In Darkness Bound - Volume 1

Lindsay H.F.
Brambles
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In Darkness Bound
A Novel
By
Lindsay H.F. Brambles
2
To Nick and Dan,
adventurers in the making.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
No man is an island; no book is born in isolation.

This novel would not have been possible without the support of family and
friends. I owe so much to so many, but especially to these few:
My parents, Jim and Betty Brambles, for bringing me into this world, and
for regaling me with tales of their lives—stories that helped shape this novel in so
many ways. How I wish they were here now to see a dream come true.
My brothers and sisters, all five of them—Brian, Elaine, Terry, Carolyn,
and Michael— who at various times in my life have been my crutch, holding me
up when I might so easily have fallen down. I know I would not have survived as
long as I have in this world if not for them. They are what family is all about, and
I could not abide existence without them.
My brother-in-law, Gerhard ‘The Great’ Klemm, who has shown me
enormous generosity and has been nothing but enthusiastic about seeing this book
get into print.
My nieces, Ashley, Erin, and Jennifer, charmers all.
Richard Roberge, my best friend, who graciously read an early draft of
this novel and made suggestions that improved it immeasurably. Over the years
he has been a great sounding board, sharing many of the interests I have had,
providing me with optimism when pessimism has too frequently clouded my
thoughts and dragged me down. I am ever grateful our paths crossed those many
years ago in the nascent days of the Internet.
Mary-Ellen Manning, mother of Nick and Dan, who read the early draft
despite science fiction not being her cup-of-tea.
Terri Antochi, for all her kindnesses over the years, especially during the
sad and difficult times when my mother was slowly succumbing to Alzheimer’s.
My sister-in-law Natalie Allaire, wife of my brother Michael and mother
of Reese, my newest nephew.
My sister-in-law Melissa Mackenzie, wife of my brother Brian and mother
of Ashley.
My brother-in-law David Austen, husband of my sister Elaine, and father
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In Darkness Bound
of Erin and Jennifer.
And the most special thanks of all go to my nephews Nicholas and Daniel,
who have brought so much joy to my life and taught me things I didn’t realize I
had yet to learn. They have been like sons, and have shared so much with me.
When I have been down, they have picked me up. They have inspired me and
encouraged me; and when I have felt old, they have made me feel young again.
Nick and Dan, I am so proud of you both and I love you more than the Sun, the
Moon, and the Universe.
Thank you. Thank you all. Know that I truly appreciate everything all of
you have ever done for me, and I can never say enough good things about you.
You are all, quite simply, the best!
Lindsay Brambles
2006
3
History will judge you, but in the end it’s all a matter of interpretation.
4
CHAPTER ONE:
THE CHILDREN OF WAR
This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.

He could taste the death. Could smell it and feel it.
He looked down at his uniform, at the streak of red darkening to brown, at the
random spattering of droplets that had struck him. Warm. Damp. Crimson against
his flesh. He felt the bile rise in his throat, swallowed hard and tried to ignore the
heaving of his stomach. He had seen it before, he reminded himself. Many times,
in many forms. Perhaps even worse than this. But still....
Maybe it was just the heat, Carter told himself. Or maybe he had had more
than just enough of this madness. Too many years, too many campaigns. Too
many letters to families. Just too damn much of it, of sitting alone in his quarters
and wondering why it had happened, trying to explain it to himself and not
coming up with any good answers.
5
Maybe he was burning out. It had happened to others. All he knew for certain
was he wanted to be sick right now and knew he couldn’t.
He blinked, trying to focus, to make sense of what had just happened, the
events of mere moments ago playing over and over in his mind. Nightmarish.
Surrealistic. It was like some horrible holodrama caught in an endless loop. Only
it wasn’t fiction; it was real. Much too real. And the silent screams and chaos
echoed through him, pounding him as forcefully as any physical blow.
He swallowed again and fought for a breath, shivered, and squeezed his eyes
shut. Hard. He saw afterimages. Remembered—and once more he saw the eerie
ballet of death, unfolding before him in a painful duet:
The door to the tent opens, sunlight forming a triangle of blinding warmth.
General Khar rises from his seat. Light from outside slants across the floor, as
though reaching for them. Carter squints, raising an arm to shield his eyes.
Shadows appear in the sunlight, steal along the floor like wraiths.
The leader of the Khalud, Savar T'an Khorun.
There is almost something angelic about her as she stands there in the
opening, surrounded by a nimbus of light, her silhouette revealing a young female
form draped in gossamer robes that stir gently with the hot breath of the desert
wind. Yes, thinks Carter, she is indeed like an angel. Soft, vulnerable, almost
otherworldly. He cannot see her face, save some hint of eyes catching a reflection
of light; and in them he sees nothing that would hint of what is to come.
She steps forward, moving like a cloud, her robe flowing, billowing. Liquid is
her grace; and Carter finds himself entranced.
It happens quickly, before he can even stir, before he can even shout warning.
For even as the words rise in his throat, a bubble of anguish and surprise, her arm
comes up level with her breasts, plucking a broach from her robes, then lashing
out, straightening, fingers uncurling, extending, releasing a silver object that
seems to explode outward. A spinning nightmare that crosses the space between
Khorun and Khar in the blink of an eye.
Too late.
Too late!
The bola, with its deadly hydrofiber threads, emits a high-pitched scream as
three silver orbs, bound in unison, whirl through the air. A deadly triad in flight,
seeking resolution in death.
Khar’s eyes widen in shock; but it’s all too quick for even fear to fully register
in them. There is just time to raise a hand protectively, to watch the weapon slice
through flesh like a sword cutting a swath through water. Just time to watch blood
erupt explosively, spewing across the inside of the tent, a hot and wet rain. Then
more: a geyser of dark ooze frothing forth from the severed neck. Warm, scarlet
vomit. Volcanic.
The general’s head seems to cock to one side, as though the man were
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puzzled; and then it topples, falling, striking the floor and bouncing. It rolls across
the pool of light, through the shadows, stopping at the feet of the Khorun, who
doesn’t miss a beat by spitting on the upturned face and frozen eyes.
Carter feels his heart hammering in his chest and thinks there’s a strong
possibility he might faint. At best he wants to puke his guts out—even as a rage
rises quickly within him and begins to wrest control.
Khar’s body totters drunkenly, crumples, and falls into shadow and light.
More blood splattering everywhere, glistening wetly. And as a red stain spreads
from the wound, biobots stream from the body like rats abandoning a sinking
ship. They’re a telltale shimmer, like a river of steel in the blood, billions of them
gathering in a vain attempt to repair the irreparable. The general was a hundred
and fifty years old and could have lived to three hundred. But not even the ‘bots
can resurrect him now.
Carter, dizzy, tears his gaze from the horrid vision of the dead Bed’wan and
stares across at Khorun. He can see her face now, the eyes filled with triumph and
defiance. He can see the sense of victory that carries her; it’s a chilling, haughty
disregard for life.
But he also sees she’s just a child. Fifteen. Sixteen at most. She could be his
daughter. His granddaughter, for pity’s sake!
He isn’t sure which is worse: That she should somehow believe what she has
done here today is some great deed; or that one so young could ever be so utterly
corrupted as to commit so heinous a crime.
He shudders; and suddenly he realizes the Assembly has made a terrible
mistake. They’ve misunderstood these people completely, and in that
misunderstanding they’ve erroneously placed trust in individuals who haven’t
earned it, whose history doesn’t warrant it. How can anyone be so foolish as to
trust people on a world where there are no more innocents? Not even among the
children.
He was right about these people, the Bed’wan and Khalud: War has become a
part of them; it is endemic to their nature. It now informs the very character of
their society, to the extent that he does not believe they can ever be free of it. Not
until they have annihilated one another.
How could we have ever thought differently? he asks himself. They’ve had
fifty years of this madness. Fifty years of children growing up in the streets
playing war, playing death, while all around them it’s real. All around them they
see the carnage, the dead and the dying. So why expect them to fear it? They’re
desensitized. To kill another human being means nothing to them. It’s an act of no
more significance on the scope of their moral radar than squishing a bug.
How could anyone get to this stage?
We came to end a war, he thinks, and all we've succeeded in doing is fanning
the flames of an insuperable hate. And the truly horrible thing is, most of the
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Bed’wan and the Khalud probably consider this a triumph.

He’d weep, but it’s hard to summon tears of sorrow for those who don’t have
the wherewithal to care enough themselves.
******
“Dammit, Suzanne! How the hell could this happen? I thought we scanned
them!”
“She was checked to Fleet standards, Captain.”
“Well apparently the fucking standards aren’t good enough, Colonel
Morrow!” Carter shouted, his face almost as red with fury as the blood that had
been spattered across it. He wiped vigorously at his skin with a cloth, trying to
remove some of the blood, his hand shaking as revulsion and rage seized him as
one.
Suzanne stood rigid, ill-at-ease. He looked at her and could tell she was angry
with herself for having let this happen, for having missed the concealed weapon—
even though the scans had been thorough and had revealed nothing. He suspected
she was equally infuriated with herself for having been so easily conned by
Khorun. She had made it clear to him she hadn’t trusted the Khalud leadership
who had served as the girl’s counsel, but she’d never expressed any concern that
the child, who earlier had seemed so naive and innocent, would ever be capable of
anything so brutally cold and calculated as this. He wondered himself if the girl
had been put up to it, perhaps drugged or conditioned to kill Khar, an unwitting
pawn in a game of political intrigue that somehow seemed beyond a child who
had only recently ascended to the throne in the wake of her father's assassination.
There was doubtless some comfort in subscribing to such a quaint notion of
innocence; he knew it sat better with his own perceptions of humanity. But he
also knew it was wrong, that the girl was no innocent, no hapless babe
manipulated by men and women bent on perpetuating the war with the Bed'wan.
She wasn’t innocent because no one on this forsaken world was. Not anymore.
Not when there were children playing war in the streets, and where by the age of
eight or nine those same children were often recruited as soldiers.
He looked at Khorun, the girl and her lone bodyguard now restrained by a
squad of Marines, and it was difficult to reconcile the creature he saw before him
with the young royal Suzanne had described. He had a hard time getting his mind
around the incongruity of such a thing, of a girl who only days earlier had
resembled any other healthy teenager. How did one place such a thing in context?
What could possibly have turned this girl into such a ruthless killer?
He knew it wasn’t one thing but many; just as it had been for most of the
citizens of this world. Only but a precious few had ever managed to rise above it.
Men like Khar, who had seen the futility of this war, of how it was destroying a
8
world and its peoples. Those few had offered hope, but now that hope was all but
extinguished. Perhaps forever.
There was something awful in the look of the girl’s eyes, something that
chilled Carter to the bone. When he stared into them he could see Khorun was
almost indifferent to what she’d just done. It wasn’t that Khorun didn’t seem to
care, so much as she simply seemed to regard what she’d done as perfectly
reasonable. Ordinary. Acceptable. She bore all the emotional content of someone
who had just swatted a mosquito from her arm. Carter could not even begin to
fathom how such a mindset could ever evolve to the point that a human life was
seen as being so utterly worthless as not to be dignified with any sort of real
acknowledgement.
He tried to control the flood of emotions that were sweeping through him,
tried to expunge them. He had never felt like this before; and suddenly he realized
it was because he’d never felt so thoroughly betrayed. It was as though this had
been a personal assault on him.
He drew a breath and studied Suzanne again, watched her watching Khorun,
conscious that if he felt betrayed, she must feel far worse. He knew she’d been a
disciplined individual all her life, never giving into the weakness of emotion, not
allowing anything through that armor she wore. But now he thought she looked
saddened. Not by the decapitated body and the blood, but by the violation of
whatever mutual trust she might have formed with this girl.
She looked away from Khorun, turning to Carter, and he was conscious of her
eyes tracking him as he paced back and forth. "We scanned her twice, Captain,”
she said into the uncomfortable silence. “I was there, sir. I saw the readouts. That
weapon was obviously masked.” He could hear her justifying herself, to herself,
trying to convince herself that she hadn’t fucked up. But it sounded like she didn’t
believe it; and he wanted to tell her it was all right but there was too much anger
and frustration in the way.
Carter halted abruptly and twisted about to face her, said bluntly, “They don’t
have the technology to deceive a scanner.”
“Apparently they do, sir. Or they acquired it from somewhere.”
And by this she meant one of the corporates—although it could have been
from almost anyone. There was no end to the number of individuals and
companies only too eager to supply such things to warring factions like those on
this planet. That’s what made it so difficult to bring peace to an environment like
this; it wasn’t in the interests of certain third parties to see such conflicts come to
an end. As long as the civil war on Inkasar continued, there was profit to be
made—even if such profit exacted a terrible toll on the people of this world. Even
if such profit would inevitably destroy it.
“I think all this is rather moot,” said Suzanne. “Our major concern now has to
be damage control. Once the Bed’wan find out the Khalud have killed General
9
Khar, the truce is going to collapse.”

“How long do you imagine we can keep something like this a secret?” Carter
asked, looking at her incredulously.
“Long enough to bug out of here,” she said. “And we had better do it fast,
because some of the Bed’wan have already left and they’ll soon be beyond the
communications blackout we’re generating.”
He gaped, feeling staggered by this revelation. “I thought I gave explicit
orders this camp was to be sealed!” he snapped. “No one in or out until my say
so.”
“They left before this happened,” Suzanne explained, gesturing towards the
inert body that lay as it had fallen, a pool of blood surrounding it, flies already
settling.
“Who? Which one of them left?”
“The one they call Khafar. He and some others took a flitter just after the
Khalud arrived.”
Carter swore under his breath and wiped at his face with one hand, smelt the
blood on it and winced. Then he shook his head and uttered a sour little laugh.
“Doesn’t that take the cake,” he said.
“Sir?” Suzanne frowned, puzzled.
“We’ve been set up,” he said. “The Khalud had no intention of ever signing a
peace treaty. No doubt that’s why they were so quick to agree to the meeting in
the first place. And I bet that aside from poor General Khar, the Bed’wan had no
intentions of signing either. This was all just a means of eliminating him from the
picture.”
“You seriously believe the Khalud and the Bed’wan collaborated?”
“It’s hard to imagine them putting aside their differences long enough to
arrange such a thing,” he admitted. “But I’d wager they had considerable help in
this. I don’t suppose we’ve been the only negotiators among them.”
“The corporates,” she hissed. From her lips it sounded like a curse, which
Carter didn’t think was perhaps so far removed from the truth. Not from where he
was standing, at least.
“Yeah, the corporates,” he grunted.. “I'd have to put one of the megacorps at
the top of the list of those parties interested in maintaining this living nightmare.
They probably tapped into the paranoia many of the Bed‘wan had regarding
General Khar. That was something that always concerned me. I had the feeling
the other tribal leaders realized he was becoming increasingly powerful and
popular with some segments of the population. Many of them undoubtedly
perceived his growing stature among his people to be as great a threat as the
Khalud. But, of course, now that he’s been assassinated they'll exploit his death as
a means of sustaining the conflict. Suddenly Khar will be the great Bed'wan
martyr, and there'll be calls to rally around the forces arrayed against the Khalud.”
10
“So what now? It can only be a matter of time before the proverbial shit hits
the fan.”
Carter walked to the entrance of the tent and stood in the opening, peering out
over the camp, looking to the flitters parked on the hard stone and dust of the
tabletop mountain. To the south were the Bed’wan. To the north the Khalud.
Overhead Marines continued to patrol, ever vigilant. Only a handful of people on
this world knew what had happened, but that would soon change. And when it did
he didn’t want to be around here, an easy target for their fury.
He ran his fingers through his short hair and sighed. He felt thoroughly
defeated, resigned to the fact that they had failed...and failed so abominably. “Get
Anna on the horn and call the fleet in. We need to get the boats down here,” he
said. “And have the fleet make ready to depart as soon as possible. I don’t want to
spend any more time in this bloody system than I have to.” He looked skyward,
shielding his eyes against the painful brilliance. “And let’s hope there aren’t any
more unwelcome surprises.”
“It could take time,” Suzanne warned. “They have to jump from picket duty
orbits. Then they have to make orbit around Inkasar. We’re talking hours.”
“I know.” He gritted his teeth. “Dammit, don’t you think I know that?” He
clenched a fist, wanted to pound something to a pulp. “I should never have
allowed the Assembly to dictate the conditions of our mission here. Leaving the
ships out there wasn’t militarily sound. And leaving us here without the boats was
insanity.”
“In retrospect, no one could have anticipated this.”
“Really?” He snorted. “Only a fucking optimist wouldn’t have. If I hadn’t
trusted the bureaucrats back on Isis, we wouldn’t be where we are now, up to our
eyeballs in shit.”
“Maybe they knew something we don’t.”
“Oh,” he drawled, “I’m sure there’s a lot about all this they knew that they
didn’t tell us.”
“So our mission is scrubbed?”
He glanced back at her, giving her an odd look. “What mission, Colonel?
We’re fucked. Whatever we may have thought we could accomplish here ended
the moment that bitch killed Khar. Any hope for peace died with him. And as for
us, if we weren’t exactly welcomed with open arms before we’re almost certainly
persona non grata now. The Bed’wan will never trust us again, if they ever did.
Hell!” He threw up his arms. “If I were them I wouldn’t trust us either. And I
suspect that was as much a part of the plan as anything: One more black eye for
the Federation. One more nail in our coffin.” He twisted away, fuming, then
added in an undertone, “The goddamn idiots never wanted peace. They simply
didn’t understand it. Easier for them to live with their fucking hate and their rage.
Easier for them to just keep fighting. That’s what they are now. That’s what
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they’ve become. That’s all they know. And who are we to be so goddamn bloody
foolish as to presume to argue otherwise?”
He turned his attentions to the girl, Khorun, and shuddered at the sight of her.
Some part of him was consumed with the compulsion to go over there and throttle
her; it would be so easy to kill her. He could do it now. Just pick up a gun and
shoot her. It would feel so good. For all of ten seconds. But he couldn’t do it. He
didn’t have it in him. Perhaps because he knew on some level she had only been
doing what was natural to her, the sort of thing she had grown up with. It was
wired into her; she had never known an existence absent of war. Absent of this
war. Might just as well condemn a lion that hauled down and killed a wildebeest.
Khorun didn’t know right from wrong. Not his right and wrong, at least. In
her world those qualifiers meant different things; and so the cold-blooded murder
of the opposition could not be construed as immoral.
He really had no choice but to let her live. Let her live and continue her
people’s senseless war against the Bed’wan. Let her continue to grow up only
knowing war, as she had known only war since the time of her birth. Let her go
on thinking this was the only way of life, that it was normal. Let her continue the
death and destruction that had destroyed so much and so many—perhaps for
another fifty years. Perhaps until she was old enough to understand the folly of
what she’d done. But by then it would be too late.
And truthfully, he didn’t think there was ever going to be any understanding
for the likes of her. Child of war, it was the only life she knew. As impossible as it
might seem, it was conceivable that for her and those like her the prospect of
peace was more frightening than any death. Perhaps she could just not imagine a
world without conflict, without the driving hatred between the Khalud and the
Bed’wan that informed every moment of daily existence on Inkasar. Perhaps the
prospect of actually living in harmony with her enemy so truly terrified her that
she would do anything to prevent it.
And perhaps it was none of that and just the greed of those who sought profit
in the misery of others. Maybe she was just an ignorant pawn in a cruel game
being played out across the Earth Empire.
He was reminded of what one of his teachers had once told him: You can’t
fight human nature; and maybe you shouldn’t even try.
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CHAPTER TWO:
FREEFALL
“Commander, I’m getting indications of activity at the Khalud station.”

Anna looked up from her command screen and glanced towards Ops, the
quick movement of her head causing the fringe of her bangs to drift upward in a
lazy motion. Beneath that layer of blond hair her brow knit in a tight frown, thin
eyebrows brought close over narrowed eyes. “What kind of movement?” she
asked, feeling the prick of suspicion on the back of her neck.
“Ships undocking, sir,” said the young lieutenant on duty at Ops. He briefly
pried his gaze from the holo image before him to shoot her a fleeting look.
“Appears as though they’re preparing their fleet for a run at the point.”
“Are you certain?”
“Can’t determine for sure, sir. Not yet. But they've been sending ships through
the point on and off since we arrived. Could just be ferrying ore.” He shrugged
indifferently.
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To call the ships docked to that old station a ‘fleet’ was stretching things a
little, she thought. A few of them were in-system patrol craft, crewed by a handful
of personnel and capable of minor interdiction duty, but certainly not a match for
anything like a heavy cruiser or even the smallest Fleet escort. The rest were
largely cargo transports, old enough to be holdovers from when the Khalud had
first come to this system, and against which the patrol craft were tiny minnows in
the company of lumbering behemoths that rivaled a corporate carrier in length and
breadth. These Anna eyed with mounting concern, calling up their profiles on her
main screen, her lips drawn in a tight line as she digested what was there.
Apparently they were no longer ordinary cargo ships at all, having been
considerably modified, now converted into something decidedly more lethal. Not
in itself unusual these days; the processed ore they carried was valuable enough to
make those ships a target for marauders and pirates, not to mention the less
scrupulous of the corporates.
“Can you give me a more detailed scan?” she asked Ops.
“High-res scan will take minutes at this distance, sir. I can use the hyperscan,
but it won't be as clean unless I boost the amplification. Means drawing a lot more
power.”
“I'm well aware of that, Lieutenant. But we don't have all day. Hyper it.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Shortly thereafter more data spilled into her screen, the information causing
the rise of an eyebrow and a pursing of her lips. The scan revealed that on some of
the ships there were magnetic signatures that suggested the presence of ‘bottles’
common in anti-matter containment. Torpedoes or mines, most likely. A strictly
military item that was costly and hard to come by. A controlled and restricted
item, at that. Unless you were Fleet. Or the corporates. And USF proscriptions
would have forbidden any third party from providing such weaponry to warring
factions like the Khalud and the Bed’wan. With enough of those anti-matter
devices, even decrepit ships like the Khalud cargo carriers could do serious
damage, making them a significant threat to anyone unlucky enough to be their
target.
“Those ships aren't carrying ore, Commander. They’re boosting way too fast
for that.”
“So I see,” she grunted
“Uh, Commander, hyperscan shows readings of multiple ships breaking from
the vicinity of the Bed’wan station. Tracking suggests they’re headed towards our
ships.”
Anna keyed for that data on her screen and studied the readout intently. The
Bed’wan ships were similar in configuration to those of the Khalud, and
accordingly a comparable threat. The extrapolated system trajectories of both the
Bed’wan and Khalud ships converged on the six USF vessels currently under her
14
command. It didn’t make any sense, if one assumed their actions were benign. But
if they were intent upon engaging in something more nefarious, then their
maneuvers took on a whole new meaning.
“Com, has there been any communications from Inkasar?”
“Negative, sir.”
She felt unease rush through her. Bed’wan and Khalud ships working in
concert, tracking towards the Federation fleet. Cargo ships that were not hauling
any ore, but did seem to be carrying anti-matter weapons of some sort. It didn't
take a genius to add that up and reach the conclusion there was something terribly
amiss here.
“Com, hail the approaching Khalud and Bed'wan ships. Ask them what their
intentions are.”
She waited impatiently, squirming in the command seat that was centered in
the bridge, her gaze moving restlessly from Com to Ops and back to her screen.
“Commander, there’s no response from either the Khalud or Bed’wan ships.”
“You tried normal space as well as hyper?”
“Yes, sir. But at normal it’s still minutes to their reply.”
Instinct told her it would make no sense to wait, that there would be no reply.
That same instinct goaded her to action. “Sound red alert,” she ordered. She said
it with surprising calm, knowing it might be overkill, but deciding that discretion
was indeed the better part of valor. She would rather a little egg on her face than
to find herself outwitted by a bunch of rank amateurs. Besides, she had never been
one to ignore her gut instincts, and they said those ships out there were now a
credible threat.
“Sir, Commander of the Winslow is asking for verification of red alert.”
The Winslow, a destroyer skippered by Commander Ceji Ivanislejk, on station
much closer to Inkasar than the Goliath was. And consequently much closer to
the approaching fleet of cargo ships. At sublight velocities they would reach the
Winslow's position long before they got anywhere near the region of space
Goliath drifted in. But she didn't imagine they'd lumber along at those speeds for
any protracted length of time; it would take days or even weeks to close with the
Winslow, by which time neither the Winslow nor any of the other Fleet ships
would be where they were now. And Bed'wan and Khalud trajectories were not
properly skewed for an orbital intersect farther along the tracks of the Fleet ships,
which clearly indicated they were going to skip-jump. Probably soon.
She sent a confirm signal to the Winslow, furious Ivanislejk was questioning
her order. With Carter on the surface, she ranked the destroyer’s captain—even
though in truth he was technically senior to her by four years. But she was acting
commander of the flag vessel and Carter had left her in charge of the fleet; if
something happened to Carter on Inkasar, command of the fleet devolved to her,
15
until such time as Admiralty decreed otherwise.

“Sir, hyperscan is picking up EM discharge from the surface of Inkasar.”
“Source?”
“Between thirty and forty different sites across the main continent, sir.”
“Forty or fifty?" She blinked. “What do you make of it?”
“Scans suggest it may be mass driver launches, Commander. Could explain
the cargo ships. They may be maneuvering to collect ore being launched.”
“Yeah, right,” she said sardonically, shaking her head. “Don’t bet on it. Look
at their headings, Lieutenant,” she ordered. “The trajectories are all wrong for
that. Besides, standard gathering orbit for the ore is close to Inkasar. We're nearly
one AU out from the planet.”
Both the Bed’wan and the Khalud used mass drivers to loft processed ore into
space for collection, but she had a pretty good idea that wasn't what they were
doing right now. She studied her screen to see if there were any data in the scan
that might indicate what was being sent into a solar orbit and quickly noted the
magnetic signatures matching those on the cargo ships. More evidence of anti-
matter weapons.
So the Bed'wan and Khalud were improvising. She had to admire their
inventiveness, converting a mass driver into a rail gun capable of launching
torpedoes was pretty clever. It wouldn’t be terribly accurate, granted, but once
you got the torpedoes into a suitable orbit they could boost to wherever you
wanted in the system. And if they had compact Pearson FTLs, that meant that
once they were far enough away from the mass of the planet they could make a
skip-jump and reach ships a hundred and fifty million kilometers out in a matter
of seconds. Ship's like the Goliath. But the one good thing about a skip-jump,
from the perspective of the target, was that it always followed a straight line, so
you could easily calculate the trajectory—provided there was no significant mass
within a couple of million klicks. The real guess work was in figuring out where
along that line a torpedo would drop back into normal space.
What the hell was happening down there?
“Arms Control, activate the packet cannons and prepare countermeasures and
anti-matter torpedoes. Com, send instructions fleet-wide that all ships are to do
likewise.” Damned if she was going to get caught with her pants down. Especially
not with Carter's ship in her hands.
“Aye, aye, sir. Activating cannons and countermeasures, preparing torpedoes
for launch on your command.”
“Message sent, sir.”
“Lock on incoming ships and any of the targets launched from the planet’s
surface. Watch for jump signatures.”
“Aye, aye, sir. Locking on incoming ships and surface-launched targets.”
The bridge was buzzing now, filled with com-link chatter from all over the
16
ship, and from hyper communications with the other ships in the fleet, all of
which were separated from one another by hundreds of millions of kilometers as
they drifted in orbit about the system's sun. Anna almost allowed herself a smile;
she liked it like this. She was in her element, in the environment and
circumstances for which she had trained so diligently. It was only in situations
like this that she truly felt complete.
“Com, inform all ships that it would appear we’re under attack. Advise that
they’re to take appropriate action. I want all ships to spool up their sublight drives
and prime their Pearson FTLs. When you’ve done that, try to establish contact
with our people on Inkasar.” She wanted to talk to Carter as soon as possible and
maybe get some sense of what the hell was going on. Hopefully their geo-sync
hyper relays near the planet were still operational; it would be a nightmare if they
were forced to communicate through standard com. The time lag would be
minutes each way, given the distance Goliath was from Inkasar.
“All ships have acknowledged your message, sir. Still attempting to contact
our ground forces.”
Where moments before she had been thinking this watch on the bridge was
going to be yet another dull session spent trying to remain alert while drinking
copious amounts of coffee, she now found herself almost trembling with the
adrenaline rush that shipboard combat always elicited from her. “Sound Action
Stations,” she said. “All hands on deck.”
The alarm sounded throughout the ship, a loud whooping that ran from stem
to stern. Behind her, throughout the length and breadth of the Goliath, Anna knew
the men and women of the cruiser’s crew would be tumbling from bed and
clambering to readiness. There would be a controlled chaos as people ran or
pulled their way through the narrow corridors and tubeways to their respective
duty posts.
“Engine room, this is the captain: spool up the sublights and prime the
Pearson.”
“Sir?”
“I may need more maneuvering speed than the thrusters can give us, Chief.
And we may have to make a skip-jump.”
“In-system, sir?”
“You have a problem with that, Chief?”
“Not as long as we're not intending to do it near any substantial mass,
Commander.”
“Only if we're desperate, Chief.”
“Very good, sir.”
“Helm, move us out from our present position. Let’s see if those ships are
really aiming for us.”
“Preparing for boost, sir.”
17
“Ops, what’s the status on those surface launches?”

“They're still firing stuff aloft, sir,” the Ops officer said. “The earlier
projectiles have reached orbit and are now beginning to boost outward towards
our track. At their current velocity they're no threat.”
“They're just maneuvering for the jump,” she said. “And when they do we're
only going to have a few seconds to react. So stay sharp on the hyperscan.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Com, have you got hold of the captain yet?” Patience, Anna, she told herself.
Patience.
“Still unable to establish contact, sir.”
Goddammit!
“Uh, Commander?”
“What is it?” She jerked her head in the direction of Ops.
“Those launches from the surface have started to jump, sir!”
“Helm, have you got their track?”
“Negative, sir!” Worriedly. “There’re too many of them. They're all over our
track. The AI is picking up hundreds of signatures. There must have been multiple
warheads in each of those packets they lobbed into orbit. Even if we boost
sublight, we're still going to be in the predicted cone of their drop from jump.
When they exit, some of them are going to be damn close.”
“Is the Pearson primed?” She tried not to sound anxious.
“No, sir. We've only got the sublights.”
She swore. “Turn the bow to the incoming,” she ordered. “We've got to
present the lowest profile possible and protect the engines. It may give us a few
more seconds. Ready the packet cannons for incoming targets. Prepare to launch
countermeasures.”
She felt her heart start racing, both loving and hating the moment in that
strange synergy that existed between the two. As a spacer she had trained for this.
She’d been born for it. But she also knew she was mortal, like everyone else on
this ship, and that a very real threat to that all too fragile flesh was on a fast
intercept with them. In the next few seconds someone might die. She might be
that someone.
“I need the Pearson, Chief,” she called out sharply. Thrusters and sublights
weren't going to cut it; the only chance they had of getting clear of the enemy
torpedoes was by jumping.
“Doing my best, Commander. But this isn't a bloody flitter; you don't just flick
a switch and fly.”
“Enemy warheads dropping out of jump and closing,” Ops rang out. “Time to
contact is one five seconds.”
Shit! “Sound the impact alarm. Launch countermeasures!”
“Countermeasures away.”
18
The distinct warning wail of the impact alarm cut through the noise
permeating the bridge; it was not a sound any spacer wanted to hear on a warship.
If you weren’t close to one of the ESCs (Emergency Survival Chambers) or one
of the secure harnesses, all you could do was find a handhold and cling to it for
dear life—knowing full well, of course, that the chances of holding on in a severe
impact were next to nil. Many a spacer had been killed or seriously injured in
combat when the shockwave from an anti-matter torp expending its energy
through the ship’s shields had hit the hull and ripped through the entire vessel.
Anna keyed her harness tighter and threw her head back into the padded
embrace of the headrest. She held her breath and closed her eyes.
They described it as the ‘ringing’ of the ship, a resonance that passed down
the length of the hull, as though the vast structure of the vessel were an enormous
bell or gong being struck a hammer blow. Beneath that resonance she could hear
the protestations of fibersteel and plaz, all being stressed as the energy the shields
couldn’t absorb and dissipate tore through the hull and through the complex
geometry of cabins and corridors that made up the labyrinthine interior of the
ship. She felt the slight acceleration as the ship was hit. It was only the briefest of
sensations, but the force of even a small anti-matter weapon was such that the
inertia of something as massive as this heavy cruiser could be overcome.
“More incoming!” Ops warned, but too late.
Again the walloping blow, like an enormous mallet swung against the port
side of the ship. Again the anguished groan of the vessel and the acceleration. The
lights dimmed and flickered, then steadied. A raft of alarms and a cacophony of
voices filled the air as damage was assessed and the ship and crew began to
recover from the initial shock.
“Hull breach in section seventeen...Ten casualties...We’ve lost the secondary
thruster on the port side...One of the sublights is now out of
commission...Cannons six through eleven on the port side are inoperable...”
It went on and on, but even as the words reached her and the data streamed
across her screen, Anna knew they had only sustained minor wounds. It could
have been worse, and might still get so—which was why she couldn’t take any
chances.
“Ops, where are those Khalud and Bed'wan ships?”
“Still boosting to our tracks, sir. They appear to be targeting every ship in our
fleet. They haven't jumped yet, though.”
"They will. Watch them closely, Lieutenant." She would have liked to have
put the enemy ships out of commission now, but releasing a salvo of torpedoes
and skip-jumping them across to where the enemy was would likely only force
the enemy to jump. On the other hand, waiting didn't really seem an option.
Clearly their intentions were hostile, so it was better to force their hand, maybe
make them jump before they were fully prepared. At least that way she would be
19
somewhat in control of the situation.

“Arms Control,” she said, “open the forward torpedo tubes and plot a solution
on the Khalud and Bed’wan ships.”
“Torpedo tubes open, sir. Plotting a solution.”
“Fire when ready, Lieutenant.”
She waited.
“Solution plotted. Torpedoes one through six away, sir!”
“Plot second salvo.”
“Plotting, sir. Torpedoes ready to fire. Locked on target, sir!”
“Fire!”
“Second salvo away, sir! Torpedoes tracking to lead targets. Closing to jump
range.”
Given the distance now separating them from the enemy, this could all be over
quite quickly. The cargo ships were likely no match for the Goliath's torpedoes.
Still, any battle in space was a complex geometry, involving a lot of guess work
and luck. Much of the time you weren't aiming directly at your target, but at
where they would be. In-system jumps by nature had to be short, unless you
wanted to risk dropping out into a planet or an asteroid, but that still meant the
chances of hitting a target that had jumped were slim. The best opportunities came
when a ship dropped out into normal space. It couldn't immediately jump again,
having to wait for the Pearson to recharge before doing so. The longer the jump,
the longer this took. So the game was to force your opponent to jump, mark their
track, and then launch more of your arsenal at them when they dropped out into
normal space.
As Anna had anticipated, the first two salvos of torpedoes from the Goliath
had goaded the Bed'wan and Khalud ships into jumping. Now all she could do
was watch the trails on her screen that the navigational AI had extrapolated,
glowing lines in a three dimensional cube, moving out towards the white
cylinders that represented the FS Goliath and the other ships of her fleet.
“Ops,” she called, sensing the drop into normal space was imminent.
“It'll be seconds, sir, if they're dropping anywhere near us.”
“Don't worry, they are," she assured him. "Arms Control, prepare to launch
another salvo of torpedoes,” she ordered as she peered into the cube and watched
the tracking, waiting to see what appeared along the projected lines.
“There's one the navigational AI has plotted to be on an intercept, sir.”
“We'll just have to wait and see,” Anna said. It was tempting to jump, but if
she did that she would lose the advantage, then they'd have to do this all over
again, a game of cat and mouse that could go on for hours or even days—though
she reckoned she was far better at this sport than they were.
The first of the Bed’wan and Khalud ships dropped out only a few thousand
kilometers away, moving straight towards the cruiser with the same velocity they
20
had had when they had first entered jump. The distance between them and the
Goliath was now closing dramatically, and it was clear from the navigational AI
that an intercept was certain. Anna suddenly realized their intent had not been to
get within close fighting range, as a warship might attempt to do; they had
designed their jumps for the sole purpose of ramming. It seemed utterly
preposterous to her, yet there they were, now on target to meet the Goliath's track.
And so close and so fast that she had no real time to consider her options.
“Commander, I’ve got contact with the captain!”
“I’m a little busy now, Com," she said in a harried voice. "Hold him on the
line.”
“Helm, can you track us away from intercept?”
“It won't work, sir. The AI says the only option is to jump.”
“Is the Pearson fully primed?”
“Enough for a short skip-jump, sir.”
“Then do it,” she said.
“I’ll try my best, Commander.”
“I don’t want you to try, Mister Doyanhi,” Anna said sharply.
“Understood, sir.”
Space seemed to collapse around them. Anna felt the wave of nausea
synonymous with a phase-shift as the ship made its skip-jump. Goliath was
moving. In the space of a few breaths they would transit ten million kilometers
inward to the sun.
“Ops?”
“We’re clear of the main body of enemy ships, sir. But I‘m reading an
anomalous signature in the envelope—”
“Collision alert! Collision alert!” the voice of the ship’s central AI wailed.
“Impact imminent.”
“Ops!” Anna almost screamed.
“It's another ship, sir! Must have got caught in our envelope when we phase-
shifted.”
“We can't avoid it, sir!”
“Countermeasures!” Anna shouted, but she knew she was too late.
The AI tried to react, and she felt the effects of that as she was slammed into
her chair, squashed against the padding, breath forced from her lungs. The
bladders meant to offset some of the gee effect inflated around her, pressing
against her body, forcing blood away from the extremities. Her vision blurred,
dulling, graying, and she knew she was hovering at the threshold of
consciousness. Spacers called it the ‘edge’, and it was not a pleasant experience at
even the best of times.
It was all so brief, because when one was so close to another ship there were
21
few options left open for the AI. Not enough in this case, and none of them good.
Not enough time to abort the jump. Not enough time to blast the enemy away with
the packet cannons. Not enough time to do much at all but accept fate.
The enemy ship fell into the jump with them, dragged along in the long
envelope created by the Pearson FTL, the cocoon of energy that folded space
around the ship and moved it through millions of kilometers in seconds.
Somewhere, far away, through the fog of semi-consciousness, Anna heard the
aching scream of clashing shields. The two ships collided, the energy envelope of
the cruiser connecting with that of the cargo ship, the resulting concatenation
erupting with a more strident fury than any anti-matter torpedo. The unseen wave
of energy that resulted was great enough to cleave the outer skin of the cruiser,
tearing up plaz and fibersteel as though it were paper caught in a wind, rupturing
the integrity of the ship, so that the vast volume of air at one atmosphere blew the
weakened armor plating out. A cloud of swelling debris and roiling plumes of
gases crystallized in the frigid dark vacuum of space within the Pearson field, an
eerie blossom caught in the faint gleam of light shining from the ship's viewports.
On the Goliath there was a grating symphony of alarms and voices
everywhere. The cruiser dropped out of hyperspace, surrounded by an expanding
tornado of tumbling debris that was all that remained of the cargo ship.
Blinking fiercely, Anna dragged herself out of her stupor, forcing her eyes to
focus as she stared into her screen and digested the extent of the damage. The
Goliath’s rotation ring had taken the brunt of the focused shockwave, an entire
outer section torn asunder and blown out. Another one of the sublights was now
out of commission, plasma spewing from it into the airlessness of space. She felt a
chill wend its way through her when she paged deeper through the mounting list
of damage reported from around the ship, and she only breathed a sigh of relief
when she saw that the Pearson FTL was still intact.
“Helm?”
“We came out of the jump early, sir.” Lieutenant Doyanhi glanced back at her.
“We’ve lost attitude control. All thrusters and weapons are off line. We've got
zero nav.” He paused in his breathless recitation, then added, somewhat
anxiously, “Our current solar track is going to take us right through the orbital
track of an asteroid, Commander.”
“How close?” she asked.
His expression turned grim.
She rolled her head slightly, looking exasperated and incredulous. “Oh, come
on!” she said. “You're not seriously telling me that in all this vast space we're both
going to reach the intersection point of the two orbits at the same time!”
“Sorry, sir, but unless we can boost, we're headed for a collision. As for the
coincidence of our course intersecting that of the asteroid, it would seem the mass
of the asteroid was enough to pull us out of the skip-jump in the first place. It
22
must have disrupted the skein and collapsed the hyper track we were on. Not
surprising, given that it's a pretty big rock. And dense. Real dense. Must be
largely nickel and iron. If we hit that the shields aren't going to do us any good;
and even if we had weapons they’d be next to useless.”
“What about the Pearson?”
He shook his head. “No damage, sir, but it has to recharge. And without at
least three sublights for the priming process, we can't make another jump—even if
we risk doing it close to a mass this substantial. We have to get the operational
sublights back on line.”
Anna swore under her breath and studied the tactical display, wanting to
confirm for herself that he was right. Of course he was, and there had never really
been any doubt about it.
They were adrift, wobbling in a slow spin about their longitudinal axis, and
sailing straight for a fatal collision. They had to get the thrusters back on line and
correct the wobble and spin, then they had to boost to expand their solar orbital
track or retro to shrink it. Either way, or they were going to end up smashing into
a very big and very immovable object. The Goliath, massive as it was, was like a
grain of sand up against a large boulder when compared with this asteroid. There
was no question it would be no match for that sort of collision; it would not
survive, except as dust, molecules, and photons.
She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, trying not to envision their possible
demise; it was not the way she wanted to die, her grave a crater on a forgotten
piece of rock.
“Com, any word from the rest of the fleet?”
“I still can't raise them through hyper, sir. Ship-to-ship com-link isn't working.
I could try the hyper relay near Inkasar.”
“Do you still have contact with the captain?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then I'll talk to him first, before you try anything else.”
“Patching him to your screen, sir.”
Carter’s face appeared in the cube; he looked stressed and distracted. “We’ve
got a situation down here, Anna!” he said. “I need the boats here pronto. And I
need you to lay down some covering fire.”
“Uh...I'll dispatch the destroyers as soon as possible,” she said hesitantly.
He gave her a sharp, mystified look.
“We’ve got a bit of a problem ourselves out here, skipper.”
“Oh?"
She sucked in her breath at the look on his face.
“Nothing serious, I hope.”
“Nothing I can't handle,” she said, with far more confidence than she felt.
“What's going on up there, Commander?”
23
“I was about to ask you the same thing, sir. We've just been attacked by both
Bed'wan and Khalud forces.”
“NI said the Khalud and the Bed’wan don’t have space armaments capable of
being a threat.”
She almost laughed. “They’ve enough. They seem to have got their hands on
anti-matter weapons, and they've been quite inventive in their deployment.”
He swore. “This sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen. Intelligence never
mentioned even the remotest possibility of threats from that quarter.” There was a
loud noise in the background, an explosion of some sort, and the image in the
cube jittered and flickered before steadying again.
“Seems like maybe Intelligence didn't mention a lot of things, sir,” Anna said
dryly. “I'm guessing the Khalud and Bed'wan had a little help on this one.“
“Apparently,” he grunted, sullen-faced. “What else is new these days?” he
asked rhetorically.
“I take it the peace talks didn't go well.”
“That would be an understatement.” Carter looked away for a moment, then
turned back and stared out at her from the screen. “What about the rest of the
fleet?” he asked.
“The other destroyers appear fine, but we haven't managed to raise them. Our
com-link is a little flakey at the moment. We only seem to be able to establish
hyper com-link with our relay.”
“And my ship, Commander?”
Suddenly she felt like a kid who had borrowed a favorite toy from a friend and
had then accidentally broken it.
“Anna?” he pressed.
“Seems we were the focus of their efforts, sir. We were forced to make a jump
and, well—”
She could see him grinding his teeth. “How bad is it?” he asked.
“We've had a little problem,” she said. “A bit of a confrontation with one of
the Khalud cargo ships. It dropped out of jump nearly on top of us just as we went
into phase-shift. The envelope of the Pearson field brought it through with us.
That may have been what disrupted the skein and forced us out of the jump. That
and the asteroid.”
Carter looked aghast. “Asteroid?”
“The AI managed to save most of the engines,” she went on hurriedly,
wishing she could avoid telling him the whole truth. This would be so much
easier after everything was resolved. After she had saved the ship. If she did.
“We’ve temporarily lost thrusters and the sublights are off line.”
“And?”
She heaved a breath, knowing there was no sense in prevaricating. “And we’re
a few hours from a potentially fatal impact with the asteroid," she said. "If
24
engineering and the tech teams can’t make the repairs in time, I may have to give
the order to abandon ship. The pods are at least maneuverable.”
For a moment Carter said nothing. The noise in the background seemed
louder. Finally he addressed her again, his tone of voice suggesting he was doing
his best to control his emotions. “See if you can get at least one of the destroyers
in close to the planet," he said. "Get them to lay down some cover on our position
and to send down some boats. We’ve just got the captain’s gig and that can’t carry
all the Marines.”
“I’ll try and pass the order, skipper. It may take some time, though, if we can't
use the hyper for the com-link. I may be able to get through using standard com-
link, but the lag is in minutes now. Our jump has placed us ten million klicks
inward and more than a hundred million from the Pretoria, which is the closest of
our destroyers.”
“Do what you can," he said. "And Commander Montagne...”
“Sir?” She looked to him, intently focused, knowing not to ignore him when
he spoke to her like that.
“Make bloody sure you save my ship, Commander. That’s an order!”
“Aye, aye, Captain.” She almost made the unforgivable mistake of adding,
“I'll try.” But there was no 'try' in Fleet. You either did or you didn't; and if you
didn't, you invariably died.
25
CHAPTER THREE:
THE ROAD TO HELL
This is what death smells like.

The flitters lay in flames, the first targets of the Khalud and Bed’wan forces. It
was ironic, Carter thought, that this was probably the first time in fifty odd years
these two factions were actually fighting a common foe. He might have found it
all mildly amusing, in a wry sort of way, had he not been the target of their
mutual enmity. But there was nothing in the least bit funny about the blackened
hulks of the flitters that lay as twisted and burning ruins amidst the rocks. Even
less so the dead Marines scattered here and there out in the open, beyond his
reach. He could only look on helplessly from the tenuous cover of the cavern into
which they had retreated, frustrated that there was little if anything he could do. It
was difficult not to consider the very real possibility that none of them would get
out of this alive.
Without the flitters they were trapped, pinned down by forces to the north and
26
south of them. Forces that had chosen to vent their frustrations on the fools who
had misguidedly come to help them. Fools like himself, who time and time again
beat their heads against the wall of intransigence that seemed increasingly the
hallmark of an empire that was steadily fracturing along a multitude of lines:
ethnic, religious, economic, and political. Fools who thought they could somehow
hold it all together with good will and good intentions, pasting over the cracks of
hate and greed. But at best these were fragile bandages that in the end could not
cover the wounds of a civilization that was growing and changing far too fast for
its own good.
What was it they said? The road to Hell is paved with good intentions? He
thought that particularly apt right about now.
He heard scrabbling on the rocks behind him and turned to see Suzanne come
up from out of the dark reaches of the cave. The Marines about him shifted,
making room for her as she squatted beside him, dirt-streaked face shadowed in
the faint light of the evening.
“There’s no way out back there,” she said, answering his unspoken question.
“The cave goes on a considerable ways, but seems to come to a dead end. We
could probably blast deeper, but there’s an obvious risk attached to that.” She
took a drink from the canteen he offered her and wiped her face with a wetted
hand. “I think we don’t have much choice,” she concluded.
By that he knew she meant the options she had discussed with him earlier,
neither of which he cared for, but both of which seemed to be all they had left
open to them. One was for him and some Marines to try and make it to the
captain’s gig—which hadn’t yet been hit—and take off for orbit. The gig was
faster and more armed and armored than the flitters had been, so there was a good
chance of escape once they got off the ground. But the gig couldn’t hold more
than a couple of dozen at a push, and he had no desire to leave anyone down here
to the likes of the Bed’wan and the Khalud. The other option was to play the one
ace they might have up their sleeves: Savar T’an Khorun, the hereditary leader of
the Khalud. Shortly before the assassination of General Khar, both the Bed’wan
and the Khalud who had been in camp had vacated the field in haste, the Khalud
leaving Khorun behind with her lone bodyguard. One could only assume they had
believed her dead, perhaps killed in immediate retaliation for Khar’s death.
Whatever the truth, the fact remained that Carter still had her, and it was possible,
so Suzanne reasoned, that he might be able to use Khorun as a bargaining chip
with the Khalud. Providing, of course, they cared a wit about whether the girl was
dead or alive. Royalty she might be, but apparently anyone was expendable on
this world; they had certainly had no compunctions about using a mere girl to
commit a murder.
The ground quaked violently as another blast hit nearby. Rocks tumbled and
bounced from the hillside, forcing them to duck for fear of being struck. The hits
27
were getting closer, and Carter was sure it could only be a matter of minutes
before the Bed’wan or the Khalud found their range.
“Captain,” said Suzanne anxiously, raising her voice to be heard above the
constant din of artillery. “You have to make a choice. We can’t wait for help from
the ships any longer. For all we know they may have run into more problems.”
Which, of course, he knew was all too likely. After all, they hadn’t anticipated
such a quick and effective strike in space in the first place, and it would be foolish
to think the enemy didn’t have any more unforeseen surprises lying in wait for the
USF fleet. He looked toward the gig, which sat a couple of hundred meters away,
nestled in a circle of rocks, shielded from much of the surrounding plain of the
mountaintop. It seemed tantalizingly close, but to traverse that distance would be
a risky procedure that would almost certainly result in casualties. Unavoidable,
Suzanne had said of the latter when he had argued the merits of the option with
her but a half hour prior. Unacceptable, had been his retort. But she had pointed
out that he was the senior officer of this mission, and that above all else it was his
duty to not only survive but to escape. He didn’t have the right to sacrifice his
own life when there was an opportunity to save it, because by saving his own life
he might well save the lives of many others. It was his command experience they
would count on to get them home.
“All right,” he finally relented, “we go with plan A.”
A whisper of a grim smile molded Suzanne’s lips. “Good idea,” she shouted
as more blasts erupted and sent geysers of rock and pulverized stone into the air.
She waited until the dust had settled, then added, “We should get you some armor
and a shield generator.”
“The Marines need it more than I do.”
“This'll be a wasted effort if you go and get yourself killed, Captain. Besides,
I've got some gear from one of the dead.”
“All right,” Carter muttered under his breath, noticing that she was now
wearing armor. The name tag on it said 'Kuisjenk'; he wondered what Kuisjenk
had been like as a soldier, then quickly buried that thought. Now wasn't the time
to be weighing himself down with that sort of guilt. “I'll wear the stuff, but I don't
think armor and a shield generator are going to do much good against that
artillery.”
Suzanne ignored him. “Lieutenant,” she called out, waving a man forward.
“Sir!”
“Take your men and secure a route to the captain’s gig.”
“Yessir!” The man turned and made motions with his hand to the Marines
behind him, then clambered over the lip of rock surrounding the cave, moving
like a shadow, a dozen Marines following him, fanning out across the open
territory.
Carter watched them apprehensively, a sinking sensation in his gut.
28
“Here,” said Suzanne, thrusting armor and a small shield generator into his
hands. “Put this on.”
He struggled into the equipment as she ran him through the plan.
“When they get the gig fired up, get ready to go,” she said. “There won’t be
much time. Once the systems are activated it’s going to be a bright beacon on
anyone’s scanner. We'll try to cover you from here.”
“I’m not leaving without you, dammit!”
“These are my people, John. They’re my responsibility.”
“And mine,” he argued.
She scowled impatiently. “We’ve been over this before, Captain. You’re duty
is to the entire mission. The ships up there are more important to the Federation
than a few hundred Marines.”
He had never liked equations like that, but he knew she was right. It was
easier to replace the bodies than the machines. The ships in space were priceless
to Admiralty and Fleet; their loss would certainly be far more significant than
Suzanne’s Marines. You could always grow another batch of those.
He turned and looked across the open space that separated them from the gig.
So close, yet so far. And even as he watched, a blast shattered the ground,
creating a huge pall of smoke and dust, raining rock in all directions. Another
followed. And another, this last striking where two of the Marines Suzanne had
just sent out had dug in. When the smoke and dust cleared enough, they could see
that the two were gone. There couldn't have been enough of the two soldiers left
to even identify them as human.
Carter swore under his breath; beside him Suzanne was quiet and still, her
face as indecipherable as stone.
The Marines kept going forward, stretching out a line, forming a corridor of
limited security to the gig. They had small shield generators that offered partial
protection—which ruefully reminded Carter that in his effort to appease the
Bed’wan and Khalud he had foregone just such a device for himself.
“Get ready!” Suzanne said as the first of the Marines reached the gig and
entered the ship. “Once it’s powered up you’ll only have a minute or so before
either the Khalud or the Bed’wan paint it with scan and target it.”
He nodded grimly and turned back to face the gig.
“Now!” She patted him on the back, urging him forward with a hard shove
that almost sent him sprawling. With a Marine in front and one behind he
scrambled over rock and dirt and slid down to the open area, hitting the ground in
a running crouch. The smoke and dust was thicker there and he found himself
choking on it. He fumbled with the controls of his shield unit, hoping to filter out
that worst of it, but the attention this required caused him to stumble. One of the
Marines grabbed him by the arm and half-dragged him onward, yanking him
across the uneven ground like a rag doll. Somewhere overhead he heard the
29
scream of a falling projectile, rising in pitch, increasing in volume. Then suddenly

he was flat on his face, pushed into the dirt by the two Marines, half-buried
beneath them as an enormous fireball erupted where the gig had been and a
shower of molten debris arced through the air and plummeted to the ground.
Someone grunted in his ear and he felt a body go slack on him, a sudden
deadweight. He twisted under it, trying to work free, aware the woman who had
shielded his body with hers had just become another one of their casualties. He
found himself looking into her face, the eyes open, fixed, a sightless stare in a
deathly quiet visage.
“Sir!” The other Marine was pulling on him urgently, trying to get him up and
away, back to the cover of the cave. He rose to his feet, shaking with adrenaline
and emotion and a myriad other things he could not even begin to fathom. The
other Marines grouped around him and they dashed across the open ground,
through a thick haze of dust and ash and smoke, clambering up the rocks and back
into the cave.
Carter threw himself down, his back against the hard rock, his breathing
heavy. He felt a little safer now—which was funny, because he knew this cave
was anything but safe. For the moment it masked their signatures from Bed’wan
and Khalud scanners, but in time it wouldn’t really matter if they were spotted on
scanners or not, because the constant artillery barrage would eventually pulverize
the entire top of this mountain. No one would be alive by the end of that.
Suzanne came over and sat beside him.
“So,” he said laconically, sweat dripping from his dust and soot-streaked brow
as he turned to her, “I guess it’s time for plan B.”
******
They were still in a solar orbit that would intersect with the asteroid, and still
too disabled to do anything about it. Anna had left the bridge for a quick tour of
the ship, wanting to assess the damage first hand, wanting to make a physical
connection to what she had viewed in the readouts of her screen. Not that you
could tell a great deal from inside; the most badly damaged sections had been
sealed off automatically. Until tech teams had been through to evaluate the
seriousness of the situation and make repairs, nobody was going to be entering
those areas.
The keel of the ship was intact, having suffered only minor damage from the
shockwave and debris. But in the ring that girded the core structure of the cruiser
there was a vile, black wound, like a great tear in the flesh of the vessel. Techbots
scuttled around out there, effecting rudimentary repairs, sufficient to getting the
ship back up and running. But it was the thrusters and sublights that were the
primary concern, for without them the ship still wobbled and spun uncontrollably
and they could do nothing to alter their imminent collision with the asteroid.
30
That in mind, she now stood in the control center of the engine room,
conversing in urgent undertones with the chief engineer.
“We have ten hours before I’m put in the position of making a critical
decision,” said Anna. “Then it’s either abandon ship or we all end up plowing into
a very large and very solid piece of rock.”
Singhali looked at her wearily, mopping her brow with a sleeve. “I'm doing
the best I can, Commander,” she insisted. “But the damage to the ship is
extensive. Frankly, we're lucky to be alive at all. Those poor buggers on that
transport didn’t stand a chance.”
“Those ‘poor buggers,’ as you put it, chief, are the reason we may end up a
black mark on the surface of some rock, so I wouldn’t go all mushy and spare any
compassion for them. Just give me something I can work with.”
“My people can’t produce miracles. Even with all the tech teams and techbots
on duty, the scope of the repairs is overwhelming.”
“I just need you to give me maneuvering thrusters. Even with that small boost
we may be able to avoid a collision. But if we don’t do that within the next ten
hours this ship is going to make a nice neat crater on some unnamed rock. I don’t
know about you, but that’s not a prospect I look forward to with any degree of
enthusiasm. And I especially have no desire to have to inform the captain that I
lost his ship to a bunch of fucking amateurs!” Anna’s voice had risen with this
last outburst, the words pouring from her in a torrent, pent up anger and
frustration finally breaking loose. What she said had a harder edge than she would
ordinarily have intended; but then, there was nothing ordinary about this
situation.
“I have prioritized things, Commander,” said a defensive Singhali.
“There’s only one priority now, and that’s the thrusters! Anything else can
wait. Hell, if we don’t have those thrusters soon, everything else is going to be
pretty much meaningless, chief. So unless there’s something that threatens the
ship beyond the immediate possibility that it could soon be a distant memory, I
suggest you divert all your energies and those of the crew involved to getting
those fucking thrusters back on line!”
“Aye, sir,” said the chief, a sullen look clouding her face.
Anna disengaged herself from the handholds and foot stops by which she had
secured herself and turned around to leave. She propelled herself with practiced
ease back towards the tube that led up to the main axis. Fortunately, the lazy spin
and precession of the ship imparted only a small bit of gee towards the outer
bulkheads, so negligible that she easily compensated. It was, however, a constant
reminder that the ship was in trouble, and that irritated her no end.
As she reached the tube she grasped a handhold, swung about and looked
back. “The thrusters, chief,” she said firmly. “Just give me the goddamn bloody
thrusters.”
31
******
“I am not afraid to die,” she said.

Grim-faced, Carter looked at Khorun through the shadows of the cave, not
doubting for a moment that what she said was true. Her convictions—the depths
of her faith—were such that she probably saw glory and honor in dying. It was the
trademark of zealots, both religious and political—although with the religious it
was often far more insidious, because it subverted all reasonable and logical
thought. It was why it was so difficult to defeat such a foe: They construed what
they did as somehow being the pure distillate of their faith, as representing the
absolute will of their God. And that was something one could not easily contest.
Certainly you didn’t do it with conventional weapons and the standard operational
procedures of war; indeed, it required a totally different approach. One that should
have been considered here, a long time ago, he thought. Because you could not
transform such people overnight; it could take years, or decades. Or longer.
You have to undermine the certainty of their belief, he told himself. You have
to make them see that what they do is a perversion of their faith, that it’s inhuman
and inhumane. You have to make people like this girl recognize that what she has
done by killing Khar runs counter to all she believes in.
Unfortunately, he could not change in a matter of minutes what had been
pounded into her head over the course of years. And he wasn’t about to try.
“I’m glad to hear you’re not afraid to die,” he said, the even tone of his words
echoing in the recesses of the cave. “Because in a few hours you almost certainly
will.”
“So, you intend to kill me?” she said defiantly; and looking for reaction, he
saw no hint of fear. Probably because she doesn't actually believe I'll do it, he
thought. Or maybe she's seriously counting on rescue.
He laughed. Laughter without a trace of humor in it. “I think your own people
will do a very good job of that,” he said. “Between them and the Bed’wan there’s
not going to be much left of this mountaintop by the time tomorrow dawns.”
“If it is the will of God—”
“You know so little of the god you believe in!” he said. Viciously, feeling the
compulsion to slap her. “Do you honestly think your god would countenance the
sort of thing you did to General Khar? Your petty intolerance for one another has
corrupted your faith. The only god you pay obeisance to now is the god of war.”
“What would you know of it?” the girl spat, glaring at him with large, dark,
brooding eyes that were almost lost in the deeper shade that suffused the cave.
“How could you? You, who have no faith, who do not know what it is to believe
in anything. How could you ever hope to understand these things?”
“Because it doesn’t take faith to know right from wrong,” he answered
32
quickly, hard pressed to steer his voice so that it did not descend into vitriol and
all his feelings of hate towards the girl did not come gushing out. “The ethics and
morals that guide an individual through life must ultimately come from within,”
he continued in a hectoring tone. “You don’t need words from a book or
exhortations from a pulpit to make choices that are human and just and
compassionate. Morality is not strictly the purview of the pious.”
“What we do is blessed by God,” she exclaimed; and he knew she hadn’t
heard a word he’d said. “God guides us in all that we do. We know the truth. We
know what must be done.”
“The Bed’wan believe likewise.”
She glared at him in disgust. “The Bed’wan twist the words of God to their
ends,” she said. “They are not true adherents of the faith. They make a mockery of
it.”
He sighed. “And they say the same of you. And beyond this world, the faithful
of the Federation denounce you both and consider you little more than barbarians.
To them it is the very nature of what you are that forced many of them to leave
Earth, to seek a new start on a new world. Because you and people like the
Bed’wan sullied your faith in the eyes of outsiders. On Earth you were a bunch of
terrorists. Here, you’ve gone a step further. You couldn’t blame others for what
beset you, so you blamed each other and made a war of it. You perverted all that
is good about your religion and made it into something truly grotesque.”
“Never!” she half screamed.
“Oh, but yes,” Carter said sharply. “Yes, and always.”
“You know nothing!” And now he thought he saw something that suggested
doubt or fear in her, a crack forming in the armor.
“You were born here,” he said, pressing the attack. “You’ve never even been
into space. You know nothing more than this world, this desert. And all your life
in it has been spent in war. You don’t even have a notion of what peace is like.
And because it's so different and strange to you and your people, you fear it.”
“I fear nothing!” She held her head at a haughty angle.
“Then why did you kill General Khar?”
“Because there can never be peace with the Bed’wan. They must all be
eliminated. They’re infidels!”
“There was peace between your peoples, once,” said Carter, gently, almost
sadly.
Khorun did not respond to this, now hushed, her eyes ablaze with a simmering
fury.
There was a long silence between them. The eerie sound of the wind stalking
through the cave and the whispers of the Marines as they talked quietly amidst
one another reminded Carter that this was not a situation likely to be resolved by
talking to a girl who back on Earth would not be considered old enough to be
33
making the sort of decisions she clearly had been forced to make here. After a few
minutes of this he could stand it no more.
“You know, I couldn’t care less about this shitty little war of yours,” he said
impatiently. “I wasted weeks trying to help you people. The Federation has
wasted decades.” His face clouded. “You repay us by killing my people. That’s
not something I take lightly.”
“You were helping the Bed’wan,” she accused.
He opened his mouth to shout at her, but held himself in check. “You’re
right,” he said, nodding. “We were helping the Bed’wan. We were helping them
because Khar had the sense to see that this can’t go on forever, that by continuing
this conflict you’re both losers. We were trying to help him stop a war he knew no
one could ever win. We were trying to save you from yourselves.”
“It was not your place to do so. And Khar did not even speak for his own
people, though he may have fooled you into believing he did.”
Carter gaped at her, startled, completely caught of guard by this
pronouncement. And what he saw, as he stared at her, was something he could not
fully comprehend. And that was probably why this mission had failed, he
realized.
He sat back slowly and let some of the day’s anger bleed from him, thinking
to himself this was exactly why peace would never be achieved on this world.
Here, in this place where no one trusted anyone, and where despair had become
the single common thread of disparate peoples, the battle had been waged for so
long that no one understood any longer what it was like to exist without it. In such
an environment it was easy to forsake peace when your entire life and every
aspect of it had been solely informed by war. Where would they direct their
animus without this constant state of conflict? Who would they blame for every ill
of their personal lives and all the flaws and failings of the societies within which
they lived? What would they use as an excuse to cover all imaginable sins and
transgressions? In some odd, twisted way, this war liberated them. It gave men—
and women—of power the instruments by which to hold onto their authority by
means no civilized peoples would normally countenance. It gave small, vocal
groups—who in a time of peace would quickly be discounted—a position of
power disproportionate to their size. But more importantly, it stripped them all of
those essential aspects of humanity that separated humans from animals. It was
not just that innocence and trust were lost, but also the internal compass of their
morality. They killed and tortured and raped and destroyed with impunity, all the
while justifying these acts as necessary to survival. Any voice of sanity and
protest was quickly silenced; just as Khar had been.
He closed his eyes and felt hammered into a state of utter exhaustion. There
had been no word from the ships in hours, and that had him concerned, but not to
the state of panic. At some point someone would respond. He had no fears of that.
34
He knew there were ships up there, though he was beginning to grow a little
anxious about his own. For all he knew it might already have met its fate against
that asteroid and be nothing more than another of the far too many casualties this
mission had claimed thus far.
Carter sucked in a shallow breath and dropped his hands to his knees. “You
can help me,” he said to the girl in as fatherly a tone as he could muster.
“I won’t,” she said, holding her head high, challenging him.
“You will,” he said, hardening his voice, his glare as equally cold and
measured. “You will or I’ll bloody well leave you to rot in this stinking hell hole
until either the Bed’wan or your own people turn the place to dust.” As though to
emphasize his point the ground shook and there was a clatter of rocks somewhere
deeper in the cave.
Khorun shivered and seemed to withdraw a little further into herself.
“I’m offering you a chance to live,” he said.
“I need nothing from you!”
“Nevertheless, I’m giving you the chance. Surely you’d rather live than die a
senseless death?” He thought to add, “You’re just a kid, for pity’s sake,” but on
this world that seemed rather pointless. There really were no ‘kids’; just soldiers
in various stages of development.
A silence hung over them, Carter watching the girl watch him.
“Why would I trust you?” she asked at length.
“Because you really have no choice. It’s either do what I ask or stay here. And
don’t be fool enough to think I won’t leave you, because believe me, I’ve had
more than enough of the likes of you. All I want to do is get off this fucking piece
of rock and back to my ship.”
She glowered at him from behind knees drawn up close to her face. But she
said nothing.
“Okay.” He slapped his knees, dust rising from his uniform and the armor as
he did so. Slowly he pushed himself erect. “Have it your way.” Then he turned to
go.
“What is it you want?” she blurted out, now sounding more like the girl she
looked to be: a child, alone with strangers, and very, very frightened.
Carter smiled to himself and turned back to her.
35
CHAPTER FOUR:
ALTERNATE SOLUTION
In the Academy they had been taught, among so many other things, that there
comes a point at which a captain must acknowledge the loss of her ship. There
were some situations, the instructors had informed them, from which there is no
escape. Sometimes the only option is to cut and run. In training for this they had
been put through various simulations, all having in common the fact that they
seemed to have no acceptable resolution beyond abandoning the ship.
Of course, the instructors never conceded this, never once suggested the only
plausible way out of each scenario presented in the simulations was the last thing
any self-respecting captain would want to consider as a valid option. To leave
your ship was to admit defeat, and it was a position from which there was no
further retreat.
But if there were solutions, beyond the obvious of deserting the ship, none of
these was ever made public; and cadets were never ‘officially’ informed of the
36
fact. It was always just rumor and hearsay and anecdotes conveniently dropped
into conversation by one instructor or another. Some argued this was only done to
encourage trainees to do their utmost to find a solution to a problem for which
there was really but one answer. They maintained that the instructors did this
because they were afraid cadets would otherwise ‘simply go through the motions’
in the simulator until the scenario reached the point at which the decision to
abandon ship needed to be made. And there were indeed a great many cadets who
did just that. There were, however, some who attacked the sims with a dogged
determination to discover unique answers to problems that all prudence said had
none. They were the sort who as often as not went on to be ship captains.
Years later Anna realized that was doubtless the whole point of the exercise:
To serve as a means to weed out the wheat from the chaff, so-to-speak. Even if
one never did find a solution other than the obvious, the process by which one
went about trying to find one and the limits to which one went to attain it spoke
volumes about the individual involved. If you gave up too soon or merely did the
bare minimum required of you to pass the sim, then it might safely be assumed
you were not up to being command material. Such people were followers, and
better routed into a career path away from the command of a ship. On the other
end of the scale would be those who went too far, who persisted in finding a
solution where none was to be had, perhaps letting pride overwhelm the
commonsense necessary for good leadership, and as a consequence eventually
sacrificing not only the ships but the crews to whom they were responsible.
Somewhere in between these two extremes was the balance. And yet....
As a cadet she had listened to the stories spread by the instructors about the
handful who had, through the long history of the Academy, achieved the
supposedly unachievable; and she had suspected these stories were not just clever
fictions crafted to rouse the competitive nature of the students. A part of her had
believed them; she had always been one of those who subscribed to the notion
that where there was smoke there was fire. Besides, on a very personal level it had
always gone against the grain of her whole being to believe there were any
problems for which there were no solutions. Accepting, of course, that
abandoning a ship was not deemed a solution; and it was certainly not one she
could imagine any self-respecting captain worth her salt was likely to grant as
such.
Of course, the stories made the sims all the more difficult. For those who
really cared, for those who were indomitable in their quest to have a career in
command, the whole process came down to deciding when best to throw in the
towel. If you were ambitious you wanted to find the alternative option, but you
had to weigh that against the knowledge that if you pursued it too far you would
do your career prospects almost as much damage as those who simply
sleepwalked their way through the exercise.
37
When it had come to her turn in the sim, Anna had resolved that she would
not be defeated by it, that she would find the other option—however mythic it
might be. But in that simulated construct, things had not been what she had
anticipated. It had been more chaotic, more frightening, and far more ‘real.’
Unlike in holonovels, where one was conscious of the fiction and able to remove
oneself from it at a whim, the Navy, in its sims, used the neural induction process.
Participants in such sims became unaware that they were not engaged with reality.
For her that had meant visceral reactions to an illusion, and for the duration of the
exercise she had, for all intents and purposes, been aboard a ship in a critical
situation. It had been only natural that the experience had been overwhelming,
and that right from the start she had found herself floundering, not quite as sure of
things as she had imagined she would be.
There had been lights flashing, alarms wailing, and copious amounts of
smoke. People had been moving in all directions, screaming, crying to be heard
because they had been hurt, or shouting so their voices carried above the din.
There had been blood and bloodied bodies and she had felt sick because of it, and
confused because people had come to her, again and again, demanding things of
her, wanting her to give them orders. At first it had panicked her, until her mind
had oriented itself, her memories of being a cadet temporarily overwritten, so that
the Academy trainee had become a Fleet captain on a ship in extreme danger.
It had been easier, then; her training had clicked into gear and it had carried
her through the basic stuff. But then there had been the problem. And partly
because she had been dwelling on it for weeks before her chance in the sim had
come, and partly because she had been conscious on some level of just how
important her performance was to her aspirations, she had felt quite ill with fear—
which, of course, had not been the right way to feel at all. That had been
something they had monitored as well; and so she’d had to fight to bring her
emotions in check and not be overwhelmed by them to the point where she
couldn’t effectively perform the task at hand.
All along, as she had waited for her opportunity in the sim, and as she had
watched others go through the process to varying degrees of success, she’d been
convinced she would be one of those elite few who found the alternative solution.
But when submerged in the exercise, it had become painfully obvious she would
be humbled. At some point in the sim the evidence had seemed irrefutable: there
was no hope. She’d been forced to make the distasteful choice of giving the order
to abandon the ship.
When it had been over she had felt like an unmitigated failure, and she had
decided it was a feeling she didn’t like at all. It did not, it seemed to her, fit with
the fact that she’d been born a spacer, and that no problem that presented itself to
her in space should ever be insurmountable. For days after her session in the sim
she’d been in a funk and certain her performance had doomed her chances at
38
command. She’d been even more certain of that when she’d been summoned
before the Board of Instructors to discuss her sim experience.
The depressed and dejected part of her had been convinced they would be
asking her to leave the Academy, telling her she wasn’t suited to life in the
military. Or, at the very least, suggesting it. But as the interview with the board
had worn on she had begun to think that perhaps all was not lost. Once it had
ended she had saluted the officers and they had thanked her for her time; and as
she’d gone to leave, one of them had openly commended her. “Good job, Cadet
Montagne,” he had said. Simple, and not a lot to go on, but it had sufficed to give
her hope; indeed, it had been enough to persuade her that perhaps she hadn’t been
a total failure.
Days later, in a rarity for the board, she had received a letter praising her
creativity as applied to finding a solution to the simulation. She knew, then, that
sometimes there could be victory in defeat. The trick was in recognizing the fact.
But she had never stopped believing there was an ‘alternate’ solution.
******
“I need options,” Anna said. “No, better yet, I need solutions.” She looked
around the briefing room as she said this, surveying the junior and senior officers
assembled. “You’re all well aware of the situation, so I want to know if anyone
has a notion of how we can possibly save the ship. At this juncture I’m willing to
entertain anything. Believe me, I’ve thought of some doozies myself. One of them
has the potential to work, but I'm hoping someone might have come up with
something more inspired.”
“There’s no chance of using the boats or the shuttles as tugs of some sort?”
one of the junior officers asked hesitantly.
“No, Mister Roi, I’m afraid not. It was one of my first ideas. But the extent of
the off axis spin of the ship makes it a risky proposition to even consider
launching the boats or the shuttles, much less try to mate them to the hull. Even
ejecting the escape pods will be problematic, should it come to that. And beyond
the difficulties inherent in safely clearing the ship, there's the inescapable fact that
the Goliath is plainly too massive to be moved by what little thrust is produced by
the engines in the shuttles and the boats. Even with all of them in play, we
couldn’t sufficiently alter the momentum of the ship to open our orbit and make
us miss our appointment with that asteroid. The target is simply too large and our
time too short.”
“Has the AI looked into the possibility of opening some of the airlocks in
strategic positions to use the vented atmosphere like thruster bursts?” That from
one of her more senior people. “We might at least rectify the spin and precession.
Then launching the boats and shuttles would be a feasible option.”
39
Anna drew a breath. “As I said: there’s not enough power there. The AI ran
the numbers, and pushing the boats and shuttles beyond rated specs, we’d end up
tanking the drives and still be in trouble. As for venting the atmosphere, that was
actually one of the first things we tried. The sims showed the effect was
negligible.”
“But if we keep doing it, the accumulative—”
“—effect might do the trick,” she finished for him, shaking her head as she
did so. “Maybe if the point of intersection between our orbit and the orbit of the
asteroid was months away instead of hours. Of course, that ignores the fact that
venting that much atmosphere would be essentially impossible. There's a limit to
how much air we can regenerate on this ship. And that's even with the oxygen
farms up and running, which currently they aren’t. The only result of such an
operation would be to suffocate us all, and since the whole idea is to try and save
ourselves as well as the ship, it hardly seems practicable.”
“Maybe we should approach this from another angle,” suggested Ensign
Lhara Jhordel, a colonial from Tartarus on her first front line ship since leaving
the Academy.
“If you've got an idea, I'm sure we'd all like to hear it,” said Doyanhi, the
leading helm officer. But by the way he spoke it was clear he didn’t think it likely
a fresh-faced ensign was going to have much to contribute.
“During the early days of terraforming Mars,” said Lhara hesitantly, looking a
bit nervous amidst all these officers senior to her, “they experimented with
moving large ice aggregates from the Kuiper Belt to Mars by setting off nukes
close to the bodies they wanted to shift in orbit. A succession of such blasts over
time was enough to accelerate the ice masses into orbits that intersected with
Mars.”
“So what exactly are you suggesting?” said Doyanhi in a rather dismissive
manner. “That we try and push this rock out of the way?” He laughed.
“If we detonated enough torpedoes in the asteroids path, close to its surface, it
might be sufficient to change its orbit,” the ensign insisted. “At least alter the
point of intersection so that we would be well beyond it when it crossed our
orbital track.”
“Well, first of all, Ensign, we can't launch any torpedoes at the moment,” he
growled, his attitude impatient and churlish. “Second, just off the top of my head,
I'm guessing that even though anti-matter torps are considerably more powerful
than nukes, it would still probably take more than we have to produce a
significant effect on something as massive as that asteroid.” He crossed his arms,
looking smug. “I think we can safely file that proposal under ‘hopelessly
unworkable.’ ”
“Actually,” said Anna, looking warmly at Lhara, “it's not an idea without
merit. Not too unlike my own proposal.”
40
Doyanhi looked dumbfounded. “But, sir—” he started to protest.
She held up a hand to stop him. “I'm not suggesting we could possibly alter
the asteroid's course by slowing it enough that we'd avoid a collision, but maybe
we don't have to.”
There were puzzled faces all around, except for Lhara’s. “The ship,” the
ensign said, her eyes bright with comprehension. “Instead of using the torps on
the asteroid we could apply the same principle to the Goliath.”
“You've got to be joking!” Doyanhi proclaimed, clearly horrified by the
prospect. “We've already suffered enough damage and you want to set off anti-
matter weapons close enough to the ship to actually move it!”
“When an anti-matter weapon hits a ship's shields, some of that energy is
translated to the mass of the ship and actually accelerates it,” Anna reminded
him.
“But the effect is minimal, sir,” the helm officer argued. “We easily
compensate for it.”
“True. But with multiple, focused blasts, and by tweaking the shields to
reduce the amount of energy they dump into hyper, we might be able to
sufficiently boost Goliath so that our solar orbit will expand, and as a
consequence we’ll reach the intersection of the two orbits at a point that will
preclude a collision with the asteroid.”
“The Chinese built a spaceship in the mid twenty-first century that was
propelled by firing off a succession of what were essentially nuclear bombs in the
tail section, and it made a successful flight to Mars and back,” Lhara pointed out.
“The Feng Xuan,” said Singhali, nodding sagely. “It wasn't a popular idea, as
I recall. But the ensign is right: it worked. And ironically, in the early days, when
there was concern over the Earth being hit by an asteroid, there were proposals to
steer them away by setting off nuclear warheads near them as a means of
changing the point at which they intersected Earth orbit. Same idea the Mars
terraformers used. Of course, you would have had to use a lot of nukes over the
course of days or weeks, which is time we don't have.”
“We don't have days,” Anna agreed. “We're looking at hours. But that might
be all we need. The asteroid is in an elliptical orbit that will cross ours in a few
hours time. All we have to do is make sure we pass through that orbit at a
different point. It's possible we could produce the necessary boost to do just that
with detonations at the stern.”
“That's a terribly risky proposition, sir,” said the chief tech team leader,
Lieutenant-Commander Siggurdson. He glowered slightly, nostrils flaring with
indignation. “As Mister Doyanhi pointed out, we’ve got enough damage to the
ship as it is, Commander. A charge sufficient to alter the momentum of the ship to
the extent you're talking about would have to be horrendously powerful. We may
be in a vacuum and in freefall, but it still takes considerable energy to overcome
41
the inertia of something as massive as a heavy cruiser.”

“Yes,” said Lhara, speaking more boldly than before. “But wouldn’t it be
possible to somehow focus the energy of the blasts with the shields so that the
brunt of the force goes through the keel? If we tweaked the projectors we should
be able to direct the force with reasonable accuracy through the strongest point on
the ship. And we'll be doing small blasts rather than one enormous one, so
although the result will ultimately be the same, the damage to the ship will be
minimal.”
“You're still forgetting we can't launch the torpedoes,” said Siggurdson.
“But we can release our mines,” piped up Singhali. “We can control their
detonation just as accurately as we could with the torpedoes. And we have a
substantial cache of class 3 mines on board. They should be enough to accomplish
what we want.”
“If this is at all possible, why didn't the AI propose it?” someone asked.
“The pitfalls of an AI,” Anna said dryly, “is that it isn’t designed to think
outside the box. No doubt it never addressed the possibility of doing something it
would consider as counter to its primary mandate of protecting the ship. Anti-
matter torps and mines are weapons, and setting them off anywhere near the ship
invites the possibility of damage. Maybe even fatal damage. The AI would have
considered all conventional options, none of which would have included the
possible destruction of the ship.”
“Then what we're talking about here is possible?” asked Hampton, the second
officer.
“Possible, yes,” said Singhali. “But risky. Very risky.” The chief engineer did
some rapid calculations on her pocket com-link, pursing her lips as she crunched
the numbers, focused entirely on her task and unaware of the deathly silence that
had blanketed the room as the others awaited her verdict.
“Well?” asked Anna, with just a touch of impatience.
“It might be feasible to focus the shields on the stern and direct the force
along the keel, but we'd have to be very precise in triggering each anti-matter
blast. There's not a lot of margin for error. If we make a mistake we could cause
catastrophic structural damage to the Pearson FTL, and I don't think any of us
needs to be told what that would mean.” The engineer shrugged. “The solution
isn't particularly elegant by any means, but it has the virtue of being simple
enough to execute and almost certainly more effective than anything else we
might try. And with thrusters still more than twelve hours away, I’d say it’s damn
near all we’ve got. It's that or we take to the pods.”
“What about the spin?” Doyanhi said, with a look that suggested he had found
a fatal flaw in the plan. “With this wobble and spin about the longitudinal axis, it's
going to be damned difficult to get a consistent boost.”
“We may be able to correct the spin with the rotation ring compensator,” said
42
Lhara.
Singhali nodded enthusiastically. “Yes. Yes, very good, Ensign,” she said,
smiling at the now blushing Lhara. “The gyroscopic flywheel.” She bent to her
com-link, making more calculations “It's worked on satellites in the past. We just
need to apply it on a larger scale. We should at least be able to reduce the
unwanted spin. The wobble is another matter, and that may have to wait until we
have attitude control thrusters back on line.”
“Run it all by the AI and sim it. If it works, then do it,” said Anna, not
hesitating or debating the matter any further. “The sooner the better.”
“There are no guarantees that even if we get it right it’ll work,” Singhali
cautioned. “We have to boost the ship to a KPH that'll allow us to pass through
the asteroid’s orbit well away from the asteroid itself. That's going to be a lot of
mines, and it's going to be hard on the ship.”
“Not to mention the crew,” Hampton observed dryly.
“Do we have a choice?” said Anna. She shook her head before anyone could
answer. “No, clearly we don't. We've run out of time and options. This is it,
people. If we don’t do something in the next few hours we won’t be having any
discussions about what we might have done or should have done.”
“Point taken, sir.”
“Back to your posts then,” she ordered, dismissing them with a wave of her
hand. “I’ll be on the bridge.”
She watched them go and hoped it would not be the last time she did.
******
There was silence; and they were blinded in the darkness.

Night had fallen, but the air was filled with dust. So they could not see. Not
the stars. Not more than a couple of meters in front of them. But at least the
Bed’wan and the Khalud had ceased firing on their position. It was a welcome lull
in the onslaught that had turned much of the mountaintop into a cratered plain of
rubble.
There were dead Marines everywhere, some butchered beyond description,
their shattered bodies strewn across stone and debris. Each time they came to one,
Suzanne paused and bent and carefully removed the dog tags—if there were any
to be removed. Sometimes there was just shredded flesh, a bloodied, dirtied mass
that could have been something from a meat shop, save for the rags of cloth that
encompassed it.
There was a solemnity about the company of officers and Marines as they
picked their way towards the edge of the mountaintop and prepared to climb
down to the desert. Northward were the Khalud. If they had not lost their flitters it
would have been an easy five or ten minute trek. But the flitters had been the first
43
to go, taken out by an enemy that had clearly planned much of this far in advance.
An enemy or enemies, depending upon how one wanted to regard it.
“Do you think they’ll hold up to their end of the bargain?” Suzanne asked as
they reached the edge and began their descent.
“You tell me.” Carter looked at her expressionlessly. “If our message got
through...if our young Khalud leader was honest and gave her bodyguard the
message we told her to give him, then maybe we’ll get some action. But you were
with the Khalud for more than three weeks. You’ve a better understanding of
them than I.”
She shook her head. “That’s the problem,” she said, “I don’t understand them
at all, John. Like I’ve said countless times on this mission: I’m just a soldier. That
diplomatic shit was never part of my programming.”
“Nor mine,” he lamented. “Bred and trained for Fleet, is what I am. Whether I
liked it or not.” He grimaced visibly.
“But for me it’s different,” she maintained. “For me it’s not just genetics; it’s
history. Family tradition. We’ve always been soldiers. I always wanted to be one.
I never wanted to be anything else. Certainly not some goddamned bureaucrat. I
don’t know squat about diplomacy. And I’ll tell you: Three weeks with those
people didn’t bring me any closer to understanding them than before I’d ever met
them. They’re a total mystery to me.”
“Understanding your enemy is essential to the strategic conduct of any war,”
said Carter absently, recalling the words from one of the many lectures of his
Academy days.
She almost laughed. “That’s fine for the classroom, but things in the field are
seldom textbook perfect. Which is doubtless why we’re in the shit we're in.”
“We made mistakes,” he said.
“No, the Assembly did. They sent us into this quagmire with insufficient
intelligence. Hell, you almost have to think they knew we’d fail.”
“I suspect they did.”
She started, staring at him wide-eyed. “You’re serious?”
“This is all about a struggle for power that goes far beyond the boundaries of
this world,” he explained. “This is about the Assembly’s function as a legislative
body capable of passing laws and enforcing them. It’s about the Federation trying
to maintain its existence in an empire where it’s increasingly becoming irrelevant
to the lives of the people. At least, on a visible scale—and for politicians that’s
usually all that matters.”
“But then why would they want us to fail?”
“Not all of them. But I think it can be safely said without prejudice that there
are some in the Assembly whose loyalties are easily bought, and who might stand
to gain a great deal were the USF to fail and the corporates to become the only
legitimate power in the Earth Empire.”
44
“So this was more about the corporates than it ever was about the Khalud and
the Bed’wan.”
“Probably. Think about it: The Bed’wan and the Khalud have been at it for
more than fifty years and it hasn’t really impinged upon the day to day affairs of
the rest of the Empire. Do you really think it matters to most of those people in
the Assembly what happens to the people on this rock? Frankly, I think there’d
probably be a great many members who would just as soon have had us raze the
surface of the planet and be done with the problem entirely.”
“That’s a cynical way of looking at things,” she observed. “Kind of puts into
question what we're all about. Every mission we’ve had in the past, every mission
we might have in the future...they’re all suspect.”
“You pretty much said it yourself earlier.”
“True. But I guess when all is said and done I still want to believe that not
everyone in this universe we live in is corrupt and self-serving.”
“Look at her,” said Carter, his voice flat. He jerked his chin in the direction of
Khorun, who was being helped down the mountainside by some Marines.
“Sometimes we believe in the wrong things.”
Suzanne said nothing. She grabbed a rope handed her by one of her Marines
and began her descent, rappelling smoothly down to a ledge a hundred meters
below. Carter followed, without as much facility as she had displayed, awkward
in the harness, tentative in his drop. He hadn’t done this sort of thing since his
Academy days, and the decades of rust showed. Still, he made it down in one
piece and was helped by a Marine in securing his harness to the next line.
On and on they descended in darkness, exposed to whatever assault might
come against them. But they had bargained with the Khalud and had been
promised safe passage down the slope and across the desert—if the Bed’wan
didn’t get them first. But the latter were now on the other side of the mountain,
hopefully unaware the Federation Marines and their officers were making good
their escape.
“We need to try and make contact with the ships again,” said Carter as they
reached the halfway point. “I don’t think our lives are going to be of much value
to the Khalud once they have what they want.”
Suzanne nodded, her soot and dust smeared face grim and resolute. “Agreed,”
she said.
“She’ll betray us the moment she gets the chance,” he added, glancing at the
girl as he made ready for another rappel.
He hesitated, watching as Suzanne studied Khorun, seeing the uncertainty in
the colonel's face, the rush of emotion he knew she kept hidden from even herself.
Betrayal was never a pleasant thing, and even less so when you had invested some
measure of faith in the individual who had betrayed you. The problem was, she
simply wasn't used to this sort of thing. She was as she had claimed she was: a
45
soldier. She worked in a world of absolute discipline and loyalty, where men and
women had to have trust and faith in one another if they hoped to survive.
He put a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
Suzanne darted a look at him, and he saw a flash of embarrassment.
“You couldn't have known,” he said.
“I should have.” And without further comment she pushed herself off with an
angry thrust and began her decent again.
He watched her fall away, still feeling the heat of her anger. It didn't take a
mind reader to know that if she were given half the chance, she might readily slit
the girl’s throat. It was only the soldier in her that kept that compulsion in check,
even as the rational part of her was probably saying there were a couple of
hundred Marines up there who had paid the price for that girl’s treachery and
deserved some sort of justice. Unfortunately, Carter knew they would not get it;
and he knew Suzanne would always blame herself for that.
******
Timing was everything.

By toying with the projectors linked to the shield generators set into the hull
of the ship, Singhali had managed to create a funnel of energy in the shield
geometry that spread outwards from the ship's stern. The apex of this was
centered precisely beneath where the mines would be triggered and aimed along
the keel. In theory, if the numbers were correct, and Newton's third law of motion
had not been cruelly subverted in this section of the Universe, each detonation
would thrust the ship forward. A succession of such blasts would gradually
increase Goliath's velocity, but it had to be sufficient to move the cruiser through
the intersection of orbits before the edge of the asteroid crossed the critical
junction, otherwise the whole exercise would be pointless.
The concept sounded plausible enough, but everything hinged on timing.
There had to be precision in the detonation of the charges, to make sure they were
at a suitable enough distance so as to not damage the ship while being close
enough to have an effect on the cruiser's momentum. The good news was that the
wobble and spin of the ship had been corrected; the precession along the ship's
longitudinal axis was no longer a factor in calculating the optimum moment of
detonation for the mines.
“Time,” Anna demanded from her command chair on the bridge.
“Ten minutes to initial mine deployment, sir.”
She studied her command display, a holocube wherein there floated an image
of the ship. A glowing circle marked the position where the mines would be
jettisoned from the stern; and a warped grid of lines that enveloped the ship
showed the perimeter of the shields and the unusual configuration Singhali had
46
created by tweaking the projectors. In this representation Anna could see the
funnel as a cone with its tip nearly touching the hull at the exact center of the
stern, surrounded by the fluted coil of the Pearson FTL's emitter. The chief
engineer had warned the shockwaves from the blasts would be intense, despite the
design to strategically cushion them. There was a chance the hull would be
breached at some points, but it was impossible to determine what the full extent of
the damage would be—especially since the ship had already sustained structural
wounds, and not all of them had been fully mapped. So they were taking a big
chance with this. At the point where the mines had been set to detonate, the hull
might be too weak to handle the successive shockwaves. Or worse, an imprecise
blast might damage the emitter, rendering the Pearson FTL useless. And without
the Pearson the Goliath would be trapped in-system, unable to jump, and too far
from anywhere that might be able to effect repairs.
But in a while we’ll know, one way or another, Anna told herself.
“Five minutes and counting,” said the bridge engineering officer.
Anna took a nervous swig of coffee from the bulb that floated beside her,
sucking the hot fluid into a dry mouth, grimacing as she always did at the taste.
She had never acquired the palate for reconstituted coffee, although she knew
there were some who swore by it. Most everything else that came out of the
reconstituters was fine, considering its source, but things like coffee and tea just
never quite had the flavor they should. There was always something chemical and
metallic about them. Still, ever since her Academy days, when training on the old
Nova Scotia, she had developed a habit of having some on hand when she was
working the bridge. It was something of a stress reliever, though admittedly not a
very good one.
“One minute and counting.”
She secured the bulb of coffee, then activated the ship-wide com-link.
“Attention all hands,” she announced, “prepare for maneuvers. Emergency
response and tech teams at the ready. When the boost has finished and the ‘all
clear’ has sounded, teams will go to their assigned sections.” She paused, wanting
to say something uplifting, something suitably inspirational to get the crew in a
positive frame of mind. She knew that by now everyone down to the lowest rating
was well aware of the seriousness of the situation, well aware that if this didn’t
work they’d be taking to the pods and hoping those would eject safely and steer
them clear of the asteroid.
“The captain is depending on us to succeed,” was all she could think to say in
the end.
“Ten seconds and counting.”
“Nine...eight...seven...six...five...”
She felt her gut tighten, her whole body tense in preparation. Her eyes were
focused on the holocube, watching the readouts, waiting for the moment. And in
47
those final seconds, when she stole a breath and waited for the shock, she felt an
ocean of doubt open within her and threaten to swallow her.
What if I’m wrong?
“...one...”
Too late!
“IGNITION!”
It was like a hammer blow, and almost as bad as the torpedo impacts she had
lived through countless times before. She felt the force immediately, the sudden
surge of gee, all lasting no more than the space of a breath, but with such intensity
she feared Signhali might have miscalculated and set the mine off too close. Then
came the noise, the roar through the ship, like thunder and rain and water falling
from a great height, tumbling over rock and crashing against itself. A full and
throaty bellow. Then a long moan of protest as the hull creaked and groaned in
places along its length, flexing, trying to absorb the shockwave. Cries of protest,
which to the uninitiated would have been a source of terror, and which to even the
seasoned spacer were pause for consideration.
Anna fought for breath—even as she tried to still it and to listen, waiting for
the ominous sounds to abate, waiting for the ship to settle and quiet and tell her in
its silence that they had survived and that they had succeeded. But there was
scarcely time for that moment of reflection when the second force overtook them
as the next mine was detonated, a brief belch of energy that sent the cruiser
lurching forward in its solar orbit. And as it ended and quiet returned and she
could breathe freely once more, she allowed herself a faint smile. So far so good,
she thought; but there was a long way to go yet.
Again and again the ship was assaulted, but gradually the KPH climbed and
the actual plot of the ship's orbit began to match the extrapolation in the cube.
Before long she knew this jury-rigged boost had worked; they would miss the
asteroid. And even as the data streamed in, she knew the damage to the ship was
within acceptable margins. They were still in one piece, after all. The ocean of
doubt she had floundered in before they had begun this exercise was now
vanished as certainty overcame her and she knew the Goliath and its crew were in
the clear.
Perhaps her greatest relief, however, was that she wasn’t going to have to tell
Carter she’d lost his ship.
“Engineering, let’s get those thrusters and sublights on line. I want to prime
the Pearson and get to Inkasar as soon as possible!” she said over the com-link.
“We’re already on it, Commander.”
“Communications, let’s see if we can establish contact with the rest of the
fleet. The captain needs help and that’s our number one priority now.”
“Yessir! Attempting to establish contact.”
Anna sat back in the warm embrace of the command chair and closed her
48
eyes. She drew a slow, steadying breath, and felt an embracing serenity, a
welcome balm that soothed the tension that had warred within her these last few
hours. She had not realized until now just how stressed she had been.
Well, we made it, she thought. Let’s hope the captain is still around to enjoy
the fact.
******
“Here.” Suzanne held out a small pack of rations. “Better eat this while you
have a chance.”
Carter glanced up at her. “I'm not really that hungry,” he said.
“Just eat it, John. Who knows when you'll get another opportunity to chow
down.”
He took the ration pack from her, turned it over in his hands, studying it
moodily, then pulled the heating tab and waited as it warmed up. “What about
you?” he asked.
She held up another pack, waggled it. “Got mine right here,” she announced.
“All the necessary nutrients a soldier needs for a day in the field. Or so Fleet
would have us believe.” She made a face. “Can't say I've ever acquired much of a
taste for the stuff.” She unsealed the container and examined the contents with a
jaundiced eye. “I think the worst part is that it doesn't really look like anything
you'd really want to eat.” She poked a finger at a yellowish square, leaving a
dimple in the surface. “Doesn't exactly inspire one,” she muttered, wrinkling her
nose in distaste.
“I think that's corn on the cob,” said Carter, looking sidelong at her with a
roguish grin. “Without the cob,” he added, straight-faced.
“Well that's just not right,” she said indignantly, looking even more appalled.
“It's really not that bad.”
She looked at him, cocking one eyebrow. “I think you've had too much sun.”
“You’re the one who insisted on this,” he reminded her, pointing a fork at her.
“So eat up, Colonel. That's an order.”
“You're enjoying this far too much.”
“Hey, you started it. Besides, I thought you Marines were made of sterner
stuff. I thought you liked this shit.”
“Don't be ridiculous,” she said, as though insulted. “Haven’t you heard that an
army marches on its stomach? We usually use this stuff as bait for pests. No one
ever wants to eat the fucking crap. Believe me, any Marine unit worth its salt
carries along a kitchen crew and top-of-the-line reconstituters. No one would ever
want to live off this shit for long.”
He looked down at his pack, at the individual squares of colored substance in
the rectangular tray and wondered if, indeed, it had started out as shit. After all, it
49
had probably come out of the business end of a reconstituter, and you could
shovel almost anything into one of those. A ship couldn't last months in deep
space without exploiting that fact. Intimately.
His appetite waned. And for a while after that they sat in silence, side by side,
eating their food with a measured indifference, until finally Suzanne stopped and
put her fork down. She sat staring straight ahead for a moment, then turned to him
and blurted out, “Why do you think she fucked you?”
Carter, who had just started chewing a mouthful of food, nearly choked. He
spewed out the partially masticated chunks, spluttering and coughing as he turned
beet red. Suzanne thumped him on the back, which didn't really help.
When he had finally managed to catch a breath and settle down, he turned and
stared at her, goggle-eyed, not quite sure what to make of her question. “Who are
you talking about?” he asked hoarsely.
Suzanne gave him an odd look. “Grenier, of course.” She sounded
exasperated. “Who did you think I was talking about?” She eyed him
suspiciously.
Carter felt himself flush. “I'm not sure I understand what you're driving at,” he
said; but he was almost afraid he understood too well—which begged the question
of just how much Suzanne knew of his past.
“She must have had some reason for doing this to you.”
“I'm sure I don't know what you mean,” he said too quickly.
“Just thought it might be personal, that's all.”
“If the Secretary General has a beef against me, I'm sure I don't know why. In
all likelihood she has no idea I'm in command here. I very much doubt Novarro
would have gone out of her way to tell her, given the bad blood between the two
of them. Besides, she may not have been the one responsible for this.”
“So it's actually the lot of us who are being screwed? All of Fleet? Being
fucked by the damn Assembly?”
“Probably.”
“And you still think they’re worth supporting?” She snorted loudly and tossed
her head, rolling her eyes in disbelief.
“What choice is there?”
“That's not the issue.”
“Of course it is. We live in a democracy, Suze. Those people were elected or
appointed to represent the people of the Federation. We can't simply choose to
ignore them. They're the people's voice.”
“They're not worth spit,” she said. “They don’t deserve our support.”
“You're selling them short.” He straightened up and took a breath of dusty,
desert air.
“Then explain this.” She gestured dramatically, as though to encompass all of
Inkasar.
50
“This doesn't mean we simply up and abandon the USF and take things into
our own hands. I know there are some in Fleet who think we should, but while it
may not be the best it could be, the Federation is still better than the alternative.
It's still an idea worth fighting for. We just have to be more vigilant. More
demanding. We have to start expecting more of our leaders rather than excepting
what we get.”
“And isn't that just the saddest thing?” she mused aloud. "That we just keep
letting it happen. We just keep on electing shitheads and morons.”
“Yeah,” he said. “But it'll change. One day it has to. Because if it doesn't…”
He shrugged.
“Because if it doesn't, then it means all these years we've spent fighting for the
Federation will have been a waste. We'll have sacrificed tens of thousands of
Fleet spacers for nothing. Just like we did here. And that’ll have meant we were
just a bunch of idiots, easily hoodwinked by a bunch of scammers and con-
artists.”
He didn't say anything because there was nothing he could say to refute her
words.
“You know,” she went on, “the irony of it all is that even when a part of me
wanted to believe it might be true, that it might happen and that we might actually
succeed here, I guess I just couldn’t deny my gut feelings about this fucking mess.
It just seemed too easy, this business of getting together to talk peace after only a
few weeks of our trying to arrange the whole thing. These idiots have had fifty
years of war, and I suppose that in the end the soldier in me just couldn’t buy into
the possibility they might suddenly end all that strife in a matter of hours or days,
put down their weapons, and be all buddy-buddy. It just smelt of a set-up.”
That had been something that had preyed at the back of his mind. He had
never doubted that General Khar had been earnest in a desire to offer a better
future for the children of the Bed’wan, but he had always had his suspicions about
the other tribal leaders. Still, despite the fact that he had begun this mission
thinking it could never possibly succeed, he had started to gain some measure of
hope when it had appeared they could actually get the two sides talking. He had
realized, then, that there was some part of him that had come round to thinking
there might indeed be a resolution to be had here, that there might be a chance he
would achieve what everyone before him had failed to in five decades of on and
off negotiations. He had got caught up in the fever of that and had allowed
himself to get carried away, meanwhile ignoring all the warning signs around
him.
Unbidden, there came to mind an old adage: Pride goes before the fall.
“We might have succeeded,” he said, a part of him still clinging to the
delusion that they might indeed have done what others had failed to do.
“I don't think you really believe that for one minute. Whatever this mission
51
was, it was not an exercise in peace-making.” Her face hardened. “Frankly, I

think you're right: whoever sent us here knew we didn't have a snowball's chance
in Hell of succeeding.”
“Well,” he sighed, “that's neither here nor there, now. The only thing we have
to concern ourselves about at the moment is getting off this rock alive.”
“We're not going anywhere without the ships.”
“No,” he agreed. “Have you tried to make contact with them again?”
“We’re still having problems with the com-link to the hyper relay.”
“Someone jamming us?”
“It’s a notion. Especially if they’re set on killing us all.”
“They’re not supposed to have jamming capability.” But he said it as though it
was no surprise to him they did; it would be idiotic to deny the possibility in light
of what had happened out in space with the fleet.
“They weren’t supposed to beat the shit out of us either,” Suzanne observed,
with trademark candor.
“A little assistance from their friends, I suppose,” Carter mused.
“It definitely has the corporate signature stamped all over it,” she agreed. “I
suspect they’re deeper into this than we’d care to admit.”
“No doubt. Aren’t they always? They had a lot to gain here. Keep the world
destabilized and eventually it’ll be ripe for the picking.”
“Eventually the Federation will give up on it and not care what the hell the
corporates or anyone else does with the place.”
“I’d guess we’ve probably already reached that point.”
“I hope so,” said Suzanne. “Because I can honestly say I’ll be more than
happy to bid farewell to this fucking piece of Hell.” She spat in disgust and kicked
at the sand with the toe of her boot. “If I never see another grain of sand again it’ll
be too soon.”
“You and me both,” said Carter. He looked around at the Marines spread out
on the rocks and sand at the base of the mountain, a sense of foreboding quickly
coloring his mood. They had left far too many behind back up there. It bothered
him that they would never be able to recover the bodies and give them a proper
burial. It bothered him even more that there would probably be more like them
before this day was done. A horrifying prospect, but an inevitable one. Even if the
Khalud did cooperate, as they had promised, he anticipated treachery from some
quarter. That, too, just seemed inevitable, in light of what they had experienced
thus far.
Such a bloody waste, he thought. Bitterly. Resentfully. Angry with himself
and with the Assembly. Angry with the fact there was damn well nothing he could
do about it. In fact, the only thing he could hope to do was redeem himself by
getting the surviving members of his mission out of here in one piece.
“We should get going,” he said at length. He dropped his tray into the sand,
52
stood up and stretched.
Suzanne nodded and signaled her troops. They rose with little chatter, a small
army, drawn from nations and worlds throughout the Empire, lethal by any
measure, but found wanting in this situation. Even they couldn’t stop the kind of
firepower the Bed’wan and the Khalud had brought to bear on them. Not when
the Assembly had hamstrung them so.
Carter watched them, and wished he’d told the Assembly to go to Hell when
they’d put so many constraints on what he could do. The peace talks should never
have been down here; the Goliath had always been the logical location. He had
wanted the ship for obvious reasons, not least of those being security. It may not
have prevented Khar from being assassinated, but it certainly wouldn’t have left
dead Marines up on that damn mountain. And it wouldn’t have left the rest of
them here, wandering in the desert, no longer able to contact their ship, and
dependent upon the word of people who had already broken the bonds of trust in
spades.
He could have forgiven a lack of enthusiasm among the Marines, but there
was no sign of that as they fell into step and began to march cautiously across the
desert. They were consummate professionals to the last.
“We’ll make it,” Suzanne said, slapping him heartily on the shoulder as they
walked ahead.
“You think?”
“I know.” She flashed a grin, a brilliance in the dirty geography of her face.
“We’ve been through worse than this and made it out the other end.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, “but we had bigger guns, then.”
“Hey, I know my destiny, and it sure the hell isn’t dying in a shit hole like
this.”
Once more a silence fell between them, punctuated only by the sounds of
footsteps on the sand and the whispers of a cold night breeze. Above them, the
stars moved in their courses in the vast milieu of the Milky Way, a stunning and
evocative panorama that stirred a yearning in Carter's heart. He had spent much of
his life wondering if he belonged out there, but on this night he could not think of
any place he would rather have been.
He understood ships and the space within which they sailed. He wasn't sure he
would ever understand human beings and the realms within which they operated.
******
“I need that information, Ops.” Impatiently.

“I’m working on it, Commander. There’s a lot of atmospheric interference
making it difficult to discern much of anything.”
“They’re down there, Lieutenant, and I want them found.”
53
“Yessir! I’m trying.”

“Try harder.”
“Sir! Yessir!”
Anna turned to the communications post. “Any success, Mister A’tembe?”
“Sorry, Commander.” The young officer shook his head. “Nothing but the
Bed’wan and the Khalud. I’ve had the AI search through every band and there’s
nothing from the captain.”
“Are they being jammed?”
“If they are, the technology is good. State of the art, without a doubt.”
Which she knew the Bed’wan and Khalud were not supposed to have. But the
Bed’wan and Khalud shouldn’t have been able to take on the Federation fleet and
have achieved anything approaching the success they had. That wasn’t the sort of
thing you expected from a poor world wracked by the ravages of a decades old
war. It wasn’t the sort of thing that should have been done by people who had a
severely limited experience of space...and almost none of conducting war within
it.
“Keep trying,” was all she could tell Com—which, of course, was all they
could do. Just try and wait and hope that Carter and Suzanne and the Marines
were still alive. But that was expecting a great deal, given the degree to which
things had gone south so rapidly up here. She could only imagine how they’d
progressed on the surface. Carter’s last message to her hadn’t inspired much
confidence in that regard.
“The ship is yours,” he’d said to her when he’d left a little over three weeks
ago. She’d never thought that might literally become true. Yet here she was, and
she had no idea of whether or not he was dead or alive. Emotion held out for the
latter; logic and reality favored the former.
“Tactical, I want you to prepare low yield torpedoes and target the Bed’wan
and Khalud encampments near the region charted for the peace conference,” she
ordered.
“Aye, aye, sir! Targeting the encampments. Torpedoes are locked, ready to
fire on your command, sir.”
“Mister Doyanhi, is the helm fully functional?”
“Yessir. We now have a full complement of operational thrusters.”
“Take us into a lower orbit, then. But keep us out of range of those mass
drivers. Even if they’ve run out of torpedoes, they can still lob rocks at us.”
“Aye, aye, sir. Setting for a four hundred klick orbit.”
“Mister Hampton,” she said, turning to the second officer who currently sat in
the exec seat to the right of her own. “Take a dozen of the reserve Marines and as
many of the non-essential personnel as is necessary to crew the remaining boats
and start a drop to the surface the moment the ship reaches our new parking orbit.
You’ll stay in a holding pattern until we give the word. When I say go, you hop to
54
it and get down to the position we relay to you. We’ll cover you as much as
possible.”
“Yessir,” said Hampton, already pushing off from his seat and maneuvering
gracefully towards the rear hatch of the bridge.
“And Mister Hampton...” she called over her shoulder.
“Sir?”
“I’m counting on you to bring the captain back…alive.”
“Yessir!” He snapped a salute and was gone.
“Com, hail the rest of the fleet and request that all ships other than the
Winslow ready boats to rendezvous with ours. Also, I want the Pretoria, the
Alexandria and the Brooklyn to follow us into a closer orbit. Have them target Al
Jerat, Khartusha, and the larger of the Bed’wan floating cities. Anything that may
be deemed a threat. Tell the Champlain to stay on point protecting the Winslow.”
“Yessir.”
She waited while her orders were relayed, studying the tactical readouts in her
command cube as she did so. There wasn’t much to see there, now that they had
dealt with the only threat from space the Bed'wan and Khalud had had available
to them. Data from the ground was far murkier. There were still mass drivers
down there that could chuck all manner of stuff into orbit, but she doubted either
one of the warring factions could recalibrate those with sufficient accuracy to
strike at any of the Fleet ships currently stationed outside the range assumed by
ore that was thrown into space. That was, of course, providing the Khalud and the
Bed’wan had no more anti-matter torpedoes in their arsenal.
The cities below, both the fixed ones of the Khalud and the floating ones of
the Bed'wan, were unobstructed; she could see them clearly with all her
instrumentation. But in the desert area where the conference had been set, the
readings were considerably less certain. She could make out the Bed’wan and
Khalud camps to some degree, but the information was suspect. There was no
way of telling how many or how powerful, though there were signatures in the
data stream that suggested heavy caliber armaments. Primitive weapons, if the
data were to be believed, but more than adequate enough to do serious damage to
the Marines down there. More than adequate, she ventured, to have wiped them
all out. And from all indications there seemed little doubt the mountaintop the
Assembly had irrationally insisted on as the venue for the negotiations had been
all but obliterated.
“Sir, Commander Ivanislejk wishes to speak with you,” A’tembe announced.
“He says it’s urgent.”
She frowned, annoyed, wondering what the Winslow’s captain could possibly
want. “Patch him through to my screen,” she said.
The screen flickered as the matrix of the holocube changed from a tactical
55
display to the image of Ivanislejk. He wore the scowling features of a man on the
verge of apoplexy.
“Commander,” said Anna curtly.
“Have you gone completely mad?” Ivanislejk demanded. “Our scans show
you’re targeting civilian areas!”
“I have ordered Jerat, Khartusha and some of the Bed’wan mobiles to be
targeted,” she confirmed calmly.
“That’s a direct violation of the Rules of Engagement as set down in USF
policy,” he said, voice rising to an almost hysterical pitch. “If you hit one of those
targets you’ll get us all hauled before a courts martial and accused of war crimes!”
His eyes flashed, an odd mix of rage and terror.
“I am taking the necessary precautions to ensure we don’t get caught off guard
again,” she said in an even tone. “We may have lost one ship,” she added, the
words a pointed thrust directed at him, “but I’ve no intention of losing another.”
“It’s not your right to make this sort of decision without consulting the rest of
us,” the Winslow’s captain complained.
“It damn well is my right!” she shot back, feeling a tide of fury rise within her.
She could feel the eyes of the bridge crew on her, their looks of shock. “With all
due respect, Commander, the captain is currently indisposed and incommunicado,
therefore command of the fleet falls to the commanding officer of the flag vessel.
I am said officer, Commander, and as such it is perfectly within my purview to
give the orders I feel are necessary to the continued survival and well-being of the
fleet and those serving in it.”
“You’ve no business targeting civilian positions!”
“Need I remind you, Commander, that it was those ‘civilian’ positions of
which you are so concerned that have left your ship severely disabled and
possibly unable to make a jump out of here.”
Ivanislejk shook his head. “That doesn’t alter the fact that all those cities
contain innocent people, Commander. If you fire on them you’ll end up killing
innocent women and children.”
“This is a precaution, Commander. I’ve no intention of firing on those targets
unless it becomes apparent they pose a serious threat to the fleet.”
“And what if they do? What if they start lobbing missiles at us again?”
“Then we shall try to be discreet and minimize the loss of life. But if the
Bed’wan or the Khalud choose to launch yet another assault against us, the attack
cannot go unpunished. Not while we’ve got the captain and hundreds of Marines
still down there.”
“It’s not within our mandate to retaliate,” Ivanislejk insisted.
She thought to say, “Screw the fucking mandate,” but bit her tongue and said,
“We are no longer engaged in a diplomatic mission, Commander. As such, our
original mandate no longer applies. We’ve now been put in the position of having
56
to defend ourselves. Unless, of course, you think we should simply sit back and
let the Bed’wan and the Khalud pound the shit out of us.” She eyed him darkly.
From the depths of the holocube Ivanislejk glared at her impotently; and she
knew she had forced him into a corner, into an ‘either/or’ choice. Black or white.
That was how one had to see the situation in a moment like this. There were no
shades of gray.
“Attacking these people isn’t going to do anything to further the peace
process,” he said.
She could barely restrain the urge to laugh at him and his pitiful naiveté.
“There is no ‘peace process,’ Commander,” she told him bluntly. “It’s dead. It
died even before it was truly born.”
There was a moment of uneasy calm between the two; and she thought to cut
him off and be done with the matter. But then he said, “I want it on record that I
vigorously protest this action.”
“If you so wish,” she sighed. “Your protest is duly noted and logged,
Commander. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have other, more pressing matters
to attend to.” And with that she severed the connection to him, cutting him off as
he began another tirade. Damn, pompous ass, she thought. She sat back and tried
to relax, only now becoming aware of how much he had infuriated her. She
wondered how someone like that could ever have attained command of a ship,
when for all intents and purposes he seemed the perfect candidate for the job of
desk jockey. His type were more comfortable in an office in Admiralty, where the
life and death decisions they made didn’t demand timely precision and could be
well vetted before they became a substantial and irrevocably bad course of action.
Anna had a pretty good idea why the Winslow was the only ship in the fleet so
seriously damaged that it was out of commission. Ivanislejk had just not believed
the threat when she had set the fleet on red alert, and she had her suspicions he
hadn’t prepared his ship and crew accordingly. When the onslaught had begun,
the Winslow had taken several damaging hits early on from the skip-jumped
torpedoes. She shuddered to think what might have happened to the fleet had he
been in command. She could well imagine him trying to negotiate even as a hail
of anti-matter torpedoes tore into the ships and made short work of them.
“Goddamn fool,” she muttered to herself. Unfortunately, he was not singular
in his existence; the USF was teeming with such cretins, many of them in
positions of power, influencing the day-to-day affairs of the Federation. They
were the sort who threatened the future of the Earth Empire by forcing Fleet to
pursue foolhardy endeavors like this one, which she thought even the most
addlebrained would have foreseen as being doomed from the outset.
There were times when she seriously suspected certain parties within the
Assembly of having a hidden agenda that included the diminution of Fleet and
Admiralty—if not the outright destruction of the Federation’s military arm. How
57
else to explain this mess? A mission like this wasn’t within the parameters of their
training or their operational objectives, so why the Hell had they been sent here in
the first place?
Carter and Suzanne shouldn’t have been down there trying to negotiate the
impossible. That was what the diplomats and bureaucrats were for. But a failure
like this—and there could be no mistaking that it was anything but an utter
fiasco—provided fodder for those who wanted to see the military arm of the USF
scaled back or eliminated altogether.
Ultimately, she was certain the megacorps were behind it all. Weren’t they
always? And that was one enemy she was sure they would never be able to defeat.
Not so long as money meant power. And when had it ever been otherwise?
******
He didn’t like the unbroken calm. Not out here. Not in this desert, in the
shadowy gloom before dawn, with gray light in the eastern reaches and stars
sinking behind mountain ridges to the west.
Carter didn’t like it at all; and the shiver that passed through him was from
more than the bitter cold of the desert air. It was that sense of foreboding he’d
ignored up on the mountaintop when he’d been awaiting the arrival of Khar and
the Khalud. It was that uneasiness he’d often felt in the hours before battle, when
he knew that by day’s end there’d be deaths amidst those for whom he was
responsible. It was that sense of dread that had consumed him when he’d waited,
cold and hungry and scared, for the rescue crew to pull his father’s lifeless body
from the sea those many years ago—before he’d even joined the Academy, when
he’d been a child only two or three years younger than the Khalud princess,
Khorun. That thought chilled him even more. He couldn’t begin to equate what he
remembered of himself with this girl. At her age he’d still been in the Academy
and had already learned a great deal, but he didn’t think he could have brought
himself to kill anyone at the point in his life. And never so callously, without
hesitation, without any sense of the moral implications, driven only by a singular
hate, itself perhaps rooted in an unreasoned fear.
“I have my people dug in,” said Suzanne, approaching him from out of the
fading night, a silhouette against the pale gray of an easterly sunrise.
“Good,” was all he said. He stood still, eyes fixed north, watching. Waiting.
Almost hoping the Khalud wouldn’t come. Now they were here—he, Suzanne
and her Marines—he was beginning to have second thoughts about the
arrangement. He couldn’t get past the issue of trust, couldn’t bring himself to
view this as anything but a foolhardy exercise that was sure to get them all killed.
Goddammit! What had happened to Anna? And what the hell did he think he
was doing leading his people into the hands of the very lot who had tried to
58
annihilate them not a dozen hours earlier?
It was crazy. Madness.
The Khalud would take Khorun, then they’d kill Carter and his people. It was
how ruthless they were; because people who had lived through five decades of
constant warfare had long ceased to have any scruples or a sense of the worth of
life. And he didn’t think honor meant a great deal to them either. Their world just
didn’t really have much room for such antiquated notions. Not when survival was
paramount.
“You’re worried we’ve walked into a trap,” said Suzanne.
“You’re not?”
“I think they’ll be very careful until they have the girl. After that...” She
shrugged.
“It’s the ‘after’ that concerns me.”
“We didn’t have much choice, John. We had nothing to barter with as far as
the Bed’wan go, that’s for sure. Not after what happened to Khar. We lost our
boats, the mountaintop was a deathtrap, and our connection with the ships is
gone.” She ran a hand over her short-cropped hair and let a telltale sigh of
weariness escape her. “This was our only option,” she insisted. “As unsavory as it
is. At least this way we may have bought ourselves some time. Maybe long
enough for the ships to find us and get some help down here.”
“Ever the optimist.” Carter smiled feebly.
“My people are good, John. They’ll not go down without a fight.”
“If they have the chance,” he said, mindful of the many they’d lost up on the
mountaintop who hadn’t had a chance at all.
“That’s why we’re meeting out here. They’re not likely to go shelling their
own people, and they’re less likely to surprise us out in the open like this.”
“You hope.” He scanned the horizon, glanced sidelong at her. “This is their
world, Suze. They know every inch of this desert. They know how to fight here.
And they’ve certainly had enough practice doing it.”
“They don’t want us, John. I don’t think they could care less about us.”
He nodded. “I imagine you’re right. We just became a means to an end, and
now we’ve served that purpose we’re just a nuisance. But one I suspect other
parties have urged them to eliminate.”
They said nothing for a while; just stood there, side by side, two lonely
silhouettes projecting skyward from the ridge of a dune.
******
They had agreed to meet representatives of the Khalud force at this prescribed
point in the desert, where they were to discuss an acceptable trade: the assured
security of the USF force in exchange for the girl. Of course, that all hinged upon
59
the Khalud acting honorably. A questionable supposition, in Carter’s eyes, and the
ungoverned source of his continued restlessness. The Khalud had certainly given
him no reason, thus far, to believe they were in any way trustworthy. Had he been
conducting business with someone like Khar, he would have felt far more
disposed to this transaction. But the only person he had trusted on this forsaken
planet was dead and buried beneath the rubble of a treachery Carter knew had not
been mere happenstance.
“Where’s the girl?” he asked Suzanne.
“Safely out of sight.”
“Good.” He said it distractedly, as though it didn’t matter. Maybe it didn’t.
“The scanners aren’t showing anything yet," Suzanne remarked. "On the other
hand, this whole place is hot, no doubt from the same thing that’s preventing us
from contacting the ships.”
Carter scarcely heard her. He stood for a moment more, staring into the dawn,
then turned abruptly and started back down the slope of the low dune’s sandy
back. “We should get to our positions,” he said over his shoulder.
Suzanne, close on his heels, signaled her Marines to be at the ready. She
followed Carter into a small shelter that was amidst some rocks the winds had
swept clean of sand, settling down beside him, drawing a laspistol and presenting
herself forward. He followed her example, using a gun she had repatriated from a
dead Marine when she had also acquired the shield generator and armor for him.
They sat for several minutes, with the whisper of the wind and faint,
unidentifiable noises disturbing the near deathly quiet of daybreak. Carter
suspected these were the sounds of indigenous life forms rooting for food or
shelter among the rocks and the sand. Aside from these it was otherwise peaceful.
Alluringly calm. Perhaps deceptively so. He could almost imagine himself
elsewhere and unthreatened.
The peace was shattered by a distant whistle, which he knew was one of the
forward Marine lookouts signaling the approach of the Khalud. Suzanne used
hand signals to warn her troops to be ready, her face a study of icy calm as she did
so, no hint of the tension Carter felt cramping his muscles and churning his
stomach.
“They’re coming,” she said to him as she watched a more forward Marine
relay a message from the lookout. “They’ve just passed our outer perimeter.”
“Nothing untoward in their approach?”
“No, it would appear they’re keeping to their word.”
“So far.” He sounded unconvinced.
They waited, poised for action, guns at the ready.
“Captain Carter,” a voice said from beyond the ridge of the dune.
“I’m here,” he shouted back, not moving from his position.
“I’ve come to negotiate the release of the Khalud.”
60
“How many of them are there?” he asked Suzanne in a lowered voice.
“A dozen,” she said, consulting the scan readout of her com-link. “No threat
to our number. If this thing is working right.” She gave the com-link a disgruntled
whack.
“Don’t count on it.” This was as much an indication of his distrust of the
Khalud as it was a reproof of the technology .
He took a breath, then rose slowly to his feet, cautious, expecting at any
moment to be hit by enemy fire. But nothing happened.
“Wait here,” he hissed to Suzanne. “When I give the word, bring the girl.”
“Be careful.”
“Kind of late for that,” he grunted as he stepped forward and struggled back
up the steep slope of the dune. When he reached the top he stood on the ridge,
looking down into the wide trough that stretched between this hill of sand and the
next, down to where a dozen people were gathered in a loose-knit group, all
dressed in the desert gear common to this world: a tight fitting garment that was
part body armor and part insulation against heat and cold, all concealed beneath a
hooded mantle.
“Captain Carter?” said the foremost figure, with an air of cheeriness Carter
thought incongruous. Levity had no place in this situation.
“That would be me,” he said. He felt like a target, standing there before them,
and was suddenly glad of the shield and armor.
“I am Khalid Nassam, aide to Her Highness, T'an Khorun.” The man made a
bow-like gesture.
Carter said nothing, just waited on the ridge, gun at the ready, feeling more
and more vulnerable.
“I have come for the princess,” said Nassam. “You have her?”
“We do.”
“Then please bring her, Captain. We are eager to return to our camp.”
“I’m sure you are, but there is the small matter of my people.”
“You wish safe passage?”
“Yes. I have no beef with you. I just want to get my people off this world in
one piece.”
Nassam nodded slightly; Carter thought it might almost be respectfully. “Of
course,” the man said. “I understand completely, Captain. This has all been rather
unfortunate.”
For some more than others, thought Carter, feeling a surge of anger. He stared
at Nassam in the gathering light of the new day and tried to reconcile the calm,
reasonable man before him with the butchery he had witnessed in the day before.
It was difficult to square Khar’s death and the slaughter of so many Marines with
the handful of men and women before him. It was never easy putting a face to
murder; and these didn’t look like the faces of people who would place such little
61
value on life. They didn’t look like the faces of heartless assassins. But then, he
wasn’t sure what the face of such a person should look like.
He spoke over his shoulder. “Bring the girl,” he said gruffly.
There was movement behind him, but he didn’t turn to look, knowing it was
Suzanne and some of the Marines escorting Khorun.
“Your Highness!” Nassam exclaimed at the sight of her. He sank to one knee,
bowing deeply. The others followed his example, chanting a few words in a
dialect Carter couldn’t understand.
Carter took hold of the girl by the arm, holding her tight so she couldn’t flee.
“I want the jamming lifted,” he said. “And I want your guarantee you’ll let our
boats land and take us out of here.”
“I can promise you our side’s cooperation, Captain, but I cannot speak for the
Bed’wan.”
“Fair enough.” He moved forward, stepping down the steeper front of the
dune, pulling Khorun with him.
Nassam moved to meet them. Above, Suzanne and the Marines kept their
weapons at the ready.
Nassam was a couple of meters from Carter and Khorun when suddenly the
girl twisted free of Carter’s grip and dashed across the short space between herself
and her aide. As she reached Nassam she grabbed the gun attached to his belt and
yanked it free, turning in a blur of motion as she did so and firing directly at
Carter. There was a surge of energy as the discharge from the weapon lit the air
and smashed into Carter’s shield, sending him flying backwards.
Even before he felt the force of the impact and the clash of shield and charge
energies warring against one another, it seemed he heard Nassam’s voice rise in
fear, half-screaming, “No, Your Highness!” But it was too late. And in the
confusion that followed, as he lay on his back and fought to regain his senses, to
reach beyond the fog of semi-consciousness that had enveloped him, he heard the
rapid fire of more weapons and saw the bright signature of their energies flashing
back and forth, splashing against rock and dune and shielded bodies. There were
screams and shouts, then suddenly, as though someone had flicked a switch, just
an eerie, disquieting calm.
He lay there, fighting for air, his whole body ablaze with the sting of the blow,
his chest aching so hard that it was excruciating to steal even the shallowest of
breaths. He felt faint and sick and certain he was going to die. Then a shadow
crossed his vision and he had the momentary fear that it was one of the Khalud’s
people come to deliver the coup de grace.
“Captain? John?”
Someone touched his shoulder, gently, though it felt as from a great distance,
until nerves clicked in and a sensation like someone jamming a burning firebrand
into his flesh flared in that spot, now abruptly all too fierce and immediate.
62
“Are you okay, sir?” Another voice, which he thought might be the Marine
medtech.
"Anybody get the number of that bus?" he groaned, the words coming out
thick and hoarse. He coughed and tried to speak again, but this time only choking
sounds and a line of warm drool came out of his mouth.
“Try to stay still, sir. You took quite a hit. Good thing that gun wasn’t at its
highest setting. Still, it’ll be some time before your body recovers.”
And Carter was thinking as he lay there that time was something they didn’t
have.
******
“Commander!”
“You’ve got something?”
“I’m not sure, sir,” said the officer at the Ops post, clearly trying to contain his
excitement. “I was doing a visual scan of the area near where our people were last
reported and I just saw some flashes that appear to be the energy discharges of
small weapons fire. Just a brief skirmish, if anything.”
It wasn’t much to go on, but Anna felt she was running out of time. She had to
take a chance.
“Com, get me Mister Hampton.”
“Aye, aye, sir. Patching him through now, sir.”
“Mister Hampton,” she said to the image in the holocube, “I’m sending you
coordinates now. We’re not sure, but we think we may have found the captain. I
want you to get the boats down as soon as you can. We’re going to lay down a bit
of cover for you, but exercise extreme caution.”
“Yessir. We’re on our way.”
“No unnecessary heroics, Commander.”
“Aye, sir.”
“I mean it,” Anna said forcefully. “If it’s too dangerous, get out of there.”
“But the captain—” Hampton began to protest.
“The captain would be the first to tell you what I’ve just told you. You’re in
command of those boats, Commander. So everyone on board is your
responsibility. And they’re your first priority. Understand?”
“Yessir.”
“Good, now get going.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Too eagerly.
Anna watched his image fade from the holocube and winced, knowing he
would only follow her orders so far. He would push it to the limit—and then
some. She knew he would; it was exactly what she would do were she in his
position. She damn well knew that if there was even a remote chance of retrieving
63
the captain she would press ahead, despite the odds and the obvious dangers.
Call it loyalty. Call it genetics. She wasn’t sure how much of it was nature and
how much nurture. Like everyone else on this ship, she had been bred and had
grown up as one of Fleet’s precious few. She had known practically nothing else,
save for the few early years on Luna. Even then she had known her place in the
future and had seen that it hadn’t been on the Moon.
There was just something about that essential truth, about that shared
experience of awakening, of realizing that you belonged to the stars, which bound
all spacers together. It connected all of those who went out into the cold dark
night of space in ways that only they could ever fully appreciate. There was
something almost spiritual about it. It was, in its way, the religion of those whose
lives were anchored to ships and not shackled to worlds and held down in the
suffocating atmospheres and crushing gravity wells of planets.
They were linked, allied to one another in ways that implantees could never
comprehend. Instead of the technological union through the electronic ether of the
Community, it was the old traditions and beliefs of loyalty and friendship and
absolute trust that bound them: she, Hampton, the captain, Suzanne Morrow and
all her Marines. They were spacers all, who would do almost anything to save one
another.
Even die.
******
“Are they—”
“Gone?” Suzanne finished for him, without a trace of emotion. “Yeah, they
skedaddled after the first flurry of shots.”
“Goddammit!”
“As you pointed out earlier: They know this desert far better than we do,” she
said. “Once the girl shot at you the whole lot of them began shooting
indiscriminately and used the ensuing confusion of the firefight to escape. They
took down two of my Marines before we had a chance to shoot back.”
“They had bloody shield generators!” It was as much statement as query.
“Good ones. Not antiquated stuff. Whatever their offworld connections are,
they’re good. I’d guess one of the megacorps, not just any old corporate. Someone
has been spending a lot of money here.”
Carter lifted his head from where he sat, stared up at her beleagueredly. “You
think the Khalud planned it this way all along?” he asked.
“I think they were prepared for anything,” she offered. “I think they may have
intended to honor the agreement. At least, initially. They wanted Khorun back.
But when the girl shot you I think they just panicked, and then instinct took over.”
She smiled grimly. “As you also reminded me earlier: They’ve had long years of
64
practice at this sort of warfare. Disappearing the way they did is probably second
nature to them.”
“Which leaves us up the proverbial creek without a paddle.” Carter hung his
head between his knees and let out a loud breath. “We’ve probably got minutes.
An hour or two at best.”
“It won’t be long before the rest of the Khalud encampment descends upon
us,” Suzanne agreed. “I’d have sent Marines after them, but I didn’t want to lose
more troops trying to chase down ghosts.”
Carter lifted his head wearily and shook it, trying to clear the fogginess from it
and instantly regretting the attempt. “I can’t believe this,” he bemoaned aloud.
“This is a goddamn fucking nightmare.”
“I’m sorry, John.”
“Why?” he said, biting back his anger, trying not to sound too truculent. “It’s
not your fault. This was all buggered from the start."
He struggled to his feet, ill-tempered and shaky, a wave of nausea rising
through him. The last thing he wanted to do right now was walk around. But he
had to. Any minute the enemy might descend upon them, and he was damned if
he was going to make it easy for them to finish off the remainder of his people.
“So what do you propose?” he asked, trying to ignore the hammering in his
head.
Suzanne shrugged. “That depends on how good their communications are and
how far away their reinforcements."
He considered this, not liking what reason suggested. “I think we have to
assume we’re going to be attacked sooner rather than later,” he said.
“Pretty much the way I see it.”
“So we should get ready to move, and move quickly. It may buy us some
time.”
“We may have some help in that regard.”
He turned a querying eye upon her.
“A storm headed this way,” she explained, hooking a thumb towards one
horizon. “It looks quite dense, if the scanners are to be believed. Approaching
fast, too.”
“The scanners haven’t been terribly accurate under this umbrella of
interference.” He studied the dark line of cloud that hung in the distance,
eastward, towards the rising sun. It seemed incredibly distant. Too distant to be of
much use to them, he thought. Besides, he wasn’t sure he liked the idea of being
out in a storm on Inkasar any more than he was enamored of the prospect of
facing the Khalud forces. He had studied the Met reports before landing on this
planet and he knew that at this time of year some of the sand storms could be
worse than what he’d experienced on Mars.
“The scanners might not be functioning a hundred percent,” Suzanne
65
conceded. “But haven’t you noticed that the wind has been steadily gathering
strength in the last hour or so? I don’t know about you, but I’ve been in enough
bad weather over the years to believe that’s a big blow coming our way.”
He had noticed: The wind was stronger than it had been when they had gone
to take cover behind the rocks. He could see sand beginning to slither across the
backs of the dunes in long, sinuous movements. And as he looked to the east
again, to where the horizon was warmed by the sun, he could see the cloud
looming larger as he watched, forming a wall of sorts, towering above the desert.
A wall of sand and dust that was rapidly descending upon them, even as it rode
higher and higher into the sky, forming spire-like clouds, backlit by sunlight, stark
and terrifying. He had only ever seen their like twice before: as a student in the
Academy, when they’d had field training exercises on Mars; and at sea, when the
storm that had killed his father had engulfed their boat and swamped it, sending it
to the bottom of the ocean. Neither recollection was pleasant.
“Are you all right?”
“Wha—” He blinked, startled, introspection and angst ephemeral once more.
“Just thinking,” he allowed roughly, although it had been far more than that. It
had been feeling. Reliving. Re-experiencing again two moments in his life that
had shaken the foundations of his existence. Two moments in which he had seen
people important to him die. People he had loved. His father at sea; Khillie on
Mars.
The wind had become fiercer, and he could feel the sand and dust in it, a fine
abrasive that was like sandpaper against the exposed portions of his skin. He
tuned his shield to micro filter settings so the sand and dust were repelled. Now he
could just hear the wind and had a sense of its weight against him, pushing at his
body. “We should try to make contact with the ships again,” he said to Suzanne.
“I’ll get on it.” She had to raise her voice to be heard over the bluster of the
approaching storm.
Just like Mars, Carter thought with a shiver, recalling it too vividly. Olympus
Mons, a flat-topped hump rising over a too near horizon, growing less and less
distinct as the dust clouds in the air grew more and more dense. A great storm,
stretching from north to south, lost beyond the curve of the planet. A dark,
ominous wall that presaged ill. Then it had overtaken them, and it had been as
though they had suddenly been swallowed into the belly of some great beast, its
gut an eerie, reddish darkness.
Blood red it had been. Then darker. Until it had been all blackness and wind
and Martian sand and too fine dust that had seemed to work its way into
everything. And overlaying all that, a howling that had been fainter than it would
have been on earth, but still audible through the suits. A howl that terraforming
had made louder than it should have been. Louder and more threatening. More
dangerous.
66
There had been fifty-two of them, in thirteen groups of four. Unlucky thirteen,
he recalled someone saying; and it had been true. All but one in the thirteenth
team had perished. Tethered to one another as they had been instructed, they had
blundered their way blindly, trying to make it to a shelter that was simply too far
away in conditions like those of that storm. But their leader, Dansen Briggin, had
been a cadet captain who had always pushed the envelope, who had always
believed he could go one better than anyone else. He had consistently been
challenging himself, and those around him. And because of that he had believed
implicitly in his ability to lead his team to safety. So instead of digging in as they
should have and as they’d been instructed to, Briggin had convinced them they
could reach the next checkpoint and beat the other teams.
So they’d stumbled their way through the drifts of Martian dust, Briggin in the
lead, Parsons behind him, Khillie following Parsons, and Carter bringing up the
rear. Five meters between each, a distance that had made it nearly impossible to
see one another. They’d been just barely perceived shadows in the gloom,
shuffling forward through a landscape that no longer had discernable features.
And that was how they’d unwittingly lurched towards the cliff and gone over,
Briggin falling first, letting out a cry that stopped almost before it had started, his
weight yanking at the others, pulling them after him. They’d gone, with little time
to even shout a warning. And Carter, bringing up the rear, had suddenly found
himself wrenched off his feet, flying through the air, hitting the ground with such
force that it had knocked the breath out of him.
Through dust and over rocks he’d been dragged, trying desperately to stop, to
gain some hold on the ground, all the while watching in horror as the shadow that
was Khillie vanished over the edge. In the last instant he’d managed to roll,
bringing his body in line with two boulders, so that he had slammed up hard
against them, jammed in behind them, the line snapping so taunt that he’d felt it
and the harness it was connected to cut into him through his suit.
Briggin had died almost instantly, his momentum and the line swinging him
into the wall of the cliff with such force that his helmet had shattered and
immovable rock had smashed his head to a pulp. Parsons had been knocked
unconscious and had died a few minutes later because one of the seals on his suit
had ruptured and failed to repair. Only Khillie, of the three who had gone over,
had remained alive. Alive, but out of reach.
Carter had tried to pull them back over, but his grasp on them had been
precarious at best, and he had not dared shift too much for fear of puncturing his
suit or losing his hold and being pulled over as well. So Khillie had dangled there,
helplessly, while Carter had desperately tried to figure out some way of rescuing
her.
They’d had no communications beyond one another, which had meant they
were on their own. And Carter had known their time was running out, that their
67
air supplies would soon be exhausted; they could not generate what they needed
to breathe from the terraformed Martian atmosphere, the fine dust too dense in the
air for the suit regulators to handle.
He’d soon decided Briggin and Parsons were both dead. He couldn’t raise
them on the com-link and there’d been no sign of life from them in the form of
movement or utterances. Having determined this, he had told Khillie to
disconnect the line joining her to Parsons, knowing that with the weight of the
other two gone he’d be able to haul her up. But she’d been unable to reach the
connector, the harness having been twisted around her. The only connection
within her reach had been the one joining her to him.
There’d been no prospect of cutting the line, even had there been something
with which to do so. It had been made of coated hydrofiber, which was similar to
the virtually indestructible nanotube filament they used on the space elevators.
For hours, then, they’d remained that way, Carter feeling his legs grow numb,
feeling the agony of the line and harness cutting into him through the suit. And he
had tried to keep Khillie talking, to convince her they’d find some way out of this,
even as he’d known he couldn’t last much longer, that before long he’d be dead
from either the garroting pull on the line or simple oxygen starvation.
He’d barely been conscious when he’d felt the line vibrate. Khillie’s voice had
sounded in his ears, tearful, full of sorrow, telling him good-bye. He had felt panic
seize him as he had realized what she was doing. He’d told her to stop, had
screamed at her not to be stupid, that they would be saved, that someone would
come. But she had disagreed, telling him it was no sense them all dying, and that
that would happen if she didn’t do the only thing that could be done.
The line had suddenly gone slack. And he had fallen back, freed, but too
numb from the pain in his legs and the emotional trauma to do anything but lie
there and weep.
Two days after they had rescued him, when the storm had cleared, search
parties had found the other three members of ‘unlucky thirteen’ at the base of a
cliff, all of them dead. If Khillie had held on for just an hour more she would have
survived along with him.
They had assigned no blame in the incident, but Carter had never been able to
assuage his own sense of guilt. Khillie had died and he had lived and there hadn’t
seemed any sense or justice to that. Khillie, who had trusted him with her life for
so many hours at the end of that line, had given hers so that he might live. And he
had felt that that was somehow wrong. He had felt he had betrayed her, that he
had failed her. He’d let her go, even though there’d been no way he could have
stopped her.
He had failed and she had died.
“No go,” Suzanne shouted, once more yanking him back to the present from
the depths of painful reflection. “There's still too much interference to reach the
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ships, and the storm is only making things worse.”
“We’ve got to get out of here,” said Carter, shaking himself thoroughly loose
from the past.
“Agreed. But where?” She looked around, gestured helplessly. “We’d never
make it back to the mountains, even if we wanted to go that way.” Which he took
to imply she did not.
He stood there, feeling the wind tear at him, shoving him, trying to carry him
away, as though it were annoyed. It was like some angry, living thing, affronted
by his presence and determined to be rid of him. He felt helpless against it.
Helpless against it all, because he couldn’t see any possible solution. He couldn’t
see any way out of this increasingly desperate situation. If the Bed’wan and the
Khalud didn’t finish them off, the desert would.
He felt that awful, suffocating helplessness of Mars again, and the quiet
despair that had swallowed him up when his father’s body had been hauled
aboard the rescue flitter in the depths of the once in a century storm that
Weathercom should never have allowed to happen.
It was at that moment that he heard the noise, like thunder, rising above the
wind and growing louder. Then there was fire spewing into the air, blasting back
the wind and the dust and the sand, a boiling sphere of orange contagion,
spreading rapidly towards them. The leading edge of the shockwave of
compressed air slammed into them like a wall of brick and threw them through
the air. And for the second time in less than an hour Carter found himself flat on
his back, winded, his mind unable to focus.
More thunder and fire, from the north and from the south, peppering the desert
around them indiscriminately. Geysers of flame and earth shot up, then rained
debris down upon them.
“Looks like they’ve found us,” cried Suzanne, trying her best to present as
low a profile to the surroundings as possible.
“They must be shooting blindly,” said Carter.
“They had better shields than we thought. Maybe they’ve got better scanners.”
“Too random,” he insisted.
“Doesn’t matter, skipper. They keep this up long enough and they’re going to
get us one way or another. Barring a miracle.”
As though in answer to that they saw flashes to the north, brilliant enough to
be seen through the thick veil of dust and sand that now obscured the landscape.
Distantly they heard the unmistakable sound of a low yield anti-matter torpedo.
The process was repeated again and again, both to the north and to the south of
them, but it scarcely diminished the incoming artillery barrage that had been
striking the desert about them.
“Looks like Anna must have saved your ship, skipper,” Suzanne roared,
almost jubilant.
69
Indeed, he thought; but he also wondered if he’d ever get to see it again, or
whether Inkasar would soon become his grave. He didn’t like the notion of dying
in this desert, with abject failure his only epitaph.
He put his head close to Suzanne’s and shouted, “Try the ‘link again.”
“Way ahead of you, skipper.”
Carter watched Suzanne as she spoke feverishly into the com-link, yelling to
be heard over the storm. After a minute or two she signaled him to come closer.
Mouth against his ear, she said, “There’re boats coming in. They’re requesting
clearance to land.”
More eruptions illuminated the terrain around them; and Carter stared at these
with mounting apprehension.
“It’s too dangerous,” he told Suzanne. “Those boats will be sitting ducks.”
“It’s our only chance, John. If we don’t get off this bloody rock now, we’re
never getting off. Storm or no storm, we can't make it through to tomorrow. Not
under this kind of pounding.”
He knew she was right, knew it was only a matter of time before the casualties
among them began to mount as a result of the continued bombardment from the
Khalud and the Bed’wan. With the storm and covering fire from the ships in orbit,
this was likely the only opportunity the boats had of making it to the surface and
back into orbit. If the storm passed, and they were left in the full light of day and
out in the open, they would be too easily picked off by the enemy.
He drew a labored breath and reluctantly assented. “Call them in,” he said.
******
“Any word?”
“The ‘link is weak, Commander, but it looks like Mister Hampton is taking
the boats in for a landing.”
“Tactical, how’s our covering fire?”
“Our window is closing fast, Commander. The target area is going to be
beyond the limb of the planet in less than a minute.”
“What about the other ships?”
“Another ten minutes of cover, sir. Then those boats are going to be on their
own.”
Anna wiped her face with her hands, then meshed her fingers and hooked her
thumbs under her chin as she concentrated on the readouts in her screen. Dour and
drained, the fetor of unease assailed her. In less than a minute they would lose
their direct communications link with the boats. For a few minutes beyond that
she could use the other ships in orbit behind the Goliath to act as relays, and for a
while longer the Champlain and Winslow up in their higher orbits. Then the
distant hyper relay. But for a few minutes, while the rest of the fleet was on the
70
same side of the planet as the Goliath and also cut off from the hyper relay, she
would have to content herself with waiting. Waiting until they swung around and
could bounce their signal through the hyper relay again, and then had line of sight
to the surface once more.
It would be an interminable wait, during which she could only hope that
Hampton would be successful.
And if he wasn’t? She shuddered at the prospect of such an outcome, knowing
she had no real choices anymore. If this rescue failed, there’d be no other
attempts. She would take the fleet and leave Inkasar far behind; and at some point
the bureaucrats back on Earth would tell her what they wanted her to do.
Considering the debacle Inkasar had become, it was not something she
entertained with any great enthusiasm.
******
They heard the boats long before they saw them: the loud whine of impulsors,
blending with the howl of the wind and intermittently all but drowned out by the
thunder that presaged nearby impacts and explosions. Then shadows followed,
which in the gloom created by the dust resembled nothing so much as whales
Carter could remember having seen in museums back on Earth. Long lost
mammalian leviathans that had once graced the depths of Earth’s vast seas before
humankind had driven them to extinction. It was an uncomfortable comparison,
since he knew their fate in the next few minutes could be the measure of those all
but forgotten creatures.
Landing gear sprouted from the belly of each boat, spindly legs that spread
wide and flexed deep as the boats sank to a landing on the ground. They kicked
up powdery clouds that mixed with the wind-borne sand and dust, obscuring
everything within a radius of a dozen or more meters. From a safe distance Carter,
Suzanne and the Marines waited and watched anxiously.
Once the boats were down the Marines hustled forward, eager to get aboard
and to be clear of the battlefield. As Carter and Suzanne approached the lead boat,
the hatch in the port side sprang open with a hiss of hydraulics and vented air.
Light streamed from within, pouring out onto the ever-darkening sepia-toned
landscape. A figure appeared on the threshold, and as Carter stepped up to the
bottom of the ladder he saw that it was his second officer, Booth Hampton.
“Anyone call for a taxi?” Hampton cracked a broad grin.
“God, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” said Suzanne.
“Why thank you, ma’am.” He tipped an imaginary hat, and his smiled
broadened as he pretended to preen himself. “Thought you might like a lift home,
sir,” he added, turning to Carter.
“Do I still have a home, Mister Hampton?”
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“Aye, sir! The commander got us through a bit of a squeaker. We took some
serious damage, but we’re okay now. Ready to make for the point as soon as
you’re aboard, sir.”
“Glad to hear it, Mister Hampton.” And Carter made no secret he was, his
face showing visible relief. He clambered up the steps and into the welcome
shelter of the boat’s austere cabin, moving forward to settle into one of the seats
just aft of the cockpit. Suzanne followed, and behind her a stream of Marines who
noisily filled the remaining seats, their chatter betraying the emotional release
they felt at the prospect of escaping the little corner of Hell into which they’d
been thrust.
As soon as the last Marine was aboard, one of the boat crew sealed the hatch.
Hampton made his way into the cockpit and instructed the pilots to take off. With
a jerk and a thump the boat struggled aloft, the wind battering it, the hiss of storm-
flung sand loud against the hull. Around them, light flashed intermittently through
the ports, the telltale signatures of the Bed’wan and Khalud artillery, overlaid by
lighting from the storm.
Carter felt himself tense, realizing how incredibly vulnerable they were at this
juncture. Large, ripe targets for the enemy. Fish in a barrel, was the phrase that
came to mind. It wouldn’t take much of a blow to send them crashing to the
ground; the boats were only modestly armored and bore only short range
armaments.
There was a blinding flash to starboard and a roar penetrated the cabin,
drowning out the sounds of the wind and the sand and the whining impulsors. The
boat seemed to stumble in the air, swaying, canting to port. They held on tight,
Carter holding his breath, wondering if they would make it. But then the boat
steadied and rose again, faster and faster, and he felt a surge of confidence,
convincing himself they would soon be safe.
It was not quite over, however. Through the viewport, past the thick veil of
dust, he could see the long, bulbous shadows that were the other boats, navigation
lights blinking on and off, headlights piercing the chaos and gloom of the storm.
And as he watched these dark shapes rising in unison, one of them was struck by
a ball of fire that splashed against the hull and quickly engulfed the craft. Carter
stiffened, mesmerized by the sight, stunned as the boat exploded in a brilliance
that almost matched a sun; and then it fell, plummeting from the sky, like some
otherworldly Icarus. He watched it, all the way down, into the thick, muddy
obscurity of the storm, until it struck the desert floor and became another ragged
plume of fire.
“Goddammit!” he cursed under his breath; and beside him, to either side of
him, he felt Hampton and Suzanne, both equally shocked and dismayed.
“There must have been at least fifty Marines in that boat,” Suzanne whispered.
Carter turned away, thrusting himself hard into his seat, feeling sick again.
72
Chances where he knew none of the men and women in that boat on anything
more than a passing level, but he nevertheless felt the intense pain of losing them.
In the Academy they’d always said there was no room for emotion in the
decisions of a commanding officer. Compassion, yes. But emotions were
irrational and led to bad choices. He knew it was true, but he couldn’t divest
himself of them, could not pretend he didn’t feel something. It had ever been thus,
and he suspected the same was true of most of the men and women in Fleet who
were in a position similar to his.
He wasn’t an automaton, though on more than one occasion he’d wished
himself so. Easier, then, to deal with what he had just witnessed—especially when
he knew he was partly to blame. He and the faceless bureaucrats and weasely
politicians who could sometimes be so arbitrary and fickle in their decrees. He
had often thought it would have been logical for those bred as soldiers to have had
emotion removed from them; it made sense to have warriors who couldn’t feel,
who wouldn’t be encouraged to rebellion by some emotional response to an order
or a combat situation. That was, of course, if one saw emotions as a character
flaw.
The boat began to shake as it rose higher and higher, the earth below
retreating rapidly. He gripped the arms of the chair and found himself staring
down through the viewport, down at the dwindling landscape, the storm now
below them as they sprang from its clutches and rode up above its skirling
tempest, above the wispy, shredded peaks of cloud, into searing sunlight and
towards the cold, black embrace of space.
The world bent, curving, becoming a rounded limb; and the sky darkened,
from pale blue to navy to black. He could see stars beyond the brilliance of the
planetshine, and suddenly felt at peace. Only then did he feel a sense of security,
knowing he was home, back in his element, in an environment whose everyday
threats to life and limb seemed to pale when compared to the hazards of
diplomacy and a populace bent on war.
“There it is!” said someone excitedly.
Carter’s eyes shot open from a moment of rest and he stared out the viewport
again, searching the endless dark, until he spotted the reason for the sudden
ebullience amidst the Marines. There, far ahead, seemingly above them and
wrapped in the shadows of the planet’s dark side, was a floating Christmas tree of
lights. They gained on it slowly, until they had passed beyond it, leaving it
behind, with it a bit of disappointment that it would take them another few turns
about the planet before the boat could match velocity and orbit with the Goliath
and complete a safe docking.
“It’ll be nice to be home,” Suzanne sighed, shoulders dropping as she relaxed.
“Yes,” he agreed, realizing he’d never consciously thought of any of the ships
he’d served on as being ‘home.’ In the past he’d always thought of home as being
73
Earth. Specifically, a single place on Earth, on the north-west Pacific shores of

North America, where there was an aging house, centuries old, that had been in
his family since the time his great great great grandfather had built it.
Home. A ship, light-years from Earth, centuries removed from that old house.
An enormous machine capable of mass destruction, bristling with weapons,
designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to wage war. Yet he found
warmth in it, in its embrace, in its narrow corridors and cramped, simple quarters.
It was a place where he realized he belonged, even as he knew there was some
part of him that had always fought that notion, had always tried to deny it, not
wanting to believe it
But it was incontestable: He was a spacer, first and foremost. He couldn't
escape genetics. Like most of humanity, he’d been created to be what he was.
He’d been designed for it. Engineered to serve and to protect, to be the human
analog of the Assembly’s rules and justice. The human factor that could bring the
unpredictable equation of human emotion to matters that required input no AI
could provide. And that, he supposed, was why they did not genengineer
emotions out of spacers.
“It looked good,” Suzanne observed. She turned to him, a grin thawing the
hardness of her features.
“Yes,” he said; and he knew she meant it in the way that it was home, an
escape from the hostile world beyond, and not in the respect of the physical
aspects of the ship’s appearance. That they had not been able to discern from their
lower orbit; but they would, soon, once boat and ship matched orbit and velocity
in the sunward side of the planet. Then he would get his first opportunity to
survey the damage that had been inflicted upon the Goliath. Upon his ship.
He looked down at Inkasar and realized they were coming up on the main
continent again. Down there, beneath the swirl of ochre cloud that covered much
of the desert, the Bed’wan and Khalud forces were locked in mortal combat.
Perhaps for another fifty years. Perhaps for an eternity—or until they had
completely annihilated one another. And indeed, as he stared into the mass of the
storm, he thought he saw the telltale flashes of artillery—though in truth they
might have been nothing more than lighting. Regardless, there would be fighting.
If not at that moment, then later. It would go on and on, because that was all they
knew; and because they feared a simple concept too alien and intangible to a
peoples whose culture now seemed irrevocably and indelibly entwined with war
and the death and destruction it occasioned.
He could almost feel sorry for them. Almost. But they’d had their chances.
Many times. And this last had been the best of all. Yet they’d thrown it away. Not
simply with indifference, but almost with relish. It was that that made him realize
he would never be able to understand them.
He wasn’t even sure he could feel sorry for the children. When he thought of
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them he thought of Khorun, of that young child-leader who had so easily
dispatched Khar, with a ruthlessness and hardheartedness that one might have
expected of an animal or a machine but seldom of a human being. There were too
many like her down there. Too many children who’d been born into the prejudice
of conflict, who’d been indoctrinated with the ideology of hate, with the notion
there could be but one way of existence and that any other contrary to it must be
exterminated with as much regard as one might observe when ridding one of
cockroaches or fleas.
It was interminable, and he wasn’t sure, now, that anyone would ever be able
to resolve it. Remove the current leaders of each movement and like a mythical
Hydra new ones would grow in their place. Likewise the fighters, whose deaths
made them martyrs and heroes, and left the young filled with an eagerness to
follow them and join them in the mythos of that foolish, foolish war .
Know your enemy.
It was a classic maxim, and well applied to this situation as regarded the
USF’s involvement. In fifty years of trying they should have understood the
Bed’wan and the Khalud, but in point of fact they scarcely knew them at all and
couldn’t begin to truly appreciate the depths of the hatred that existed between the
two—if, indeed, the Bed’wan and the Khalud actually understood it themselves.
Increasingly he was sure they didn’t.
But it’s no longer my problem, Carter told himself; and he couldn’t afford to
invest any further emotional content in it.
In a few minutes they would dock with the ship, and once he had assessed the
full extent of the damage he’d give the order for the fleet to get underway. Even if
they couldn’t make the jump today, they’d still break orbit and put as much
distance as possible between themselves and Inkasar. Their commitment to that
world and its people was over; it was a commitment they’d paid for in blood. He
wouldn’t compound that error by giving either the Khalud or the Bed’wan a
chance to cause him any further grief.
He looked down on the world and silently remarked upon how peaceful it
seemed from afar. But even as he stared at the cloud formations that spanned the
deserts and the many scattered briny seas, a heated anger simmered in him, and
there was the unbidden compulsion to end the illusion of peace once and for all.
In his ship alone there was enough firepower to raze the surface of the planet. He
could wipe out the Bed’wan and the Khalud in a matter of minutes and end the
fifty years of irritation and torment they’d caused the Federation. He could make
them pay for the blood they’d drawn, for the dead Marines on the mountaintop,
for the ones who had died in that boat he had watched crash to the surface.
It would be so easy; and that, too, was why they hadn’t genengineered soldiers
without emotion. Because his conscience stayed his hand, just as it had prevented
him from killing the girl after she assassinated Khar.
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It was a matter of degrees; a fine balance, this tightrope spacers walked. On

the one hand they were soldiers, and it was a part of their job to sometimes be
ruthless and to kill. On the other hand, they could carry that only so far, and not
beyond the boundaries of moral, human probity.
“A penny for your thoughts,” Suzanne said from beside him.
He glanced at her and shrugged indifferently. “Not sure they’re worth that
much,” he grunted. “Just wondering what it was we accomplished here.”
She snorted. “I’m sure as hell certain I don’t know.”
“All those weeks, and all those dead people, and nothing has changed.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head and regarding him seriously, “you’re wrong.
Something did change. Khar is no longer part of the equation. That may change a
world.”
“Or not. He was just one man, after all.” And he was surprised how casually
he said it. Had he already become so indifferent, so detached?
“Maybe he was just one man, but sometimes that’s all it takes. History is
replete with moments when ‘just one man’ or just one woman meant all the
difference in the world. Those are the individuals who are more than the sum of
their parts, who embody ideas and ideals that are like a contagion that can spread
and envelop entire peoples. Maybe Khar was such a man. And maybe someone
realized that and knew they had to get rid of him.”
“Before his ideas spread,” said Carter.
“Before they became something beyond him. Something embraced by others,
so that killing him would do nothing to end those ideas and might even inflame
the passion for them.”
“And after fifty years of trying to establish peace, of searching for just such a
one as Khar, we served him up for his execution and destroyed everything we so
vainly tried to accomplish.”
“Ironic, isn’t it?”
He looked at her bleakly. “No,” he said, his voice a pinched whisper. “It’s just
tragic.” Then he sat back and closed his eyes and waited for the boat to reach his
ship. His home. Because maybe there he could finally forget this nightmare and
put it behind him. Maybe there he could leave it in the past where it belonged and
never let it blight his conscience again. Ever.
Maybe.
But there was still Khar’s blood on his hands, and he could never wash that
away.
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CHAPTER FIVE:
BEZUKOV
Her words, barely audible under her breath, were a string of ill-remembered
Russian invective. Gutter talk. She had picked it up as a child, when she’d roamed
the narrow streets and back alleys of Moscow, in the shadow of the Kremlin. That
had been long ago and far away. Before fortune had shone upon her. Before
salvation. Before RussoAsia Industries had discovered her talents and offered her
escape from what would have been almost certain death before she’d reached
twenty. Salvation and company citizenship. And a chance at a life she could never
have imagined, and which her mother, a street teen herself, could never have
expected for the child she’d abandoned upon birth. The child who had run with
the gangs, thieving, begging, and when necessary, prostituting herself just to have
another meal or a night in a warm hotel room away from the damp and the cold
and the possibility of being knifed or shot or worse.
Alexandra Dimitria Bezukov had sold her soul to the company, and she’d
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never once regretted it. She had killed for the company, and never had had second
thoughts about it. She’d done things for the company that would have made others
blanch, and never once stopped to consider the ramifications of such actions.
She’d never wanted to, had never felt the need to, because it had never
mattered to her. Only the company had. Only the company and the life it offered
her.
The company was, indeed, her life. Her soul. Her very existence. Without it
she knew she was nothing. Without it she would have been just another girl
whose life would have ended prematurely, in a pool of blood, on a grimy street,
on a world that had long ago abandoned itself to accepting such scenarios as the
natural order of things.
And so she swore. And swore again, delighting in the fact she could do so,
that she was alive and not some unremembered death that had added yet another
tally to the dry statistics that amounted to life on Earth.
“Is something wrong, Colonel?”
She smiled thinly. And though she didn’t turn to look at him, she knew that
beside her Major Tsarnyesky, her second in command, was raising an eyebrow,
revealing a hint of the disdain that all too frequently colored the youthful
aristocracy of his face. That had annoyed her when she’d first met him. But with
time she’d learned to ignore it. That and the fact he looked far too young to be so
old; but then, it was that way with most people on rejuv. She, herself, was eighty,
yet seemed scarcely half as much.
“Tell me,” she said, not bothering to lower her viewers to even glance his
way. “Do you know anything about chess, Pieter?” She knew it wasn’t likely he
did, and the question would be like a barb that taunted him, pricking at the thin
skin of his arrogance. He prided himself on being superior, taking it as a given
that gene-typing had made him a far better soldier than nature could ever have
hoped to make of her. But he was narrow-minded and incapable of thinking
beyond the conventional. He didn’t have the wildness and creativity that nature
would have given him. He didn’t have the street smarts that circumstance had
pounded into her. Or so Bezukov was given to believe.
"Chess?" he echoed, perhaps a little querulously.
“Yes.” She could hear the gears whirring inside that head of his, assessing
what she’d asked him, trying to make sense of it, to decide just what she’d meant
and to determine whether or not it was a trick or some sort of subtle insult.
“A game of some sort,” he said at length, apathetic in that haughty disregard
of his that always made her want to knock him down a peg or two. Just as she’d
so often done in the streets with those who’d rubbed her the wrong way.
“A game, yes," she agreed. “But not just any game.” She was still staring into
the viewers, looking out across the nightmarish landscape of Obsidian’s Badlands.
“Chess is perhaps the greatest game ever conceived. There have been many
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attempts to better it, but ultimately it has been chess that has survived. And do
you know why?”
He hesitated, and she knew he was trying to figure out an answer. But in the
end he said, “No, sir,” and tried to make it sound as though he were bored.
“It has survived where so many other games haven’t because it is timeless in
its simplicity, yet equally challenging in its execution. To be a true master of the
game you must understand it and its history implicitly. You must have a clarity of
thought and vision beyond what the normal human being has. You must be
capable of thinking beyond the board and the pieces, to think beyond the mere
parameters of the moves.”
Tsarnyesky gave her a look that suggested he’d no idea what she was talking
about, and really didn’t care.
She glanced at him this time and almost laughed. She knew he didn’t like her,
that he resented her and thought this should be his command. It was well known
to her that he and many of his colleagues in the officer corps didn’t fully accept
her because she hadn’t been typed a spacer from the moment of conception. Her
arrival at this point in her life had come purely as a result of happenstance.
Serendipity, she liked to call it. An unforeseen encounter with a lonely Industries
executive on a dirty Moscow street had vaulted her from a life of gangs and crime
and certain early death into the ranks of the elite, serving RussoAsia Industries as
one of its best field officers.
The spacers, of course, didn’t like it. They never had. They’d always seen her
as some sort of interloper. A pretender. An outsider who didn’t belong, who was
where she was because she’d given good sex to a weak bureaucrat. It wasn’t, of
course, entirely untrue. Naturally bred, she’d been denied the career options of
those typed for specific roles in life—which was why she’d ended up on the
streets, leading a gang of other naturals and failed gene-types, selling her body
when theft didn’t bring in enough to feed family and friends and a growing link
addiction. Selling her body for a night in a warm bed in a hotel that was, however
seedy, far better than being curled up over an exhaust grate in the corner of some
wet-stoned alley that was littered with rubbish and crawling with vermin of the
four- and two-legged variety.
But there’d never been any favors for her after that one break. A man whose
name she couldn’t even recall had opened a door for her. She’d never quite
understood why. Certainly not only because she’d serviced him in that night of his
weakness. So while she’d never known the reason or reasons, she hadn’t hesitated
when presented with the opportunity. The door had been opened and she’d leapt
through—even though it had meant abandoning what friends and family she’d
had. Abandoning them forever. But that really hadn’t been so difficult a thing to
do. When you lived on the street you didn’t dare get too close to anyone.
Though a door had been opened for her initially, she’d had to fight every step
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of the way after that. In that respect the wiles she’d learned on the streets had
served her well. Without them she would surely have failed and have ended back
on those streets—or worse. Long dead by now, because life was cruel to link
heads, and because those on the street never got beyond the very basics in life,
much less rejuv. Of course, knowing that fact had been her inspiration, driving her
and making her more determined than any other cadet to succeed. Nothing they’d
ever done to her during her years of training had ever been as bad as some of what
she’d endured during her life on the streets, and that had made it so much easier to
suffer even the worst indignities her fellow cadets and her instructors had thrown
at her.
“They teach so little in the academies since my days there,” she said. It was a
pointed remark, designed to provoke. She knew him well, this one; and knew the
sort of things that could raise his ire. “In my day it was required we study chess
and its intricacies. Back then our instructors understood the value of exercising
the mind’s ability to conceive strategies far in advance and to methodically
execute them.” She snorted. “Now, it’s all just simulations against machines.
Machines against machines. As if a machine’s way of thought could ever match
the randomness, chaos, and sheer elegance of the human mind.”
“I don’t understand what all this has to do with our situation,” said Tsarnyesky
gruffly.
No, of course you don’t, you dickless monkey, thought Bezukov, which is
why I’m in command and you’ll probably never reach so far before you get
yourself killed. Killed by the same foolishness and arrogance that’s just the sort of
thing that comes of thinking you somehow know it all because someone mapped
out your life before your parents even dared fuck. It’s a miracle you even got this
far.
“Our enemy understands chess,” she said. “He’s not a rash man, but knows to
study the board carefully before committing himself. He knows there can be value
in a simple pawn.”
“It’s an easy victory for us,” the major proclaimed, as though she’d said
nothing. “We outnumber the NorAmicorp forces.”
She regarded him narrowly, wanting to tell him to his face what an idiot she
thought he was. “Strength does not guarantee victory,” she said evenly. “The
soldier who reacts invariably fails, but the soldier who thinks ahead and is
accordingly proactive has a good chance of success, regardless of the forces
arrayed against her.”
“We’ve run the simulations many times, Colonel.”
Bezukov leaned on the edge of the leviathan’s conning tower, looking down
the sand-colored wall of fibersteel, to where it met the massive hull of the craft.
By starship standards it was tiny, but by the measure of any land-based vehicle
this roving fortress was enormous. A great, hovering arsenal of deadly weaponry,
80
with enough firepower to destroy a small city. And then some.
She lifted her gaze southward again, to a dark, oily smudge that resembled a
smear of ink on sun-yellowed paper. It rose into the hazy skies, effortlessly and
silently. Occasionally she could see a silvery flash of reflected light, the fibersteel
of NorAmicorp flitters as they slid through the air and beyond the thick haze of
the smoke. Below them, in the jumbled mist of wind-driven dust and the sooty
discharge of fires, she knew there were lethal skimmer tanks. And amidst them, a
leviathan not unlike the one in which she now rode. The roving headquarters of
her enemy, whom she suspected was not so far removed from the kind of
strategist she was.
And if he was indeed like she, then he was not here for merely the sake of
money or ideology, but for the game. For the hunt. To play out the strategies, like
two masters at the board, moving pawns and knights and kings. Two masters who
couldn’t give a damn about anything else, who cared nothing about the goals they
were meant to achieve so long as they were able to pursue the game.
For now, they were both content to play the game as it was.
“Our adversary is clever. Far more clever than any AI’s simulation,” she
mused. “He has maneuvered us into a position where we must circumnavigate a
wide canyon to get to him. He has severed our only means of crossing it directly."
She raised an arm and pointed to where the smoke rose from the twisted ruin of a
bridge that had once crossed the deep chasm. Only the shattered ends of it
remained, silent testament to a most basic piece of civil engineering.
“We were promised a swift victory,” said Tsarnyesky, sounding like a
petulant child.
She wasn’t inclined to respond to that, thinking to herself it only confirmed
the enormity of the man’s stupidity. But she found herself saying, “A good soldier
knows better than to count victory before the battle has even been joined. Our
opponents aren’t feeble-minded amateurs; they’ve been at this as long as we have,
major. It’s why they’ve acted swiftly and assuredly. And it’s why they chose a
smaller, more mobile land force. They’re more agile than we are. Something I
argued for,” she added pointedly, giving him a look of sharp rebuke. “But I was
vetoed on that account, by the same people who promised you your quick
victory.”
Tsarnyesky‘s face colored and he shifted uncomfortably.
“Now, because we’re slower, we can’t take to the air. He’ll make short work
of us if we do. So he forces us to ground, and along a single route.” She paused
and looked once more to the canyon that lay deep-shadowed beyond the
weathered landscape of rock and sand.
“You can be certain he has laid down a number of surprises to greet us,” she
concluded.
“Perhaps we should await the arrival of reinforcements.”
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“There’ll be no reinforcements.”
“No reinforcements?” The major looked startled. “Industries wouldn’t strand
us here like this!" he insisted.
“They’ve no choice in the matter. A communications came earlier today
informing me that the Red Catholics have requested USF troops to police the
planet until their status in the Federation has been determined.”
“But Obsidian isn’t a member of the Federation,” Tsarnyesky protested, his
words swollen with indignation.
“The Federation, in its infinite wisdom, has decided this is a special case, and
they’ll determine the merits of the matter in due course. In the meantime they’ve
decided to send a fleet to this system to ensure the rights of the citizens of
Obsidian aren’t violated in any way.”
“They can’t act arbitrarily! There are rules to be followed.”
“And I’m sure our representatives will be taking them to task over that,”
Bezukov assured him, practically laughing at his righteous anger. “But until that
happens we’re somewhat constrained by the legalities of the issue.” And while
she was amused by his reaction she did share some of his frustration, having no
patience for the political machinations of the USF. She’d never regarded the
Federation as anything more than a nuisance; indeed, she’d always considered its
claims as the arbiter of human justice and defender of freedom to be specious.
Where’d they been when she’d been living on the streets, discriminated against
because her mother had been a whore who’d foolishly decided not to have an
abortion? Where were they for the millions or even billions of others spread
throughout the empire who suffered similarly, or worse?
“Once the Federation troops are here they’ll intercede and put an end to the
fighting,” Tsarnyesky insisted. “And that’ll be the end of it for us.”
“You’re far too pessimistic, Pieter. I don’t imagine for a moment that either
RussoAsia Industries or NorAmicorp are simply going to accept this decision
lying down.”
“You think they’ll defy the Federation?”
Bezukov laughed. “My dear Pieter, they’ve been defying the Federation from
the very first day of its conception. The corporations have never liked the notion
of government having anything to do with how they run their business. It galls
them that some tiny spec of a nation or world of a few tens of thousands might
actually wield enough clout to thwart their plans. They believe strongly in the
manifest destiny of the corporate empire. They see themselves as the replacement
for ineffectual governments of the past. To them the USF is an outdated
institution that should have died long ago, in the way so many nations did. The
corporates represent billions of individuals who have chosen corporate
citizenship. Who does the Federation really represent? None but a handful of
politicians and bureaucrats, and the misguided misfits who foolishly follow them
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because they can’t step beyond the past.”
“The Federation is still a powerful force to be reckoned with,” the major
argued. “If they send a fleet here—”
“The megacorps will respond as they see fit,” the colonel interjected. “It won’t
be the first time such a situation has occurred. Nor will it be the last—though
mark my words, the Federation is on the slippery slope of extinction. They can’t
avoid the inevitability of their demise. The sun is setting on institutions like the
USF. The future of the Earth Empire lies in the hands of the corporations that
have always been the backbone of its economic might and the force for its
continued expansion.”
“The Federation won’t be easily defied, Colonel.”
“You forget, Pieter, that possession is nine tenths of the law. While we’re
here, on the surface and in orbit about Obsidian, there is a limit to what the
Federation can do. They’ll be facing two megacorps, both with substantial
firepower. To take us on over a matter of dubious principle would be courting
disaster. They certainly can ill afford the losses they’d surely incur were they to
confront us directly.” She smiled malevolently. “No, we can’t lose in this matter.
One way or another, the Federation will come out of this the weaker for it. And
with each successive challenge they’re enfeebled still further, until their capacity
to respond to anything we do will be limited to the empty, toothless rhetoric of the
Assembly chamber.”
Tsarnyesky looked doubtful. “Even for the corporations the USF has served a
useful purpose in the past,” he agued. “I fear we risk chaos if there’s nothing to
govern the conduct of anyone in the Empire.”
“The strong will survive and rise to the top,” she assured him. “That’s how it
should be. Might is right.” It was the way of the streets, and she knew those ways
well enough.
“But until that happens...until one corporation rises above all others...what
then?” He demonstrated concern, suddenly bereft of the conceited assuredness
that was his common demeanor. It was as though he didn’t like to consider the
possibilities of a future too vastly altered from the past, of a future wherein his
own place wasn’t secure, not an absolute.
Bezukov understood his concerns: Better the devil you knew than the one you
didn’t. But she didn’t share his misgivings. She’d always embraced change.
Perhaps an odd thing, in light of her past. Life on the streets, after all, had been
anything but stable, full of the uncertainties of day-to-day existence, death ever on
your heels. Back then, in a time she didn’t care to recall with any great
enthusiasm, she’d never known what the day would bring. Even so basic a thing
as having a place to sleep or food to eat had been an undetermined factor in her
life. But now, despite the fact there was comfort in stability, in knowing where
you would sleep tonight and that you’d have food in your belly before you lay
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down, she still found something exhilarating about the prospect of change, of
uncertainty. It was to her an intoxication, a drug that kept life from falling into
that too comfortable monotony of routine.
Perhaps, in its way, that was what made her a good soldier: She could handle
the indeterminate nature of living a life where one’s only true anchor was duty
and loyalty. A corporate soldier in the Empire had no roots beyond the ship that
carried her through space and beyond the ‘family’ of her fellow spacers. And that
wasn’t so unlike the street kids of the city. Nor was the fact that she didn’t fear the
prospect of death. In her youth she’d dealt with that daily. Moreover, it was what
gave life meaning—because without the specter of death hanging over one, life
had a certain emptiness to it. The possibility of imminent extinction was a
powerful incentive to achieve as much as one could, to not waste a second of
one’s life on the meaningless and extraneous aspects of daily living.
“Until one of the corporates rises above all, we play the game as we’ve always
played it,” she said with finality.
“And what game would that be, sir?”
She laughed loudly, but didn’t answer. She didn’t think he’d understand, this
stuffed shirt with his programmed genetic heritage. Human in such an artificial
way. No, he wouldn’t understand that the two most basic elements of human
existence were sex and death. They were the beginning and the ending, closing
the circle. As old as humankind itself; and she knew them both intimately. They’d
molded her, and made her. Far better than any gene-typing could ever have done.
Sex and Death. They drove civilization. Inexorably. Human’s couldn’t exist
without them.
And what was war, but another aspect of death.
“You should play chess, Pieter,” she said.
He stared at her, sullen-faced.
She just laughed.
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CHAPTER SIX:
DANIELLE
It was her game: She pretended to listen.

In that studied manner she’d perfected over the years, eyes seemingly focused,
her look intent (when in fact she was gazing inward, listening to another voice),
she presented an outward aura of being sincerely interested. Deception. And those
who knew her well recognized this. But for the most part Danielle Grenier’s
deceit went unnoticed. Which was just as well; it wouldn’t have done to have the
representative from RussoAsia Industries aware that while he addressed the
members of the Assembly she was directing her attentions elsewhere. A
diplomatic faux pas at the very least. And given the current tensions that existed
between the Federation and the megacorps, likely far more than that.
So while Sergei Voshkov droned on with his lengthy diatribe against the
USF’s latest intervention in what he claimed were strictly corporate affairs, she
was accessing the central AI on Isis through her implant. To be on the safe side
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she’d set the implant agent the task of scanning the content of Voshkov’s speech;
it would alert her if any of the subjects she’d flagged came up. For added good
measure it was recording it all, on the remote chance she might want to view it at
a later date—although she couldn’t imagine that possibility. Voshkov was all bile
and bluster and given to extremes of hyperbole. He invariably spoke at great
length about not much at all. Lots of words without actually saying anything of
consequence—which, of course, she supposed was quite the norm for a politician.
Still, his was an act that quickly wore thin, staged, no doubt, for the benefit of the
good corporate ‘citizens’ of RussoAsia Industries rather than the Assembly. It was
said he modeled himself off the twentieth century Soviet Union’s Khrushchev, a
leader from the days of the great political nation states, when propaganda had
been no less a weapon of war than it was now. She could well believe the
assertion. She’d once done a search on Khrushchev and her agent had dug up a
grainy old black and white pre-holo visual of the man at his peak in the long gone
UN building in New York. A bear of a man removing his shoe and banging it on a
desk. Childlike behavior masking shrewd cunning and treachery. The similarities
between Voshkov and his antecedent were inescapable.
With the increasing propensity of the megacorps to emulate the imperialism of
the past, old habits had been given a new breath of life. Voshkov and his
counterparts in the Assembly seemed as much actors on a stage, as they were
diplomats and politicians. And Voshkov was a ready indication of the attempt by
the corporations to resurrect some aspects of those days when the Earth had been
locked in a titanic struggle between two monolithic nation states whose differing
ideologies had put them on a collision course with one another and had threatened
the very survival of all humankind. It had been a delicate time for humanity then.
It was a delicate time for humanity now. A cold war brewing towards hot.
So one might have argued the case that she be a bit more attentive of
Voshkov, but there was only so much time in a day. There were far more pressing
concerns than listening to another of his extravagant performances—particularly
since she pretty much knew what he was going to say before he even said it. It
wasn’t as though any of this was new: The Federation and the megacorps had
been at odds with one another for decades—although admittedly the enmity
between the parties had increased of late, with Obsidian now being the latest bone
of contention.
Obsidian. Right on the heels of Fleet’s debacle on Inkasar. But she had
anticipated that, and to some extent had orchestrated things to that end. Fleet’s
disgrace at Inkasar worked well into her plans, for now Novarro and her merry
little band of spacers were sporting a black eye, and there was much talk again
among Assembly members about the financial burden of maintaining Fleet and
the logic of doing so. Of course, it wasn’t her intention to have Fleet dismantled,
but rather to have it reined in, to cut Novarro down to size and limit some of the
86
growing autonomy Fleet had acquired over the years. She knew the USF couldn’t
exist without the physical presence Fleet provided throughout the Empire, but she
wanted Fleet more securely under her control.
So as Voshkov preformed his theatrics, she took in the latest information on
the Obsidian situation. Updates on the progress of the USF fleet the Assembly had
assigned to Obsidian flooded her consciousness, much of it massaged by the AI
into data she could readily assimilate. It was like having a sudden rush of
memories, and all she had to do was remember data that had just been
disseminated to her mind.
Most of what she didn’t understand was of a military and highly technical
nature. Having been specifically gene-typed for a career in politics and
diplomacy, this information wasn’t within her purview—although it would be a
simple matter to take a viral that would ‘build’ into her consciousness the
necessary knowledge. She hated that process, however, because it came at a cost.
Consequently, she’d always left the details of the strategies and maneuvers that
governed the operating of ships and soldiers to the Chief of Military Operations,
Admiral Christiana Novarro; there’d never been cause for Danielle to intervene in
such matters in the past. And that was the way she’d always liked it. She’d been
bred for other things. Greater things, she was inclined to think.
But even as she tried to sort through the mass of data, she had the sense that it
had been a mistake to be as cavalier now about such things as she’d been in the
past. Her indifference had afforded Fleet too much autonomy. It had made
Novarro far too bold and adventurous. And she couldn’t have that. She couldn’t
have someone rising to challenge her authority. Especially not some unelected
soldier. She had worked long and hard to become Secretary General of the USF,
and she wasn’t prepared to have the stature of her office in any way diminished
by Fleet and the aspirations of the admirals in Admiralty.
Times change. And sometimes situations arise that require one to rethink old
habits. Such a time was now.
In today’s Federation she could see there was a disquieting blurring of the
lines between politics and the military. At least among the spacers. Old soldiers
like Novarro were becoming far too political for her liking. Markedly so in the
last few months. She sensed some of this shift was rooted in the uneasy co-
existence of the megacorps and the USF, which was now steadily deteriorating,
pressed by the fact that the corporations were becoming increasingly brazen in
their efforts to flout USF law. Historically they’d been much more subtle in their
subterfuge, but Obsidian pointed to a new direction in their attempts to
emasculate the Federation. They were becoming overtly aggressive, more
forthright in using force rather than diplomacy to resolve differences of opinion.
Primarily, Danielle suspected, because they no longer saw the USF as a genuine
threat. And she blamed Novarro as much as anyone else for that.
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The diminution of the USF was a failing of Fleet. Or so she wanted others to
believe. She had skillfully steered Inkasar into Novarro’s lap, anticipating
failure—having never had much faith in the ability of soldiers to deal with issues
that were clearly of a diplomatic character. After all, the spacers of Fleet were
bred to war, not the intricacies of mediation. Novarro and her like only
understood statements of force; it was their answer to every problem. It wasn’t in
their nature to understand peace. They believed if you carried a big enough stick
you could control an empire. They put little faith in words, in constitutions and
treaties—the territory of her office. Nor did they have a firm grasp of the cunning
and deceit necessary to gain and maintain power within the Empire. Perhaps if
they had, the USF wouldn’t now be in the precarious position it was.
She hadn’t expected things on Inkasar to work out quite as they had, but she
wasn’t displeased with the result. It would temper Novarro, she hoped; and she
would perhaps gain a little more control over things as regarded Obsidian. The
Assembly would be keen to listen to her rather than a spacer who had proved
Danielle’s point: that the affairs of the Federation couldn’t be entrusted to
soldiers. The Assembly must surely see Inkasar as a wake-up call of sorts,
signaling that it was time to give the Secretary General more direct control over
Fleet.
Ever since Kesselus, when the Assembly had made the critical error of
denying Fleet the right to protect its people, Admiralty had grown more and more
forthright in its determination to take Fleet in a different direction, out of the
hands of politicians. In the two decades since, Novarro had built herself quite a
powerbase over in Admiralty. True, the Assembly still held the purse strings and
still made the decisions about the missions in which Fleet should be involved, but
it was Novarro and her fellow admirals who determined much of what Fleet did.
It was Novarro who allocated resources, and accordingly held some Assembly
members in check—especially those on worlds dependent upon Fleet for
protection.
Danielle had seen the growing autonomy of Fleet coming long before anyone
else in the Assembly had, and she had worked hard to thwart it. It had helped to
find that Admiral Jackson, who headed Naval Intelligence within Fleet, had
ambitions of his own. There was no love lost between him and Novarro, and she’d
exploited that to the fullest. To the point that Jackson’s intentionally vague
intelligence reports on Inkasar had almost certainly played a role in the failure of
that mission. That and the constraints she’d had the Assembly impose upon the
mission commander.
She had wanted the Assembly to realize Inkasar had been a mistake. She’d
wanted them to see that it was folly to trust Fleet to anything of a political nature,
or to give it any freedom to engage in such an enterprise in the future. She was
certain that if her message hadn’t yet got through, it could only be a matter of
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time before it did.
And now there was Obsidian, where she was determined that she would
finally crush Admiralty’s quiet rebellion. But here she had to be far more
circumspect, for there was much more at stake. The future of the Federation, no
less; indeed, the fate of the Earth Empire would be decided on Obsidian. She had
to make sure that when the dust had settled it would be the Federation that would
come out on top. More specifically, she wanted that the office of the Secretary
General be more securely in control of the Assembly and Fleet.
She was playing with fire, she knew. With Obsidian she must deal with the
Red Catholic threat her own intelligence sources had determined to be very real
and growing. She must also stem the troubling rise of the corporates. And on top
of that, she had to use Obsidian as a springboard to securing her hold on power,
making certain Novarro didn’t come out of this looking in the least bit good. It
was a delicate line to walk, because if she strayed too far one way or the other
there was the potential for disaster. But then, politics was her game; and she never
liked it so much as when it was hard and dirty and a fight to the bitter end.
She knew the game well; she’d played it to near-perfection with Inkasar.
She’d led the Assembly to believe her analysts and planners had assured her that
prospects for a peace between the Bed’wan and the Khalud had never been better,
and as such the mission was an almost guaranteed success. Of course, she’d
conveniently failed to inform them of the fact that Novarro had never wanted the
military to be involved at the diplomatic level, that the admiral had insisted a
civilian group would better serve the situation. Nor had she made known that
Jackson’s more detailed intelligence reports had contained evidence pointing to
heavy involvement of the megacorps and the inevitability of failure on the
diplomatic front because it wasn’t in the interest of the corporations to pursue
anything but war on Inkasar.
When Novarro had contested suggestions that Admiralty and Fleet were to
blame for Inkasar, Danielle had quietly implied to Assembly members that the
admiral’s protests were mere prevarication.
Despite how well Inkasar had worked out for her, she felt a degree of
ambivalence regarding Fleet’s mission to Obsidian. She wasn’t sure she
understood Novarro’s thinking on this matter, and that concerned her; she didn’t
like the notion the admiral might be trying to outmaneuver her. Just how much
did Novarro actually understand of the situation? It bothered Danielle that she
didn’t know. Bothered her even more that Jackson didn’t appear to be able to tell
her. Or wasn’t willing to.
If she had any regrets about Inkasar, it was that her covert interventions had
placed someone she’d once truly loved at the center of the storm. It had been
unavoidable, however. Alas, her betrayal of him would be furthered by Obsidian;
and she had to wonder if Novarro knew this. It would certainly go a ways to
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explaining the choice of mission commander for Fleet operations at Obsidian.

Perhaps the old war dog wasn’t so feeble and toothless a foe as Danielle had
imagined.
But if Novarro thought Danielle’s ambition might in any way be diminished
by concerns for a former lover, then the admiral was sadly mistaken. That was all
water under the bridge; and she wouldn’t allow herself to be swayed by anything
so crude and irrelevant as emotion.
After all, she’d sacrificed him long ago for the sake of her career. She’d have
no compunctions about doing so again.
******
When they had parted years before, Danielle had initially kept a close watch
on John Carter’s career, following his service record as closely as she could. But
over time the demands of her own profession had steadily consumed her, and she
had put thoughts of him behind her. Occasionally she would hear something about
him through dispatches that came across her desk, but never much more than that.
Until Inkasar. Things had changed then, although in some ways she wished they
hadn’t. It would have been easier to have not known that he was the one who
would take the fall for the mission failure—even as she told herself she no longer
cared enough about their shared past to let what had once existed between the two
of them affect her plans.
Yet, she couldn’t deny being somewhat contrite, which was decidedly
uncharacteristic of her. But then, when it came to Fleet she normally just dealt
with numbers. Statistics. And she wasn’t prone to being moved by those. They
didn‘t have a face she could identify, a voice she could recall. They were just
numbers. A hundred died here. A thousand were wounded there. Just numbers.
No pain or concern to that. No personal input.
Numbers. They had kept her at a distance, making her decisions easier. They
rendered everything so remote and purely calculated. And she’d long ago
learned—through her own agencies, and through what they’d taught her when
she’d been fast-tracked to a career as a diplomat—that you could never afford to
make anything personal. If you thought of spacers as people, then it became that
much more difficult to ask the military to send those people into dangerous
situations in which you knew they would perish. She didn’t want to know the
captain of a ship assigned to some remote quarter of the Federation, with the very
real possibility of meeting with disaster, had a husband and small children waiting
for her back home. She didn’t want to know there were men and women, young
enough to be her children or grandchildren, who were serving on missions in
which there was a good chance they’d be coming home in body bags or not at all.
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She didn’t want to know the man she’d helped betray in the Inkasar mission
would likely become the scapegoat for Obsidian. Unfortunately she did know.
And that knowing was cause for discomfort.
She knew him. Knew him well. Too well.
She closed her eyes. How ironic, she thought, that it should be he. Her past
come back to haunt her. Almost, she felt herself in a quandary as to what to do.
There was a resolve to demand that Novarro replace him, but she suspected that
was exactly what the admiral wanted her to do. And when she was honest with
herself she knew he would work best for her purposes. He would work best
precisely because she knew him so well. Knew of what he was and wasn’t
capable, and of what he would and would not do.
She knew him on the closest possible terms, as well as any woman could ever
know a man. She knew how he liked to be touched, how he liked to sleep facing
the window, so that at night he could see the stars and in the morning he could
feel the warmth of the sun on his face and have it awaken him. She knew what he
tasted like, the saltiness of his skin after passionate lovemaking, the vague
spiciness of his lips and tongue. She knew the feel of him against her, the strong
arms, the hard muscles, his legs tangling with hers, him hardening inside her,
surging, the two of them cresting the wave of release together. So well had they
known one another. So much had they loved each other.
She knew his laughter, and had once even seen him cry. She knew his
longings and his fears, the stuff of heroes and ordinary men. She knew him for all
that he was: his compassion, his nobility, his strong moral center. She knew he
was a man of principle, who stood by his word and was willing to sacrifice much
to maintain honor—even his life.
And she knew she wouldn’t enjoy doing this to him, but that in the end this
was what was best for her. She could find no better to take his place.
It was sad really, she thought. Things could have been so different for them.
But now here they were.
She wanted to feel nothing, but it was impossible. Once, after all, she had
loved him; and she wasn’t sure she’d ever truly stopped loving him. There were
people who could come into your life who were like that, people you couldn’t
erase, no matter how hard you tried. People you couldn’t forget and couldn’t stop
loving. People forever connected to you on some level that was difficult to
articulate, save to say that it was as though they were a part of you.
He may have been a spacer since before birth, may have trained for it, even
yearned for it, but she knew he was so much more. So much more human than
anyone she’d ever known. There’d always been something about him that went
beyond the gene-typing that had made space his calling. Something about him
that had always suggested his place in the scheme of things was more than a mere
spacer’s. Or so she had believed.
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It was that which had so attracted her to him. It was what had made her want
to have him for her own. And she had had him, for a time. Too short a time.
That was why it had been so difficult, in the end, when they’d parted and had
known that was the end of it for them. She had never wanted to let go, afraid of
losing something special, of somehow being the lesser for having lost him—
because she’d felt herself so much greater for having found him.
And now here he was, out of her past, as though fate had played some cruel
trick upon her. But not fate. Not really. Just Novarro trying to run an endgame
around her. For while Danielle knew that he was, on the one hand, perhaps the
best she could hope for in a human being, she knew also that the very virtues that
made him so unique were what would likely make him the perfect dupe on this
mission. This mission, which was so much more than simply a matter of
upholding the interests of the USF
She felt a headache coming on, a too frequent occurrence for her these days.
She instructed her implant to have the biobots adjust her physiology accordingly
and within seconds the physical pounding in her head had subsided. But the ‘bots
could do nothing about her current psychological state. Not in ways she wanted to
entertain at the moment.
Lifting her head, she stared out into the Assembly, to the mass of men and
women who represented nations and worlds within the United Space Federation.
There were hundreds of them, all with their own petty self-interests, so
cantankerous a bunch that it was a miracle the Assembly ever managed to get
anything done. Many of them were less than wholly independent, having
connections with one or the other of the megacorps—which often called into
question their votes on various matters that came before the Assembly. There
were few among them she trusted.
That was what she had to work with, and it was never an easy job. Made all
the more difficult by a military that often seemed to see itself more the equal of
the Assembly than a mere adjunct. Yet, as much as she abhorred the truth of it,
she could not deny what Novarro and her Admiralty believed: That much of the
power in the Federation was firmly rooted in the might of its military.
All the more reason that she should gain a firmer control over it.
Unquestionably, to maintain stability in the Empire there had to be a force in
place that could ensure peace and good government, and such a force had to have
teeth to it. But it also had to be under her control.
She checked the time and was astonished to find they’d been here for nearly
eight hours. Eight hours of listening to the ramblings of Voshkov and his
NorAmicorp counterpart, Neil Sterling. Increasingly it seemed that between them
the two somehow managed to dominate much of the proceedings of the
Assembly. They were a filibustering tag-team. Given that they represented the
two most powerful of the vast conglomerates that had arisen from the ashes of the
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old political entities that had been at their zenith in the Nations period of Earth,
this was really no surprise. Sometimes to watch them was to sense there was
almost a historical rivalry here, reminiscent of the infamous days of the twentieth
century Cold War, when the great nations of Russia and the United States had
stared one another down across a great ideological divide, held to an unnerving
deadlock by vast arsenals of nuclear weapons, the combined might of which could
have wiped out the entire human race and left the Earth submerged in the dark
holocaust of Armageddon.
Of course, the megacorps for whom Voshkov and Sterling served as
ambassadors were vastly more powerful than those old nations states to which
they had distant historical ties. They were no longer confined to one world, but
spread out across the vast distances of the Earth Empire. Some might even argue
they were the Earth Empire—in so far as their influence on so many planets
exceeded the reach of the USF—and that they were the prime instruments of
humankind’s expansion into the nether regions of the galaxy.
For anyone who knew even a little bit of history it wasn’t difficult to draw
interesting parallels between the handful of megacorps that existed today and the
more powerful nations of the past. Particularly as regarded the similitude that
marked the relationship between RussoAsia Industries and NorAmicorp. A
contemporary East versus West, U.S.S.R. versus the United States of America.
Now, however, it was not the divergent ideological extremes of Communism and
Capitalism competing with one another; it was the pure quest for profit and the
simple elimination of the competition. But the means by which they achieved
such ends hadn’t changed all that much since the grand old days of the twentieth
century. Except, perhaps, that the megacorps were more inclined to engage one
another in direct military hostilities, under an arcane set of rules of engagement
that had evolved over time. Rules of engagement which didn’t, however, apply
when it came to confronting the military arm of the USF. And it was that which
made the Obsidian situation such a dicey proposition.
It was a high stakes game they were playing here. Danielle had known that
from the start, and Voshkov’s rhetoric had gone far to convince her more than
ever that this was so. While RussoAsia Industries and NorAmicorp were
ostensibly at odds with one another, there was also more at stake in all this than
mere control of Obsidian. Although she didn’t care to indulge in such absolutes,
she was personally convinced the outcome of Obsidian was to be one of the most
critical events in the history of the Federation. She was certain it would decide
whether the USF survived as a player, or whether the field would be left entirely
to the corporates.
It was for that reason she had little doubt NorAmicorp and RussoAsia
Industries had carefully orchestrated this crisis. First they’d used Inkasar to their
advantage, and now Obsidian. Both cleverly scripted to essentially eviscerate the
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USF military. Her instinct told her the best way to avoid this was to steer clear of
the confrontation in the first place. But she had no choice: the Reds had to be
dealt with; the megacorps had to be challenged; and Novarro had to be put in her
place.
If the Red Catholics on Obsidian had requested membership in the USF when
they’d first settled the planet this whole situation would never have arisen. But, of
course, they’d purposely not done so, knowing full well that with membership
went certain duties and obligations—not least of these being religious tolerance
and an observance of basic human rights. In short, the USF would have required
the Reds to have opened their world to other peoples, to other religious
philosophies, and to have adhered to certain human rights provisions they were
known to violate.
Ironic the way in which it was all working out. The megacorps assault on
Obsidian now provided her with the means to deal with so many issues that were
threatening the future stability of the Federation.
Her task, however, wasn’t easy by any stretch of the imagination. The fact the
Reds had sued for status within the USF shortly before the arrival of the
NorAmicorp and RussoAsia Industries fleets left her in the unsavory position of
actually having to do something to protect them. Personally, she would have
happily denied such status under other circumstances, but it was necessary to her
future to at least maintain the pretense of acting in the interests of the Federation’s
newest citizens. And ultimately, of course, it worked in her favor, providing her
the opportunity to deal with the worrisome Red Catholics and what they
represented, and thus to weaken the disturbing increase in the influence of Red
Catholicism in the Empire.
Novarro and Fleet were a challenge to her hold on the reins of power within
the Federation, and the megacorps threatened the very existence of the Federation
itself. But it was the Red Catholics Danielle perceived to be the greater threat; she
feared the potential of what they might become. There was precedence in history.
And history, as any but a fool knew, wasn’t to be ignored. Or denied.
Suddenly restless, eager to get out of the Assembly’s meeting chamber, she
checked the time again. She was beginning to feel fidgety and impatient,
squirming uncomfortably in a seat that was too well acquainted with her derriere.
But she knew she was trapped. Here, in the Assembly, with the likes of Voshkov
and Sterling intent upon making their case before the Federation, the likelihood of
escaping to her quarters and enjoying some much earned rest was remote. If
things went well she might expect to see her bed in ten or twelve hours. In the
interim there would be arguments and counter-arguments, delays and points of
procedure. She could well look forward to sitting through a great many more
speeches before this was laid to rest. Everyone would want to have his or her say.
Especially those representing the worlds and nations not yet under the
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thumbscrews of the megacorps. This was, after all, the one place where they could
see themselves as equal, the one place where wealth and military might were not
supposed to account for much when it came time to a vote.
Or so we all like to kid ourselves, she thought. Of course, politics was politics,
no different now from what it had been throughout history—and it had never been
without its corruptions and perversions, without its more unseemly and seedier
sides. The buying of votes was nothing new. And principles were easily denied
when the right price was paid. In the case of many of the smaller nations and
worlds it was easy for the megacorps to be persuasive. Powerfully persuasive.
When it came to pleading the legitimacy of USF authority on Obsidian, it was
another matter altogether. She wouldn’t waste her breath trying to sway
RussoAsia Industries or NorAmicorp. No, her task was to ensure the Assembly as
a whole recognized her authority, so that Fleet could act without prejudice under
her orders, fulfilling the design of what she considered her carefully constructed
destiny. She had to make sure Carter was given the legal tools to intervene,
otherwise her best laid plans would never get off the drawing board.
As the day unfolded, Danielle observed as how it seemed not unlike a game of
chess, with Voshkov and Sterling working in tandem, moving their pieces on the
board, counter to each move she made. They trotted out legal experts and
representatives of client states, backing up their contention that the USF had no
authority to act on Obsidian. She, in turn, played her own pieces, sending forth
her lawyers and experts, calling upon other members to stand up and be counted.
It made for good theater, but in the end she knew it would change little or nothing.
The crucial vote on USF intervention had been made days earlier, and the appeals
of the megacorps weren’t likely to change that.
They had better not, she told herself. If they did, it would surely be the
beginning of the end for the USF as a viable body. There had to be some
counterbalance to the megacorps, otherwise she feared the so-called Earth Empire
would fall into the tyranny of corporate greed—though some would argue that
had happened long ago. Indeed, in some circles the USF was an aging, toothless
dinosaur whose continued existence merely legitimized the actions of the
megacorps. It was an opinion she’d have liked to have dismissed, but she’d
always felt there was much truth to it.
Too often we’re reactive, she thought. Too often we respond to what the
megacorps do when it’s really too late to prevent anything. It’s like closing the
barn door after the horses have bolted. By the time we intervene the megacorps
have invariably achieved what they set out to do and all we can do is pick up the
pieces and pretend that somehow we’re serving the people, protecting them and
ensuring the sanctity of their rights. And in a way that legitimizes the actions of
the corporates. They walk away with what they wanted and receive a slap on the
wrist at best.
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Of course, she knew part of the problem lay in the fact that even those nations
and worlds not aligned with any of the megacorps were reluctant to go against
them. That was why Fleet had seldom directly engaged the corporate fleets to any
degree. In most instances where the USF military had entered battle with an
opposing force it had been against megacorps proxies. Inkasar was a good
example of that.
But Obsidian might well change everything. No proxies there. It was one of
the reasons why Danielle recognized that success there was crucial to the survival
of the USF. She suspected the megacorps realized this as well: Here was their
chance to finally be done with the Federation, to remove a thorn in their side and
at last gain the unfettered freedom to expand and exploit the Earth Empire as they
saw fit.
It was the confluence of divergent ideologies. But this was not a happy
meeting of minds; it was a full on collision she feared would see one of the parties
involved come away more bloodied and damaged than the other. And logic told
her that particular party wouldn’t be from the ranks of the megacorps.
The sad part was that even if the USF succeeded on Obsidian it wouldn’t be
the end of the battle. The megacorps wouldn’t be so easily thwarted in their
ultimate goal; and the USF would probably remain ineffectual, hamstrung by law
and fear and the fact the megacorps remained far more powerful in ways that
mattered.
So much for politics and diplomacy, she thought. Perhaps Novarro was right:
Wars were won with guns, not with pretty speeches and the pens of
bureaucrats.
******
She had carried the day. For now. The Assembly was behind her, but only
just. It could change, and she was all too well aware of that. Now, however,
Danielle could relax for a moment, take time to breathe, to close her mind to the
streams of data and conversation that had murmured through her all day. She
thought of escaping to her room and settling into a luxurious bath. A real water
one. There was nothing like an hour or so in the tub to wash away the ills of the
day.
But first there was the gauntlet to run, through the corridors, past the media.
Past the interrogation she didn’t want to face. The ‘Inquisition’, her aides were
fond of calling it; and she was often inclined to think that description not far
removed from the truth.
When she exited the Assembly chambers she found herself confronted with a
barrage of questions as a wall of human flesh tried to press close to her. She felt
her protective shield go active, her flesh crawling with its energy. It was
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something she tolerated at the insistence of her security, but she’d never liked it in
the least. Never. Perhaps as much as anything else because it reminded her she
was a constant target, and not quite as popular as she might wish. Certainly not
among those who supported the corporates—of which there were many. And
when the Obsidian affair was finished with, she was certain matters would be
worse, for then she’d likely have the vast underground network of Red Catholics
after her.
Yes, there were people who would gladly see her dead. Probably more than
she cared admit. Assassination wasn’t a lost art by any means. Generally just a
more subtle one—although she knew of more than one politician disposed of
publicly in a particularly bloody and gruesome fashion.
“Is it true, Madame Secretary, that you’ve declared war on the ‘Corp and
Industries?” someone shouted close to her.
Danielle didn’t try to find the speaker amidst the wall of jostling bodies and
faces, but merely addressed them all, knowing, as she did so, that her words were
destined to go out across much of the Empire. Several tens of billions would see
her, as they had many times before over the years since she’d been elected to the
post of Secretary General. This time, however, she felt there was more at stake; it
was important to impress upon those who might be watching that the Federation
they knew—which constituted all the Earth Empire represented by the Assembly
and which served as the one true ‘legal’ governing body in the Earth Empire—
was at risk of extinction.
“The Assembly is merely acting on behalf of its citizens to uphold the
constitution and thus maintain the stability of the Federation,” she said,
disciplining her voice so as not to sound too officious or pedantic. She wanted the
people on her side, and so she had to make them believe she was earnest and
accessible. In short, she wanted them to believe she was one of them, as quaint a
fiction as that might be.
“You’re sending a fleet to Obsidian, Madame Secretary. Isn’t that a drastic
measure?”
“We’re sending it to ensure the security of Federation citizens.”
“But isn’t it true that up until a few days ago the people on Obsidian had
declined Federation status? Isn’t it true that in the past they specifically denied the
USF access to their world and refused to acknowledge the constitution?”
“While they may not have been signatories of the constitution, the constitution
of the Federation clearly states that anyone within the borders of the Earth Empire
is subject to the provisions of the constitution, insofar as they are to be accorded
protections and rights so stipulated.” She felt herself cringe inwardly, aware of
how that was all too bureaucratic sounding. Political gobbledygook, of a sort in
which she didn’t care to indulge; it wouldn’t win her brownie points with the
public. On the other had, she was treading on shaky ground here; and everything
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she said had to be weighed carefully, lest she ignite a diplomatic furor.
“If what you say is true, Madame Secretary, then why hasn’t the Federation
ever made efforts to ensure that the human rights of women on Obsidian are
respected?”
Of course, she couldn’t tell the truth on that regard: that she’d never dared
press the point of human rights for fear of stirring the hornets’ nest of Red
Catholics in the rest of the Empire to act. Now that Obsidian had sought
Federation protection outright she was in a better position to change that. But it
was really of little importance to her; the women of Obsidian didn’t figure
prominently in her plans for the future, and she wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice them
for the greater good. What mattered most was securing more power for the office
of the Secretary General; and only then would she be in a position to rectify so
many wrongs and injustices that existed in the Empire.
“While we were obliged to extend the blanket of protection over Obsidian, the
sovereignty of the planet could not be contested by the USF,” she explained
patiently. “We can’t intervene in internal affairs unless invited to do so by the
parties involved.”
“Isn’t it a bit opportunistic of the Red Catholics on Obsidian to presume in
such a manner, Madame Secretary? They come to you now, cap in hand, when
they’re threatened, and expect Fleet to gallop to their rescue. Surely the public
will want to know why the Assembly would risk the lives of our men and women
and incur the cost of such a venture for a world that has studiously avoided us for
so long and flagrantly violates human rights. A world that has never, until now,
considered itself a part of the Federation.”
“Would you have us abandon them?”
“Isn’t that a risk they agreed to when they repudiated the Federation, Madame
Secretary?”
“Perhaps. But we’re not talking about the past, now. Our concern is the
present, and for the welfare of the men, women and children on Obsidian. I’m
sure none of you”—and she pointedly swept the scrum of reporters with her
steady, scathing regard, meaning it for the audience far beyond—“would wish
that we simply turn our backs on them.”
“But what of the legitimate claims made on this world by both NorAmicorp
and RussoAsia Industries?”
She flicked an angry glance in the direction of the speaker. “There are no
‘legitimate’ claims,” she rebuked. “NorAmicorp and the RussoAsia Industries are
well aware of the constitution and the provisions within it that forbid exploitation
of any world with a prior claim on it.”
“But in the past that has only applied to signatories of the constitution.”
“No. In the past, when incidents like this have arisen, the injured parties have
been acknowledged signatories of the constitution. But there is no precedent that
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indicates exclusion of any world that might be otherwise, ladies and gentlemen.
And I would think that NorAmicorp and RussoAsia Industries would gladly
accept that it is necessary for there to be a rule of law within the Empire if we are
to prevent the utter chaos of lawlessness that would surely threaten the lives of all
Federation citizens and, I might add, the profitability of the corporations and the
welfare of their citizenry.” She almost smiled inwardly at this, for she knew it
would hit home with most of those watching. It was easy to be indifferent to
something when you were far removed from it and the outcome didn’t appear to
be of a nature that it would have much of an impact on your life. But tell people
their personal, physical and financial security might be at stake and they would
suddenly sit up and take notice.
“If the corporations involved on Obsidian refuse to withdraw, will Fleet act to
remove them?”
“I hope it won’t come to that.”
“Then you concede there’s a possibility Fleet will have to engage
NorAmicorp and RussoAsia Industries.”
Danielle forced a thin smile. “Wherever Fleet goes there is always the
possibility that it will be called upon to act in a military manner. That is, after all,
its ultimate purpose. The USF isn’t maintaining costly ships and personnel on a
whim, ladies and gentlemen. In the past it has acted, and it will do so again in the
future, if it is necessary. But I should add that we hope it won’t be so on Obsidian.
Until the political issues of Obsidian have been ironed out, Fleet will merely be
there to ensure the safety of the citizens of the planet. It isn’t the Assembly’s
desire to conduct a war against the corporates who are invested in this matter.”
“Then you’ll not interfere with NorAmicorp and RussoAsia Industries?”
“It isn’t within the Federation’s purview to tell the corporates how to run their
affairs, so long as what they do doesn’t threaten the rights and security of
Federation citizens—be they corporate citizens or members of any one of the
many independent political bodies that exist within the Empire.”
“But surely in the case of Obsidian it’ll be necessary for Fleet to do more than
remain in orbit conducting surveillance, Madame Secretary.”
“We’re aware that the two megacorps involved in this matter have already
established a physical presence on the planet’s surface and are conducting
military maneuvers aimed at solidifying their claims on the world,” she conceded.
“Until the Assembly has determined how we should proceed, Fleet will be
primarily engaged in ensuring the safety of the citizens of Obsidian. It’s hoped
this won’t necessitate military engagement of the corporates; however, the
Commander of the Fleet vessels assigned to Obsidian has been given the authority
to do so if he deems it necessary.”
“Does this mean the Federation could go to war against the corporates?”
“It means nothing of the sort!” she responded sharply.
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“I think the Secretary General has answered enough of your questions for
today,” said a voice beside her; and she felt a hand on her arm, lightly pushing her
forward through the scrum of reporters. It was Eleanor Morrison, her aide,
appearing at her side at just the right moment—as she was so often wont to do.
“Any further information can be acquired from our offices during appropriate
business hours, ladies and gentlemen. And now, if you’ll excuse us, the Secretary
General has a busy schedule ahead of her.”
“Thank you,” Danielle whispered as they hurried along to the bank of lifts.
“No problem, boss.” Eleanor cracked a smile. “I figure that after listening to
Voshkov for the better part of an afternoon you deserve a break.”
“If only.”
“I can reschedule your evening appointments, Dani.”
“You don’t know how tempting that is.” Danielle gave Eleanor a wistful look
as they entered the lift. The doors sealed behind them, closing off the crush of
reporters who had pressed forward in one last anxious bid to get in another
question, a pandemonium of voices that made no sense and sounded like the
squabbling of a pack of rabid dogs.
“Are things really that serious?”
“Just complicated,” Danielle allowed. She sighed. “It’s a delicate time.”
"Truly," Eleanor said with a slight tilt of her head. “I suppose that’s why
you’ve agreed to see Sterling.”
“Don’t remind me,” Danielle moaned. Meeting with Sterling was not
something she enjoyed at the best of times, but under the current circumstances
she imagined it would be a living nightmare. The corporates, all too aware of their
power base, were a decidedly arrogant lot. More so now, when they believed they
had the USF on the ropes.
It was difficult to imagine the time when they’d tolerated the Federation
because it served their purpose to do so. Back then they’d been civil, and they’d at
least shown some respect for the office of the Secretary General. But they’d less
reason to do so now, with corporate worlds greater in number and their citizen
base accordingly larger. Now the relevance of the USF was at risk of becoming so
diminished that she often felt like an impoverished cousin when faced with the
megacorps representatives. It was only a matter of time, she knew, before they
would decide the Federation was totally superfluous. This was why Obsidian had
quickly become an issue of such import. To lose there wouldn’t be merely a
matter of losing face; it would be the final nail in the coffin. To lose there would
be to render the USF totally ineffectual; and legal, democratic government within
the Empire would suffer a body blow from which she feared it would never
recover.
“What if we lose?” Eleanor asked, as though reading her thoughts.
Danielle gave her aide a sober look, then said light-heartedly, “I suppose we’ll
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both be looking for new jobs then.”
“That bad, eh?”
You don’t know the half of it, she thought. She drew a long, steadying breath
and girded herself for Sterling. It wasn’t easy.
101
CHAPTER SEVEN:
ORDERS
“Obsidian? Are you serious?”

“I see by the look on your face you’ve heard of it.” This said dryly.
“Who hasn’t? The newscasts have been full of it the last few days.”
“Which would explain why we’re headed there.”
“We should be on our way to Earth,” said Anna, fuming. “The nearest station,
at least.”
“No time for such luxuries.” Carter looked past her to the lift chute, fidgeting
impatiently as he waited for it to arrive. “I thought engineering promised they’d
have these up and running,” he grumbled aloud.
“They can’t work miracles, Captain. We took a lot of damage at Inkasar.”
He shot her a withering look. “As if I need to be reminded of that,” he said,
his tone and manner blunt. “I’m well aware of our condition, but we have a job to
do; and a commitment, as sworn members of Fleet, to carry out our orders to the
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best of our abilities.”
“We’re in no shape for a policing action,” she protested. “We—”
He raised a hand to cut her off. “We’ll do the best we can,” he said firmly.
“As we always have, and as we always will.” His chest heaved as he drew a
breath. “What else can we do?”
“Refuse to be cannon fodder? None of us signed up to die for the sake of
political expedience, for men and women light-years away who haven’t a damn
clue about what it’s really like out here!”
“We have our orders, Commander.”
“With all due respect, sir, our orders suck. Our orders on Inkasar were to bring
about a peaceful resolution to a decades old war, and I don’t think I need remind
you of the results of our efforts on that score.”
“Your point being?” he asked wearily, knowing where this conversation was
headed and not feeling himself in the mood for it.
“My point is that maybe it’s time we admitted to ourselves it’s not our place
to always play the boy scout, interfering in matters that might be better resolved if
we just left the various parties to work it out on their own.” There was a weighted
exhalation at the end of all that, underscoring the frustration Anna and many
others in the service were beginning to feel these days.
Carter saw in her the apathy he all too often felt within himself of late, a sense
of frustration and fatalism that made it increasingly difficult to believe they were
doing anything of worth out here. Inkasar had changed everyone, from officers
down to ratings. He could feel it. Could see it. And he deeply regretted it.
He thought of what had happened in the past few days, the collapse of the
peace talks before they had begun and the resulting escalation of the conflict
between the Bed’wan and the Khalud. Then, of course, the assault on his own
forces. All because of outside influences beyond his control—even though they
shouldn’t have been. Outside influences that had provided the two factions on
Inkasar with logistical and materiel support of a military nature that had been
beyond anything Federation intelligence agents had implied. Beyond what was
legal—though legality was moot when the USF could do little or nothing to
maintain such laws and restrictions.
He still felt the sting of failure, of having been forced into a full retreat, his
forces taking punishing loses and his ships significant damage. Two things USF
HQ had promised would not be the case. Of course, he had learned long ago to
take everything they said with a grain of salt. They were bureaucrats, after all.
Specifically engineered as such. They knew nothing about fighting, about what it
was like to be out here, in space, engaged in battle. They had never witnessed war
first hand, never seen its true malevolence up close and personal. It was all just
statistics to them. Numbers to be crunched by the AIs, who spat out solutions that
made sense to a machine, but which had little or no bearing on the reality that real
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men and women faced in these life and death confrontations.

A part of him agreed with Anna and those who had long held her view: that
more often than not what they did out here was of dubious worth, bordering on
pointless. He had been inclined to feel that way before Inkasar; but for a time,
when it had seemed he might actually succeed in working a peace, a naive
sanguinity had begun to take hold within him. Perhaps, to some extent, it had
always resided there, a part of him that was the eternal optimist, forever holding
out hope that things could be better and would be better, and that somehow
humanity could rise above itself, above the hate and the greed and the intolerance
that drove so much of the strife that worried at the edges of the Federation and
threatened to unravel it. There was, indeed, a childlike part of him that always
wanted to believe that in everyone there was inherent good, and that only the
proper conditions were necessary for it to manifest itself. But he had to admit to
himself that on Inkasar he had been sorely tested, and that his faith in humankind
was moribund.
“So,” he said, “you’re of an opinion we should simply leave all the citizens of
the Federation to fend for themselves?” He jabbed the manual call switch for the
lift, glaring at the red indicator that blinked back at him with brazen insolence.
His impatience was rising—although he wasn’t sure it was only the recalcitrant
lift that was responsible for that.
“You know me better than that,” said Anna, sounding offended. “I worked
hard to be a spacer because I believed in the Federation and wanted to be out here,
serving the people. But I never imagined it to be like this, to be so bloody
political, our work being constantly undermined by people who clearly have
agendas that are other than making the Federation work. So I can’t help but ask
what we’re doing getting involved in places like Inkasar? That was an internal
matter, for pity’s sake. It wasn’t threatening the Federation. We should have left
well enough alone, rather than trying to force a peace nobody wanted.”
"General Khar did. And don’t forget it might have turned out otherwise," he
insisted. He jabbed the call button again. “What would you be saying now if we’d
succeeded? Wouldn’t it have been worth the risk, then? Wouldn’t you then be
thinking we’d been right in doing what we did, in getting involved?"
“That doesn’t change the fact that it wasn’t our place to be there.”
“Fifty years of war, Anna. Someone had to at least try to do something about
that. In all good conscience, could we simply have ignored it? Ignored it, when
we had the capacity to do something about it.” He shook his head aggressively.
“No, I can’t believe you, of all people, would believe that.”
“So what if we had succeeded? What would we have achieved? Do you really
think an enforced peace would have lasted? The moment we’d pulled out they’d
have been back at it again.”
“We don’t know that.”
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“Well I know we can’t continue to be all things to all people, John,” she said
soberly. “We can’t be the Federation’s police force when our ability to act in
upholding the constitution and the law is hampered by the petty political
shenanigans of the Assembly.”
“I don’t disagree, but what alternative is there? As thinly spread as our
presence in the Empire may be, it’s nevertheless there. We represent something.
Values the corporates don’t. And despite the Inkasars we’ve encountered, we still
keep the corporates in check to some extent. Surely that’s worth something.”
“You think so?” Anna’s eyes challenged him with the sort of look that always
made him uncomfortable. He never knew quite how to respond, or whether he
even should. It was all the more intimidating because she was taller than he was.
“What do you want me to say?” He whacked the control panel of the lift with
the heel of his hand in a final fit of agitation, the blow a bit harder than he’d
intended. His whole wrist suddenly smarted. Hell! What was Siggurdson doing?
“I just want you to admit to yourself there’s a possibility we’re wrong,” she
said quietly.
He laughed, though it had an edge to it and died quickly in his throat. “Do you
think for a minute I’m stupid enough to think we’re always right? Hell, I find
myself constantly full of doubts, forever questioning everything we do. But then I
think of the alternatives, the things that would happen if we did nothing, and I
convince myself our intervention is better than our indifference. Think of all the
times in human history when people have simply stood by and done nothing. No
good ever came of that.”
“You realize, of course, we’re just fighting a rearguard action against the
inevitable,” said Anna. “It can only be a matter of time before the corporates
begin to carve up the Empire as they see fit. They’re already starting to do it,
anyway.”
“Well,” said Carter with a fretted sigh, “then I guess we just keep doing our
best until that happens.”
“If we waste time and valuable resources on more lost causes like Inkasar, it’s
going to happen sooner rather than later. We should concentrate our efforts on
where we can do the most good, in the places where we’re really needed, and
where maybe the people won’t spit on us for trying. Because I’ll tell you,
John,”—her eyes flashed with indignation—“I’m bloody well fed up with that!”
“Maybe it’s the battles like Inkasar that are the important ones,” he argued.
“Maybe the Federation will be won or lost on worlds like that. Maybe the balance
of our fate rests solely on how we respond to situations like those.”
“Then I think we’re doomed, because we can’t win those battles.”
“You’re a soldier, Anna. You were designed before birth for this very thing.
You grew up and trained to be a spacer, on a fighting ship, taking chances, risking
life and limb for the sake of the Federation and all its citizens. You took an oath
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to die fighting for that, and surely that means something. Surely we don’t turn our
backs on people simply because things get a little tough.”
“My oath didn’t require I be a part of futility."
“Trying to save lives is not futile!” he exclaimed in a voice shaped by
exasperation. “Whether we succeed or not isn’t the point. It makes a difference
that we tried.” He pointed at her. “You swore to protect the people of the
Federation. All the people, Anna. Not just the ones we think deserve to be
protected. Not just the nice ones or the ones we think may contribute to a better
future. All of them. The good and the bad. The rich and the poor. When it comes
to our service, we’re obliged to treat them all with an equanimity that can’t stop at
the borders of our internal prejudice. And we do so with the knowledge that we
may be called upon to sacrifice our lives in the process. That’s the way it has to
be. That’s the only way it can be. Because as soon as we start choosing who
should and shouldn’t die we assume responsibilities we’ve no right to have.”
She said nothing for a moment, but he could see she didn’t agree with him.
Then: “I’m proud to be a soldier.” Softly, with a stiff undertone of righteousness.
“And I’m perfectly willing to die for the people of the Federation. I’m willing to
die upholding principles—even when I may question some of them. But that
doesn’t mean I have to pretend I’m some sort of bloody machine, dammit! It
doesn’t mean I have to pretend those on Inkasar mean more to me than my
crewmates, or to the people of my own world. I’m human, John.” She clasped a
closed fist to her chest. “Human, with all the contradictions and prejudices that
entails. I’m not about to be ashamed of that."
“And your oath? You swore fealty to Fleet and the Federation. Doesn’t that
mean anything?"
“Of course it does!” Indignantly. “I just don’t think taking an oath precludes
having an opinion, Captain. It doesn’t mean I have to accept the absurdity of what
we’re trying to do. Nor do I think it means I have to be willing to die for
questionable actions founded on insupportable principles no one seems to give a
rat's ass about anymore anyway. If I’m going to put my life at risk and possibly
die, then I have a right to decide who I lay my life down for. Especially if I’m not
going to get the bloody support I need from the likes of the Assembly and the
people I’ve sworn to protect!”
“It’s our obligation, Anna. Regardless. There’s no arguing it.”
“Is it our obligation to sacrifice our lives on the altar of unreason, John? Does
our obligation to Fleet and the USF and all the citizens of the Federation mean
we’re expected to die for nothing?” The expression on her face left no ambiguity
as to where she stood on that issue.
“There are some things worth fighting for,” he argued. “Some things even
worth dying for. We have to believe that’s what we’re doing, because if we don’t,
then we diminish ourselves.”
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“I’m not afraid to die,” she said. “You know that. But I don’t want my death
to be an empty one. I don’t want to die knowing my death made no difference
whatsoever to the landscape of humanity. Principles mean squat to some spacer
who has just sacrificed her life for people who could care less that she even
existed. If I’m to die, then let it be for something valid and for someone who
actually appreciates the sacrifice. Those are the people who deserve our attention.
Those are the people we should be saving.”
He understood where she was coming from all too well, because those very
same thoughts had run through his mind on and off throughout the years. More so
now, since Inkasar. “I don’t have all the answers, Anna,” he said, running a hand
over the short bristles of his hair. “God knows, I wish I did. But I do know that
sometimes someone has to stand up for what is right—even if it means dying to
make the point. Even if sometimes it seems to be wholly without meaning.
Senseless. Possibly stupid. Because if good men and women simply stand by and
turn a blind eye to the terrible things that go on every day in our world, then what
does that say of humanity? How can we consider ourselves civilized peoples,
with a superior moral core, if we would merely let wrongs go unpunished and
innocents suffer as a consequence? Doesn’t that make us as guilty as the
perpetrators of the crime? We shouldn’t need rewards of recognition to do what’s
right.”
“Those are noble sentiments, John, but it doesn’t alter the fact we’re not
making a difference. We’re just dying. And I’m not even sure what we’re dying
for anymore. All I know is that I'm fucking tired of it.”
Carter hesitated. On countless occasions in the past he had argued those same
points with himself. And they had haunted him when he had looked upon the dead
spacers under his command, and had said the words that had committed them to
the deeps of space forever.
“There were children on Inkasar,” he said.
“I know.”
“I’m afraid of a Federation where we don’t at least try,” he went on, looking
at her in sorrow. “I’m afraid of what happens if we stop trying. If we stop
believing...if we stop caring, then what is there left?” The words were a whisper
from him. “What becomes of hope, when all hope is lost?”
“I don’t know,” said Anna. “But at least we’d still have our lives. At least
we’d still be here to fight other, better battles.”
Now he simply shook his head, overwhelmed by the realization that she had
become so cynical and cold. He didn’t want to believe she could see the world
with so jaded an eye.
“There are dead bodies lying all over the Federation,” she continued. “If you
could talk to them, I’m sure they’d agree with me.”
“But we’re not them, Anna.”
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“The Marines on Kesselus were us, John! They were spacers. So were the
people we lost back on Inkasar. Do you think they thought it was worth dying just
so the Assembly could pretend it has principles and is willing to uphold them?”
“They made us for this, Anna. What we are is supposed to mean something,
isn’t it? So what are our lives worth if we protest the conditions of a world around
us but refuse to do anything about it? Doesn’t that make us hypocrites?”
“It makes us alive.”
“Surely,” he said, “the essence of life is believing there is some greater
meaning to it all. It can’t be enough to simply be alive. We have to mean
something, Anna. Even if we only shape that in the context of human existence.
We have to stand for something.” And as he said this he suddenly realized that
maybe Khar had been wrong when he had called Carter an ‘unbeliever,’ that
maybe he wasn’t totally without faith, that there was, indeed, one thing that
perhaps he did believe in, one belief he had always clung to—especially in those
darkest times when he could make no sense whatsoever of the chaos around him,
of the madness of humans that drove them to kill one another and destroy all
they’d worked so hard to build.
“Ask the children on Inkasar if it wouldn’t have been enough to just be alive,”
said Anna.
“To stop their deaths was why we were there!”
“But we failed, John. We failed because we never had a chance to succeed.
Because lofty principles aren’t enough to win wars, and they can’t ever be
sufficient means to march into war and die. There has to be more than that.”
“No there doesn’t,” he said. “That has to be enough. It has been in the past.”
“But the deck was stacked against us before we even arrived,” she argued.
“You know that’s true. You know that’s why you failed! Despite your best
efforts, you weren’t able to save them. And because of that, because of that
failure, we paid dearly. And for what? To prove a point?” She scoffed. “To say to
everyone that no matter what the price, we’re going to uphold the fine principles
of peace and justice for all? That we’re not going to let the corporates rule the
roost— even when it’s obvious they do?” She shook her head. “That’s madness!
That’s the Polish cavalry charging head on into the tanks and guns of Hitler’s
German army. Even as a symbolic gesture it’s more tragic than heroic. It proves
nothing. It doesn’t make us heroes, John. It makes us goddamned fools.”
“If we stop believing we can make a difference, Anna, then we’ll truly cease
to make a difference.”
“But don’t you understand?” she pleaded. “Don’t you see we’re just the
cannon fodder for the political agenda of an Assembly that has no regard for us
whatsoever? The Assembly doesn’t care about us or about Inkasar. It’s all just
about the politics of the Empire. It’s all about power.”
“You make it sound worse than it is.”
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“Do I?” she challenged.
“There are good people out there representing the people of the Federation,
Anna. They aren’t all in it for themselves. There are men and women who truly
want to make a difference, to put an end to the misery and suffering caused by the
injustices and inequities of the Empire.”
“Oh, yes! And while they sit back and make their virtuous stands in the
Assembly, far from any threat, we’re spilling our blood to fulfill their promises.
They get the accolades and we get a grave on some godforsaken planet. Where’s
the justice in that?”
“You’re missing the point.”
“No, you are.”
All he could think to say to that was: “Someone has to do it. Someone has to.”
And Anna threw up her hands in despair and shook her head. They had come
full circle.
He glanced at her and was not sure whether to pity her or envy her. In many
regards he sensed she was the voice of reason, his sanity. But the morality that
guided him was ultimately far different from hers. And while she had taken an
oath, which she would uphold—even if it meant dying to do so—she wouldn’t
follow blindly without query, wouldn’t accept orders that bore the prospect of
terrible consequence without at least posing some difficult questions. It was her
right to do so, as a human being. Her right as a citizen of the Federation.
It was her duty.
He, on the other hand, was a different ‘kettle of fish’ altogether. While it was
certainly true it had all begun similarly with him, with gene-typing and the
aspirations of parents, there was something more that drove him, something far
deeper than even genetics. And it was not the desire to be in space, as it had been
for her. The religious might have argued it was a ‘spiritual’ thing, but he believed
it was simply a fact that some of us are born with a deeper sense of commitment
to our fellow human beings than are others. Some of us believe the singular
purpose of our existence is to help others along the path of life—no matter what
the cost might be to ourselves.
Some of us are damned fools, he thought.
He didn’t know from where his particular moral code sprang, but he knew it
wasn’t something Anna shared to any large degree. There were times when he
wished she could feel the depth of unwavering human commitment he often felt
overwhelm him, so that she could believe as he believed and see things so clearly
defined as he sometimes felt they were. He wished she could know the absolutes
of truth and justice as he had on occasion known them. But that clarity of
conscience seemed to elude her. Or perhaps she was merely afraid of it. There
was, after all, something almost fanatical about it. Just as was his unerring belief
in the inherent good in all people. She thought otherwise, he knew. She was
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convinced there were simply people out there who were evil, who would do bad
things no matter what the circumstances of their lives. They were born that way.
People who, even when the reward for doing what was right was so much greater
than for doing what was wrong, nevertheless chose to take the path of darkness
and cruelty.
The lift arrived at last, and for a moment their conversation was suspended as
they boarded the narrow capsule and were jerked along the shaft. The hum of the
vehicle was ominous, but they both studiously ignored the sound, having long ago
grown accustomed to the creaks and groans of an aging and battered Goliath.
Within seconds they arrived at the living quarters, and Carter welcomed the
pull of gravity generated by the spin of the ship’s rotation ring. A spacer he might
be, but he had never really liked zero-gee. A firm deck beneath his feet was what
made him feel secure, reminding him of his days of sailing with his father off the
coast of Cascadia.
“Obsidian is an impossible situation,” said Anna as he followed her out of the
lift and into the upward-curving corridor. “NorAmicorp and RussoAsia Industries
have both staked competing claims for the planet, along with the resident
population.”
“Who happen to be Red Catholics,” he interjected.
“Yes, which goes a long way to explaining why they never requested status
under the USF.”
“A fact the corporates seem to have exploited.”
“The legality of the issue would seem tilted in their favor,” she said. “And that
begs the question of why we’re being sent there.” She glanced at him sharply,
quizzically; and he knew she suspected he hadn’t told her everything. And he
hadn’t. Not yet.
“The Reds have no justification for USF protection,” Anna said. “They
refused Federation status when it was first broached by the Assembly decades
ago. They made it clear they didn’t want Federation authorities interfering in their
society, and that they didn’t want to be constrained by the treaties and
conventions the rest of us are bound by. Now, suddenly, when their world is
threatened in precisely the manner the Assembly warned them it might be, they
come scurrying for cover, pleading for protection. Forgive me if I regard their
motives as being suspect.” Her face hardened and didn’t suggest a trace of
compassion.
Looking at her, Carter thought it was easy to lack compassion for people
you’d never seen, and for whom, on paper, you easily found yourself despising.
Even he found much about the Red Catholics of Obsidian disturbing; but he
couldn’t bring himself to so easily discard them. He knew things were seldom as
they seemed.
They squeezed past two junior officers, the young men flattening themselves
110
against the wall of the narrow corridor, standing rigid at attention. Carter and
Anna nodded acknowledgment and carried on.
“The USF has received a petition for member status from Obsidian,” he
informed her, knowing this wouldn’t sit well with her.
She sniffed at that, her expression bordering between disgust and contempt.
“Of course they’d apply for member status now,” she railed. “They’re only too
happy to be a part of us now that they need our help.”
“I’m not unaware of the irony of the situation,” he remarked. “But that doesn’t
change the fact they’ve made an official application for membership that was
accepted by the Assembly, and as such must be regarded as now falling within the
auspices of the Federation.” The words were like a shrug of resignation.
“You know the megacorps and their allies in the Assembly will never accept
this. Surely back on Earth they can’t think for a moment that either ‘Corp or
Industries will simply back off and concede Federation jurisdiction.”
“I would imagine that’s why this fleet is being strengthened. The politicians
have instructed Admiralty to pull ships off other duties to supplement our
mission.”
Anna’s eyes widened as she pulled up short and faced him. “So they think this
might degenerate into a full-blown skirmish,” she said.
“There’s always that likelihood when the corporates are involved.” But he
thought it more a certainty than a possibility in this case.
“We’re talking about two of the most powerful corporate fleets in the
Federation. We’re no match for their combined might.”
It was exactly what Carter had thought when he’d initially read the message
from Admiralty. But he said, “Intelligence suggests they’re spread rather thin at
the moment, with much of their assets distributed widely to protect their other
interests. They’ve a little less latitude than we have when it comes to deploying
their fleets.”
She regarded him cynically. “Is this the same intelligence that claimed there
were no armaments on Inkasar or in-system capable of posing a serious threat to a
starship?”
Carter said nothing. He turned and started to walk again, striding hard along
the curving deck of the ring.
“They know there’s no chance of this ending peacefully, don’t they?” Anna
persisted as she caught up with him.
He shrugged. “I don’t profess to know what goes on in the minds of the
members of the Assembly,” he said, the conversation now wearing on him. “But
it’s a good guess they see this as a last stand for the USF. If the Assembly doesn’t
assert its legitimate right to impose a degree of law and order within the
Federation, then the megacorps will simply step forth to fill the vacuum.”
“Did it never occur to those fucking idiots in the Assembly that this just might
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be exactly what the megacorps want?”

“They’re reasonably intelligent people—”
“Could have fooled me.”
“Ships are in your blood,” Carter said impatiently—perhaps a touch crossly.
He swept his arm out to indicate the Goliath, the gesture implying that and more.
“Politics and diplomacy are in theirs. Don’t forget that most of them were bred
for their jobs, too, Anna. So give them some credit. Nothing is ever as it seems in
this business. Nothing is ever simple. I can assure you the possibility this might be
some master plan of the megacorps designed to totally eviscerate the USF hasn’t
escaped their notice.”
“Then they should have the sense to see it’s the wrong place to take a stand,”
Anna said, shaking her head and looking petulant. “The legitimacy of our
intervention is weak at best. They’re giving the corporates a legal avenue by
which to pursue military action against us. And if they wipe out this fleet, the
USF may never recover. That’s a lot to gamble for a few tens of thousands of
people.”
“I think everyone is aware of the stakes.” The words came from him in a faint,
uneasy murmur.
“Are they?” she said. “Does the rest of the Federation citizenry know we’re
gambling with their future? Do they understand the decisions being made here
today on their behalf could dramatically affect their lives tomorrow? Do they
know the protections they’ve enjoyed over the last few centuries teeter on the
verge of extinction because someone has decided we should extend those
protections to people who eschewed them long ago? To people who merrily
refuted all we are until it served their purposes to do otherwise?”
“You’ll have to ask them that,” said Carter wearily.
Her nostrils flared. “You can’t believe the authors of the constitution intended
it to be debased in such a way.”
“The constitution of the USF is not simply hollow rhetoric, Anna. It’s
supposed to mean something. It’s supposed to apply to us all. To all humankind,
regardless of our beliefs, our race, or our place of residence. That was the grand
vision the architects of the document had when they crafted it. And I refuse to
believe they intended it to stop at some arbitrary border. They weren’t the sort of
men and women who would have been so narrow-minded as to want it to cease to
apply simply because someone chose not to sign a bloody piece of paper. Because
in the end the ultimate goal is compassion and caring and seeking to do what is
right. They designed it to be all about humanity and making human existence the
best it can possibly be.”
“They also said the constitution is a contract, John. They said it’s supposed to
bind us all and apply to us all so long as we honor it. But the Reds never have.
They were never a part of it by choice, and they repudiated it by conducting
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themselves the way they have. Any lawyer would tell you that absolves us of any
obligation to save their bloody asses!”
“We’re obligated by the fact that we’re human and so are they."
“So we may be handing control of the Federation to the corporates because
someone in the Assembly has suddenly grown a conscience and doesn’t care how
much it costs in our blood to assuage it?”
“The Federation won’t be worth saving if we reduce ourselves to the sort of
pettiness that would have us turn our backs on fellow human beings in a time of
need.”
“A time of need?” She gaped at him in disbelief. “There wouldn’t be a ‘time
of need’ if they’d been signatories to the constitution.”
“And we shouldn’t be bound by the letter of the law to do what is right,” he
countered.
“So what? Now you’re saying we should risk our future for a bunch of
religious fanatics who until a few days ago didn’t want to have anything to do
with us because that’s the ‘right’ thing to do? Never mind the fact their lives
aren’t being threatened by the corporates. Never mind the fact there are plenty of
other people in the Federation who are in need of help?”
He didn’t rise to the bait, falling silent instead as he carefully picked his way
past twisted debris. A tech team was busy nearby, making repairs, welding
patches where bulkheads had been ruptured. A servobot hovered attentively above
them, passing them tools when required. Carter looked at the damage and felt the
knot that had been growing in his gut suddenly tighten. He closed his eyes and
fought for a breath as the acrid smell of burning metal filled the air and evoked
images he would rather have left well and truly buried.
Suddenly he saw again the charred bodies of spacers, laid out for
identification, the scent of their burnt flesh a sickly sweet odor in the canned air of
the hanger bay. Nauseating. As nauseating as it was to see officers and crew he
had known lying dead, each lifeless body stretched out to be tagged and
catalogued for disposal. Meat in a butcher shop. And certainly it had been
butchery. As was all war, he supposed, when one took the sum of it. And he
suddenly had had more than his fill of it and was certain he wanted no more, ever.
But, of course, he had felt that way countless times before and he would feel that
way again. And again. And yet for all of that, he was still out here, still involved
in this madness. Still defending it beyond all reason.
In that respect Anna was right to challenge the notion that they were obliged
to risk their lives. On some level it didn’t make sense even to him.
All those dead, and for what? He heard Anna’s words of a few moments
earlier echo in his mind and he wondered if she was right, even as he knew he
couldn’t start to believe she was. Because if he did, it made the loss of those lives
all that much more tragic and empty. And to believe what she believed essentially
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meant to believe in nothing—even as he had oft thought he actually did believe in

nothing. To believe as she believed was to abandon all hope for humanity. It was
to see only purposelessness, to see existence without cause or reason. It was to
simply believe we served no greater purpose, that when the measure of a human
life was taken it was found wanting, functioning as nothing more than a vessel for
the procreation of cells, ensuring survival of DNA.
He couldn’t believe that. He wouldn’t believe it.
“It’s just a job, John.” Anna said as she joined him on the other side of the
repair.
And he knew she had seen his pain and consternation, had seen the conflict
within him writ large on his face and in his eyes. But he shook his head and said,
“No, it isn’t. And it can never be ‘just a job.’ ”
“You’re too much your father’s son,” she told him. “You were raised in the
halls of academia, where men and women still believe fine words and ideals can
somehow overcome the worst of human nature. But the real world isn’t like that.
It’s cruel and harsh and unrefined. It’s all that is good and all that is bad, and
sometimes the two collide and leave us with moral dilemmas that have no easy
answer. In the real world there are people who have no compunction about using
whatever means are necessary to achieve their goals. They aren’t restrained by
principles. They don’t bind themselves by any rigid moral code. They have no
perception of such things.” She touched him gently on the arm. Compassionately.
As a mother might a child who has suddenly seen the clay feet of a hero and
suffered a bitter disappointment as a consequence.
We are only human, Carter thought. Only human, and all that that entails.
“If you insist on trying to be the moral compass of all humanity,” she
cautioned, “you’re doomed to failure and eternal disillusionment. And in the end
your efforts will destroy you.”
“Better I should have tried, than to have stood by and done nothing,” he said.
A cold, empty silence fell between the two of them. Anna’s face flushed with
emotion. She could only look at him and in her eyes he could see a terrible sense
of desolation. For what some would see as his virtues, he knew she saw only
weaknesses. They both had emotions and were guided by them; but he was a
soldier who was increasingly being driven by the demands of his conscience. Too
driven. And he wasn’t sure if he could survive that, because to be an effective
military machine one couldn’t afford the luxury of such things. In war, at the
height of battle, there was no time to wrestle with one’s competing sense of right
and wrong, no time to debate the justice and fairness of an act. He knew she
hadn’t, when she’d bombed Inkasar. For to engage in such debate was to court
death. Yours, and those of the people who depended upon you. And this was
something civilians could never understand. They could never comprehend that
the only way to win a war was to fight the enemy even more ruthlessly than he
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fought you. If you didn’t, then you were almost certain to lose. War didn’t
countenance the weak and the honorable. War didn’t hold still for such values as
fair play and nobility. It was a mechanism of the basest characteristics of
humankind; and it was the ugly side of a reality that civilians could never accept.
They finally reached his quarters. Carter thumbed the identilock and the hatch
hissed open. He stepped through, then turned and looked back at her and said,
“Tell me, Anna: If they were your people, your parents, your family, would you
feel the same way about all this? About going to Obsidian? About sacrificing our
lives for them?”
“It doesn’t change what I’ve said, John. It doesn’t change how I feel. You
can’t change the truth.”
“I suppose that depends upon your definition of the truth.” He smiled wanly.
“Ultimately we’re all just human.”
“My point exactly. Sleep well, Captain,” she said. “Don’t let those scruples of
yours keep you awake.” She saluted him, then turned and walked up the corridor
to her cabin.
He watched her go, and thought how he envied her that she could see things as
she saw them and not be so burdened by the unwieldiness of her conscience. For
him it was as though he were Atlas, with the weight of a world on his shoulders.
A world and more. He sensed that in time it would crush the life out of him.
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CHAPTER EIGHT:
THE OFFWORLDERS
It was all she’d ever known.

This world, this lonely planet on the Fringes, was Sylvie Charlemagne’s entire
universe. She’d never been anywhere else, never seen anything but the bleakness
of Obsidian. Obsidian, to which her parents had come willingly, if reluctantly,
seeking to escape persecution, to have the right to practice their faith as they saw
fit—without the laws and the reasoning of the Federation being insinuated into the
daily lives of honest, God-fearing folk.
She’d never known anything else, but she wished she had. Wished, in fact,
that she’d never known Obsidian, this blighted world that was her prison.
She was still a child and had a child’s dreams. Dreams of other places, other
people, and other ways of life. Of worlds like those she’d heard her parents speak
of when they thought she couldn’t hear them. Worlds vastly different from
Obsidian—although she could only try to imagine in what ways, given the
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myopic scope of her understanding.
And now those other worlds had come here, in a manner of speaking. People
had come, who had lived in other places vastly different from her home. People
who’d seen a universe far bigger than her tiny one—which encompassed little
more than her father’s farm and perhaps some of the ‘city’ just beyond.
Offworlders, her father called these new people, saying the word in such a
manner she instantly knew he reviled them. But she couldn’t fathom why. She
couldn’t understand how one could feel such hate towards people one had never
met. And she wasn’t sure why these men and women from the stars were to be
feared so. But then, she’d never known the worlds her father had known. She’d
never faced the things he had had to face before he’d found sanctuary on
Obsidian. Still...
Still, she found herself as much fascinated with the prospect of offworlders on
Obsidian as fearful of it. And any fear she did have was mainly rooted in the
alarm she saw in others, in the faces of her friends and her parents, in the hushed,
anxious conversations between the Elders of the Church. Otherwise she was filled
with awe and excitement. To see something that wasn’t of this world, that was
alien and different, elicited a compulsion that was almost overwhelming. It was
something she didn’t dare confess to her father. Or even her mother. They
wouldn’t understand. She wasn’t sure she did. She was even afraid this
fascination of hers was blasphemy the Elders would not countenance and
accordingly punish. Indeed, she was sure of it.
A young woman wasn’t to concern herself with anything but learning the
skills necessary to make a good wife: cooking and cleaning and sewing; tending
the gardens and the house; caring for children. All else but prayer and obeisance
to God was secondary to that. Even what limited schooling she’d had was meant
only to facilitate the goal of being a dutiful wife to the husband the Elders would
choose for her.
She shuddered at the thought of the latter. In only a few months she’d have
her thirteenth year. The ‘marrying year’ they called it. There’d be a great
celebration to mark her passage into womanhood, and from that day on she’d no
longer take the suppressants meant to hold the day of blood-letting at bay until she
had passed the threshold of thirteen Standard years. From that day forward they
would watch her, waiting, until she had her first bleed. Then the Elders would
take her from her home forever, to be placed in the house of her new husband.
He’d likely be a man well in his twenties. Sometimes they were far older than
that. Sometimes they were old widowers, men whose wives had died in childbirth
or from beatings inflicted upon them because they’d not done their duties well
enough. For such men the Elders degreed there was worth in a second marriage.
They seldom decreed otherwise.
She looked at her father, tense beside her in the groundcar, his attentions fixed
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forward. It made her cold to realize she might even end up with someone older
than he. It had happened to others. Just a month ago her closest friend Amelia had
bled; and when the Elders had come they had taken her to be wife to a man older
than Amelia’s father. A gray-haired, stooped farmer. It had made her sick to see
her friend with such a man; and she had wondered how Amelia’s father could
have let his daughter become the bride of such a wizened monster. But, of course,
no one defied the Elders.
Until the arrival of the offworlders she had resigned herself to this life. But for
some reason she couldn’t quite explain, she felt almost hope now—as though
there might be some chance at something different. Something better. She didn’t
want to be another Amelia, shuffling behind some dour old man, a child of
thirteen going on sixty. Broken. Spiritless. And already with child.
A child having a child. She’d been so afraid when she’d first heard about it.
And she was still afraid. Afraid to reach her thirteenth year. Afraid of the first
bleeding. Afraid to be with any man. But most of all afraid of the things that
happened in the bedroom, behind the closed doors. She’d seen her mother
sometimes after those nights. Nights of angry, animal-like noises. Nights when
she would hear her father’s shouts punctuated by thuds, and somewhere in the
midst of it all her mother’s groans. Unpleasant, painful sounds.
Once, she had asked her mother about it, had asked about the bruises on her
mother’s face and the way her mother favored a leg. Her mother had simply given
her this resigned, sorrowful look and had said that was the way it was. It was the
way of God. And Sylvie had wondered why God would think it was right that
women should be treated like this. But she’d never dared voice that. Not even to
her mother, who would have done a wife’s duty and told Sylvie’s father. That
would have meant a caning—of an intensity that would have left her unable to sit
down for at least a week.
She had lived in fear of her father all her life. Not that he was an utterly evil
man; indeed, he was far more fair and gentle than most of the men on Obsidian.
But he was a pious man, who believed fervently in God and the will of God. A
man who obeyed the Elders, even when he might not agree with them. A man
who was now more frightened than she’d ever seen him.
He’s afraid these offworlders will take away his world, she thought. Our
world—because she had known nothing else, after all. Until now. Until now she’d
always accepted that was the way it was to be for her, as a woman on this world
ruled by men who feared God. But now she wasn’t so sure. She had heard her
father talking to others about the people from the stars, and on one such occasion
he’d commented on the presence of women among them. Women soldiers.
Warriors. Women who stood with men and fought with them. Women who even
commanded men! It was a concept so radical she couldn’t fully comprehend it;
for she’d only ever known women to be the dutiful servants of men, doing what
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men said. The idea that a woman should speak for herself and that she might talk
to a man without permission, as an equal or as a superior, left her almost
breathless with the scandal of it. The notion that women might actually fight,
might carry guns and kill, was something that made her giddy with excitement. It
was as though she were in possession of forbidden knowledge—which, she
supposed, wasn’t so far from the truth.
Women who commanded men.
It was so difficult to get her mind around the concept. And while she knew she
was supposed to fear these people, these offworlders who threatened her way of
life, she found she couldn’t. Perhaps because of the fact they did, indeed, threaten
the very tenets of the only existence she had known. It was hard for her not to
look upon them as liberators, come to free her from a fate like Amelia’s. It was as
though until their arrival she’d been blind, and now she could see.
The groundcar jerked violently and she was startled out of her reverie,
abruptly brought back down to earth, back into the everyday reality of Obsidian.
She glanced at her father, a study of apprehension, his body almost rigid with his
fear. A fear she was beginning to understand, realizing the reasons for why he felt
the way he did. Realizing he was probably more afraid of the ‘ideas’ the
offworlders might bring with them than he was afraid of their guns and ships. She
was old enough to understand that ideas could transform a world far more
dramatically than even war could. They were far more difficult to defend against
than bombs and bullets.
I should be afraid, she told herself. This is my world, my home, and now it is
endangered by people I’ve never seen. People of strange ways, from strange
worlds. I should be like my father and want them to go away and leave us alone.
But she couldn’t. She couldn’t wish for that, couldn’t wish for this world to
fall back into its old ways, into the ways that saw a child become a woman
overnight. The ways that saw children having children and condemned a woman
from birth to forever be the lesser of a man.
She didn’t want to be lesser. Particularly not the lesser of any man she’d seen
on this world.
She turned and looked out through the sand-scoured bubble of the groundcar
cockpit, beyond the fields of their farm, across to the hills. Along the tops of those
hills were the great sail-like structures of the moisture traps, catching precious
water from the wind, from the early morning fog that rolled in with the dawn of
each day. Beyond those silver sails, which made the hills resemble great ships at
sea, there was a pall of thick, black, oily smoke. It billowed skyward, a dark stain
that was like a harbinger of a greater darkness beyond the horizon. She stared at
it, never having seen anything like it before, and knowing instinctively it was the
work of the offworlders.
I should be afraid, she reminded herself again; but all she could think of was
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that the fire beyond the hills might rage on and sweep across the planet, burning
everything to ash, transforming a world, changing everything she’d ever known.
And somehow, as horrific as that vision might seem, she found comfort in it.
Fire purified.
Wouldn’t the God-fearing Elders see that? Wouldn’t they see this as God’s
will?
But what did it mean beyond that? Was this some sort of punishment being
exacted upon them?
She looked at her father and thought to herself there was some part of him that
deserved to be punished. The part of him that had many times left her mother
limping, that had left her mother with blackened eyes and painful bruises. The
part of him that had made this woman he claimed to ‘love’ live in fear of him—so
much so that she’d come to this world with him, to live where he was free to do
these things to her, because she’d been too afraid to run away.
Sylvie looked at her father and couldn’t help but feel a part of her hating him,
wishing the offworlders would destroy his world. Because then her mother might
be free. Her mother and all the other mothers she’d seen beaten black and blue.
And the child-wives like Amelia, who didn’t deserve to grow so old and worn so
quickly.
A roar broke above them, drowning out the whining of the groundcar’s
impulsor engine. She felt a momentary chill of fear, until she looked up, through
the cockpit bubble, through the dust and glare, to where a dark, predatory shape
hovered overhead, tracking them like it was their shadow cast heavenward. For a
moment it seemed almost alive, a giant manta ray of a machine, the dark
underbelly of which seemed to swallow all surrounding light.
It’s them, she thought; and fear was replaced by the thrill of seeing for the first
time something from another world that carried men and women who weren’t of
Obsidian. She wanted to wave, but knew it would be folly to do so in the presence
of her father.
Her father slowed the car and peered up through the arch of the scratched and
dusty canopy, shielding his eyes against the sun. She dared to look too, to stare in
fascination at the sleek craft that was like nothing she’d ever seen. It sported four
large pods, each protruding from swept gunwales, with stubby control surfaces
attached to each. An atmospheric flitter, she guessed. Newer and bigger than the
ones she’d seen on those rare occasions when her father had taken her into Saintus
Cecilius, but a flitter nonetheless.
Suddenly she was thrust back hard into the contours of her seat as her father
pressed the groundcar’s accelerator. The vehicle surged ahead, skimming across
the fields, the impulsor humming loudly, the tired old body of the craft beginning
to protest. She gripped the handholds to either side of her and held on, wanting to
cry out to him to stop but afraid of what he’d do to her if she did.
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She could no longer see the offworlder flitter, but suspected it was somewhere
behind them. Then there was its shadowy form again, running parallel to them,
twenty or thirty meters aloft. She wanted to shout that they couldn’t outrun it, but
again she held herself in check. Her father wouldn’t listen to her. Not to a child.
Not to a female.
He would just keep trying to outrun them, in this groundcar, in this world
where their presence would change all he’d known on Obsidian. He would try to
outrun them, but Sylvie was sure he’d fail. They’d all fail, those who believed
they could hold back the tide of change the coming of the offworlders surely
foreshadowed. Oh, they’d try, but they wouldn’t succeed. They wouldn’t succeed
because there’d be others like herself who would never be content to go the way
of their mothers and be forever enslaved to men.
Her father could no more stop change than he could stop that flitter out there.
And when she looked at him she saw he knew this too, and he was more afraid of
that than she’d ever been afraid of him.
They were approaching the house now, a simple two story structure made of
lazed stone and the cultivated bamboo the first settlers of this world had grown
from stock they’d originally imported from Earth. A wide veranda encompassed
the first floor, providing for a cool, shaded space in which to escape the merciless
heat that was a daytime constant on Obsidian. Often the men sat out there, served
by Sylvie and her mother. Sometimes the Church Elders would stop by, and she
always had a sense that when they did they were somehow checking up on her
father. It was often after those visits that her father would beat her mother, and
she had come to link the two in her mind.
The offworlder flitter slid ahead of them, reaching the house before they did,
and pausing almost directly above it. From afar it looked like some sort of
prehistoric bird suspended over its prey. Slowly, gently, it settled earthward,
stirring up a cloud of dust in the last couple of meters as the impulsors that held it
vertically aloft emitted a greater force. With something by which to now judge its
scale, Sylvie saw that it was indeed quite large. Far bigger than the flitters she’d
seen in Saintus Cecilius. As big as one of the haulers they used on the farm to
transport produce to the city. She stared at it, more fascinated than ever, drinking
in the spectacle of it, almost afraid it was an illusion, and that if she looked away
for even an instant it would disappear.
Her father made a noise in his throat, which she recognized as anger and
discontent. It was a subconscious warning to her that she should be on her guard,
that to do anything that might annoy him would result in physical retribution. She
had felt the sting of his hand many a time, and the cane more often than she cared
to recall. As eager as she was to see these offworlders, she wasn’t sure she was
willing to pay the price to do so.
“When we get to the house you will go inside immediately,” her father said,
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his voice as cold and hard as she’d ever heard it. “You will not look at them. Not
so much as a glance. Do you understand?”
She nodded.
“Do you understand!” he barked as he turned and glared at her.
“Yes, father,” she said meekly, wondering if she’d already upset him enough
to warrant the cane. “I understand.”
“Good.” He nodded, a satisfied look on his face.
That look she knew only too well: The look of men who take comfort in
knowing they’re in control of women by use of fear. It stirred within her a sudden
spark of loathing. Not unlike the feelings she had for him after a caning, when she
wished for nothing more than to see him dead—though on Obsidian his death
would have meant that she and her mother would have become the property of her
father’s closest living relative. And she knew her uncle to be a far more cruel and
odious man than her father. He’d killed his first wife because she had dared to talk
to a married man.
The groundcar bumped to a halt, easing roughly to the ground as the weak
repulsors that thrust if forward cut out and the battered vehicle rolled along on its
undercarriage. The whine of the impulsor engine died to a whisper, then silence.
The cockpit canopy curved back into the body of the machine, allowing them to
debark.
Sylvie got out carefully, ducking her head, keeping her eyes cast towards the
ground. She fetched up the shawl that covered her hair and was wrapped about
her shoulders, using it to cover most of her face, to conceal her from the prying
eyes of the outside world. On the other side of the groundcar her father stood tall
and stiff, eyes fixed on the offworlder flitter, a look of a counterfeit anger and
defiance etched in the lines of his face.
She darted towards the steps leading onto the veranda, hurrying to gain the
refuge of the house, fearful that temptation would make her steal a peek at what
she’d been forbidden to see. But at the sound of a hatch opening in the alien
flitter, the loud hiss of vented air punctuating the chill silence that had fallen over
everything, she instinctively snatched that fateful look: a flickering glance at an
extraordinary looking woman, who stood far taller than any she’d ever seen, a
giant dressed in some sort of armored uniform with insignia gleaming on
hardened shoulders and a weapon strapped to a steel-girded waist. And suddenly
Sylvie found herself frozen in awe, enthralled, transfixed by what she saw, as
though she were gazing upon the living embodiment of a goddess, heedless that
for this transgression she would likely pay more dearly than she’d ever paid in her
life.
“Sylvie!” It was like the crack of a whip, snapping her to attention, driving a
wave of fear through her that made her legs suddenly like jelly as she now fled at
a wild pace up the steps, feet clattering loudly on the bamboo. The front door
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opened before her and her mother reached for her and dragged her in roughly,
pushing her protectively behind her. It seemed so ironic, her mother shielding her
from the threat the offworlders supposedly represented; but it would be her father
from whom she would need protection. Her father, who would take her out to the
barn and deal with her as he had in the past—only perhaps with more vigor this
time.
She thought of daring more, telling herself she already had a caning to come
and there wasn’t much more her father could do to her—even as another part of
her knew that was only partially true. Slipping away from her mother, she
retreated through the unlit corridor that bisected the house and clambered up the
stairs to her room. The window was open, the dry, warm wind pushing gently at
the curtains. She pulled back her shawl, releasing a cascade of dark hair, and
settled in under the sill, back pressed against the wall, listening intently to what
was going on outside below her.
“I am Captain Natalia Xian of the RussoAsia Industries Expeditionary
Forces,” she heard a woman say, certain it must have been the same woman she’d
caught a glimpse of as she’d scurried for the house. And she was stunned, for
even that simple introduction shattered a mythology that had encompassed her
entire life to this point. Now, in those words spoken with such bold authority by a
woman to a man, she felt as though a veil had been lifted from her eyes, and that
suddenly she was seeing possibilities where never before there had been any hope
of such. She had no rationale for this, yet it was as though this offworlder woman
embodied truths that Sylvie had always believed. Truths denied by the Elders and
the men of Obsidian, but now made concrete and whole and unflinchingly
undeniable.
“You are trespassing,” her father said. Sharply. Angrily. But she could hear
the fear there. “You have no right to be here.”
“We’ve been authorized by your Elders to conduct a survey of this area,” Xian
countered.
Sylvie could imagine the expression on her father’s face: fury and outrage.
Perhaps, too, there would be a sense of betrayal, the Elders having done what he
probably could never imagine them doing. And yet, she heard him say, “The
Church Elders have no business ceding you such authority. This is not their land.”
“You’ll have to discuss that matter with them, sir. Meanwhile, I’d ask that you
cooperate with my people. It’d be better for all of us if you do.”
“And if I do not?”
“It’ll take us that much longer, and you’ll have to deal with that accordingly.
You’re cooperation will ensure that we accomplish our task as quickly as
possible, and then we’ll be on our way, sir. The choice is yours.”
Sylvie waited for her father to say something, wondering how far his defiance
would extend. She knew him to be a stubborn man, but when dealing with the
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Elders he’d always capitulated. Sometimes shamefully so; and she had often
wondered if it was this shame that invariably drove him to violence against her
mother. Ultimately, he was simply nothing more than a coward.
“Do what you will,” she heard her father say with gruff finality; and she could
hear in that voice rage and humiliation warring with one another. It occurred to
her in that instant that she and her mother would pay dearly for his dishonor. And
although this filled her with a terrible dread, it also emboldened her to lift her
head and peer over the sill of her window and look down to the offworlder flitter
parked below. She had little to lose by doing so. The caning would be hard, so she
might as well get her money’s worth.
She stared, wide-eyed, fascinated by the woman who looked like no other
she’d ever seen on Obsidian. Far taller than her father. Far taller than any man she
had ever seen—to the point of clearly being intimidating. Short-cropped hair
hugged the contours of the offworlder’s skull. Shorter even than a boy’s hair, so
that Sylvie could see the paleness of the scalp beneath it, reflecting sunlight,
looking altogether alien; and she unconsciously pulled at the ends of her own hair,
which ran long, down past her shoulders and nearly to her waist. No woman on
Obsidian would ever willingly wear her hair like that. Only those found guilty of
crimes were shorn of their locks. A woman’s hair was supposed to be its natural
length, from birth to death. To cut it short was considered a sin against the will of
God.
But this offworlder woman was no criminal; she had the carriage and
deportment of one who bore much authority and bore it well. A leader. A leader
of men and women.
Sylvie felt the tingle of excitement spread through her, swelling to encompass
her whole being, filling her whole consciousness. She knew her world was now
irrevocably on the path of change, that from this day forward nothing would ever
be the same. And she could think of nothing in that that was necessarily bad.
Nothing she feared, at least.
She watched as more offworlders got out of the flitter, men and women armed
with much heavier armaments than the first woman had borne, and wearing what
she could only guess must be some sort of battle armor. They looked as much like
machines as people, and even she had to admit there was something a little
fearsome about their appearance.
The offworlder soldiers fanned out, moving in pairs, one holding a large
laserifle at the ready, the other using some sort of handheld scanner. She studied
them, curiosity quickly assuaging any fear; but always her attention came back to
the woman who had called herself ‘Captain Xian.’ She had never imagined so
imposing a figure. Here was a woman who stood confronting her father, clearly
not in the least bit unsettled by him. If anything, this offworlder woman was the
one bristling with menace.
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As quickly as they had come, the offworlders reassembled and climbed back
into their flitter. Captain Xian thanked her father and bade him farewell, to which
he did nothing but glare in return, his eyes watching them back into their machine
and away, off into the sky and out to parts unknown. And when they’d finally
gone he turned and looked up and caught Sylvie’s eye; and she had never in her
life seen anything like that look he had in that moment. Never anything like that
mix of black anger and hate and shame. And she knew the caning would be like
none she’d ever had before.
“Sylvie!” he roared, in a voice she knew only the foolhardy would dare defy.
“Down here. Now!”
She ran, knowing that to delay would only make matters worse.
And as she felt the cut of the stick against her bared buttocks, felt the fire of
each blow lance through her, making her want to cry out even though she dared
not, she couldn’t bring herself to regret. As she stood there, bent over the riding
hitch with her skirts hiked up about her waist, light filtering down through the
small window of the barn, dust seeming to glitter in each slanting shaft of it, she
could only see that woman from another world. That woman who’d been so
foreign. That woman who’d spoken to her father and made him cower. A woman
who was like none on Obsidian, whose very existence challenged a way of life,
defying all that the Elders had ever said, and counter to what they declared must
be.
Counter to the word of God.
Through tears and pain, Sylvie could only think of hope. Of hope and change
and the possibility there might come a time, soon, when her father would never
again be able to do this to her. A time when no man would ever touch her if she
didn’t wish it.
It was liberating; and she had never felt so free.
The tears she wept were not only of pain.
Almost she smiled.
Almost...
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CHAPTER NINE:
THE WAR ROOM
“And so it begins.”
“Yes,” said Carter, the word barely a breath of sound against the hum of
background noise that permeated the bridge. “But where do we go from here?”
It was, of course, a rhetorical question; because he knew they’d go the way
they’d gone in the past. The way they’d gone on countless missions prior to this
one. But familiarity didn’t make the task any easier, didn’t make the prospects for
success that much better. Certainly it hadn’t on Inkasar; and he imagined that if
anything Obsidian would be a far more difficult assignment than the world from
which they’d retreated but a few days prior.
More difficult and more dangerous. And he couldn’t help but think yet again
of the dead they had left behind, inwardly shuddering at the possibility there
might soon be more to join them.
“Of all the worlds in the Empire, why this one?” asked Anna, from her seat
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beside him. “There must be any of a dozen other planets far more profitable and
worth the investment. Why would two of the most powerful megacorps want this
hunk of rock?”
“Other worlds don't have this one's transit point,” he reminded her. “Nor
would they have been as great a threat to the Assembly.”
“So others wouldn’t have required our presence? They could have gone about
merrily doing whatever they wanted to do?”
He turned his head to look at her, recalling their earlier conversation. “One
would hope not, were there inhabitants,” he said. He jerked his head in the
direction of the command display, where an image of Obsidian swelled to fill the
holocube. “We’d have had no interest in what they were doing if they’d gone to
any of a number of other uninhabited planets. But that one down there is the
honey in the pot, meant to draw us in.”
“If it’s that obvious, surely the Assembly can see the folly of sending us here.”
“That’s why this could be a make-or-break mission for the Federation and
Fleet. Admiral Novarro and the Secretary of General have made it quite clear that
failure is not an option.”
“I’d like to think their concern was for the people down on that world,” Anna
said, “but I can’t believe that was really much of a factor.”
“The objectives are not mutually exclusive.”
She looked doubtful. “Success for us doesn’t necessarily translate into an
equitable outcome for the Reds,” she observed. “At the end of it all, this world
will be changed, John. Irrevocably. And its people will be changed along with it.
Consider that when you think about your much vaunted principles and the
constitution.”
“Change is the inevitable corollary of war.”
“So it’s war we’re at, is it?”
“Has it really ever been otherwise?”
She shrugged. “There are some who would argue the point.”
“Out of political necessity more than anything else. And I don’t think anyone
who has served in Fleet has ever fooled themselves into believing the delusions
held by some of the members of the Assembly and the general public. They may
choose to call our confrontations with the corporates skirmishes and police
actions, but we all know it’s war.”
“And so now we bring our nasty little conflict to this little world.”
“Did we have a choice?” His face darkened. “We’re not running the show,
Anna. The corporates are. They lead, we follow. All we can do is play along and
hope we can stay in the game.”
“It won’t be easy.”
“Harder than ever, I imagine. And there’s probably more at stake than there
ever has been.”
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Anna looked past him, at the display that glowed bright in the subdued
lighting of the Goliath’s bridge. He followed her gaze, saw that she studied the
world that shimmered in the holocube: ochre and black, tinged with gray, and a
chain of small blue-green seas sweeping around the two continents that
counterbalanced one another. There were thousands of islands littering those seas,
small fragments barely discernable to the eye, trailing away in arcs from the
mainland. They formed fine necklaces that glittered and sparkled as though
bejeweled with precious stones and diamonds.
There was, he observed silently, an inherent beauty in all worlds when they
were seen from the vantage point of space. Viewed from afar, from the safety of
distance, each was unique. Foreign. Alien. And each possessed certain qualities
that seduced the human eye and mind, beckoning, arousing the curiosity within,
awakening some primal urge to go down into the gravity well and stand on
distant, alien shores and look upon a sky that was new and a sun that one had
never seen rise or set before. She’d once told him that that had been one of the
primary attractions of space for her, the one thing that had, perhaps above all
others, compelled her to work as hard as possible to meet the physical
requirements that would allow her to leave Luna and the Moon behind and
become the spacer her parents had chosen her to be.
She’d once described to him how on the Moon, while standing outside the
walls of Luna in her heavy suit, she’d imagined what it would be like to stand on
other worlds and look at constellations totally unfamiliar to her. And sometimes,
when the Earth had been pregnant in the Moon’s perpetually blackened skies,
she’d thought herself on a starship, coming upon an alien world, staring at its
tumescent face and feeling the wonder of setting her eyes upon something no
other humans had seen before.
In all the years she’d served in Fleet, she had told him, the strangeness of new
worlds had never ceased to excite her, to stimulate the inquisitive aspect of her
character, and to draw her like a moth to a flame. Even the most hostile of worlds
aroused in her a certain compulsion, which the exigencies of a military career had
necessarily moderated. And he thought it was an unfortunate fact that one could
not simply go traipsing off to the surface of a planet when one was a command
level officer on a ship. In that respect she, like he, had enjoyed more freedoms as
a junior, when it had been easy to volunteer for survey teams and be accepted. In
her first two or three years of naval service she’d been to the surface of more
worlds than she’d been occasioned to visit in the last two decades.
“A penny for your thoughts,” said Carter.
She blinked and turned away from the image of Obsidian, settling a languid
look upon him. “Just thinking what it must be like down there,” she said. “And
wondering if we’re just going to screw it up.”
“It’s a big world. Short of lobbing a few dozen high yield anti-matter
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torpedoes at it, I don’t think there’s any cause for concern.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
He nodded soberly. “I know.”
She glanced again at the cube, sadly and pityingly. “What if they force us to
the limit?” she asked. “Will we really go all the way?”
“I doubt either Industries or ‘Corp would want to see the planet rendered
uninhabitable. If they have an interest in it at all, it’s because it’s a world that can
sustain human life in close proximity to a vital jump point. I don’t think they’ll
want to push so far as to put that in jeopardy.”
“But will we?” she pressed. ”How do we stand? I’m just wondering if the
Federation...the Assembly...might not see it more fitting to be rid of the place
rather than to let either ‘Corp or Industries get their hands on it.”
“They might.” Carter’s face was dour, the look in his eyes bleak. “Scorched
earth,” he said, feeling sick at the thought, wishing he could be dispassionate
about it, to regard it with a clinical detachment. But he’d never been of a mindset
where he could compartmentalize these things; there was always something of his
humanity that got in the way.
She glanced at him with narrowed eyes. “That’s extreme,” she said.
“These are extreme times, Anna.”
“Is that the excuse they use these days, the Assembly and Admiralty?” she
asked.
“I’m sure,” he said, in a noncommittal tone.
“And this is principled? This is moral?” Her face flushed with anger. “What
about all that stuff about protecting these people?”
“We’re here to do that too.”
She sat in silence, staring at him; and he knew she must be thinking him a bit
of a hypocrite after their earlier conversation—which was fine, because he felt
like one and hated himself because despite that he would carry out his orders.
“So, do we have orders to that effect?”
He didn’t meet her eyes. “If the need should arise, you’ll be informed one way
or another.”
Anna stared back at him, appalled. “God,” she breathed. “They would go that
far? You would go that far?”
“We’ll go as far as is necessary to ensure the continued survival of the
Federation,” he said. He thrust himself back in his chair, venting a heavy sigh, a
look of desolation on his face and a blackness in his heart. “We can’t afford to
lose this one, Anna. Whatever the cost, it’s become apparent to Admiralty, if not
the Assembly, that we can no longer continue to retreat in the face of the
corporate threat. We’ve drawn too many lines in the sand, each time stepping
back and drawing a new one. But now there’s no more room left. We have to
confront them. Here and now.”
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“But why here, exactly, John, when we’re on such a shaky legal footing?”
“Because Admiralty thinks we have the best chance of success here.”
She snorted. "In the way they thought we had such a good chance of bringing
peace to Inkasar?” She rubbed her hand across her forehead and let out a breath.
“Their way of thinking is going to get us all killed.”
“That’s a distinct possibility. But that’s always been the risk of being a spacer
in Fleet. And Inkasar wasn’t Novarro. She didn’t want that. Not that way. But
here, she senses we have the numbers and the opportunity. The corporates are
spread thin. They’ve expanded the number of worlds in their circle faster than
they’ve been able to build ships to protect them. So the ‘Corp and Industries fleets
that are here won’t be of the strength we’ve had to face in the past. Moreover,
we’ve got more firepower this time.”
“This time. But what about the next time? Even if we do succeed, this won’t
end it. The corporates won’t stop here, if their intent is to be rid of us. If we
hammer them here it can only be a matter of time before they regroup and make
sure they teach us a lesson somewhere else.”
“But a victory here could change the balance of power, it could sway those in
the Assembly who have gravitated towards the corporates. And if it does that we
could see Fleet get the resources and power it needs to maintain the authority of
the Federation.”
“Too many ‘ifs’ and too few absolutes,” she argued. “I don’t like that we’re
putting so many eggs in one basket. If we fail here...if we get beaten, then that
could be the end of Fleet and the Federation. We’re painting ourselves into a
corner, John.”
“It’s either this or slowly bleed to death.”
She said nothing. Watching her, he knew she was thinking this mission was
now far removed from the principles and the values he had championed only days
ago. Suddenly it seemed all about the dirty politics of the Federation. Backroom
scheming of a sort that disrupted the lives of thousands, sometimes even millions
in so cavalier a manner. Suddenly it was not at all about what he had claimed it
was to be a member of Fleet.
Suddenly it was merely about Darwinian notions of survival.
Survival of the fittest, in a jungle of ruthless predators.
******
We’re a sorry lot, he mused. All of us growing weary of this contest. Growing
tired fast.
Indeed, most of them were old hands at the game in question, some with four
or more decades of service. Even the youngest of them had nearly two. That was a
long time to be doing this sort of thing, to be away from home—wherever that
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might be—out amidst the stars, in cold, black darkness, risking life and limb for a
cause that all too often these days seemed to be lost somewhere in the ascendancy
of the corporates and the dissembling and political intrigues of the Assembly. He
looked around the oval table of the briefing room and studied the faces of men
and women who had seen a lot in all their years in space. They were all spacers
who had borne witness to an excess of death and dying, spectators to the endless
misery and suffering that was symptomatic of an empire growing in unreasoned
haste. An unreasoned haste compounded by the greed and the insatiable lust for
power that were so integral a part of human history and the human character. The
cornerstones of human endeavor, it sometimes seemed.
Some six centuries ago humans had first ventured into space, beginning a long
slow climb out of Earth’s gravity well, out of the grasp of its tiresome politics and
insuperable prejudices. But in truth there’d never been genuine freedom. There’d
never been an absolute liberty from those notions that had made Earth less than
what it could have been. They’d taken the excess baggage of what they were into
space with them, exporting it to other planets, to other stars. The best of
themselves and the worst. War being perhaps the most vivid archetype of the
latter.
It had been inevitable, though. Inevitable that war would follow them beyond
the threshold of space and to the stars. Inevitable, because it had become so
fundamental to human nature. They couldn’t relinquish it. No more than they
could stop being themselves.
Ironic, he thought; he had told the Khalud and the Bed'wan that war had
become endemic on their world, that it had reached a point where it had been
inculcated into the very fabric of their culture, dictating who and what they were.
But he saw, now, that that was not so far from the truth for all humanity. Now, in
the past, and in the future.
We can’t rid ourselves of the scourge.
There’d long ago been a theory that wealthy, comfortable and democratic
nations didn’t start wars, didn’t wish them, and didn’t freely abandon themselves
to them. Yet, in fact, history argued otherwise. History was replete with examples
of great, powerful, wealthy nations marching to war. Sometimes they did so
because they felt threatened by other, rising nations; sometimes because they
couldn’t countenance indifference to inhuman and inhumane crimes being
perpetrated in the world; and sometimes simply because war was a political
convenience—or perhaps always because it was such.
There were many kinds of wars for numerous reasons. Often it was said that
war was the failure of diplomacy. Rarely, however, was it for the just cause. The
noble end. Most often as not war was a consequence of senselessness, born of the
madness of men. Even still, it wasn’t always possible to distinguish one reason
from another. And in the end war was simply war, and that was all there really
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was to it. It was about killing, about people dying, about doing the maximum
damage to the enemy, punishing them and thus forcing them into submission—
extorting a capitulation they might not otherwise have entertained.
War was slaughter, justified by the cold logic of survival. It was ten thousand
Federation Marines dead on Kesselus. It was millions of innocent people sent to
early graves in wanton murder and carnage. Often. Too often, in fact. And
sometimes, now, it was about whole worlds being destroyed; and he remembered
Traygart, where corporate fury had been unleashed in a literal scorched earth
policy that had razed the surface of a habitable world, plunging it into a nuclear
winter, wiping all life from it in a matter of days, and changing the paradigm by
which humanity measured horror and genocide.
And now here they were; and he wondered what sort of war they faced here.
In what guise would it show its face? What sort of miseries will we inflict upon
ourselves and others? he asked himself.
He looked around the room at the faces of those he’d summoned. There were
more than thirty of them, the most senior seated, others standing behind them,
crowding a room that had never been intended to accommodate so large a host. A
room he thought looked suspiciously like a war room should.
He knew many of those somber faces, though a few were unfamiliar. Of those
he knew, there were some with whom he went back as far as his days in the
Academy. Others he’d served with on other ships, in the days before he’d
assumed command of the Goliath, and before he’d become a fleet commander.
But ultimately they were all kin, all brothers and sisters of Fleet, all trained in the
same Academy, to the same values, to the same ends. All spacers who’d
committed themselves to what the Federation meant rather than to the commercial
interests of the corporates or the freelance merchant fleets.
Drawn by ideals, he supposed—although as he got older he began to question
that supposition more and more. Certainly as far as he was concerned, on the most
personal of levels, allegiance to a particular ideology no longer seemed quite as
compelling a reason for which to fight and to possibly die. He wasn’t the boy who
had entered the Academy at the age of fourteen. Nor even the young man who had
graduated from it four years later. The decades had weathered him, aging him,
transforming him as only time and experience could.
Each moment of our lives changes us, but some moments change us more
dramatically than others. In war it was as though that reality were magnified; you
learned to live with a heightened sense of mortality, of the fragility of human
existence. So everything you did, every moment you lived, seemed amplified.
“Glad to see you all,” said Carter, nodding to the gathered officers in friendly
salutation. Heads inclined in acknowledgement and a few murmured polite
replies. But he could see the concern etched in their faces; it was the same worry
he’d seen that very morning in his bathroom mirror.
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“Was this face-to-face absolutely necessary?” asked Olivia Franklin, her tone
of voice making it clear she didn’t think it was. She was the captain of the
Colossus, one of the Goliath’s sister ships, and much renowned in Fleet for her
impatience and unwillingness to suffer fools gladly. She looked particularly
unforgiving right now, and Carter couldn’t blame her, given the circumstances of
the occasion.
“I’d rather not broadcast our plans to the whole system,” he said. “We’re close
enough in for them to pick up on our communications without any difficulty.”
“Encrypted communications,” Franklin pointed out.
“They have access to the same sort of technology we do, Captain, so I would
venture to say there’s a pretty good chance they could intercept our transmissions
and decode them.”
“Then why not use the tight beam coms?”
“Because I prefer it this way,” he retorted bluntly, annoyed by her persistence
on the matter. “I’m not much of one for talking at faces in a cube, thank you very
much; and it’s been my experience that one is able to achieve a great deal more in
a shorter period of time in meetings like this.”
“They could wipe out a big chunk of Fleet command with one lucky shot.”
“Rest assured, if I’d thought there was a serious possibility of that I’d have
never brought you here,” Carter said, clenching his jaw.
Franklin said nothing more and simply settled back into her seat, her stern
and sullen look suggesting she was far from mollified. On another occasion this
might have raised his ire, but Carter realized her concern was really at the root of
all this. But then, she wasn’t alone in that; they were all very much aware this was
a mission unlike any other, and that its outcome would prove crucial to the future
of Fleet. And he knew there was not a one among them who didn’t realize what
they were up against, and of the very real possibility there would be heavy
casualties to contend with in the next few days. Understandably, they felt more
vulnerable not being on their own ships; it didn’t contribute to a saturnine mood.
“Anyone care for something to drink?” he asked, surveying the assembled
with a sweep of his eyes, trying to break the ice.
“I would prefer to get down to the matter at hand,” Franklin grunted.
“Very well.” Carter drew himself up, sitting forward in his seat, forearms
resting on the table, hands clasped together.
“You’ve no doubt all noticed this is one of the largest assemblages of Fleet
ships in more than a decade, outside of space dock Earthside.” There were
murmurs amongst them, and some nodded knowingly while others shot
inquisitive looks his way. “Twenty warships, ladies and gentlemen, with the
Leviathan and the Argo still to arrive. Another dozen troop and cargo carriers.
The latter empty, I might add.” That provoked a quick exchange of looks.
“May I ask why?”
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He turned his attention to Robyn Martinez, the second most senior officer
here, after himself, and the one with whom he’d served in Fleet the longest. They
knew each other well. Very well—though they’d seen less of one another ever
since she’d taken command of the Heracles two years previous.
“A safety precaution,” he said, in answer to her question.
“What exactly does that mean?” This from Yash Bindari, Captain of the
Mumbai, a destroyer that had been pulled off picket duty near Celtis, out on the
Fringes some three days jump from Obsidian. That move hadn’t sat well with the
Celtan Assembly member, but Admiralty had deemed the risk to the planet
minimal in light of the corporate interest in Obsidian and the fact that the other
megacorps were as equally stretched thin when it came to resources. As a sop to
the Celtans, Novarro had redirected an aging Fleet escort from Fargo Station to
take up patrol duties around Celtis. It was no destroyer, but it would keep at bay
opportunistic agents (read: pirates) and more minor corporate interests who might
have an ambition to expand via extortion.
“Admiralty is simply covering all its bases,” Carter said to Bindari.
“With all due respect to Admiral Novarro, having lightly armed transports in a
position that could grow decidedly hostile seems rather foolhardy,” said Franklin.
She leaned on the table and regarded him squarely. “I have difficulty believing
Admiralty would risk them without good cause.”
Carter held a breath for a measure, then let it out slowly. “There is a
possibility we may have to evacuate the entire population of the planet,” he told
them, watching the shocked expressions ripple around the room, a wave of
dropped jaws and saucered eyes.
“My God! You’re talking about fifty thousand settlers,” said Franklin, looking
as aghast as the others.
“Yes,” he said, with a diffident shrug of his shoulders.
“Surely this is a measure of last resort,” Martinez insisted.
He looked at her and gestured helplessly. “That would depend on how things
go between us and the corporates.”
“It would be a logistical nightmare to move all those people.”
“Yes. I don’t think Admiralty is unaware of that. But perhaps a necessary
action, regardless.” He again circled the room with his intense gaze, and added,
“Industries and ‘Corp can’t win here, ladies and gentlemen. No matter what the
cost. It’s as simple as that. If they do, then Fleet and the Federation may well be
toast.” He put special emphasis on the last, and he could see by the look in their
eyes they were beginning to grasp the enormity of what he was getting at, seeing
the broader picture as Anna had seen it.
“I thought it was our business to save worlds.” Martinez again, visibly
discomfited.
“We’re the military extension of the Assembly,” said Carter. “Our purpose is
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to enhance the political will of the people, as represented through the Assembly.
Enhance it by force. We’re not the diplomats. Or we’re not supposed to be, even
if we are sometimes involuntarily thrust into that role. But the fact remains that
our primary purpose is to enforce the law, and to use all means at our disposal to
do so. We’re supposed to maintain stability, to keep order, and to make sure
democracy persists. At all cost. If the corporates succeed here, then our
effectiveness throughout the Federation becomes an issue. The issue, ladies and
gentlemen. It’s doubtful failure here will allow us to ever again function and do
what we were created to do in any way approaching a measure of efficiency and
effectiveness.”
“But the cost,” someone voiced aloud.
“Is extreme, yes.” He nodded, glum-faced. “But consider the alternative.”
“Free-reign for the corporates,” Martinez muttered dourly.
“Exactly.”
“But we’re talking of destroying a world here,” Franklin protested. “A
habitable world, near a viable jump point. A profitable gateway to expansion of
the Empire.”
“Which is the whole point, isn’t it?” said Carter. “If we allow the corporates
that, it’s more than allowing them to thumb their noses at the Assembly and flout
the laws of the USF. It’s letting them gain control of a key strategic point.
Moreover, whichever of the two megacorps fighting for possession of this world
wins will surely come out the strongest of all the corporates. ‘Corp and Industries
are the superpowers among the megacorps as it is, either one of them is nearly
twice the size of their nearest competition. But that’s tempered by the fact that on
the flip side of the coin they are both currently equals, neither really having the
advantage in terms of wealth and numbers. But Obsidian—more specifically,
Obsidian in combination with the jump point—could upset that balance, throwing
everything into chaos and quite possibly triggering a major war between the
corporates. A war we certainly don’t have the means to police. And a war the
Federation can’t economically afford. It would be an understatement to say that
such a consequence would be disaster, inflicting misery and suffering upon untold
billions of people. It would threaten the fragile stability of the Empire and present
an opening for fanatical groups to gain power.”
“I don’t argue with what you’ve said, John," said Martinez, "but if we’re
forced into the action Admiralty proposes, we could be setting a dangerous
precedent every bit as lethal to the future of the Federation as any failure might
be. It goes against all we’re supposed to represent. It’s a tacit abrogation of the
constitution. By engaging in such action we’re likely to alienate a host of potential
client worlds, driving them straight into the hands of the corporates at a time
when we need to be attracting as many as we possibly can.”
“I know that Bobbie,” he said, addressing her directly. “Novarro also knows
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that, you can be sure. But our options are limited. Much more so than I think
many of you realize. We’ve reached a stage where it is imperative we display
some military fortitude. Not just to send a message to the corporates that we’re
not yet ready to roll over and die, but to also send one to some of the members of
the Assembly. A tough, uncompromising response here may give some of them
pause to reconsider throwing their lot in with any of the megacorps.”
Franklin shook her head. “It’s a fucking roll of the dice,” she growled. “It’s
asking us to risk everything on a damned crapshoot.”
“And who’s to say this won’t be another Inkasar?” interjected Shebna
Mosyetna, captain of the Odessa, a destroyer that had come from patrol near
Farside station to join the fleet.
“Because this time we have more control over the situation. This time we’re
dealing with the corporates up front, and, more importantly, we won’t have the
whole Assembly breathing down our necks on this one. Not, at least, if Novarro
can help it.”
“There are serious political ramifications to that,” said Martinez. “Especially
if we fail.”
“I don’t think we’ll be worrying too much about that sort of thing if we do,”
Carter countered.
“So what’s our first course of action?” Franklin asked after a lengthy silence.
“Establish a presence on the planet’s surface.”
“The Marines?”
“Yes. For the purposes of protecting the civilian population.”
“And paving the way for their mass transport to orbit, I take it,” said Martinez.
“Quite.”
“You don’t think for a moment the corporates are going to take that sitting
down.”
“It’s anticipated it’ll be a difficult task,” Carter conceded.
“Damn right it will! They’ve both got substantial forces down there, well
entrenched, with enormous firepower.”
“As I said: It’ll be a difficult task.”
“And then what?”
Carter smiled thinly. “Then I pay our corporate colleagues a visit and lay
down the law— although I don’t expect for a minute they’re actually going to
acquiesce.”
“I take it the aim of this exercise is to avoid a major confrontation,” said
Mosyetna.
“Isn’t it always?”
“Perhaps, Captain, but this time the corporates are surely as well aware of the
stakes as we are.”
“True. But they also have military considerations. They can’t afford to lose
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too much equipment here. Not with such vast holdings spread so far and wide
throughout the Empire. And not with the other corporates nipping at their heels.”
“It comes down to just how desperate they are to get rid of us,” mused a
disgruntled Franklin. “I think we’re all pretty much in agreement that at least part
of their agenda here was to lure us into making the sort of mistake we may well
be making now.”
There were some mutterings around the room and nods of agreement, all of
which Carter regarded with calm resolve, knowing there was no fear of rebellion
here. These were professional spacers committed to fulfilling the mandate of
Fleet. They might grumble. They might gripe and protest. But in the end they
would do their jobs, to the utmost of their abilities. It was what they were
designed for, after all.
“I think that about does it for now,” he said, rising from his seat. “You all
have your assignments,” he added. “Until further notice we’ll maintain standard
orbital operating procedures. However, all ships will remain at the highest level of
alert. I don’t expect any immediate trouble from our corporate colleagues, but
there’s no sense in taking any chances.”
They began filing out of the room, in groups and pairs, continuing the debate
that had only just begun here. He knew there were doubts among them all. Doubts
he shared. But in the end they were Fleet and he knew they’d do their jobs. No
matter what. And that was the most sobering part, because he knew that when all
was said and done there was a very real possibility a good many of them would
die. He’d try his best to make sure that didn’t happen, but he was well aware there
were limits to what he could do. All he could truly hope for was that those who
did die wouldn’t do so for a lost cause, that they wouldn’t sacrifice their lives in
vain. It wouldn’t be the first time, however. Nor the last.
There would be great heroes made in this place and in this time, but even
greater sorrows. That was the nature of the beast. War, after all, was ultimately
ever thus. A series of battles, a series of victories and defeats, then the messy
aftermath, when the guns had stopped and the smoke had settled and there was a
true accounting.
Then we bury our dead, he thought.
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CHAPTER TEN:
THE NIGHT VISITORS
She awoke to the sound of them.

Men, their voices low, distant, like stones tumbling over stones. It was a
murmur, rising and falling, coming in upon the breeze, which blew in fits and
starts, stirring the drapes at her window, frosting the air of her room. She lay
there, beneath thick covers, still, and holding her breath. But the words were just
noise. Just whispers above the night’s mischief, and she couldn’t make them out,
couldn’t grasp the sense of them. So she threw back the covers, and in the chill
that made her shiver Sylvie rose cautiously from her bed, careful not to make any
untoward sounds as she stole across the wood floor of her bedroom to the window
that looked out onto the front yard below. If her father caught her out of bed when
she was supposed to be well asleep it would be another round with the cane, and
she hadn’t yet recovered from the last one. The one that had made her bleed, that
had made it a horror to sit and an agony to walk. The one that had filled her with
even more loathing for him, and for the injustice that made it a sin for her to look
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upon an offworlder. But she couldn’t resist, couldn’t just lie there in bed
pretending she didn’t hear these unbidden, tantalizing voices.
Through a parting of the drapes she dared to peer out into the ink-black night,
to where yellow light from the downstairs windows spilled out across the hard-
packed earth of the yard and caught the edge of the battered groundcar and the
farming machinery her father had parked near the house. There were shadows
amidst that light. A handful of figures huddled close, muttering to one another in
voices too low and indistinct for her to make out what they were saying. But
among them she did recognize her father’s voice, colored with urgency, shading
to fear. A stark contrast to the ferocity of the individual who’d taken a switch to
her bottom and wielded it with such a fury that it had drawn more blood than
usual.
She strained to hear, holding her breath again and cocking an ear. But only a
few words drifted up to her on the gentle wind. Kisses of sound that confused
rather than clarified.
“...my daughter...protected from...offworlders…entrust...”
“...They won’t have her...my word...we’re resis...no choice…”
It made little sense, but still she clung to the window sill, leaning close to the
opening, trying to pick out words from the background noise, to build them into
something coherent. She’d never known her father to act like this, to consort to
meet what appeared to be strangers in the middle of the night in so clandestine a
manner. It seemed to her it must have something to do with the descent of the
offworlders onto Obsidian, and their subsequent intrusion into the lives of the
settlers who called this home.
She watched and listened for a long time, until the cold made her shiver
constantly and her bare feet began to ache of it. Yet as inviting as her warm bed
was, as much as she wanted to be back beneath those thick covers, she remained
by the window, straining to hear voices that occasionally rose in anger and
exchanges that by turns seemed heated and bitter. Then quite suddenly the
meeting was over. She saw her father turn and start towards the house. One of
men in the group he’d been speaking to followed him up the stairs to the porch
and slipped beyond her view. She heard the front door open, footsteps in the hall,
the creak of the stairs. And like a flash she scurried back to her bed and buried
herself under the covers, squeezing her eyes shut and feigning sleep.
Now there was the voice of her mother out in the hall, anxious, protesting,
tears in the words that were muffled by the closed door and the wood walls.
Sylvie froze, and this time felt her heart pound in her chest as she lay in that
perfect stillness and listened with mounting anxiety. Even without the words she
could discern her mother’s distress and her father’s rising impatience. There was a
sound like a slap, of flesh hitting flesh with evident rage, and she guessed that her
father had just struck her mother. Fear and anger quickened in her, but she dared
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not move. Dared not make matters worse by getting out of bed and opening her
door to see what was happening. She knew the consequences of that, knew it
would only exacerbate the situation, to the extent that her mother would pay
dearly later on for such a transgression by her daughter. And Sylvie, too, would
know the pain of raising her father’s ire yet again. A pain she wanted to avoid if
possible. A pain she didn’t think she could live through another time. Not on top
of the caning that was still a burning memory on her buttocks.
The voices stopped and she heard the heavy thud of her father’s boots on the
wood of the floor. The door of her room burst open, without so much as a
knock—though she would never have expected such civility from her father
anyway. Light spilled in from the hall, a twisted gold rectangle of illumination
that spread across the floor and onto the wall. The shadow of her father was
framed by it, and swelled to fill it as he stepped into the room. A younger man
followed, a stranger with dark hair and darker eyes and three days growth of
beard. A man who looked at her with assessing eyes as she sat up in her bed, the
covers drawn up about her, eyes wide with fear and confusion.
“Get dressed,” her father ordered, in that gruff, no-nonsense tone she had the
wisdom not to query.
She got out of bed, feeling self-conscious in her long nightdress and bare feet,
very much aware of her father’s eyes upon her, and more so of the younger man
beside him. She’d never been in front of another man without a scarf or bonnet to
cover her head and clothes to conceal almost every square centimeter of skin. She
had never felt so exposed.
She hesitated, waiting for them to leave, but they remained; and she realized
she was expected to change in front of them. When it was clear they weren’t
going to allow her any privacy, she shakily slipped out of her nightdress and let it
drop to the floor, trying to pretend they weren’t there. Her back was to them, but
her eyes caught their looks in the small mirror on the bureau. The stranger turned
away, averting his gaze, suddenly interested in something out in the hall. Her
father, however, stood sternly, regarding her with an indifference she thought was
a salient characterization of his opinion of her. In that instant, as she stood naked,
hurriedly trying to dress, she was acutely aware that he saw her as nothing more
than some sort of commodity. She meant about as much to him as one of the
cattle on the farm: Something to be looked after only for the value of what it
might later bring. There didn’t seem to be any familial love in their relationship at
all.
“Put on warm clothes,” her father barked.
She nodded, still not daring to speak. He wouldn’t countenance such in front
of another man. As a woman she was only to speak when given the liberty to do
so, or when she was in the company of other women—so long as no male older
than thirteen was present.
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Nervously, she pulled on a sweater over the coarse denim dress she had
donned, and overtop of this she wore a quilted jacket. All dark clothes. Grays and
browns and dirty blues. No woman wore anything bright or boldly colored on
Obsidian. Her entire wardrobe, which constituted but a handful of dresses and
working smocks, a few sweaters and thick socks, and scarves and bonnets to
cover her hair, was of the same drab palette. Often, she thought, this was because
no woman would ever dare suggest she was happy and reflect that state of affairs
in her choice of clothing. And as she contemplated that, fixing her scarf in place
with the small mirror on the bureau, it occurred to her that the only times she’d
ever seen women smile or had heard them laugh was when they were away from
the men, secure in some place where they knew, for a time, they could be
themselves without fear of physical reprisal. On the streets and in the shops and in
the churches—and most especially in the company of men—the women of
Obsidian wore dour, beaten expressions that matched the lifelessness of their
clothing.
Staring in the mirror as she hurried to comply with her father’s orders, she
saw that same look in her own face: the sadness, the defeat, and most of all the
fear.
I’m an old woman, she thought, even before I’ve had a chance to be a child.
“Come,” her father commanded, grabbing her brusquely by the arm and
yanking her towards the hall. “There is no time to dawdle, child.”
She wanted to ask where it was they were going that she should need to be
dressed for outdoors. Of course, she didn’t dare to open her mouth, and instead
scurried along beside her father as he led the way downstairs, the stranger close
on their heels. Her mother was already standing near the front door, a stricken,
plaintive look on her lined and weathered face. Tears, too, Sylvie saw; but none
her mother would let break free and roll down her cheeks. None her mother would
dare to shed in front of her father. Still, it was enough to see them to know
something serious was happening. Something was happening to Sylvie; and
suddenly her stomach was all knots of fear and panic.
She put on her shoes, almost tripping in the process as her father yanked on
her arm and drew her outside, onto the porch, the door clattering shut behind
them. They went down the steps in haste, Sylvie stumbling after her father. The
young man marched boldly ahead of them, calling out to the others she’d seen
from her window. These men stepped from the shadows and into the light cast
from the house, all of them in black clothing, some of them—the shorter ones—
with their faces shrouded in thick cloth, only the eyes showing in shadow.
“These people are going to take you and keep you someplace safe,” her father
said. “You will do what they say. You will not question them. Do you
understand?”
“Yes, father,” she said quickly, bowing her head. But even as she said this her
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panicked mind screamed questions. Who are these men? Why are you sending me
away with them? Why now, in the middle of the night? And to where?
“When the offworlders have gone and it is safe again, they will return you to
us.” Her father showed no hint of emotion as he said this, no suggestion that
sending her away meant anything more to him than protecting an investment. It
dismayed her, even though she’d have been shocked if he’d displayed anything
other than this disaffection.
“Come,” said the young man who appeared to be the leader of the group.
“Time is short, and soon the sun will be up. We must be gone before then. Before
the patrols begin.”
She turned and dared to look at him, to look into his eyes. A man’s eyes. A
place where women weren’t supposed to look, when doing so on any other
occasion could mean far worse than the punishment inflicted upon her by her
father in a session with the cane. And in the eyes of this stranger she at least saw
some shred of compassion, some hint of a person who might understand her
confusion and her fears. And also something of a man who wasn’t at all like her
father. Perhaps not even like most of the other men on Obsidian—though her
knowledge of men was admittedly narrow in scope.
“It’ll be all right,” he assured her, smiling and taking her arm. Gently. Not in
the bruising, vice-like grip her father had employed. And to her father he said, “I
promise you I shall do my best to ensure no harm comes to your daughter, Sire
Charlemagne.”
“Be sure none does,” warned her father. Hard and cold, with eyes that were all
threat. “She is promised to Sire Saundersen when she has had her first bleed.”
The young man raised an eyebrow, and there was something about his look
Sylvie thought suggested disgust and disapproval. He said nothing, however;
merely bowed courteously.
But her father’s words struck Sylvie with an almost physical force; and
suddenly she was besieged by a new terror, deeper and more petrifying than any
she’d yet encountered that day. Sire Saundersen. She knew the name. Knew the
man. A hard, cruel man, who had beaten his first wife senseless, then burned her
to death. The Elders had deemed it a just killing, agreeing with Saundersen that
his wife had not faithfully conducted herself in the manner expected of a woman.
She swallowed, and a sickness begin to fester inside of her. Saundersen. She
couldn’t abide it. She couldn’t bring herself to believe her father would surrender
her into the hands of such a monster: A man who was older than her father by at
least two decades; a balding, wizened ogre of ill temper and vile repute. The sort
of foul creature she’d heard in illicit stories the women sometimes told one
another. A troll of a man, who was undeserving of life, let alone a second chance
to abuse a woman.
No! No, she couldn’t believe it, couldn’t imagine it.
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Father, how could you?
But she saw how too easily he could. She was just a daughter. Not the longed
for son. A woman child he had no use for except as a means to curry favor with
the Elders. A piece of livestock to be traded and never thought upon again.
How she detested him. How she wanted to tell him so to his face.
But she just looked at him, blankly. Disbelievingly.
And there was nothing in his eyes. No hint of apology. No concern for her.
Not one tiny shred of compassion. He simply didn’t care.
She turned away, angry and afraid and hurt and suddenly filled with the
absurd notion she would somehow defy him. She would escape him, denying him
what reward he might get for abandoning her to such a fate.
I’ll never forgive you, she thought as she allowed the young man to lead her
away into darkness with the others. I’ll never forgive you and I’ll forever hate
you. And if you die, father, I’ll shed no tears. Rather, I’ll rejoice that the world is
free another loathsome man.
May God make the offworlders victorious. May they destroy this Hell you’ve
created.
Sylvie walked with more sureness in her step, and never once did she look
back.
I’m glad to be free of you, father—though you’ve been more a prisoner than
I’ve ever been.
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CHAPTER ELEVEN:
IN EARTH’S SHADOW
“You will live in interesting times,” her father had told her.
Danielle stood before the Earth, staring down into blue-green seas and the
bright white swirl of clouds, feeling the immensity of those words across the
decades that separated her from that day when she’d been six and he’d taken her
to the Louvre. There was history there, in those storied halls, in the paintings and
sculptures and symbols of a human past. A compendium of humanity, etched in
stone, painted on canvas, wrought in steel, fashioned from all manner of
substance.
We’re nothing without our past, she thought; on a personal scale, and in terms
of all humankind.
Forget your past and you forget who you are and where you come from. And
if you don’t know who you are and where you’re from, how can you have a
future? How can you know where to go if you don’t know where you’ve been?
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She stood and considered that, considered the world below, with all its rich
histories, its many races and many faces, its varied pasts. Its wars. Its hates and
prejudices. Its great pains and endless sorrows.
She stood and contemplated the essence of humanity as embodied in that great
sphere. Everything we are can be summed up in that, she told herself. Even on
worlds far flung from Earth, out on the Fringes, there’s a connection to this place.
An unbreakable bond.
This was the ‘mother world.’ Home. The fount from which they’d all sprung
and to which they were all bound by history.
A spiral cloud over the Caribbean suggested a storm, its white arms fanning
out over what had once been Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Still was, she
supposed, in the narrowest sense of such things. Borders had largely evaporated in
the geopolitical perspective, but places were still known largely by old names.
You couldn’t erase all the habits of history with technology. You might change
the land and the people and their cultures, but some things stayed the same. Some
things must—if for no other reason than to give people a sense of place, of rooted
permanence in a world that too often saw rapid change and constant paradigm
shifts.
There’d been so many wars fought across that globe, ravaging so many places,
so many people. She’d no idea of how many millions had died over the course of
human history. No one did. It merely sufficed to say that there’d been too many.
Too many who’d sacrificed their lives or been sacrificed for the sake of political
expedience. Too many bones buried in that earth. Too many graves of the
forgotten and the never remembered, the men, women and children who had died
in the crossfire of hate and avarice.
Politicians had been rather cavalier about sending the young blood of nations
to be spilled across battlefields and drowned in seas, to die in the muck of other
lands and the lonely ocean deeps. Once, war had been such an easy instrument of
change; and humankind had wielded it too readily like a sword, cutting a wide
swath through the annals of time. It was no coincidence that so much of Earth’s
history focused on wars.
There was peace down there now. Oddly, a peace that had come about largely
due to war and the technologies it had helped spawn. Technology had altered war
and how it was fought and how it was perceived. Technology had changed the
landscape of the human mind, the way of human thought. It had transformed
human values and human perceptions. It had, indeed, erased some of the
intransigence of humanity by blurring the lines of distinction that had so often
been the basis of confrontation. Technology had knit much of humankind into a
homogeneous superset: one vast, linked peoples, sharing more than the
fundamentals of their DNA. It was difficult to find reasons for war in such an
environment. Much of humanity was now an amalgamation of minds, of people
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who saw no profit in the destruction of others when those others were essentially
a part of them. So on Earth, at least, war was essentially obsolete.
Of course, not all parts of the Earth were the same. There was still hunger and
poverty and a disparity of wealth that by all measure of human decency was
obscene. There was still suffering and there were still unconscionable inequities.
In part because history wouldn’t die a simple death; and humans were just human,
after all.
But there was peace. A hard won peace. It had been a peace that in part had
evolved as the societal dimensions of humanity had transcended the inbred
isolationism of ethnocentricity. The more civilized and undifferentiated
humankind had become, the more difficult it had been to go to war. And as
borders had vanished and a secular equilibrium had arisen, all rooted in a
universal democracy, the imbalances that had colored much of history’s broad
canvas had become subsumed by the force of common enterprise. Free, wealthy,
informed citizenries were less inclined towards armed conflict than were
impoverished, oppressed and ignorant peoples.
Technology had expanded knowledge and awareness and democracy, and it
had leveled the playing field in terms of wealth for much of humanity. It wasn’t a
panacea for all that ailed humankind; indeed, it had created as many problems as
it had solved. But it had neutralized war. On Earth, at least. In the cruelest of
ironies, however, it had shifted war from the surface of the mother world and
spread it throughout space, into the vast reaches of the Empire.
Because we’re all different out there, thought Danielle. All that was wrong on
Earth had been exported to the worlds beyond the borders of the mother world.
Humanity had largely avoided taking pestilence and the poverty of thought out to
the stars, but it hadn’t been able to avoid taking war with it. Not in an
environment that was like the heated cauldron of the past, ripe with the glories of
power and expansionism, flush with the notions of acquisition and possession.
It was a frontier out there. To some degree as lawless and wild as parts of the
Earth had been during the course of pre-space human history.
And we’re the police, she thought.
She reflected upon that; and it occurred to her that therein lay much of the
problem. The USF wasn’t a proactive organization. It wasn’t in the business of
expanding the boundaries of the Empire by the process of exploration and
colonization. That was left to the member states of the Assembly, so long as they
practiced the process within the parameters of Federation law. Ultimately,
however, the megacorps were largely responsible for pushing back the boundaries
of the unknown, opening up new vistas of space, discovering new worlds upon
which to build new civilizations of humankind. The Empire was what it was today
because of corporate involvement. If expansionism had been left to governments
alone, the Federation would as like as not have been stillborn.
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But if expansionism had been left to governments, perhaps we wouldn’t be
fighting the battles we’re fighting now, she thought. If the USF had been given
the task of exploration and colonization it would have become a far more
powerful force within the Empire than it was now. Instead, it was a weak political
body, dependent upon an aging, too-stretched thin fleet to carry out its mission
statement of maintaining peace and order within the borders of the Earth Empire.
Worse still, the USF was at threat from within, its fragile superstructure of
political allegiance slowly crumbling under the weight of corporate malfeasance
and coercion. As Secretary General she was well aware of the intimidation tactics
employed by the megacorps. The latter pressured non-aligned worlds to cast votes
in their favor with subtle suggestions of embargoed trade routes and lost market
share if they didn’t cooperate. For many of those worlds, struggling at the margins
of economic viability, the possibility of losing trade was enough to make them
capitulate.
In the case of Obsidian she’d had her work cut out for her in gathering
sufficient votes to prevent a corporate victory within the Assembly. And even at
that she’d been forced to use some pressure tactics of her own: threatening
withdrawal of Fleet protection, and suggesting certain goods made by vacillating
worlds might no longer find a market in other parts of the Empire. In the end it
had come down to which threat each world had found the more palpable, and to
how much they valued principles and abhorred the corporate creed. It had been
uncomfortably close; and she wasn’t enamored of that fact.
No, she wasn’t pleased at all in that regard, for it didn’t bode well for the
future. How long could she go on making the same threats and appealing to the
conscience of people whose primary concern was simply ensuring that their
worlds continued to survive in a very hostile and uncompromising universe? How
could she blame them for seeing the writing on the wall? They knew the USF was
balancing on the edge of a precipice, and that it would only take failure in a crisis
like Obsidian to shift that balance and possibly end the existence of the venerable
institution. They knew the power of the corporates was constantly increasing—
though therein was one possible weakness of the megacorps: that as they grew
larger and larger they also grew more and more unwieldy and less able to adapt.
At some point things will change, Danielle told herself. At some point. And
she had to hope the USF could hold on until that time. She had to hope the
mission to Obsidian was not a failure. At the very least, the corporates couldn’t
win.
If they did win—if one of them won—she had no doubts the Earth Empire
would be thrown into a war such as humanity had never seen. A war in which not
just mere millions would likely die, but quite possibly billions. The notion was
staggering, and it was only that which kept her going, kept her fighting. If she
gave up now she feared the corporate victory would be inevitable.
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If she gave up now she might be condemning all humanity.

But so much depended on what happened at Obsidian. If she prevailed, as she
intended to, then the corporate threat would be dealt with for now, Fleet would be
more firmly under her control, and the Red Catholics, whose followers were
spread throughout the Empire, would get the message she wasn’t to be taken
lightly and that she wouldn’t countenance anything that had even the faintest
whiff of sedition and rebellion. This last was in some ways what she regarded to
be the most important; she perceived the Red Catholics to be a greater threat in
the long term than the corporates might even prove to be. There were few greater
enemies than the religious zealot. Those were of a sort who would do almost
anything in the name of their faith. They’d brought down whole empires in the
past; she had no doubts they could do so again. In the name of religion they’d
been known to do unspeakable things that seemed contrary to all human nature—
things that were by any measure purely and simply evil. History abounded with
their kind.
At the moment the Red Catholics hadn’t reached that critical mass in the
Empire, dispersed as they were, hiding in the shadows, and with no real force to
rally them. But Danielle knew it might not always be that way. Not with a world
like Obsidian to serve as a catalyst. Not with what her intelligence reports had
been telling her.
Remove Obsidian from the equation and you diminished the threat. Or so she
believed.
So she couldn’t let the corporates have that world.
And she couldn’t leave it in the hands of the Red Catholics who claimed it.
In the end, if she played her cards right, she would have victory. She would
beat the corporates at their own game and prove the Federation a worthy
adversary. And she would stop a potentially threatening religious movement in its
tracks, before it could pose a serious threat to the existence of the USF. All under
the legal auspices of that august organization.
It all just depended on how well John Carter did his job—which was, of
course, the one thing that worried her. She knew him. Knew him so well. And
knew he had a conscience as deep and as wide as an ocean. It too often ruled his
heart and mind and accordingly governed his actions. She was afraid her plan
would be shipwrecked on the shoals of that morality. And that wasn’t acceptable.
Not now. Not on this mission, when a fearful thing must be done.
One way or another Obsidian would be no one’s world; it was the only way to
victory.
It was the only way the Federation could survive.
Of that she had no doubts.
None.
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CHAPTER TWELVE:
MASTERS OF DESTINY
There were no chimpanzees on Earth.

In the latter years of the twentieth century, into the dawn of the twenty-first
century, logging companies had cut roads deep into the heart of once
impenetrable jungle in parts of Africa that had long been impervious to incursions
by humankind. Where in the past the imprint of humanity had been small and
localized, it suddenly became vast and overwhelming. The roads allowed large
groups of organized hunters to penetrate farther than they could before, into
places of ecological fragility. Into the territory where once the apes had roamed in
relative exclusivity, safe from their greatest enemy.
In a matter of decades the habitat of the apes shrank and their population
faded, all in direct relation to the encroachment of humankind. In village markets
one could see the evidence of the callous disregard humanity had for the species
with which it shared the Earth. There, laid out for purchase, were the carcasses of
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slaughtered primates. Monkeys. Chimpanzees. Occasionally gorillas.

Sometimes the bodies were whole. Sometimes they were butchered remains,
sold as food to people desperate for it. In death the apes looked strangely human.
Like small children laid out in a morgue. Children dressed in black fur. And
perhaps in some ways they were just that; for they were innocents, without the
means to protect themselves from the technological onslaught of humankind;
children of the Earth, bereft of the ability to adapt to the dramatic shift in the
landscape of their existence, left to falter and fail. Their limp, lifeless bodies, on
display for purchase in those village markets, were a horrific testament that spoke
volumes about the nature of the collective conscience of humanity.
Opportunism and a lethal contempt for the value of any life or function that
was not human or of human need led to the extinction of the apes in the wild.
They and other creatures vanished. In time the diversity of wildlife on the face of
the planet was sorely diminished, and in accordance with this the ecological
balance of the planet was egregiously disrupted. The price humanity would
eventually pay for the ruthlessness and avarice of hunters, whose sense of the
future extended no further than the next sale of meat, was inestimable. By most
measures, however, it was a price whose impact would be felt for centuries, and
perhaps even longer.
It was the shame of humankind that it had eradicated most of its competition
for the air and space on the planet by the close of the twenty-first century. There
remained animals on Earth, but fewer in number and often in ever shrinking wild
spaces. Technology, in part, had seen to that. Rejuv had extended human life to
the point that an unwieldy mass of humanity had overrun the globe, putting more
and more pressure on the untouched parts of the planet. Finally, what wilderness
was left was only in the most remote and hostile regions. The far north. The south
pole. In the mountains and in the deepest recesses of the seas. Places where the
density of wildlife had always been necessarily low.
In part because of the extreme population pressures on Earth, flight to the stars
had become something of an imperative—even as it was realized that simply
removing tens of thousands of people from the planet each month or even each
week would not suffice to correct the imbalance created by the wonders of
biotechnology. And so humanity had reached beyond its grasp, across once
unimaginable distances, opening up new worlds, transforming them into new
enclaves of human civilization, where once again all the mistakes of the past
might be again repeated anew.
The arrogance of humanity knew no bounds.
Nor did its ignorance.
******
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He missed the captain’s gig. The shuttle was tiny and cramped and poorly
armed. It made him feel decidedly vulnerable, even though he knew there was
really nothing to worry about. Not yet, at least.
So he settled into his seat just behind the pilot and co-pilot, swiveling it to
stare forward through the curved section of transparent plasteel, looking out into
the gray light of the secondary hangar bay. An alarm bleated, heard distantly
through the thick hull of the shuttle. Somewhere overhead, out of his field of
view, warning lights flashed.
The pilot muttered something into his head-mounted com-link, touched the
control sphere, and abruptly the tiny craft jerked aloft and seemed to float free in
the bay. It reminded Carter of being underwater, suspended in the clear liquid of
the sea, just drifting and floating in silence and stillness.
“Ready for launch,” said the pilot.
“Releasing docking arm clamp,” said the co-pilot as he stroked a holokey.
Carter looked to the side, out the small, round port to the left of him, staring
down through its slightly bulging surface to the deck below. Beneath them the
fibersteel plating of the deck fell farther away, swinging out to either side,
opening to the eerie, transient glow of the atmosphere retaining field. Beyond that
flickering net of energy lay the stain of blackness that was space and the night-
engulfed far side of Obsidian.
The Kepler drifted down from the hold, through the atmosphere retaining
field, awash in an energy that sparked and splashed around it. Silent bursts of
plasma jets thrust the tiny shuttle out of the hangar bay, clear of the blast shield
doors, so that in that darkness it seemed like nothing so much as a tiny minnow
disgorged from the belly of an enormous shark. Five hundred meters of heavy
cruiser dwarfed the craft; the vast bulk of the Goliath was a shadow that seemed
to swallow the shuttle into a suffocating shroud of black. Only the tiny running
lights and navigation beacon betrayed the smaller vessel’s position: moving lights
against a silhouette peppered with points of illumination.
Carter shifted in his seat again and strained to look back through the port to
the dark specter of his ship, now fast dwindling astern, rapidly submerged in the
vaster fold of night that encompassed this side of Obsidian. From afar it looked
like a city skyscraper at night, its true nature concealed. He couldn’t see the scars
on the cruiser’s hull that betrayed its martial past, but he knew they were there.
Those and the marks of repairs, which like a patchwork tapestry told the tale of
conflicts and skirmishes: Crudely fashioned bandages of metal and plasteel,
swathing blackened sections where packet cannon fire had penetrated energy
shields and seared the ablated surface.
They should have put into port long ago, but instead they’d been moving from
mission to mission for more than a year now. They’d had only brief stops at
smaller stations, where the large scale work the heavy cruiser required was
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beyond the skills and means of the resident shipwrights. Most of what had been
done had been done by his people, by the skilled engineering and tech teams, who
had worked wonders with inadequate tools and supplies. But there was only so
much they could do and they’d done it. He just wasn’t sure it was enough. Not
now. Not here.
But out in space you make due with what you’ve got, he reminded himself.
The early voyagers had done with less, yet they’d continued to leap from star to
star, exploring, surveying and colonizing. There’d been no prospect of putting
into a station for them. Once away from Earth there’d been no turning back,
which no doubt explained why some of those early expeditions had never been
heard from since.
Sometimes, in his childhood, he had imagined those lost ships voyaging on
and on, still maintained by their crews or the descendants of their crews, still
searching for a world upon which to settle. Even now he supposed there was a
possibility some of those ships were still out there, drifting through the Matrix, or
in the cold vacuum between the stars. Their original crews would be long dead
and forgotten, of course. After centuries even the power supplies for the primitive
AI units those ships had had would probably have failed. Still...
He shivered. There was something disturbing about the thought; it was like
imagining enormous coffins sailing endlessly in the black void.
One had to admire them, he thought: those bold voyagers who had risked so
much, daring the unknown in vessels that seemed so ludicrously frail and
inadequate when compared with the behemoths that plied the depths of space
now. They had faced unbearable hardship, packed into such tiny shells for so long
a time. But at least they’d had Pearson FTLs. In the earliest days of exploration
there’d been no known means of circumventing the speed of light, so ships had
crawled along through normal space, their crews in cryo, many of them never
awakening from that deep sleep.
Space had been the boldest of adventures back then, and there’d not been
much thought given to militarizing it. In those days governments and corporations
had worked hand in hand, cooperating with one another to expand the reach of
humankind. It had been more about finding those first new worlds than about
competition for resources in those early days. But inevitably that had changed.
Slowly at first, but then with increasing alacrity as the power and influence of
corporations had begun to exceed that of the governments on Earth, assuming
many of the functions of government as governments themselves had undergone
transition and had shed some of the responsibilities that had traditionally been
theirs.
That was when the megacorps had begun to build ships designed for more
than just exploration.
That was when weapons had become a factor in space, creating a controversy
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and a fear that eventually led to the establishment of the United Space Federation.
Fortunately, in those nascent days of the organization, the corporates hadn’t
chosen to intervene. Rather, they’d used the Federation to their advantage,
realizing the rule of law needed to be maintained out in space and that it was
preferable some neutral party do it. Just so long as it didn’t unduly impede the
expansion of corporate holdings and throttle corporate ambition.
Thus had begun the USF’s steady ascent along the path to becoming the
universal policing force of the so-called Earth Empire. And as had gone the
corporates, so had gone the USF—until corporate aspirations had begun to
conflict with Federation ideals.
And now here we are, thought Carter. Now we’ve come to this.
To Obsidian, and the consequence of its existence.
It was the chimpanzees all over again; and extinction was all but unavoidable.
******
“Approaching the Alexander Nevsky, sir,” the shuttle pilot informed Carter.
Carter craned his neck to look past the shoulders of the two pilots and through
the forward port, out to where a ship half as big again as the Goliath loomed
before them. Even from such a distance it was an incredible sight; and although
he had seen carriers many times before it never ceased to impress him—and
perhaps invoke not just a little envy on his part. In his youth he’d dreamed of
being in command of such a vessel, but there was nothing comparable in Fleet.
The Federation preferred to use its limited resources to build many and faster
ships, rather than invest in carriers, which by most analysis were lumbering giants
too vulnerable to attack. Indeed, they required a fleet of ships to protect them. On
the other hand, they could mount planetary assaults that were beyond the
capabilities of the Federation’s heavy cruisers.
He sat and watched as they closed with the Nevsky, the shuttle moving from
out of Obsidian’s shadow into sunlight, where the RussoAsia Industries ship
glowed in the sun’s dazzling luminescence and the cool radiance of planetshine.
Close to it were two Industries frigates, and farther ahead in orbit a light cruiser
and an escort. Down lower, closer to the planet, were transports, not unlike the
ones in his fleet. Empty, too. But they hadn’t arrived thus. Of that he was certain.
No, their cargo was already down below, on the surface of the planet. A cargo
Suzanne and her Marines would have to deal with.
He listened as the pilot spoke to the bridge of the Nevsky, verifying clearance
to dock. He didn’t hear the reply, but seconds later the shuttle rotated and began
to maneuver closer to the carrier’s mid-section. A large, shimmering blue
rectangle hove into view, set in the hull between the two rotation rings. This was
the atmosphere retaining field of the hangar bay, a shimmering curtain of energy
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through which a shuttle could pass unimpeded.

As they drew nearer he could see the details of the many craft secured in the
bay beyond the field. A half dozen shuttles, a large captain’s gig, several landing
boats, repair rigs and an assortment of lesser vessels. It was impressive—and all
the more so when he considered how the stock of ancillary equipment on board
the Goliath had been sorely depleted by the Inkasar debacle.
The Kepler swung in fast, rotated again along its longitudinal axis, then lined
up on a spot in the center of the hanger bay. Carter felt the pulse of the thrusters.
Ahead he saw the shimmering blue field across the opening to the bay loom
before them, filling their view. Another pulse, slowing them, turning them, until
they were directly ‘beneath’ the field. Then, like a submarine surfacing from the
deeps, they rose up through the atmosphere retaining field, into a space between
the large boats and the sleek captain’s gig. There was a slight jerk and a clanging
thud as a docking arm snagged the shuttle, swung it about, and secured it just
above the deck. Now behind them, the blast doors drew closed, sealing out the
bright glow of planetshine, plunging them into a grimmer, grayer illumination.
The pilot glanced over his shoulder at Carter. “Docking complete, sir,” he
said.
“Thank you, Lieutenant.” Carter nodded an acknowledgement, then got up out
of his seat, reaching for handholds with practiced ease. He pulled himself
gracefully towards the hatch at the back of the craft. When he reached it he
pressed the release and the hatch opened with a soft hiss. As he swung through the
opening he found himself confronting a dozen Industries soldiers, all armed, all
neatly at attention, and far more jumpy than he thought they ought to be. He
studied them a moment, then pulled himself down and let his gravboots make
contact with the deck.
“Captain Carter,” said one of the soldiers, stepping forward and snapping off a
salute with all the rigidity and finesse that bespoke a military in which the
emphasis was on discipline.
Carter returned the salute in a far more casual manner, affecting an air of
calm, even as he was mindful of the wariness in the dozen pairs of eyes that
tracking his movements as though they expected him to do something rash and
violent. “Sergeant,” he said, deliberately ignoring the other soldiers as he regarded
the woman before him with an air of assurance.
“The Admiral sends her respects, sir. And would the captain please join her in
the briefing room?” The sergeant waited stiffly for a response, her face as
immobile as a block of granite, her eyes fixed ahead, not really looking at him—
though he was sure she took in his every move, his every breath.
“Very good,” said Carter. “Lead on, Sergeant.”
The young woman turned with parade ground precision and barked an order to
her squad. They swung about in unison, like a precisely machined mechanism,
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and marched away, doing so with a remarkable facility considering they were
wearing gravboots. When they were gone the sergeant turned to Carter once more.
“This way, please, Captain,” she said, gesturing for him to follow.
He fell in step beside her, glancing back once to watch the retreating soldiers,
wondering if they’d been there as some sort of honor guard or if they’d been there
to respond to some perceived threat. Certainly it was a rather paranoid response if
the latter, but when he thought about it he supposed he might have done the same
in similar circumstances. Knowing Chayestski, however, it had, in all likelihood,
been equal measures of both.
They left the hanger bay through an airlock, doors sealing behind them as they
passed from this and into a narrow corridor that ran bow to stern in direction.
Here they deactivated their gravboots, the limited confines of the cylindrical
corridor making them superfluous. Along the corridor they moved forward
swiftly, hand over hand towards what would be the bridge section; but long before
they reached that they stopped at a bank of lift chutes and got into one of these,
orienting themselves so they would be settled in the right direction as the
sensation of weight returned to them. The lift started with a jerk and instantly they
were in motion at a fast pace, moving to the outer reaches of the ring.
Carter felt weight descend on him, seemingly from the floor up, growing more
noticeable as the lift moved farther and farther outwards. Finally it came to a halt,
and he had the sensation of nearly a full gee on his body. A tad more than what he
was generally accustomed to on the Goliath.
They stepped out of the lift and into the wide corridor of the ring, where two
people could easily walk abreast of one another with room to spare. A contrast, he
noted, to the far less commodious expanses in the ring of the Goliath. But then,
this was a larger and newer ship. And a corporate ship at that, built to excess, with
far less concern for the limitations of budget than any Fleet vessel. Nevertheless,
it was a starship, and accommodations to the concerns of weight and volume were
evident everywhere: in the ascetic nature of the interior, with its wholly functional
aspect; in the holed structural members; in the exposed servicing conduit. In that
regard it was a mirror of his own ship, and of practically every warship on which
he had ever served. Only in the passenger sections of the liners would you ever
see otherwise—though on those ships, beyond the view of the paying customer,
functionality remained the order of the day. When it came to weight, a strict
adherence to frugality was maintained even on the commercial colossi.
They passed others in the corridor as they walked its gentle curve, most of
them junior officers and ratings, all of whom saluted Carter as soon as they noted
the four silver braids on the cuffs of his uniform flight jacket. He acknowledged
each, catching the guardedness and curiosity in their eyes, wondering what must
be going through their minds as they studied him. They were not, he knew, so
unlike his own crew. That they were ‘corporate’ spacers perhaps meant little more
155
than that they were separated from his people by degrees of ideology and little
else. True, their function in space was informed by their corporate allegiance, but
in the long term that still didn’t make them all that far removed from a Fleet
spacer. Ultimately it was all about being bred with a passion for space and a sense
of duty and mission when it came to traveling from star to star, world to world,
and beyond, into unknown expanses of the Universe.
We’re brethren, he thought; and that was what made it all the more difficult
when their encounters with one another became violent and deadly. He cared no
more for the fact of deaths amongst those of the opposition than for those of his
own side . Quite simply, when all was said and done, he had no appetite for war.
He may well have been genengineered a spacer and a soldier, but he had never
perceived himself a killer—even as he understood that sometimes good men must
do bad things to ensure the preservation of what is right and just. Ideals can’t be
protected simply with words.
Sometimes killing the few is the only alternative to sparing the lives of the
many, his instructors at the Academy had said. Even if those few be good and
innocent people.
But what happened when good men and women died for the sake of people
who didn’t truly deserve their sacrifice? People like the Khalud and the Bed’wan.
We’re family, we spacers. Brothers and sisters of the stars, who fight one
another for the sake of those who could care less about us, he reminded himself.
We exist to serve the welfare of people like those on Inkasar, who would as soon
slay us as take the help we might offer.
But even as he considered that he realized it wasn’t wholly true. And perhaps
it was also a fact that however he might view his corporate colleagues as family, it
was unlikely they ever thought quite the same of him and his people. The
corporate objective was surely closer to the exploitation of peoples and worlds
rather than their salvation. It was a difference of ideals not easily reconciled from
the USF perspective. It was certain that in the long history of the corporate entity,
dating back to long before humankind had even ventured into space, the social
paradigm of the corporate belief system had been predicated on the assertion that
what was good for ‘big business’ was good for everybody. On such affirmations
had been built the foundation of the megacorps, which had, in time and with the
help of technology, essentially supplanted traditional notions of human
collectivity and now threatened the very likes of institutions like the USF.
We made you, Carter thought, and now we have to live with you.
Sometimes he couldn’t shake the feeling it was a battle they couldn’t win, that
in time the evolution of human society would be irrevocably shaped by the
corporate agenda. He wasn’t sure that hadn’t already happened. Perhaps those like
him, those who had chosen not to align themselves with any of the corporations,
were anachronisms. Hopeless romantics, pining for a lost era. Relics of the past,
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doomed to be consigned to the dust bins of history, along with all the other failed
or vanished socio-political experiments that had variously steered the course of
humankind from the first proto-human in Africa through civilizations and empires
like the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Mayan, Incan, Chinese, Indian,
British, Soviet and Neo-American.
We’re just a breath away from extinction, he told himself. Obsidian might
well be it: that last labored gasp before the USF finally withers and dies.
He was never more conscious of that than when they finally arrived at the
briefing room. The sensation he suddenly had as he stood before that door wasn’t
unlike what he’d experienced long ago, as a student in the Academy, when he’d
been summoned to the Commandant’s office: butterflies in his stomach and a
pervading sense of dread weighing heavily upon him. Impending doom, lurking
as a dark specter in his mind.
The sergeant spoke into her com-link, then reached out and pressed the access
panel control that opened the secured door. Carter drew a breath and stepped past
her, into the spacious chamber, beyond the two burly guards who stood sentry just
inside the opening. He paid them no mind, instead focused his attention on the
man and woman seated at the long, oval table that dominated the space.
His opposition.
His enemies.
And he knew them. Knew them as well as any friends. And because of that it
was hard not to smile, hard to think of them as they should be thought, and to
remember the purpose for which he’d come.
“John!” cried the woman cheerily. She surged up from her seat in greeting,
coming out from behind the table and making a beeline for him, like a mother
eager to embrace a lost son.
She gave him a hearty bear hug and slapped his shoulders playfully, joyously,
with not a false note in her enthusiasm. “It’s been a long time,” she said, her
broad grin illuminating her face in such a way that it was difficult not to be totally
beguiled.
“It’s good to see you, admiral,” he said to Chayestski, more reserved than she,
a tentative smile warming his face.
“So it’s ‘admiral’ is it?” she said, stepping back and frowning at him as
though affronted. “Whatever happened to ‘Maggie’?” she demanded, assuming an
air of petulance.
Carter shrugged diffidently. “I wasn’t sure it would be appropriate under the
present circumstances," he said.
“ ‘Present circumstances,’ ” she echoed, looking comically aghast as she
exchanged looks with Stackpole. “What do you think, Linc?” she asked, winking
at her opposite number from NorAmicorp.
“I think the good captain here needs a stiff drink to loosen up a little,” said
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Stackpole, his rugged visage ruled by an infectious grin. “Perhaps a little

something for old times sake.”
“Yes, indeed,” Chayestski crowed eagerly, rubbing her hands together in
gleeful anticipation. “Some vodka to relax our old Federation comrade and
remind him he is, indeed, our friend. No matter what.” And with that she took
Carter’s hand and half-dragged him into the room, to a chair next to hers at the
end of the table.
Carter looked pleadingly to Stackpole, but the ‘Corp admiral gestured
helplessly. “Don’t fight it, my boy,” he suggested. “When Maggie’s in this mood
it’s best to sit back and enjoy the ride.”
Chayestski stuck her tongue out at him and said, “You should be careful, Linc,
you never know the terrible things the vodka might make me say. Why I might
even start babbling about a certain little incident on Fargo.” She batted her eyelids
coquettishly.
Even despite his dark complexion it was possible to see Stackpole blush.
Chayestski laughed and patted his hand. “Don’t worry, dear, your secret’s safe
with me.” She winked broadly, theatrically, with all the subtlety of a Kabuki
actor.
Watching them, Carter felt a comfortable camaraderie, of a sort he too seldom
enjoyed. Only among a few of those with whom he served could he ever feel quite
this at ease—and even at that there was something different about the relationship
the three of them enjoyed. Perhaps it was just the simple fact they weren’t within
the purview of his command, that they didn’t report to him nor he to them. There
was never that barrier of rank between them he felt with his own people—even
sometimes felt with Bobbie, who was virtually his equal in terms of seniority.
He went a long way back with Magda Chayestski and Lincoln Stackpole.
Decades, in fact. Back to the days when he’d still been a callow Lieutenant sent as
an observer to one of their legal ‘skirmishes.’ They’d been freshly minted
captains then, engaged in a corporate battle over the rights to a small planet on the
Fringes, and he’d simply been there to ensure they made no blatant violations of
Federation law. It had been his first ‘official’ command.
“I heard about Inkasar,” said Stackpole as he accepted a drink from
Chayestski. He gave Carter a sober, commiserating look.
“Yes, not a very pleasant business at all,” Chayestski offered as she poured
Carter a glass of the vodka.
Carter tried not to let his emotions show as he said, “Water under the bridge;
it's not like it's the first time it's happened.”
“Of course," Stackpole and Chayestski said together in a rush.
"Still, it must have been terribly disappointing,” Stackpole went on. He toyed
with his glass, staring expectantly across the table at Carter, clearly awaiting
elaboration.
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“I won't lie: I’d have been far happier if things had worked out differently,”
Carter said. He eyed the two admirals with reservation, suspecting this
conversation wasn’t quite as innocent as it might seem. Friends they might be, but
he knew they weren’t beyond fishing for information if the opportunity presented
itself. Hell, he'd do the same in their situation; and wasn't that partly why he was
here? He could have informed them of Fleet's intentions over a com-link, but he
knew from past experience the whole dynamic was different when you got the
three of them in a room together.
“I hear you took heavy damage,” Stackpole said.
Carter ghosted a smile. Yes, indeed, there was a little fishing going on here.
“You had no time to make port before coming here,” added Chayestski,
shaking her head in a disapproving manner.
“The price of we pay for living in uncertain times,” Carter said. “But we’ve
suffered far worse.” Which wasn’t a total fabrication; and he wasn’t about to let
them know too much about how his fleet was faring. Such information was of
clear strategic value, given that at some point in this mission the weaknesses
inherent in his fighting force might become a very real issue. If it came down to a
confrontation between his forces and theirs, he didn’t want them knowing which
of his ships should be targeted for easy dispatch.
“I’m surprised you found the Inkasarees such a handful,” Stackpole continued.
“It was my understanding that technologically they aren’t particularly cutting
edge on the military side of the equation.”
“A rather backward people,” said Chayestski, waving a hand dismissively.
“With minor mining expertise. They hardly seem the sort worth bothering about.”
“The constitution behooves us to serve and protect all citizens of the
Federation,” Carter reminded them. "And it's certainly not my place to decide
who is and isn’t worthy of that protection."
"Your political masters certainly would have seemed to have made a poor
choice in this case," Chayestski proclaimed.
"I wouldn’t be inclined to disagree. But matters on Inkasar weren't helped any
by foreign interference.”
A thick black eyebrow vaulted up Stackpole’s forehead, an unvoiced question.
“Yes,” Carter went on, “it seems there was considerable offworlder
intervention. Restricted weapons and that sort of thing.” He said it with a casual
dispatch, even though it still made him seethe.
“That's a serious charge,” Chayestski mused. “Isn't that a contravention of
USF prohibitions? Not an offense to be taken lightly.”
“Indeed,” he agreed, tipping his glass slightly in her direction. “Nevertheless,
there we have it.”
“Perhaps smugglers or pirates,” Stackpole offered, not meeting Carter’s eyes
as he presented this argument.
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“Perhaps. But not likely.”

“You say that with some assurance. May I ask why?”
Carter took a cautious sip of his drink before replying, then said, “Because
that would suggest the megacorps have a serious problem when it comes to the
security of their weapons.”
Stackpole and Chayestski exchanged quick looks.
“I would find that hard to believe, wouldn’t you?” he said.
“I can’t speak for the other megacorps, but I can assure you our security is
tight,” said Stackpole.
“As is ours.” Chayestski’s earlier exuberance had faded.
“Nevertheless...” Carter let the insinuation hang there in the air between them.
“Nevertheless you’re suggesting these weapons have a 'corporate' source,”
ventured Stackpole.
“The evidence is there,” Carter said matter-of-factly. He sat back, enjoying
himself a bit more now that he had turned the tables on them and had shifted the
conversation to a topic he was certain they wouldn’t be eager to pursue.
“I can assure you Industries wasn’t involved,” Chayestski said firmly.
“Ditto for the ‘Corp.”
Carter nodded. “We’re well acquainted with the various corporate
technologies,” he assured them. “From our scan data and some of the hard
evidence we were able to gather we’ve now pretty much established that Eurocorp
and EastAsiaTech were the source of the technology.”
“Interesting,” said Chayestski, sitting farther back in her chair, an elbow
planted on the arm of it, her chin resting on her closed fist as she surveyed him.
“Yes, isn’t it,” Carter allowed. “Not like them to be so sloppy and leave an
obvious trail. Especially considering the corporates are all signatories to the treaty
proscribing the transference of any technologies that might be used in the
execution of internecine warfare in a civil conflict.” He set his glass down
carefully. “It serves none of us any good if we allow chaos to reign—even if on a
planetary scale,” he added pointedly. “Moreover, the ramifications of such
destabilization can reach beyond the planet in question and affect the Empire on a
wider scale. Trade is but one of the possible casualties. Political instability has a
way of being contagious.”
“I agree,” said Stackpole. “Which is why it’s difficult to believe any of the
megacorps would be foolish enough to involve themselves in such matters.
They’d have more to lose than gain in the long run.”
“If their long term objective was strictly economic,” Carter agreed. “But if
their goal was more than to simply gain immediate profit at the expense of other
people’s misery, well...” He shrugged.
The two admirals stared at him blankly.
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” asked Stackpole, much
160
subdued.
“I’m saying that if their goal was something other than immediate profit,
something that ostensibly had little to do with the civil war in question, then one
might understand the logic of their deception.”
“I’m not sure I follow you.”
“Surely you’re not suggesting the corporates manufactured the civil war on
Inkasar,” Chayestski said. She snorted aggressively. "It's patently absurd."
“I’ve little doubt the Bed’wan and the Khalud reached their mutual hatred on
their own,” Carter assured her. “And I’m not suggesting corporate involvement
was solely responsible for the fact that for nearly five decades the two parties on
Inkasar haven’t been able to arrive at a peaceful resolution to the fighting and
killing.”
“Then what exactly are you suggesting?”
“That the megacorps involved perceived there to be an opportunity to deal a
critical blow against the authority of the USF by damaging an essential part of its
military component.”
“To what end?” Stackpole tried to look appalled by the notion, but Carter
didn’t find him especially convincing.
“Listen, Linc,” he said, “it’s no secret the corporates aren’t particularly
enamored of the USF these days. In the past you tolerated us because there were
benefits to having us around. But now you see it otherwise. Now you see us as a
threat and an obstacle to expansionism.”
“That’s nonsense!” Stackpole protested.
“Is it?”
“We’ve had our differences with the USF in the past,” Chayestski said, “but I
hardly think that constitutes grounds for assuming we’ve a desire to eliminate you
from the playing field. As you noted yourself, you’ve served a useful purpose for
us as well, and I don’t believe all that much has changed.”
“I’d argue to the contrary,” said Carter. “The economics of the Empire support
my hypothesis.”
“In what respect?”
“In the respect that many of the megacorps have reached a level of critical
mass that presupposes the need to expand at an ever increasing rate in order to
sustain the vast holdings already within their dominion. If they don't, then the
fundamental laws of economics suggest they’ll stagnate at best and possibly even
collapse.”
“One might argue that in such circumstances there’d be a greater need for the
rule of law rather than a lesser,” argued Chayestski.
“Yes, one might argue that,” Carter agreed, eyeing her shrewdly. “But one
might also venture that the corporates realize the only way to survive beyond
expansion would be through annexation. The annexation of already established
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worlds and quite possibly of those belonging to their competition.”

“Ah.” Chayestski allowed herself a tiny grin. “And you’d posit that we, the
megacorps, identify the Federation as an obstacle to that?”
“Of course.”
“And if I told you this isn’t the case?”
He laughed. “We know each other too well, Maggie. Too well for you to
expect me to believe that.”
“Of course.” She stared at him coolly. “And so we come to Obsidian.”
“Yes.”
“And what is our agenda here?” she asked, smiling humorlessly. “Or are you
too circumspect to reveal that?”
“I think Obsidian isn’t unlike Inkasar,” he said. “Wouldn’t you agree, Linc?”
He looked over at the ‘Corp admiral.
Stackpole straightened in his chair, clearly uncomfortable. “There isn’t a civil
war here that has to be resolved,” he said.
“No, just a vital piece of territory that could dramatically transform the current
landscape of the Empire.”
“It’s a small planet,” said Chayestski, toying absently with her glass. “There’s
little worth in it.”
“Yet the two most powerful forces in the Empire wage war over it.”
“That’s our business.”
“No, Maggie,” said Carter quietly. “It’s everybody’s business. We’re not
talking about some corporate skirmish over mineral rights. We’re talking about a
strategically placed gateway to expansionism. Obsidian’s proximity to a jump
point with routes beyond the Fringes makes it an extremely valuable piece of real
estate. Those who control Obsidian control the point. The two together are a
formidable package, affording the corporation that might have that control over
the two an ability to launch a major expansion at a fraction of the cost it would
otherwise be.”
“I think you overestimate the value of the planet,” said Stackpole.
“Do I?” Carter refrained from laughing at the absurdity of the claim.
“Linc is right,” Chayestski said. “Obsidian is just another world to us. No
more or less than any other.”
“Yet stretched thin as you are in providing security for your vast holdings in
the Empire, you nonetheless reassign valuable hardware to this theater.”
Neither of the admirals said anything, conspiring in their silences.
“You know, of course, that only one of you can possibly emerge the winner in
all this,” said Carter, more conscious than ever that he was in control of the
conversation. “And with the winner set to become the single most powerful force
in the Empire, it’s not difficult to imagine that that’s going to frighten and
concern a great many people. And fear has a bad habit of leading to irrational
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thought, and in time to instability.”
“I’m not sure I understand exactly what you’re leading to,” said Stackpole.
“I’m suggesting you both might want to reconsider Obsidian.”
“You know we can’t do that,” said Chayestski stiffly.
“Then you should know the USF can hardly countenance the possibility of a
force within the Empire so powerful it’ll destabilize the structure of legitimate
authority and quite likely lead us into social and economic chaos and the very real
possibility of a large scale war.”
Stackpole’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re saying you’re here to stop us?”
“I’m saying, Linc, that I’m here to ensure continued stability within the
Empire. And I’ll do whatever it takes to achieve that.”
Chayestski bristled visibly at these words. “That’s a bold statement," she
cautioned.
"Yes," said Carter. He stared at her dispassionately.
“You’d be sacrificing the lives of thousands!”
“For the sake of billions, Maggie. It would surely be worth the price of that
blood.”
“And it would achieve nothing!” She threw up her hands in a gesture of
helplessness, brought them back down to the table, slapping the smooth surface
hard. “Obsidian would still be here. The jump point would still be here. And if
one of us didn't claim it, then someone else would. If not now, then soon enough.
Then where would you be, John? You’d have lost a substantial part of your fleet
to a senseless exercise. You’d have weakened the entire USF for nothing. It
would mean that what you didn’t want to happen would. Only it might be far
worse than you imagined, because now the USF wouldn't have the facilities to
maintain any control over the situation. None!”
Carter said nothing, but instead sat silent, watching the two of them, his
friends, his enemies, waiting, knowing they’d soon reach the obvious conclusion.
And it was Chayestski who first arrived there, her eyes widening in sudden horror
as she surmised what was implied by his words and now his silence.
“You can’t be serious,” she breathed, a slight tremor in her voice.
Stackpole frowned and looked at her. “What are you talking about?” he
demanded, annoyance and confusion booming from him.
Chayestski didn’t take her eyes off Carter as she said, “Don’t you see, Linc?
They don’t intend for anyone to have Obsidian.” She swallowed, and uttered a
nervous little titter. “Not anyone.”
“What!” Stackpole blinked furiously, switching his attention to Carter, staring
at the captain in shock and disbelief—as though Carter were insane. “Are you
stark-staring-raving-mad?” he suddenly roared, spilling half his drink on the deck.
“To even consider such a thing is beyond comprehension. It’s unconscionable.
It’d be absolutely monstrous!”
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“Yet there you have it,” said Carter quietly.

Stackpole lurched to his feet and started pacing, moving quickly back and
forth, his now empty glass still clutched in his hand, his breathing fast and
shallow. He ran a hand over his bristly hair and shook his head several times
before abruptly coming to a halt and confronting Carter again.
“You actually expect us to just back away?” he said, incredulous.
“Yes.”
“There’s no honor in this,” Chayestski growled under her breath.
“This isn't about honor, Maggie," Carter said. "We both know that. It never
really is, is it? Certainly there was no honor in what was done at Inkasar.” He
raised a hand quickly to stop her before she could rebuke him.
“Oh, I know you say you had nothing to do with that,” he continued, “and that
may well be true. But it’s also true the corporates aren’t above colluding with one
another when it comes to dealing with the USF. We’ve seen it in the past.”
“This has nothing to do with goddamn Inkasar!” Stackpole bellowed,
throwing his arms out wide.
“It has everything to do with it,” Carter said. “I lost good people there, Linc,”
he went on in a lowered voice. “People I cared about. Men and women who
trusted me. Men and women who died because of principles. The same principles
the corporates have made a mockery of in the last few years. Can you even begin
to imagine what it’s like to see people die before you for no reason? Sacrificing
themselves to uphold values that too many in the Empire would now so easily
betray and throw on the rubbish heap of history.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” said Chayestski soberly, “but that’s the nature of the
game, John. We all know that.”
“It isn’t a fucking game, Maggie!” He glared at her, feeling his skin prickle
with his rage. “This isn’t your beloved chess. It’s not fucking pieces on a board.
It’s about life and death. It’s about people. About their futures. About the right of
children to grow up not having to worry about whether or not they might be
blown to bits in the next moment, or lose their parents and be orphaned. It’s about
what’s right and good and just.” He clenched his hand hard about his glass.
“And down there, John,” she whispered back at him with just as much steel,
“there are children. Thousands of innocent children. Children with parents who
sought out this world, so they could live in a place where they wouldn’t have to
know fear and the possibility of a premature death. Forget everything else about
Obsidian and remember they belong to this world. And now you’d take that away
from them.”
“You’re taking it from them, Maggie.”
“No.” She shook her head vigorously. “We, Industries and NorAmicorp, have
agreed from the start that the indigenous population wouldn’t be affected. When
the battle is done the winner will ensure they’ve a place on the planet.”
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“Which is exactly what the Assembly can’t allow. And you know it.”
“Why?” Chayestski demanded. She slammed her hands down again in a
visible display of frustration. “Why?” she said again. “Because some half-assed
politicians are afraid they might lose some of their power? Because a bunch of
shitless bureaucrats drew up rules centuries ago that we’re still expected to abide
by now?” She thrust herself angrily away from the table, shaking her head in
disgust. “No, I can’t accept that. Times have changed, John. And so has the
Empire.”
“We can’t allow a precedent to be set,” Carter said. “That’d lead to anarchy.”
Chayestski fixed him with a stare. “A precedent has already been set,
Captain,” she countered. “The Red Catholics down on that planet sued for
admission into the USF after we’d clearly stated our claims on this world. The
Assembly had no right to accept the Red Catholic submission.”
“Even without membership, the constitution of the Federation still applies to
them. You know that as well as I do.”
“There’s nothing in the constitution that prohibits what we're doing.”
“Conscience surely does.”
“Conscience? Conscience be damned!” Chayestski drew a deep breath, plainly
trying to rein in her ardor. “We’re not violating the rights of these people. We’re
guaranteeing them a place on Obsidian when all this is settled. You’d throw them
to the stars like seed and leave them scattered to rot.” Her eyes flashed rage. “So
don’t talk about values and morals and conscience when it’s you, the Federation,
who would violate all the basic principles of human civility.”
Carter felt her words like blows. He knew there to be more than a grain of
truth in them. Even he didn’t believe what the Assembly proposed to do was in
any way just; it wasn’t rooted in the pure and fundamental values of honest moral
probity. Nor was it in the least bit concerned with protecting the rights of these
people and their dignity. Quite simply, it was all about politics, about holding
onto power, clinging desperately to a faltering notion of authority. All honor and
virtue had been lost, submerged in the long years of bargaining and coercion,
driven away by those who’d become blinded to what the Federation was really
supposed to represent. Driven away by those who were inured in self-interest and
fearful of losing their cushy little place in the hierarchy.
“I didn’t come here to fight a war,” he said at length.
“How can it be otherwise?” Chayestski said with obvious sadness and regret.
“Do what is right, Maggie.”
“Right by whose criterion?” She shook her head. “Yours, John? The
Assembly’s?” She sniffed, rejecting the notion. “You’d destroy a world. Destroy
it so we can’t have it. How petty is that? So don’t talk to me about what’s right.
Don’t pretend for a minute that what you do for that fucking farce of an Assembly
has anything to do with justice. This is all just small-minded and cruel, and it’d be
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laughable if it weren't so fucking serious!”

“I have my orders.”
She shot him a wilting look, which didn’t need an interpretation. “How many
who have committed atrocities throughout human history have used that very
same excuse?” she asked, the words launched at him like a hand across the face.
"It didn't work for them."
Carter looked down at the table, feeling her stare burn into him. “I may not
wholly agree with what the Assembly is proposing,” he said, lifting his gaze to
meet the challenge of hers, “but ultimately I can see the end may justify the
means. The Federation is at stake, Maggie. Not just the Assembly. Not just Fleet.
But the lives of billions, on dozens of worlds. What you seek to do here risks all
that. If you're allowed to proceed, how can the outcome be other than to upset the
delicate balance that currently prevails and lead us into an even more horrific
nightmare from which humankind may never emerge?”
“You exaggerate,” Stackpole said.
Carter turned on him. “How can you know?” he demanded.
“How can you know it’ll be otherwise?” Chayestski contested.
“Because I’ve seen the future, Maggie. On Inkasar. And it wasn’t a pretty
sight.”
Chayestski sighed. “You know we’ll have no choice but to fight you,” she
said.
“Yes.”
“And you’ll lose.”
He shrugged. “There’s a good chance we will," he agreed.
Stackpole stopped his pacing and sat down heavily, slumping dejectedly in his
chair, looking old and worn. “It’s madness,” he lamented. “Pointless, fucking
madness.”
Carter scarcely acknowledged him with a glance. “Make it otherwise,” he
said. "It's within your power to do so."
The admiral stared back at him as though he didn’t see him, or as though he
didn’t want to see what he saw. “I have a mission too, John,” he said quietly,
bleakly. "I’ve no choice in this matter. Obsidian is vital to the 'Corp."
“Then our paths are set. If you can't make the choice, then I have to force one
on you. Either Industries and ‘Corp leave the system and Obsidian remains as it
was before you came, or I begin removing the population in preparation for
destruction of the planet’s surface. If you truly care as much as you’ve implied
about the welfare of those people down there, then you’ll reconsider your
extraterritorial ambitions and retreat. If you insist on remaining here, then I
sincerely hope that at the very least you’ll not interfere with our removal of the
local populace.”
“You expect us to simply sit back and do nothing?” Astonishment. "The
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population's presence is the only guarantee you'll not destroy the world and render
it useless to us."
“The Assembly's edict is clearly stated," Carter said . "And even the
corporates are currently bound by Federation law, Linc.”
“I think we’ve heard enough,” said Chayestski, a sour look on her face as she
rose abruptly from her chair to indicate the meeting was adjourned. “It would
appear we’re all perfectly clear on where we stand,” she concluded.
“I’m sorry,” said Carter as he stood to leave. “I wish things could have been
otherwise. I wish...“ He hesitated, a sigh slipping from him. “I wish there was a
better solution,” he said at last.
“There is, John: Go home.”
"Can't do that, Maggie." He shot her an anemic grin, then, as he hadn’t done
with them since those days when he’d been a junior Lieutenant, he saluted.
Smartly and stiffly. There was an almost shocked look on Stackpole’s face, but on
Chayestski’s only sad resignation. He left them there in their brooding silence,
wondering all the way back to his shuttle just how long it would be before that
silence was shattered by the fury of armed conflict between his forces and theirs.
‘Corp and Industries were fighting a war with one another, and he could only
hope that would hamper their efforts to engage his fleet and his ground forces any
time soon. He needed at least enough time for his people to get firmly established
on the planet.
It’ll be a hard war, he thought; and he had neither the stomach nor heart for it.
But in the end there would be one truth: whether the Federation lived or died.
It’ll be a hard war.
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CHAPTER THIRTEEN:
WITH BOBBIE
He remembered a night on Mars, in a tent, on a plain, the wind blowing

fiercely and the fine dust a blanket beyond the fiber walls of their pressurized
shelter. There’d been just the two of them sharing that small space, cut off from
the others of their group by the windborne fines and the noise of the storm, as
alone with one another as they’d probably ever been in their time at the Academy
up to that point. In such circumstances, pent up passions had overcome fear and
inhibition. Suddenly they’d been upon one another, kissing, pulling at clothing,
fumbling with fasteners, in a fever to ditch their suits.
He had made love to other women since, but he didn’t think anything had ever
quite compared to that moment, out on Chryse Planitia, on Mars, with just the two
of them in that tent and the storm raging about them while others, meters away,
were oblivious to their love-making.
There were times when he thought that perhaps it had been a mistake; yet, he
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could never bring himself to regret it. It was impossible to regret something that
had been so intense and wonderful. So perfect.
He found himself thinking about it often, now, wondering why they’d never
been able to go further, beyond the moments in bed together, to something more
permanent. They’d always been so right for one another; and there’d been many
times when he’d wanted to press the matter, to suggest to her a more formal
commitment. But then pragmatism had always reared its ugly head and he’d
realized the notion that their relationship could be anything other than what it was
could only be counted as ludicrous.
To be a spacer was to know above all else that existence was transient. There
was impermanence about life in space; at any time you could die. And though that
was true of almost any living thing in the Universe, it was more so the case with
spacers. Especially those of Fleet. There were just too many ways in which to
succumb in the cold vacuum between the stars, not the least of them being in
battle. And over the decades they’d known one another, they’d both come close to
death on several occasions.
One day, he knew, one of them would run out of luck. It seemed to him it was
inevitable. Then what could have been between them would never be forever. But
they were spacers. Fleet. They understood such things. Or so he told himself.
He just never truly believed it.
******
She snuggled closer to him and he felt the nipple of her left breast rub against
his upper arm. It was like an electric shock, rippling through his body, a
powerfully erotic signal that stirred ambitions elsewhere. He felt her hand slide
down his stomach, a murmur of delight from her as she discovered his renewed
enthusiasm.
“Ummm,” she whispered sleepily in his ear. “Do we have time for another?”
She giggled playfully and stroked him, shifting against him.
“I’m supposed to be briefing you," he admonished.
She smiled, dark eyes hooded. “I think your briefs are on the floor
somewhere,” she said, a playful, sensual tone to her voice as she kissed him and
moved atop him.
“Ha, ha. Very funny.”
“Well, if you really want to work—” She made to move off him.
He didn’t say anything, but grabbed her by the waist and pulled her back onto
him. She bent and kissed him again. He buried himself in the sensation, then
shuddered slightly as she maneuvered and guided him into her. Some distant part
of his mind was thinking this was crazy. Crazy that he should be enjoying the
carnal pleasures of the flesh when war might soon be upon them.
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But that was it, of course: war wasn’t yet upon them. And somehow there
was this sense of urgency in everything he did now, with the notion there might
not be a chance to do it later. Ever. It was always the same: On each mission,
when they’d faced the prospect of death, he’d had these intense feelings, the
certainty of how frail and fleeting their mortal flesh. So, suddenly conscious of its
finite nature, he was at once driven by the need to fill himself up with the
sensations of existence, and to seek some permanence by committing an act or
acts that would leave his mark upon the fabric of the Universe.
Posterity, he supposed. A chance at the illusion of immortality.
And here he was, with Bobbie, seeking that illusion and not quite sure how he
was going to find it by making love. Perhaps, he told himself, it was an instinctual
sort of thing, an animalistic act from more primitive times, recollected in the
primordial subconscious that was written in his genes: the impulse to extend his
mortality by sowing his seed. A primal urge to procreate. Having children, in
short, who would ensure that some part of his DNA was perpetuated and not
extinguished from the chain of human evolution; hence the desire to have sex in a
time when he was feeling the oppressive weight of his mortality.
Of course, there’d be no child from this coupling. They were spacers and they
took precautions, their biobots suitably programmed. Because there was no place
for a child in a life that would have its parents forever amidst the stars, always
under threat of death—which wasn’t to say it was never done, that there weren’t
spacers who chose to have children. But not he. Nor Bobbie. Not while they
remained starship captains. Not while they remained soldiers whose lives had a
decided impermanence.
But he would not always be a soldier. And neither would she. Or so he wanted
to believe. At some point they’d leave all this behind, he told himself. At some
point they’d just be ordinary.
But by then it’ll be too late, he thought. Sadly. He didn’t want to be a father
when he’d reached a point in his life where he couldn’t enjoy being one.
“So how did they take it?” she asked, after they’d finished their latest physical
‘discussion’ and lay together in his bed, cloaked in the soft light of his cabin, she
nestled against him, her head on his chest, and he with his arm about her.
“They took it as one might have expected,” he said.
She lifted her head and looked at him curiously. “You didn’t really think it’d
be otherwise?” she said.
“I guess I’d hoped they might do the right thing.”
She snorted. “Has it ever been otherwise with you?”
"You think I'm wrong?" He frowned.
"I think you sometimes have far too much faith in humanity, John." She
sighed and rested her head back on him, her ear to his heart, her warm breath a
feather touch against his skin.
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Carter lifted a hand and stroked her hair. “I’d hoped the threat of this
escalating into a full scale conflict would’ve been enough to dissuade them,” he
said. “I thought maybe they’d have the sense to see there’s the potential for
substantial losses on their part as well as ours.”
“They know that,” said Martinez. “But if part of all this is somehow intended
to weaken the Federation, then they’re not likely to back down, no matter what.”
“I know.”
“And the fact of Obsidian’s strategic value is inescapable. It'd be foolish to
expect them to relinquish that without a fight.”
“True enough,” he sighed. “Unfortunately for those poor wretches who chose
Obsidian as their home.”
“Perhaps they should have been more circumspect in their choice,” she
observed. She sat up abruptly, pushing the sheet back and swinging her legs over
the side of his bed. “I should be going,” she said as she got up and padded
barefoot to the washroom.
Carter lay there, admiring her in the pale glow, marveling at her body as the
light played across her bared flesh, along her sensuous curves. She had a spacer’s
physique, not nearly as ravaged by the effects of gravity as one so often observed
in groundhogs. She was lithe and trim, with the carriage of an athlete. She looked
far less than half the age she really was. Rejuv, of course. But good genes, too.
Spacer’s genes. The same genengineering he’d had. The same gene-typing that
had essentially condemned him to be what he was and had led to him being here,
having to make these choices, having to suffer the weight of those choices on his
conscience.
She vanished into the head and moments later he heard the sonic shower. He
stayed where he was, the sheet half covering him, thinking he should join her. But
before he could do so she came out and back to the bed.
“That was quick," he said as she gathered up her clothes from off the floor.
“I’m late,” she said as she sat down on the edge of the bed and began to dress.
“I should be getting back to the Heracles.”
“There’s no rush. I’m sure your exec can handle things.” He reached out and
touched her, fingers caressing the small of her back. She shivered, but didn’t draw
away.
“Jiang is a fine enough officer, but he has a tendency to get a little concerned
when I’m not on time." She reached for her uniform. “Besides, we should be
getting back to work, my dear Captain.”
Now he was the one feeling playful and exuberant. He took hold of her hand
and pulled her towards him. “Happy to oblige,” he said, smiling lecherously.
She laughed and gently pushed him away. “I don’t think Admiralty or the
Assembly would approve of your definition of work,” she said as she got to her
feet and bent to slip on her underwear. “Not that I mind,” she added, flashing him
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a grin as she pulled on her uniform and ran a hand up the front seam, sealing it to
within a few centimeters of the collar. She adjusted the latter, snapping it tight
against her neck, then fluffed out her short hair with her fingers. When she was
done she stood there, looking down at him, her hands on her hips.
“Are you going to lie there all day?”
“Hey,” he said, “it’s my ship.”
“Well, if you’re not going to get dressed and see me off...”
He ignored her and asked, “Don’t you ever consider the possibility of just
giving it all up?”
“What?” She started, caught off guard. “Give up what?”
“Fleet,” he said.
“Where did this suddenly come from?”
“It's just a question, Bobbie.”
She eyed him warily. “Give up all this?” She encompassed the cabin and
beyond with a sweep on one arm. “Give up being in the Navy?” She dropped her
arm to her side and shrugged. “Sometimes, I suppose. But then I think of what I’d
do if I wasn’t a part of this, and I’m not sure I like the alternatives.”
“You wouldn’t want to be a mother?”
She stared at him open-mouthed. “A mother?” she said after a long pause. She
titled her head and gave him a bemused look, then sniggered. “A mother? At my
age?”
“You’re not too old. You're what? Sixty chronologically? Rejuv and your
genes make you about twenty-five biologically. Thirty at most. You’re still
fertile.”
“Technically. Not that that would be an issue. I’ve banked eggs like most
women in Fleet. Mix ‘em with a little sperm, pop them into a synthetic womb and
you’re good to go. Nine months later you’ve got the son or daughter of your
dreams.”
“Sounds good.”
“Are you sick or something? I’m the captain of a warship, John, and there
isn’t room in my life for that sort of thing right now.”
“Others have done it. It’s not like spacers never have children, Bobbie.”
“I know. A few of my old Academy mates have done it.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“Call me old-fashioned, but if I were to have a child I’d want to raise it. I’d
want to be with it. I don’t think I could accept being an absentee parent, showing
up maybe once every six months or less often than that. How would that be fair to
the child? And what would be the sense of it?” She sat back down on the edge of
the bed, reaching across to take one of his hands in hers.
“What’s brought all this on?” she asked, her eyes luminous with concern.
“Nothing,” he said, pulling his hand free of her grasp. He rolled out of bed and
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got up, crossing to the washroom in a few quick strides.
“It’s something,” she insisted. “I know you.”
“Just thinking about the future,” he said over his shoulder, feeling a bit hurt by
her too easy dismissal of the whole idea. “Just wondering...” He let his voice trail
off.
“The future?” she said after him. “What other future do we have? We’re
spacers, John.”
“Exactly,” he said, that one word freighted with bitterness. He stepped into the
head and closed the door behind him.
“Anna and Suzanne are right,” Martinez said, the proximity of her voice
indicating she was standing just outside the door. “You allow yourself to get too
involved in these missions. You make them too personal. It’s that damned
conscience of yours; it’ll be the death of you yet.”
“Anna and Suzanne talk too much,” Carter grumped as he splashed water on
his face and looked up into the small mirror. There were lines beginning to show
around his eyes. Frown lines on his forehead. He was over sixty, and in another
time, in the days of his forefathers, he’d have been looking at retirement in a few
years. But thanks to rejuv he could expect several more decades of service before
he might have to contemplate the thought of moving on to something else. If he
was lucky he might even push his time in space to a hundred and fifty.
If I’m lucky, he thought—though he wasn’t really sure that would constitute
being lucky at all.
He stepped into the shower and let the field of energy pulse over his body.
He’d have preferred water but there was no time for that.
“What would you do if you weren’t here?” she asked as the sonics finished
and he stepped out of the tiny cylinder.
Carter opened the door to the head and stood facing her. “I’d rather be any
place but here,” he said bluntly.
She was visibly taken aback; and seeing the slack-jawed look on her face he
hurriedly added, “I didn’t mean this.” He gestured to himself and her. “I didn’t
mean us. Just this mission. Just this whole fucking business.”
“There’s not much place for a spacer on Earth,” she said darkly, her face now
screwed up into an expression that hinted at an unwelcome recollection. “We
don’t fit into that social dynamic. You know that as well as I. We’re different
from them. Disconnected when we’re among them. Separate. At least out here
we’re all of a kind. We understand one another. We have a sense of place.”
“Do we?”
“When I was growing up in Madrid I couldn’t wait for the day when I’d leave
for the Academy. I hated life in the city, among all those people who looked at me
as though I were crippled or a half-wit. There might not have been malice in their
attitude, they might not even have been aware they were doing it, but it was there
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all the same: that underlying current of distinctions, of them somehow being
superior because of their link, and me being like some primitive outcast
condemned to wander half blind and half deaf to the world around me.”
“It’s still home, Bobbie.”
Martinez shook her head firmly, and he could see the glitter of tears in her
eyes. “Not for me it isn’t,” she said, straying to anger. “Even when I go back to
Earth I never go down to the surface anymore. I never have a desire to be back
there. I don’t have fond memories of that place.”
“What about your parents? And your brothers and sisters?”
“My parents chose to make me a spacer, John, but after they made that choice
it was as though they regretted it and wished it could be otherwise. That’s why my
siblings were gene-typed for more traditional roles. For careers that would leave
them as groundhogs. You can’t begin to imagine what it was like growing up in
that environment. They and my parents were always this tight-knit group and I
was this alien thing living under the same roof.”
“You never talked about that before,” he said.
She swallowed a breath. “Because it hurts. Because I put it behind me and
accepted what I was and learned to see it as a blessing. So my home is out here, in
space.”
“On a ship?” He shook his head, skeptical; yet he recalled his feelings after
leaving Inkasar, that moment when the boat had soared up into orbit and he’d
seen the Goliath.
“At least the ships are ours, John. Our place. Our territory. They’re where we
belong. It’s only here we’re not outsiders.”
“But we have no anchor, Bobbie. Not even Earth. Like you say, that’s not
really a place we fit in. So that leaves us like some sort of contemporary gypsies,
wandering from star to star, port to port, with no sun to call our own. No sky we
can stand under and say is ours and that this is where we belong.” He hung his
head dejectedly. “Sometimes I just want more. Sometimes I just feel suffocated.”
“We don’t belong anywhere else, John. Not on worlds. Not under skies. Those
are prisons. We were made for this." She spoke with conviction, and stamped her
foot on the deck to emphasize her point. "We were made for space. For ships. It’s
all I ever wanted. Gene-typing or not, it’s what I’d have done.”
“You think.”
“I know,” she said, impassioned.
“Then I envy you, because it’s not all I ever wanted,” he grunted. He slipped
past her and picked up his clothes, donning them quickly, closing seams and
snaps on his coveralls in a mechanical flourish without even having to think about
what he was doing. And on some level that bothered him. It bothered him there
was too much of his life like that. Too much that was mechanical in nature: so
routine he could do it in his sleep. On a ship that quality was almost vital, because
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the parameters of the environment demanded that some things be done without
one having to be reminded they must be done. Some things had to be as second
nature as breathing. If they weren’t, then accidents happened. And in space
accidents often times led to death.
He sat down heavily in a chair in front of the large viewport of his cabin and
paused to look out through it, towards the bow, the long spear of the ship’s core
extending out into space. The world was in motion beyond that sheet of
transparent plasteel, Obsidian a curving mass of reflected sun, burning in the
black, rotating around his view. To the uninitiated that sort of spectacle could be
disconcerting—to the point of inducing motion sickness. But he’d seen its like
hundreds of times in all his years in Fleet. It was another thing that had almost
become routine; and sitting there, try as he might, he couldn’t summon the same
enthusiasm for it he’d felt that first time when he’d seen a world from the ring of
a starship.
Martinez came and sat beside him and put an arm around his shoulders and
rested her head against his. “We’re going to win this one, aren’t we?” she said,
her words part query, part affirmation.
“If ‘Corp and Industries hold off launching any sort of offensive against us,
and if we can manage to get those people off the surface and into the transports.”
“It’s a lot the Assembly asks of us.”
“They always do.”
He had the sudden compulsion to kiss her again and did. And when they were
done they just sat and watched a world go around and around.
“They’re not going to let us save it, are they?” she whispered.
“No.” And he wished again he wasn’t here; it wasn’t easy being right.
Not this time.
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CHAPTER FOURTEEN:
THE ENSIGN
Fear.
They had dealt with the subject it in her first year at the Academy. One of her
instructors had said it was often an unreasoned response to things we don’t
understand or to things we imagine will happen based on faulty or conjectural
data. Thus her fear of heights was rooted in the irrational notion she was going to
fall. Her fear of speaking in public grew out of the notion she would somehow
embarrass herself in front of everyone. Her fear of command stemmed from the
belief that she wasn’t yet properly equipped to make decisions and give orders
based on those decisions.
And her fear of death? That came from not wanting to confront the fact that
nothing existed beyond that last moment of life, when light faded from one’s eyes
and the breath rattled from one’s lungs and the heart was stilled forever.
She had, over the years, managed to deal with many of her fears, but never
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quite those related to death. Had she been religious she might have been able to
reconcile herself to lifelessness, embracing the notion there was some sort of
heavenly afterlife to which one ascended. But few among spacers were believers;
and though on her homeworld of Tartarus there were many who were deeply
devout, she hadn’t been raised among them. Her parents had put no stock in
religion. She’d grown up with the certain knowledge that when one died there was
nothing more to one’s existence. It was a concept she found chilling, because she
couldn’t get her head around the very idea of never again feeling anything, never
breathing or laughing or crying or experiencing the pleasures and the sorrows of
being alive. She couldn’t imagine, no matter how hard she tried, just what it
would be like to die. The closest analogue that came to mind was sleep; but one
didn’t fear sleep when one had the sense that at some point one would arise again
to enjoy life and living anew. And in sleep there were dreams. In death there’d be
nothing more than an unadorned finality. One moment one might be filled with all
the many senses of corporeal existence, then in an instant that would be
extinguished.
But what happened beyond that?
She didn’t know. Nothing, was what logic told her. Absolutely nothing. She’d
have liked to have believed otherwise, to have believed in some world beyond,
where the dead continued in another plane of existence, but she simply couldn’t
reconcile herself to such demonstrably unsupported and unsustainable
contentions.
There were some who believed life was simply a loop of existence, that when
one died one was born again as one had been before, and one lived one’s life
again. And again. And again. This, supposedly, explained such oddities as child
prodigies, ESP, clairvoyance, deja vu and countless so-called miracles. So when
you breathed your last breath you were born again and your life was lived again
as you’d lived it before. Or almost so. Sometimes there were changes. Sometimes
variations brought about because not all of your previous existence had been
completely erased and some of it leaked into your re-living of it.
She wasn’t sure she liked this any better than the notion that life simply ended
forever, our bodies degenerating into the stuff of worlds, to one day end up the
stuff of stars, from whence we came, in the wake of some long ago supernova.
She knew it was irrational to fear death. If there truly was nothing beyond
one’s last breath, then there was nothing to fear. When you died that was it. You
wouldn’t know about it; it wouldn’t be something to worry about. It wasn’t as
though one moment there would be light, then suddenly darkness and you
suspended in some limbo and conscious of the fact. You’d just cease to be and it
would be as though you’d never been. And just as one had no awareness of an
existence before one’s birth, one would have no awareness of an existence after
one’s death.
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It was all so logical, all so rational, yet still she had her fears.
The unreasoned response to things we do not understand.
And she knew we’d never understand death, because to understand it we had
to die. And the dead tell no tales.
******
“You okay, sir?” the burly Marine asked.

They’re always big and burly, thought Ensign Lhara Jhordel as she looked up
at the man who was maneuvering to settle into the seat beside her. He wore the
chevrons of a sergeant—a trio of bright red vees on the upper arm of his suit—
and a dozen gold hash marks, each of which represented five years of service. On
his chest plate the name Mokaihi was stenciled in gray letters. A veteran, who’d
seen countless actions in the sixty years of his career. She couldn’t even begin to
imagine the wealth of experience such an individual like this would have; and it
was difficult to accept that anyone could have lived and fought through so many
years and still be doing so.
“Sir?”
“I...I’m okay, Sergeant,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. She
examined him again, still having to tilt her head somewhat to do so, despite the
fact he was now sitting down. Even without the added bulk of his armor he’d have
been something of a giant. Normal, she reckoned, for the Marines, who tended to
select for that sort of thing among spacers—if all the others filing into the boat
where anything to go by.
“I’m fine,” she reaffirmed, more to herself than to him. Privately she kept
telling herself this was going to be a piece of cake. That’s what she’d overheard
some of them saying. A piece of cake.
"Good," said Mokaihi, nodding. “Commander Montagne asked me to keep an
eye out for you. Assigned me as your aide, sir.”
“You’re not nervous?” she said to him.
“Nah.” He shook his head. “Done this more times than I can remember, sir.
But it’s okay to be a bit scared the first time,” he assured her. “Lots of people are,
sir.”
“Really?” She wondered how he knew it was her first time, then almost
laughed as she realized that if nothing else it was probably pretty obvious by the
look on her face. Besides, she was sure Commander Montagne would have
briefed Mokaihi on the situation.
“Yep,” he said, “I’ve seen plenty terrified by the drop. Grown men pissing in
their pants, puking their guts out.” He chuckled good-naturedly, but stopped
quickly when he saw the horrified look on her face.
“Don’t worry, sir,” he said, “I’ve a feeling you’re going to do just fine. The
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commander speaks highly of you, and she ain’t too liberal with her praise.” He
laughed again; and she wasn’t sure if he was laughing at her or trying to throw a
spot of levity into the mix.
Lhara fidgeted in her seat and stared out the viewport beside her into the
hanger bay. Across from her she could see another of the boats and beyond that
still more, all lined up for the big drop. A harrowing quick de-orbit and a fiery
plunge into the atmosphere. A piece of cake, she reminded herself, but she found
her convictions unconvincing.
“We’ll be down soon, sir,” he advised. “Once the boats drop from the ships
it’s a quick ride down into the atmosphere. You never want to be too long in orbit
or in the air.”
“Why’s that?”
“Gives the enemy too much of an opportunity to target you and blow you to
pieces before you hit the ground.”
Lhara paled. “Does that happen often?” she squeaked.
“What? Getting blown out of the sky?” He grinned broadly. “Nah! Hardly
ever. You watch when we disengage from the ship.” He pointed with a big,
gauntleted hand to the viewport. “When we drop out of the hold the ship’ll launch
a slew of hot decoys. They send out lots of EM and heat and stuff. Attracts any
smart weapon. Like a bee to honey. They’ll swarm about us, confusing the hell
out of enemy scans as they follow us right down to within a klick or so of our
landing. They don’t go farther than that ‘cause in the final approach the pilots
don’t like to have all that electronic noise and junk clouding their readouts. So it’s
just that last thousand meters or so you usually have to worry about. The ‘sprint to
the finish’, as some calls it.”
“ ‘The sprint to the finish,’ ” she echoed, not liking the sound of that. And she
began to imagine just what could happen in that space of time before the landing,
when their only protection would be the limited shields and armor of the boats
and the skill of the pilots. She knew about what had happened on Inkasar, and that
had been against an enemy far less technologically adept than either of the
megacorp armies now in position on the surface of Obsidian.
“Don’t worry about it, sir,” the sergeant said confidently. “They’re not likely
to attack us yet. They’re set up in the two major population centers on the planet,
which are both well away from where we’re going. Besides, they’re too busy with
one another to mind us.”
These assurances aside, Lhara didn’t find herself inclined to relax at all.
******
There was a loud, external bang. The boat jolted violently, throwing Lhara
against her straps. She heard whirring and clangs and ominous sounds that were
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mechanical in nature, all of which set her heart aflutter, beating fast, thudding
hard in her chest, beneath the armor that encased her and now felt to her like a
suffocating shell. An alarm sounded, blaring a loud warning she found terrifying.
She’d never been in one of the troop boats before. Only the shuttles. And once
on the captain’s gig. Both very different experiences from this.
“Hang on!” Mokaihi warned as he took hold of a bar above him and grasped it
tightly.
She hurriedly followed suit, feeling herself on the edge of panic as an
explosive roar filled the cabin and a force like a fist striking her in the gut
smashed into her body. Ohmigod! she thought; then there was no more time to
think, but just to feel and to watch out the port as the walls of the launch tube slid
by in a blur and then were gone, replaced by black space and a swirl of ice
crystals that quickly vanished behind them.
The boat accelerated against its forward momentum, and she was pushed
deeper into the rack, the elastic envelope of it giving way to the weight of her and
the armor she wore. She could feel the pressure on her chest, making it grueling to
inhale, and belatedly she remembered the breathing rhythm they’d taught her in
the Academy. Pretend like you’re constipated and trying hard to go, the
instructors had said, raising a few laughs from some of the boys with that one. But
it worked. Sort of. That and squeezing her eyes tightly shut and imagining she
was somewhere else. Anywhere else other than in this fragile boat plunging down
towards a thick atmosphere that could burn them into ash and slag if they didn’t
hit it just right. Providing, of course, they made it that far; there were no
assurances the corporates wouldn’t make a bid to knock them off before that. But
probably not, what with the heavy cruisers riding station above them.
Suddenly the crushing weight stopped, the sound of the engines throttling to
silence, and Lhara felt the other end of the spatial equation of motion in a vacuum
while in orbit about a planet: zero-g. Her stomach rebelled, and she had to breathe
short, panicky breaths as she tried desperately to swallow back the bile that was
coming up her throat. The last thing she wanted to do was to puke in here, amidst
all these Marines, who treated this as though it were just a casual shuttle ride.
“You’re doing good, sir.” Mokaihi cracked another of his trademark grins and
gave her a thumbs-up with his free hand.
She smiled back, feebly, inwardly pleased with the praise. She looked again to
the viewport, staring out at Obsidian, the mix of cloud and land and tiny seas a
tapestry of color she found almost beguiling.
“Pretty world, eh, sir?” Mokaihi mused aloud.
“Yes, I suppose,” Lhara agreed—although most worlds had a certain charm
and beauty about them when seen from above; it was what one found on the
surface that often changed one's point of view, both literally and figuratively.
Nevertheless, she watched as Obsidian slid by beneath them, or above them—she
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was never sure which and supposed that either was correct when one was drifting
weightless—and considered what they were headed into. Her briefing had not
suggested anything pleasant; it was clear this wasn’t going to be a vacation, by
any stretch of the imagination. Simply put, Obsidian was a harsh and unforgiving
world, and not the sort of place she could picture anyone actually choosing to
settle on. Certainly it stood in stark contrast to the lush, fertile ecology that
characterized her homeworld, Tartarus.
“Should be preparing atmospheric insertion,” Mokaihi warned her after the
boat had made a few orbits of the planet. The sergeant shifted in his seat,
checking his straps—which Lhara noticed others doing.
“It can get a little rough in the atmosphere, sir,” he explained. “With our
velocity and the turbulence, it’s best to be sure you’re well and truly secured.”
So she checked her straps and pulled them tight. But Mokaihi wasn’t satisfied
and yanked them even tighter, until she thought they would strangle her. “Better
safe than sorry,” he said as she grimaced in discomfort.
“Thanks,” she said faintly.
Another alarm sounded, not unlike the first, and abruptly they were no longer
in freefall but accelerating. Or decelerating, as she supposed it must be in order to
drop out of orbit and surrender themselves to the gravity well of the planet. In
what seemed the space of but a few minutes she felt the boat begin to vibrate.
Faintly, at first, with just a scarcely audible hiss of sound from outside the hull.
“We’re going down now,” Mokaihi declared, with an unbridled enthusiasm
Lhara didn’t share in the least.
More vibrations and more noise. She could hear loose things in the cabin
rattling, and when she dared to open her eyes the image was a blur she couldn’t
focus.
“Fifty klicks.”
Fifty kilometers. Still far above the surface. But altitude was bleeding off fast,
now. Once they passed the thermal barrier and had bled off most of their forward
velocity they’d plunge faster towards the surface, cutting their time of exposure to
the bare minimum.
“Forty klicks.”
The boat shook horribly, the vibrations so intense that Lhara could feel them
right down into the core of her. Through her flesh. Through her bones. Until she
thought she might be literally shaken to death.
“Thirty klicks.”
“Not much farther,” Mokaihi informed her; but Lhara thought otherwise.
Thirty kilometers was a lot, and she was feeling hot and sweaty and filled with an
unremitting panic, even as the logical side of her told her there was nothing to
worry about. Why worry? It was foolish. No one else seemed concerned. Of
course, they’d all been through this many times before.
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The boat continued to fall. At ten thousand meters they hit turbulence so
violent she thought she’d be ripped from her seat and tossed against the forward
bulkhead. She couldn’t imagine this sort of thing was normal, and as though to
confirm this Mokaihi said, “A little rougher than usual, sir. Must be coming down
in a storm.”
“A storm?” she managed to croak.
“Good cover. Thick cloud filled with lots of moisture to scatter scans. Lots of
lightning, which plays havoc with tracking gear. Makes the decoys a little more
effective.” In confirmation of his words the atmosphere beyond the viewport
showed a maelstrom of black and gray, as though they were falling through an
oily, tempestuous sea.
She swallowed for not the first time and gripped the arms of the rack tightly,
as though the harder she held on the less likely anything untoward would happen.
Like a light being switched off, the vibrations stopped; and through the
viewport she could see a brighter panorama. Clouds towering into the sky like
gothic spires, and above them the roiling underbelly of the enormous
thunderheads through which they’d just passed. It was weather like nothing she’d
ever seen on her homeworld of Tartarus. And as she continued to watch it, sheets
of illumination seemed to ripple through the dark folds of the clouds now above
them, and in the distance spikes and spears of brilliance cracked the sky,
connecting the earth to the heavens in a lance of radiance one knew instinctively
contained an immense power.
“Wicked,” said Mokaihi, shaking his head in awe. “Wouldn’t want to get hit
by one of those.”
“We’re safe, aren’t we?” she asked, not doing a very god job of hiding her
apprehension.
“Sure. Nothing to worry about, sir. These boats can take a lot.”
But somehow she wasn’t convinced.
They continued their descent, down through more thick clouds, the surface of
the Obsidian looming. Lhara could see the wrinkled flesh of the planet through
the viewport, the mountains that stood off to the north and the east, the expanse of
a great desert, and farther away one of the small, briny seas. It all looked
innocuous enough. Peaceful, in fact. But when she glanced around at the Marines
who were in the boat with her, she was reminded it was probably anything but.
There was danger below. Of a life-threatening nature. And although she had
trained for this sort of thing in the Academy, she couldn’t pretend that on one
level she wasn’t absolutely terrified. That was the part of her that didn’t want to
die.
They were at five thousand meters when there was an ear-splitting clang that
shattered the relative peace of the cabin.
“That was damn close,” Mokaihi observed, glancing out the viewport. And as
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he did so he cursed under his breath.
“What?” Lhara demanded, fearful because of the sudden change in his
demeanor.
“One of the decoys was hit.”
She didn’t quite understand why that was cause for much concern, considering
there were surely more than enough to still do the job. But then an alarm sounded
that she immediately recognized as a proximity warning, indicating that
something was close and getting closer.
“Brace yourself!” Mokaihi shouted.
Without warning the boat rolled to port, throwing them hard against their
straps. Then there was a thunderous roar, like an explosion in the stern. The lights
went out and somewhere aft a hatch blew, engulfing the cabin in the hurricane
force of decompression as the air in the boat rushed out through the opening.
Lhara’s helmet came to life, closing in around her head, a protective shield of
transparent plasteel sliding down in front of her face. Through her suit com-link
she heard exclamations of surprise from some of the Marines as the boat pitched
violently forward, rolled back and yawed, clearly out of control. Another alarm
sounded, unlike the others she’d heard. Fiercer. More urgent.
“Shit!” Mokaihi swore.
“Sergeant?” she cried, eyes wide with panic.
“We’ve been hit, sir!” he explained, having to shout to be heard above the
alarm and the rumbling that now permeated the boat. “We’re going down!”
“Down!” She looked about wildly, wondering what to do, trying to remember
her training. In a flitter you bailed if you had time—provided you had an impulsor
pack or a chute. If you didn’t, you rode it down and hoped to hell the impact
safety systems cushioned you from the worst of the blow. If you were lucky you
could survive fairly unscathed. But a good ten or twenty percent of the time even
the bubble of impact gel and restraints weren’t enough to protect the fragile shell
of human flesh.
"What do we do?" she wanted to ask; and almost as though he could read her
mind Mokaihi said, “We can’t eject the racks if the boat isn’t in a stable attitude.
Can’t risk trying to bail, either,” he added. “We have to wait and see if the pilot
can get things under control, sir. Still have plenty of meters left before we pass the
cutoff for a safe eject or bail. But if we have to go, you follow me, sir.
Understand?”
She nodded quickly.
“Don’t worry; I’ll make sure you get out all right.”
She couldn’t believe how calm he was, or the others. But even as she
considered this she realized you couldn’t afford not to be calm. It was what they
taught test pilots: to focus on the task of saving the craft, to not allow fear to
interfere in any way. If you succumbed to that fear, if you allowed yourself to
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panic, then you were as good as dead. Even when the situation was at its worst
you had to remain clear-headed; it was the only chance you had of surviving.
So she gulped a breath and tried to force out her fears, to center on all the
things she’d learned in the sims about this sort of thing when she’d gone through
her training in the Academy. It helped, but she was still afraid. Very afraid.
Truth be told, she was terrified.
******
The pilots weren’t going to get the boat under control. Even to Lhara,
inexperienced in this sort of thing as she was, it was apparent they were going to
have to ride the tumbling craft right down to the surface. The least favorable of all
options. Survival in an eject or bailing was degrees higher. There were fifty-two
of them in this boat and it was likely that a great many of them were going to
perish.
A new alarm cut through the howl of wind and the screaming of the engines.
“Altitude warning!” Mokaihi shouted.
“How long?” she managed to ask.
“Two minutes, tops!” he replied. “Activate your shield, sir!” he ordered, using
the wrist control pad on his armor to bring his own shield on line.
Lhara followed suit, nervously touching the holokeys with her gauntleted
fingers, feeling clumsy as she did so, and all the while worrying she wouldn’t get
it right or that time would run out. It would have been a ridiculously easy task
under normal conditions, but these were far from ‘normal.’ The boat was pitching
and rolling and she had no idea of up or down, left or right, and her stomach was
churning and threatening violent insurrection. She had the horrifying fear that she
would vomit inside her helmet, which under any circumstances would be
disastrous, but all the more so in the present situation.
Mokaihi grabbed up her arm, brushing her other hand away with an impatient
swipe as he took over, his fingers moving with a steady efficiency through the
holokeys, bringing her shield to life. There was a moment of violent discharge as
their shields clashed, gone in the instant he released her arm.
“Thanks,” she managed, feeling a bit ashamed he’d deemed it necessary to
act, but nevertheless grateful he had.
“Less than a minute,” Mokaihi announced.
She wondered how he knew, then realized he must have keyed his com-link to
the pilots and the boat’s AI. She tried to use the eye pick-up in her helmet to do
the same, but in the chaos of the boat’s fall to earth she couldn’t accurately focus
on the HUD display. She could have used the wrist controls but she knew that was
hopeless. Likewise voice, since she was certain she couldn’t keep hers steady
enough for the suit’s AI to understand.
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So she sat and waited, heart beating harder than she could ever recall, her
breaths fast and furious as she drew closer and closer to panic. Only the presence
of the giant Marine sergeant beside her kept her from going over the edge.
“Geronimo!” someone shouted.
“Banzai!” yelled another, with what Lhara thought must surely be false
bravado.
There was a flash like lightning that lit the cabin interior, blinding her for a
few seconds; then she felt something like a thick ooze envelop her, submerging
her in a gel that swelled like an inflating balloon. She felt it all around her,
pushing from all directions, suffocating her in a soft cocoon that had the texture of
rubber. And now she did panic, gasping for breath, certain she was going to die as
a shockwave ripped through the boat, through the gel, and tore into her.
Distantly she had the sensation of flying end-over-end through the air,
bouncing again and again, wave after wave of force pummeling her. And all the
while there was this noise that was like the squealing of an animal in unbearable
pain, rising over top the roar of water falling from a great distance onto rocks.
This gave way to a horrendous banging and clattering and screeching that
resembled nothing so much as some sort of macabre, out-of-tune orchestra. Over
and over and over, resounding in her ears, in her bones, making her certain she’d
fallen into a nightmare darker than any that had ever haunted her in sleep.
She could do nothing; just let it happen. Let her body be punished. Let the
noise terrify her to the point of near senselessness.
Just let it happen, and hope it would soon be over.
And finally it did slow, the bouncing, crashing, careening trajectory across the
surface of the planet faltering and ending abruptly. The blows to her body, like a
thousand fists and hammers, ceased. And the awful sounds, which had seemed
like an echo of madness, portending death and decay, fell mute.
It all simply stopped.
And there was just silence.
Just absolute silence.
She listened, but she didn’t hear anything. Only a frightening quiet. An eerie
stillness.
Like death, she thought.
And she lay there, drifting in and out of consciousness, hanging upside down
in her seat, held in place by the rack safety harness and the impact gel. Or so she
thought. She wasn’t sure of anything. When she opened her eyes there was only
darkness and the faint glow of her HUD. But she couldn’t make out anything it
displayed. Everything was just too confusing. And she was in pain; and realized
there was blood in her mouth and more in her nose—blood that was on her face,
wet and uncomfortably warm. Blood on the inside of her helmet visor, smeared
there, she assumed, when her nose must have smashed against it. That was why
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the HUD looked wrong, why she couldn’t read it. The blood was refracting the
lasers.
The tightness around her seemed to relax, and the darkness slowly became a
dull gray. Some long buried memory in the back of her mind told her the impact
gel must be dissipating. In a matter of minutes it would evaporate, leaving just
puddles of green goo. They would be free to move around, if they could.
She heard a groan and at first thought it had come over the com-link, then
realized it had actually come from her. Now, through the fog of near
unconsciousness, she realized she was in pain. Broken ribs at least. Perhaps
worse. Internal injuries were a strong possibility.
You’ll be all right, she told herself. Just stay calm. The biobots will do their
job.
They would, if she weren’t too badly injured. Even for nanotech there were
limits, however.
She tried not to think of the possibilities, of the damage that might have been
done her. But it was a difficult task, given that every square centimeter of her
body seemed enveloped in pain. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to move. Her shoulders
ached like hell; and only when she tried to shift her body did she realize her arms
were dangling above her. Or below her, since she was hanging upside down in the
overturned remains of the boat.
Distantly, through the helmet’s exterior audio pickup, she could hear a
crackling sound, somewhat reminiscent of rustling paper. She fought the haziness
of her mind and tried to concentrate on the sound, some faint memory of it
tickling at the edge of recollection, triggering a sense of panic within her though
she couldn’t discern why.
What is it? she asked herself.
She struggled to move her arms, trying to pull them back up so she could grip
the edge of her seat. She had never realized how heavy the body armor was, and
suddenly had a new appreciation for the fitness level of Marines. The weight of
the fibersteel, which even earlier, when she’d first donned it, had seemed
overwhelmingly cumbersome and heavy, now made lifting her arms pure agony,
and she was aware of a half grunted scream escaping her as she strained to move
her limbs. Somehow, through sheer force of will, she managed to bring her arms
into better view so she could see the wrist-mounted control pad. With some
dismay she saw that the pad had been damaged. Possibly to the point of
uselessness. Nevertheless, she attempted to activate it. With a fumbling gesture of
her right hand she tried to initiate the holokeys and trigger the tiny display. But no
three-dee interface flickered into view. No holokeys. No display. Just a cracked
pad that uttered a few plaintive beeps when she jabbed pointlessly at the back-up
activation switch.
She sighed in defeat and tried to relax. Her shield was down, she had no com-
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link, and there was no telling what sort of injuries she’d sustained. And now the
crackling was louder—almost a thunder in her ears. And with the clarity of that
sound came instant recognition: fire!
Her breathing quickened as a panic seized her. She tried to look around, to see
something—anything!—that might indicate to her how serious a threat the fire
was. Towards the aft section of the boat she thought she could see a reddish-
orange glow that wavered and flickered like an animate object. That was almost
certainly the fire.
She tried to recall if there was anything especially flammable back there,
anything that might explode and kill anyone who’d survived this crash. There was
a cargo hold in that section, just forward of the main engines. The engines were
cold fusion impulsors, so they were no threat. But there had been ordnance in the
cargo hold and she had no idea of how dangerous any of that stuff could be when
subjected to high temperatures.
She had to get out.
She moved her arms again, gritting her teeth against the pain, suddenly very
conscious of the blood in her mouth as she did so. She wanted to spit it out but
couldn’t, so she swallowed it, practically gagging in the process. It was nearly
impossible to swallow upside down, and it was made the worse by the fierce pain
of her broken ribs.
Somehow she got one arm raised enough to give the quick-release of the
safety harness a hard thump with the heel of her hand. She fell, crashing down
hard on her left shoulder as she smashed into the debris-strewn remains of the
cabin’s ceiling. Despite the pain that made her just want to lie there in a heap, she
knew she couldn’t. She could still hear the fire, and it seemed as though it was
getting bigger and closer.
Grunting and groaning, her breaths coming in ragged gasps, she turned over
and pushed herself to her hands and knees. Once more she fumbled with the
control pad, but resolved that it was well and truly out of commission. Reluctantly
she gave up and switched her attentions to more immediate concerns. Groping in
the darkness that was broken only by the light of the fire, she activated her suit
lights. Now, as she turned her helmeted head, a great circle of white illumination
swept the view before her, revealing for the first time the true extent of the
disaster that had befallen them. There was wreckage everywhere, and amidst it
dozens of armored bodies, none of which seemed to be moving.
She wasn’t sure how she managed it, but she got to her feet and stood in the
midst of the ruined boat, turning slowly about, her light casting eerie shadows that
leapt across a landscape of broken machinery and lifeless bodies. Finally her light
shone on Mokaihi, or what was left of him. Where his head had once been there
was just a dark blot between the shoulders of his armor, blood still oozing and
dripping from it, propelled by gravity.
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Her stomach jumped, heaving violently. She clawed at her helmet in a panic
as she struggled with the release, trying to rip it off. Just in time she tore it from
her head and threw it aside, doubling over as burning bile and the remains of her
last meal spewed from her in a coughing, gagging fit. It hurt so much she dropped
to her hands and knees, tears streaming from her eyes as she wretched again and
again. She moaned with the pain, until finally all that came out of her mouth was
a thick, slimy drool. It streamed in a thin line and pooled on a ceiling panel
between her hands. She stared at it, not really seeing it, wanting to scream but not
having the energy to do so. More tears as she gasped and heaved, gasped and
heaved, puking nothing out until it felt like she would literally throw-up her
stomach.
It was several minutes before she was able to get herself under control. She sat
back on her heels, hands on her thighs, gripping the smooth armor tightly, her
knees planted against the plasteel paneling. She thought to put her helmet back on
but decided against it, frightened she might need to barf again.
Shakily, with more difficulty than the first time, she got back to her feet,
scooping up her helmet, now relying on the chest light in her armor to illuminate
her way. Cautiously she stepped through the field of debris, picking her way to
the closest body. She knelt and turned it over, checking the bio-readouts on the
chest pad.
Dead.
It was the same with the next one, and the next. There were several others
who had suffered a fate similar to Mokaihi’s, but half the contingent of Marines
was simply gone. Vanished, along with a sizable chunk of the boat’s starboard
side. Almost certainly demolished on impact and no doubt she’d find pieces of
that starboard quarter, along with more dead Marines, strewn back along the track
of the boat’s collision with the unyielding surface of the planet.
She came to the aft section of the boat and thought she could almost feel the
fire. Certainly she could now clearly see it through the ruptured bulkhead. There
was nothing she could do about it, however, so she turned about and clawed her
way back to the cockpit. Or what was left of it.
This time she didn’t vomit at the sight of the mangled remains of one of the
pilots, a butchered torso that hung upside down in a chair before the shattered
remains of a control panel. But it was close. She had to swallow quickly several
times and beat a hasty retreat, stumbling back into the cabin and sprawling
backwards as she tripped over the body of a dead Marine.
Panic was beginning to gain the upper hand, if it hadn’t already done so. Her
immediate impulse was to run, to put as much distance between herself and the
boat as possible. But through all that were her years of training, kicking in like
instinct, keeping some corner of her mind rational and thinking straight.
She closed her eyes and concentrated on what they’d taught her in the
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Academy, recalling the survival training on Mars, the lessons on how to operate
when stranded in enemy territory—which she had to assume was the present
circumstance until otherwise informed. In her armor there were the basics: a
simple medkit, since it was expected the biobots would serve as the first line of
defense in that quarter; a laspistol, which was not meant for any heavy fighting;
and core rations for a four day limit. It was not a quantity of gear intended to
sustain a soldier for weeks; just enough to maintain an individual until a rescue
extraction could be effected.
As loath as she was to do so, she searched among the Marines until she found
a laserifle. Along with that she took a few spare charges and extra rations and
meds. She would have liked to have liberated a com-link that worked, since hers
clearly didn’t, but they were too intimately connected with the armor. She had
neither the time nor the inclination to try removing armor from one of the dead
and extracting the necessary components of the com-link—if she could even have
managed such a feat, tech not being one of her specialties.
Having finished gathering her supplies, she scrambled clear of the wrecked
boat, working her way out through the shattered remains of the starboard side.
She struggled up a slope of sand, her legs feeling like lead, her boots like lumps of
cement she had to drag behind her. By the end of the ascent she was crawling, and
her breath was coming in painful, labored gasps, each inhalation like a knife
twisting in her chest and sides.
At length she reached the summit of the slope and collapsed, rolling onto her
back and weakly lifting her head to look back. She was somewhat amazed by how
far she’d come, but still more astonished by what she saw. The boat, or what
remained of it, had come to rest in a deep trough between two large dunes. The
stern was aflame, and much of what remained of the craft was scorched and
battered beyond recognition. All around it was a litter of debris, and amidst this
she could now see what she was sure were bodies. Trailing off into the distance
was more of the boat, bits and pieces of plaz and fibersteel and other odds and
ends, some of which fluttered and stirred in the errant night breeze. She thought
she could see the dark lumps of still more bodies, but it was difficult to be certain
in the dim perimeter of light that was cast by a fire that was doing its best to
consume the entire wreck.
She let her head fall back against the sand and closed her eyes, panting. Even
with her eyes shut she could sense the light of the flames. So it didn’t pass her
notice when abruptly they brightened, this flare-up followed by an explosion that
made her jump and set her to trembling. Sparks fell like rain nearby and she
scrambled to keep clear of them.
On the crest of the dune, with her meager haul of supplies beside her, Ensign
Lhara Jhordel sat under the brooding sky of Obsidian, her face bathed in the
yellow-orange glow of the fire, smeared with soot and blood, her thoughts adrift
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in despair. In that moment, as she surveyed the emptiness of the desert around her
and the tempestuous darkness of the sky above, she was very much aware of her
aloneness. She was on an alien world, with a busted com-link, and absolutely no
idea of what she should do next.
Stay put and wait for rescue, she remembered.
She shivered, feeling the chill of the night air against her face. It was difficult
to fight back the tears, and eventually she gave up and let them flow. Drops that
glinted in the fire like pieces of molten glass, mirroring the flames, so that it was
as though hard nuggets of petrified amber stood poised on the edges of her eyes.
They ran down bloodied, dirtied cheeks, kissing her bruised lips, caressing the
soft line of her chin. She sniffed and went to wipe at her nose with her hand, only
to find it encased in the heavy armored gauntlet. For a moment she stared at it
blankly, then slowly removed it and the other one.
It was a long time that she sat there, legs drawn up against her chest, chin
resting on her knees, her teary eyes fixed on the burning wreckage.
Someone will come, she told herself. They know we crashed and they’ll send
a rescue flitter or something.
Of course they would. They wouldn’t ignore the loss of a boatload of Marines.
All she had to do was remain calm and stay where she was and probably by
morning or sooner they’d come and rescue her. It was textbook.
Yet, despite these reassurances, she couldn’t evade the sense of loneliness that
overcame her. Nor could she ignore her fear. She was alone and scared and
suffering from shock. Shock and guilt, because she couldn’t fathom why she,
alone, had survived. Why not any of the others?
She was just an inexperienced ensign. Inkasar had been her first real mission
since coming out of the Academy less than a year ago. Her duties then had been
innocuous enough, and they’d certainly entailed nothing like this. Nothing that
had brought her so viciously face-to-face with the true nature of death.
Nothing like this.
She wasn’t even sure why she was here. The exec, Commander Montagne,
had assigned her to the Marines. “Because we lost several officers in the Marine
ranks on Inkasar,” the Commander had said, “and your file says you were a junior
reserve in the Prime on Tartarus. That makes you more suited than most of the
other junior officers. You’ve got some experience with ground troops. And at the
moment we can’t spare any of the senior officers from the ships. Not with the
current level of the corporate threat.”
She hadn’t protested, although in hindsight she thought she should have. The
time she’d spent in the Prime, the standing army of Tartarus, had been relatively
brief—though her family heritage and the fact she’d been created as the Tartarus
‘contribution’ to Fleet had meant she’d started young. Younger than anyone else,
in fact. But it had still been modest, and her experience as an officer of land forces
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had been limited to a few training exercises. There was no war on Tartarus.
Hadn’t been in her lifetime. Her time in the reserve of the Prime had merely
succeeded in convincing her she was better suited to serve on a ship, as her gene-
typing had determined.
But you don’t question an order from a superior. And she had reached the
conclusion that Commander Montagne wouldn’t have chosen her if the
commander hadn’t thought her up to the task. And, when she was honest with
herself, she had to admit to having felt some measure of pride that she’d been
among the few in the ranks of the ship’s officers who’d been selected for this
duty. There’d surely been a certain level of prestige in that. Definitely her
crewmates had been of that opinion, some openly envious of her, decrying the
fact she’d get to see frontline action and be in charge of Marines, no less.
Alone, watching the fire that consumed the remains of the boat and the bodies
of the dead Marines in and around it, she didn’t think there was anything now of
which to be envious. She would have given anything to have been back on the
Goliath, safe in her bunk in the tiny cabin she shared with Ensign Shinmaeri,
whining about the daily routine, joking about some fool thing someone had done,
or discussing the romantic attractions of certain senior male officers.
She sniffed, and blinked back tears, and told herself she had to be strong. She
was an officer. She had trained for this. She had battled against the discrimination
that had greeted her on Tartarus because of the gene-typing that had made her
unique among them, one of the only ones on the planet to be destined for life as a
spacer. She had fought hard to be accepted by her peers in the Academy, even
when many had looked down upon her because of her colonial heritage. And now
she was here. Alone.
They’ll come, she told herself.
It would be a long night; she hoped she would make it through to morning.
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CHAPTER FIFTEEN:
THE RAIN OF JOY AND SORROW
It was cold.
Who’d have thought a desert could be so damn cold, was her first thought as
she stood in her armor and watched her Marines at work. It brought to mind a
training mission on Mars, when she’d been in the Academy, still a year from
getting her commission. Utopia Planitia. In the northern winter. Flat and cold and
deadly. Despite the accelerated terraforming efforts, the planet had still been a
hostile place, where armor was a pressure suit and a broken seal could mean death
by decompression. She’d been constantly cold, then. Especially at night. But it
had also never really bothered her; she’d been young and ambitious and caught up
in a sense of mission.
It was different, now. In too many ways. She was older. Much older. And she
had seen a great deal in those decades of her service. Seen too much, perhaps.
A long breath soughed from her. She watched it dissipate in the chill air, a
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brief fog that lifted skyward. She stared at it, then saw beyond it, to the sky, at
night, starless and shrouded in black cloud, lit sporadically by the strobe-like flash
of lightning. The storm. Above them. About them. Sometimes distant, near the
edge of the horizon, the thunder coming late, like the muffled groan of cannon.
Sometimes overhead, the crash of sound right on the heels of a too brilliant burst
of electric illumination, brighter than the day at noon.
In her childhood, in the low Earth orbit station Isis, she had watched storms
from above, great masses of cloud that often swirled about a vortex, crossing from
the great blues of the seas onto the folded browns and greens of the continents.
She would watch them, fascinated by the flickers and flashes of light that
invariably wove a dance through them, and she would wonder what it was like to
be down there, beneath all that chaos, exposed to all that energy. In the
hermetically sealed world of Isis, where an occasional imbalance of humidity was
the full extent of any weather that might exist, it was difficult to relate to the vast
expanses and the variables of environment that were the norm on Earth. Yet that
weather on the world below had been the sort of thing that had fascinated her, and
had kept her glued to the viewports, intently studying the globe that slipped by
only a few hundred kilometers away, ever mindful that it was as alien to her as
any planet on the Fringes.
By the time she had reached her tenth year she’d made several spacewalks
beyond the safety of the station, but she had never set foot on the world that
loomed on her doorstep, just a short trip away, and which seemed, when she was
drifting in a suit at the end of a tether, to be a great, fathomless canvas into which
she could dive and lose herself completely. She could have taken one of the
elevators and been there in less than a day; or a shuttle and been to the surface in a
matter of minutes. But by the time she entered the Academy she still hadn’t
descended into that atmosphere, down to the wonders that existed beneath all that
weather. Indeed, because the Academy used Mars and the Moon so extensively in
training, she saw those two worlds long before she finally set foot on Earth.
But when she’d finally reached the mother world, at the age of sixteen, top of
the list of the things she’d wanted to see was a thunderstorm. And so on her very
first day she had taken a flitter from sunny Washington-East Metropolis and
crossed the Atlantic to Africa, where on the Serengeti she had stood in awe at the
vastness of the place, overwhelmed by it, never having experienced horizons that
seemed so far away. And there, in one of the few remaining protected enclaves on
the planet, she had marveled at the clouds, a dark host of cumulo-nimbus
marching forward across the landscape as the day advanced, cloaking the sky in a
shield of thickening gray, until all was in shadow, like night in the corridors of the
station.
The storm had unleashed its pent-up fury, a deluge of rain and a thrashing of
wind, with thunder booming loud in the wake of lightning. It had been both
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terrifying and exhilarating. And for the first time in her life she had stood outside,
beneath a sky, unshielded, letting the rain fall onto her in a heavy shower that
quickly soaked her from head to toe. Her guide had stared at her as though she
was insane, but she hadn’t been bothered in the least.
When she’d first left the station to set foot upon a real world, she’d been
intimidated by unbounded skies and distant horizons. Even sims hadn’t prepared
her for the actuality, hadn’t prepared her for the intense visceral nature of the
experience of being out in such an open space, beneath kilometers of atmosphere.
As real as technology could make such things, a sim was never quite one hundred
percent. But on that day, as she had stood smiling in the aftermath of the storm,
her wet cloths clinging to her, her hair damp strands matted to her scalp, and
beads of water rolling down her pale skin, she’d known no fear. Only unfettered,
boundless joy.
All of that had been so long ago. More than forty years had passed, and she’d
been to many worlds since that time, and stood beneath many different skies.
She’d seen countless different sunrises and sunsets, each a miracle of light and
color, each unique. She’d seen a myriad of different landscapes, marked by rivers
and trees, mountains and lakes, some so strange they seemed the makings of a
crazed mind. Yet always, even in their alienness, there’d been familiarity.
In forty odd years she’d seen many storms, and felt their winds and their rains.
She had watched lightning race through clouds, spearing the dark, joining heaven
and earth, even on worlds where the air was a choking death. Always there’d been
some reminder of that first time, of that bliss she had felt on the Serengeti. Like a
first love. A first kiss. An original moment that could never truly be surpassed.
But tonight it was different. Tonight she felt a hollow inside of her deeper
than the dark of the clouds: a cold bareness, like the vacuum of space, only
starless, and bereft of hope.
“Sir.”
Suzanne turned and looked at Sergeant Major Mackay. “Sergeant,” she said,
raising an eyebrow in query.
“Thought you might like this, sir,” he said, holding up a mug that steamed in
the chill air.
“Tea.” She smiled gratefully and took it, enfolding the hot mug in her gloved
hands and raising it to her lips to take a sip. “Thank you, Josh,” she said softly as
she stared out into the desert again.
“Mokaihi is one of the best, sir. If they got down he’ll make sure they get
through this.”
"I'm sure," she said absently.
“It’s only a matter of time, sir.”
“I don’t like the waiting.”
“No, sir. Nor I.”
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“We’d have heard if they'd made it.”
“There might be com-link problems,” said Mackay. “They’re not always
reliable in this sort of stuff.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. Their silence suggests one of two
things: that they’re all dead or they’ve been captured.”
Mackay shifted uncomfortably beside her, staring down at his heavy boots for
a moment, then looking up and out into the desert with her. “Does seem you may
be right, sir,” he said at length.
“I wish I weren’t.” She blew out a breath. “God, how I wish I weren’t.”
There was a flash of lightning, thunder rolling in its wake, across the dunes
and over the camp.
“Goddamn storm,” she cursed.
Just hours earlier she had watched the boats fall from the sky, like a rain of
leaves torn from a tree by the winds of autumn. Down and down they’d come, on
jets of plasma, descending through the clouds, steaming from the heat of entry,
long trails behind them. Dozens of them, filled with troops and machines and all
manner of weapons. A small army of elite Marines, the Fleet’s best, who
collectively probably had more fighting experience than any other force in the
Empire.
She had watched until the last of them had descended to the camp, the bright
glow of their impulsors and plasma thrusters stark against the storm clouds that
had gathered overhead. And even as that last boat had been landing, others had
been taking off, back up into that roiling maelstrom, risking the fury of nature.
But there’d been no getting around it; they’d had a mission to do and couldn’t
afford a moment’s hesitation, regardless of the dangers inherent in that errant
storm. A storm of which the shipboard Met officer had failed to apprise them.
That was why she couldn’t spare tears for those who might be lost: there was
no time. No time, even yet, to think about sending out a rescue unit. Not in this
storm. Not with the camp to be completed and defenses to be erected.
Later, perhaps, if the storm abated. If they could get help from the ships.
But for now she could only concern herself with getting the camp up and
running. It had to be readied quickly, so they’d be prepared for anything the
corporates might care to throw at them. For while she doubted either of the
megacorp armies would take action against them yet, she knew it never paid to be
anything but prudent. That was why on Inkasar her Marines had all carried arms
and shields the Assembly had forbidden them. That was why some of them had
been able to escape, when in truth they should all have perished on that cursed
planet.
And so the camp. Up and running with defenses set; then she’d think about
rescue.
She sipped her tea, drawing strength from its warmth, letting the hot liquid
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slide down into her gut as she peered through the curls of steam that drifted free
from the cup and rose before her eyes. She wished for hope, but it seemed lost in
the storm—both in the literal one now passing over them, and in the figurative
one that beset this world and the Empire in general, threatening to be the undoing
of the Federation.
It was cold; and she hated it.
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CHAPTER SIXTEEN:
THE LAUGHTER OF WOMEN
She heard the laughter of women.

It was so foreign. So alien. In nearly thirteen years of life she’d heard it only
on rare occasions; and even then it had never sounded so uninhibited.
Sometimes, in the circle of women, when they were alone and sure there were
no men to hear them, there’d be laughter. A nervous, self-conscious laughter.
She’d personally witnessed it a few times, and had even heard it from her mother
once. To a girl who’d known little pure joy in her life, laughter had been the
strangest of commodities. A precious thing, shared cautiously, privately, with the
awareness that it could come at a terrible price. Men engaged in it constantly and
freely as they talked among themselves. Boys too. But wives or daughters or
sisters in the company of men or boys dared never laugh or giggle. Even the very
youngest girls were disciplined for doing so. By men. With the cane. Or worse.
To the Elders it was quite simple: Women were not people. They weren’t to
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be recognized as anything other than property, to be used as a man saw fit.

Marriage wasn’t a contract of equal partners; it was the purchase of a product, as
one might assume the rights to a chicken or a cow. Accordingly, there was no
place for laughter in the lives of women. Animals didn’t laugh. Animals served
men, making their lives better. It was how God had made the world. Women were
for work, and for the pleasure of men, and to provide children to perpetuate the
community. If women could laugh, then it meant they were idle, their minds with
too much free time. Time to think. And to the Elders a woman who dared to have
thoughts was as dangerous as any evil the Daemon of Hell might conjure.
So on Obsidian women of all ages didn’t laugh in public and never in front of
the opposite sex.
Sylvie had grown up under that edict, holding fast to it except on those few
occasions when she’d been alone with friends, or with the women when they met
for quilting or baking or the arrangement of some community event. The one
instance when she’d publicly disobeyed it, in a place other than those secret
places, a swift retribution had been forthcoming from her father. A caning when
she was just six, before a crowd of people, as punishment for daring to laugh
openly at a boy who had purposely provoked her into laughing in the first place.
She couldn’t even remember why she’d laughed at him; but she recalled the
caning all too well. It had been the beginning of her realization that her father
didn’t love her in any true sense of the word. His commitment to her began and
ended with the simple fact of maintaining her until he could trade her for profit, in
much the way he looked after livestock until such time as they were ripe for
slaughter and the market.
She heard the laughter again, and this time it was unmistakably women’s
laughter, intermingling with that of men. She thought she must be dreaming, so
she opened her eyes and found herself staring into a dimly lit room that resembled
nothing so much as a large barn with dusty glass windows. There were containers
piled off to one side, and an old lifting unit that was presumably meant to move
them about. Near that, seated around a small container that served as an
impromptu table, were some men from the group that had brought her to this
place from her father’s farm. With them, however, were women.
She pushed herself into a sitting position and sat with her back to the wall,
watching them warily, having the notion that she was observing something of a
decidedly clandestine nature: Women talking to men and laughing with them in
such an open manner. She’d never seen anything like it. Not, at least, among her
own people. They reminded her of the woman who had confronted her father just
days earlier. But that woman had been an offworlder, which was as good as being
another species altogether.
A shadow crossed her and she looked up, recoiling slightly as her eyes met
those of the man who’d taken her from her father. Instinctively she looked away,
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casting her gaze to the floor, bowing her head submissively.
“You don’t have to do that,” he said in a gentle voice. “You don’t have to be
afraid.”
Sylvie said nothing and didn’t look up.
“You’re safe here,” he assured her, squatting down in front of her. He reached
out and lifted her chin with his hand; she kept her eyes averted.
“You’re a real charmer, Gabriel,” said a sarcastic voice from behind him. A
woman’s voice; and Sylvie was scandalized by the very idea that a woman of
Obsidian would have the audacity to talk to a man in such a brash manner.
“Let me try,” said one of the other women; and there was another shadow and
the sound of movement. “You’re among friends,” said this same voice, hands
taking hold of hers. Warm. Tender. A maternal touch, not unlike the one her
mother had often employed on those occasions when Sylvie had returned to the
house following a caning. Her mother would dare show sympathy then, because it
had only ever been the two of them. Her father seldom stayed around after a
beating. She had often tried to convince herself that it was because of a sense of
guilt on his part, but now she thought it more the act of a coward unwilling to face
his victim in the wake of his crime.
“My name is Claudia,” said the woman holding Sylvie’s hands. “I’m
Gabriel’s wife.” She glanced towards the man who had first approached Sylvie,
with an affection Sylvie couldn’t recall ever having seen her mother show for her
father.
Sylvie remained silent, but allowed herself to look more fully at the woman
named Claudia. She was young, but at least five or six years older than Sylvie,
and nothing like the traditional women of Obsidian. Indeed, dressed as she was,
Claudia would have courted a severe penalty from the Elders. Possibly even death
by stoning. Because Claudia was wearing pants and a shirt. Black pants and a
black shirt—which, judging by the fit of them, Sylvie suspected had been
Gabriel’s at one time. On Obsidian such dress was unthinkable for a woman. Only
the scarf over Claudia’s hair owed anything to tradition—although it, too, broke
from convention simply because wisps of blond tresses were visible beneath the
loosely knotted fabric.
“You must be hungry,” said Claudia; and Sylvie realized she was. She hadn’t
eaten in at least a day.
“You can answer,” said Gabriel.
Sylvie didn’t look at him, keeping her eyes fixed on Claudia.
“Brainwashed,” said the first woman she’d heard. There was a hardness to that
one’s voice which Sylvie found disturbing. It wasn’t cruel or brutal, but it did
suggest someone filled with a bitterness and resentment that was almost
fathomless.
“Not all of us have had the good fortune to have had understanding and
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compassion, Genevieve,” said Claudia, with what Sylvie detected to be a touch of

irritation. “She comes from a traditionalist’s home. I’d bet her father has beaten
her or worse for any transgressions she might have made.”
“I know that well enough myself,” said another of the women, in a gentle,
commiserating tone. This one, like all of the other women, was dressed in black
pants and shirt, a black scarf covering her head. “My father punished me plenty
before I was fortunate enough to get out. Lucky for me Carl is kind and
understanding,” she added, reaching out and taking hold of the hand of a tall,
broad-shouldered man. He in turn smiled almost shyly at her.
“We’re all well acquainted with your good fortune,” Genevieve remarked
snidely.
“As we are with your misfortune,” the last of the four women present said.
“I think we should all consider ourselves fortunate,” Claudia interjected, with
a commanding tone so uncharacteristic of Obsidian women that Sylvie was rather
thrilled to hear it. “We could all be stuck with men who treated us as nothing
better than livestock.”
“I was,” said Genevieve. “I’m just lucky the offworlders came at the same
time I decided I‘d had enough of being someone’s punching bag. But we all know
what’ll happen to me if Sean ever finds me.” She looked around at the others
sharply, challenging them to rebut her words. None did; and there was a prickly
silence between them all, as though they shared some uncomfortable, dark secret
none of them cared to confront.
“We’ve fooled the Elders thus far,” said Gabriel at length, “and there’s no
reason to think we can’t continue to do so.”
“You’ve fooled them,” Genevieve said pointedly. “You, who are a man. But
you know damn well that if any of us women were to go outside during the day
unescorted by one of you we’d be arrested for blasphemy and sedition. If one of
the Morality squads didn’t stone us to death first.”
“We’re all taking our fair share of the risk,” said Claudia. “You know damn
well the men would suffer if any of this was discovered.”
“Men have never had to endure what we’ve had to face!”
“That’ll change,” Gabriel promised. “Now the offworlders have come.”
“And what if the offworlders come and go and we’re left as we were before?”
Genevieve demanded. “How long do you think we can hide what we’ve been
doing from the Elders?”
“Our world will be changed,” Gabriel insisted.
“How can you be so sure? Because you wish it so? Because you believe it?”
“That’s a start,” he argued. “We’re not alone in our belief that the ways must
change.”
“Really?” Genevieve made a show of looking around the building. “Where are
the others, Gabriel? Where are all these people you’re talking about? The one’s
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who think women might actually be more than animals. Where’s the army you
promised us?”
Gabriel rose slowly and faced Genevieve. “There are other cells in the
movement, as I’ve told you many times,” he said, stiffly. “It’s safer, though, that
we not all gather together, nor that we know each other. We have to overcome
decades of fear and indoctrination, so the less risk the better. But when our
numbers warrant, we’ll rise in rebellion and end the tyranny of the Elders.”
“And meanwhile we recruit children to the cause by means of deception?”
Genevieve shook her head in disgust. “Look at this one,” she said. She thrust a
hand at Sylvie in a brusque, dismissive manner. “What kind of a soldier do you
think this one will be for your great army of liberation, Gabriel? She’s too timid to
even speak. How do you think she could ever be part of a rebellion?’
“She has lived as we once did,” said Claudia.
"And that’s enough?" Genevieve sneered. “There are tens of thousands of
other women on this planet who have lived as we have, yet none of them would
dare to challenge the authority of the Elders or of their fathers and husbands and
brothers and sons. They’ve been beaten and raped and tortured and oppressed, yet
ask most of them to fight to free themselves and they’ll look at you as though
you’re mad.”
“She’s right,” said Mara, with evident reluctance. “I’ve tried to persuade my
sisters to join us, but both are so hidebound by tradition and by the fears that
govern their daily lives that they can’t even imagine breaking free of that. They
tell me I’m a fool, that I blaspheme God. They would live as they do, accepting it
as their lot in life, rather than risk a leap into the unknown.”
“They’ve not had the benefit of teaching,” said Claudia.
“But they never will,” Mara countered. “Not while they’re enslaved to the
men who were chosen for them.”
“I had the courage to leave,” Genevieve said boldly.
No one offered an argument to that; and Sylvie sensed there were many things
left unsaid here. Resentments, perhaps. And more. An uneasiness among them all.
Fear—which she supposed would be understandable, given that what they were
doing bore unimaginable risks. Even to simply be here in this place together and
talking to one another warranted a death sentence from the Elders.
And now I’m a part of it, she thought, whether I like it or not. But strangely,
she had no regrets that they’d brought her involuntarily into their fold. Even the
prospect of punishment and possible death did not dampen her spirit—although
she wouldn’t pretend it didn’t scare her. Still, she now felt the same excitement
and sense of deliverance she had felt when she’d seen the offworlder woman talk
so audaciously to her father. Suddenly she knew there was something better to be
had, that her life didn’t have to constitute the preordained existence her father and
the Elder’s had laid out for her. Suddenly she had the notion her world could
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change, and that she could have things she’d only once ever dreamed of having.
The things men enjoyed and took for granted. Happiness. Laughter. Choice. But
most of all, a sense of freedom.
For the first time she dared look at Gabriel and met his gaze squarely with her
own. She practiced a smile, which he returned. It was like an epiphany; and
suddenly she knew her world had already been irrevocably altered. Her life would
never be the same, even if the offworlders did leave and the Elders remained in
control. She had seen possibilities, and the potential for a world far different from
the one she’d known until now. She would never be content to go back to the way
her life had been just a day before.
“Breakfast?” asked Gabriel; and she had the notion that perhaps he sensed her
revelation.
She peered cautiously at them all, meeting each face with a silent, measured
scrutiny, her look cautious but curious. Only Genevieve didn’t smile back at her,
and Sylvie suspected that had less to do with her personally and more to do with
the issues of a woman who’d lived a terrible, painful life and now resented the
whole world because of it.
Just a day before this Sylvie had been terrified to find herself being sent away
with strangers. Now she looked at them and the welcome they expressed in the
openness of their expressions and she felt as though she had become a part of a
new family. Perhaps a family more real than the one from which she’d come.
Because even though they hardly knew her, these people genuinely seemed to
care about her. They worried about things beyond themselves; and they’d the
courage to try and change a world for the better. It was indeed courageous,
because if they were caught the punishment would be beyond all imagining.
But I would rather die that way, knowing that at least I’d tried to fight for
something I believed in, she told herself. Better that than to submit and become a
child bride and a mother to a child of her own before she’d really had a chance to
live.
“Breakfast,” she said, hesitantly, not believing she was being so bold as to talk
back to a man and take hold of the hand he offered. “I’d like that very much.”
And she rose and followed them, feeling that with each step she took she was
distancing herself farther and farther from the oppression of her past. If she went
far enough, she believed she could outrun it altogether.
Anything seemed possible now.
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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN:
NOVARRO
Her great great grandfather had been proudly Argentinean, in the last days of
the ‘nations’ period, when the light had dimmed on the great geopolitical
divisions of Earth and essentially consigned them to the dustbin of history. But
even as the concept of the nation state had faded into the past, the family had
continued the tradition of Argentine citizenship. And so, while she had been born
in Dante, the foremost city-state of Venus, her parents had chosen to have her
registered as a citizen of the Argentine enclave in the Community.
Growing up it had never particularly bothered her, even though others in
Dante had sometimes questioned her capacity to be loyal to the city if her
citizenship was to a quaint memory of history that was keep alive in the Virtuality
on a world millions of kilometers away. It never bothered her because she had
known, since the day she’d been able to understand such things, that she would be
a spacer, and that when she reached her fourteenth Earth Standard year she would
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leave the pressure-cooker inferno of Venus behind and begin the pursuit of her
destiny.
And left it she had. Forever. And she had never gone back once in all that
time. It seemed right that things should be that way, when she had determined that
her future was to be amidst the stars. She had spent her first fourteen years in
Dante. Fourteen years that had been a suffocating hell, trapped beneath a giant
dome, itself submerged beneath an oppressive, crushing atmosphere that forever
obscured the stars. As a child, knowing her destiny to be what it was, that had
been particularly frustrating.
The day she had stepped into the shuttle to leave for the Academy she’d shed
tears, which her friends and family had mistaken for sorrow. But she’d been far
from sad to leave; indeed, her tears had been tears of joy, knowing that she was
finally going to break away and fulfill the destiny her parents had chosen for her.
When the shuttle had lifted up through the clouds and finally escaped their
uppermost reaches, revealing to her for the very first time in her life the heavens
in all their starry glory, she had felt a joy beyond all measure. She’d known then
that nothing would ever stop her from achieving what she wanted to achieve.
And so it went...
Christiana Novarro was a hundred now, and she’d come as far as she could
ever have imagined herself coming. From her days as a first year cadet in the
Academy, through the long tours of duty on the ships and the many battles fought,
she’d eventually found herself in charge of it all. Admiral of the Fleet. One of the
most powerful people in the Earth Empire. Some would say the most powerful.
And yet I can’t get a decent cup of tea, she thought, setting the fine bone china
cup down on the glass smooth surface of her ebony desk. She wrinkled her nose
and carefully pushed the cup and saucer aside.
“So,” she said, looking across at her guest. “What can I do for you, Madame
Secretary?”
Opposite her Danielle Grenier put her own cup down and settled herself back
in her seat. “I was in the neighborhood,” she said, smiling cryptically. “I thought I
might drop in and see how things were going on Obsidian.”
“The Assembly offices are on the other side of Isis,” Novarro observed dryly.
“And we’ve been sending the Assembly and your offices constant updates on the
situation regarding Obsidian.”
“Of course,” said Danielle. “But I was visiting my good friend Admiral
Jackson over in Naval Intelligence, getting some details from him. I’m sure there
are things that don’t always get put in the reports.”
Novarro regarded her coolly, not having missed the pointed allusion to
Jackson, with whom her relationship might best be described as ‘troubled.’
Jackson was well known within Admiralty to have ambitions beyond being head
of Naval Intelligence; she knew he coveted no less than her job. She thought he
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mightn’t be so eager to have it if he knew the headaches that went along with it. “I
assure you,” she said to Danielle, “that Admiralty is not in the habit of keeping
secret those things that are in the general interest of the public.”
“I would not presume to suggest otherwise, admiral. However, I think both
you and I are well aware there are some things that are often better left unsaid.”
Novarro didn’t even flinch. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“Ah, well...” Novarro leaned back and folded her hands in her lap, elbows
anchored on the arms of her chair. She favored Danielle with a catlike grin.
“You’re concerned about Captain Carter’s capacity to fulfill his mission
mandate,” she said evenly.
“There is Inkasar to consider.”
“I would suggest you’re being disingenuous in ascribing blame for that
particular debacle to Captain Carter.”
“He was the senior representative of the Federation.”
“Not by choice, Madame Secretary. It was you and the Assembly who decided
to assign diplomatic duties to a military man. As an officer myself, I can assure
you the last thing Captain Carter probably wanted was to be involved in
negotiating a treaty between two warring factions whose unmitigated hostility
toward one another had thwarted all previous attempts to establish peace. We are,
after all, merely spacers. We were neither born nor trained for diplomacy. That’s
your bailiwick.”
“The Assembly thought a fresh perspective was needed,” Danielle said,
although this was of course a total fabrication and Novarro knew it. “It was
believed that since so many diplomats had failed to achieve results of any kind, it
might be worth considering the possibility that a military negotiator could
reconcile two parties that had been at war with one another for so long.”
“Set a thief to catch a thief,” Novarro mused.
“In the crudest terms, yes. A military mind would better understand the
mentality of people for whom war had become an endemic feature of their
cultural landscape.”
“But then you proceeded to hamstring Carter with ludicrous and pointless
restrictions that made it almost impossible for him to do his job in the best way he
possibly could. And for the mission on Inkasar to have worked, Madame
Secretary, he needed to be able to do things he knew how to do best. You wanted
a military man but you didn’t want a soldier.”
"There's a difference?"
Novarro only smiled.
“We wanted someone who could understand the sensitive nuances of a unique
political situation,” said Danielle.
“What you wanted was a scapegoat,” Novarro said bluntly, observing Danielle
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through narrowed eyes. “And what the Assembly wanted I can’t begin to imagine,
though I suspect it has much to do with the fact that there are far too many
members in the pockets of the corporates.”
“You assume too much, admiral,” Danielle rebuked, visibly bristling at the
accusation.
“No, I think not,” said the admiral, pleased she’d clearly hit a sore spot. “We
in Fleet have long recognized there is a certain degree of enmity towards us
among those who sit in the Assembly."
"Would that include me?"
Again the cryptic smile. "Only you would know that for certain, Madame
Secretary."
“I’ve nothing but the greatest respect and admiration for the men and women
who serve to protect the interests of the Federation, admiral,” Danielle said.
“And yet at every opportunity the legislative body of the USF has attempted
to emasculate Fleet. If it hasn’t been in the budget it’s been in legislation that has
compromised our ability to function in a military capacity to the best of our
abilities. You can’t fight a war, Madame Secretary, when you’re told you can’t
shoot back.”
“You exaggerate.”
“There are ten thousand dead Marines on Kesselus who would beg to differ,”
Novarro said menacingly. “You and your Assembly sent them to a planet and told
them to hold it in the name of the Federation. But when the corporates launched a
proxy war to gain control of Kesselus, the Assembly refused to withdraw the
Marines and at the same time prohibited Fleet from giving them the assistance
they required. 'Mustn’t upset the Goddamn corporates,' you said. ‘We can’t afford
to antagonize the megacorps and start a full-blown war,’ was how it was put I
believe.”
“You’re talking about an incident that occurred more than two decades ago;
it’s no longer relevant.”
Novarro clenched her jaw and leaned forward, eyes ablaze with hostility, an
undercurrent of rage clouding her face. “Not ‘relevant’!” she hissed. “It could
never have been more relevant. I’ll not see the graves of more Marines on
Obsidian, Madame Secretary. Whatever the political intentions of yourself and the
Assembly—if they’re even one and the same—I can promise you I’ll not make
the same mistakes I’ve made in the past.”
“Need I remind you, admiral, that Fleet serves the Federation?”
“The Federation, yes, ma’am. But not the whims of yourself or the petty
political ambitions of the Assembly. We’re the guardians of the people, Madame
Secretary, and we take that responsibility very seriously.”
Danielle's eyes burned with indignation. “The Assembly and the office of the
Secretary General are the duly elected representatives of the people, admiral," she
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said. "Fleet functions under the auspices of the Assembly. Consequently, the
authority of the Secretary General supercedes that of the Admiral of the Fleet.”
“I’m well aware of the constitution,” Novarro growled. “But your authority is
limited to the general allocation of Fleet resources, not the specifics. You may
mandate a mission, but it’s not within your authority or that of the Assembly’s to
dictate the manner in which that mission is to be carried out. And believe me, if
Inkasar had been mandated a military mission it wouldn’t have been the debacle it
was. We in Fleet know how to accomplish what we set out to do. We don’t leave
jobs unfinished.”
Danielle sat silent for a moment, observing Novarro with cold disdain. Finally
she said, “Let us be clear on one thing, admiral: When it comes to the disposition
of Obsidian and its people, rest assured it’ll be I and the Assembly who make that
determination.”
Novarro showed no reaction, her face as cold and hard as granite. “Pray then
that your ‘determination’ doesn’t differ from the military objectives of Fleet. If
there’s war, Madame Secretary, there’ll be war, and we’ll fight it as we see fit.”
Danielle surged to her feet and stood glaring down at Novarro. “If there’s war,
admiral, pray that you win it. Because if you don’t, the issue of who has the
greater authority in the Federation will have been rendered moot...and we’ll all be
looking for jobs while the corporates run riot throughout the Empire.” And with
that she turned haughtily about and stormed from the office.
Novarro sat staring after her, wondering exactly what had just happened here.
A test of wills, perhaps? Or had Grenier come here for another reason?
The admiral swung her chair about and faced the large viewport that
dominated the outer bulkhead of her office. Beyond it she could see Earth,
shrouded in darkness now that the station’s orbit had swung it far past the
terminator. Through the breaks in the clouds she saw the great yellow-white glow
of the cities, which from above, in the darkness, resembled nothing so much as
chains of glowing embers strewn across scorched earth in the aftermath of a forest
fire, or cracks in cooled lava through which shone a molten underbelly. So
extensive was the network of illumination that one could make out the shapes of
coastlines and the borders of rivers and lakes.
We’ve always been a seafaring species, she thought—if one considered
‘seafaring’ in the broadest sense of the word. Humanity built on distant shores so
that it could sail out again to seek and explore new territories and make anew the
human gestalt. But always, in these journeys, there was the sense of safe harbors,
of places to which humanity could return if those far shores turned hostile. Most
of all, there was always Earth, the mother world, the wellspring of all that was
humanity, the sacred fountainhead of human existence.
Not quite nine decades ago she had arrived here and seen this world firsthand
for the first time in her life. She had been overwhelmed by what she’d seen; and
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from orbit she had believed in this place as the moral center of all humankind. For
the longest time she’d persisted in that belief. But things had changed with
Kesselus. That had been the catalyst for her growing conviction that Fleet could
no longer be totally subservient to the whims of the Assembly—an Assembly
dominated by Earth-centered politics and the aspirations of Terran politicians.
She steepled her fingers, crooked her thumbs under her chin, the tip of her
nose against her forefingers in a pose of concentration, her eyes fixed on the view
beyond the station. As she watched, lost in thought, one of the elevators hove into
view, its lower waystation shining in the thin reflection of moonlight. The cable to
which it was affixed was like a shiny silver filament of spider’s web descending
into the atmosphere in one direction and shooting out into space in the other.
Somewhere, at that other end, thousands of kilometers from Earth, was the
anchor, a small asteroid that had been carefully steered into place over the course
of decades, orbiting in perfect balance so that the Earth end of the cable was not
actually affixed to the surface. The other elevators were much the same, all
girding the earth at points on or close to the equator. The station and the elevators
played a delicate ballet, the cables resonating to the passage of the station, the
station orbit fluctuating as it revolved about the Earth, all precisely designed so
that neither had the misfortune of colliding with the other.
There’d been an incident, once, when the Ecuadorian cable had been broken
and portions of it had been flung off into space while other sections had fallen to
the surface of the planet, causing something of a political firestorm and an
ecological disaster. For a long time after that people had been wary of the
elevators, some even calling for their removal. Trust had had to be re-earned, but
in time it had been.
People adapt, Novarro told herself. With time they overcome their fears and
their anger and the emotions that sometimes lead to rash, unreasoned conclusions.
And when the dust has settled they go back to being what they were, or they
change and learn to live with that change and become something else. Those who
don’t adapt simply perish. It was a crude distillation of Darwin’s much vaunted
‘survival of the fittest.’
Obsidian, she feared, would be like that cable that had come crashing down
onto Earth. She just wondered how well the Earth Empire would adjust in the
wake of that particular catastrophe.
I need to get a message to John, she thought. He was one of the few in the
upper echelons of Fleet she knew she could always trust implicitly. And because
of that they’d developed, over the years of their relationship, a personal code that
was discreet and innocuous, and beyond the capacity of any but those who knew
them intimately to decipher. It was something she was certain Jackson and his lot
hadn’t been able to figure out. Which was just as well, for it was inevitable that
anything she sent to Carter’s fleet these days was going to be intercepted and
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quickly routed to Jackson’s people in Naval Intelligence. She felt a burning sense
of betrayal when she deliberated this, outraged that she couldn’t even trust her
own people. Not, at least, those connected to Jackson—and his circle of disciples
was constantly growing.
Anything sent would have to be carefully buried, and of such a nature that
only Carter would understand it. A message transmitted on its own might not even
get to him, if she knew Jackson and his people.
She swiveled about and smiled as her eye caught the file chip lying in front of
her on the desktop. It would be the perfect cover: the Prospero would be heading
out to Obsidian within the next few days; it was just awaiting the loading of its
special cargo at the Vesta research facility. She had planned to send details of that
to Carter anyway, so if Jackson’s people got a hold of the information on the chip
there would seem nothing untoward about it.
She set to work on her message, working with industry, a growing sense of
urgency seizing her. It was as she was finishing up that she determined she would
take the chip out to Vesta herself and hand-deliver it to the captain of the
Prospero. At the very least she’d know it had got that far without falling into
Jackson’s hands.
“Commander,” she said, summoning her aide into her office.
“Sir?” The man bustled in and saluted with a snappy flourish.
“Arrange for an interplanetary to take me out to Vesta.”
“Vesta, sir?” He gaped at her.
The expression on his face was enough to make her laugh, but she bit back the
urge to do so. “Don’t look so shocked, Commander,” she growled playfully. “I’ve
been known to occasionally venture beyond the four walls of my office.” Which
was true, but only by a matter of degrees. In the past few years she’d never gone
much farther than Earth, spending most of her time in Admiralty headquarters,
trapped by the concern that if she left Isis for too long her enemies might conspire
to take advantage of her absence.
Ironically, the risk of leaving was greater now, if anything; but she wanted to
personally see the cargo the Prospero was going to be carrying. She wanted to
talk to the men and women who had created the device. But more importantly, she
wanted to make a firsthand assessment of Lieutenant-Commander Hitomi
Masaguchi, the captain of the Prospero.
“Vesta, Commander,” she reminded him.
Her aide started, abruptly alert to her. “Yessir!” he said quickly, flashing an
apologetic grin. “Right away, admiral.” And he scurried off to make the necessary
arrangements.
Novarro watched him go, thinking to herself that she had become too
predictable if this simple act of spontaneity on her part could rattle even her own
aide. Too damn predictable. And that was dangerous; she didn’t want her enemies
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feeling they knew her so well they didn’t have to be on their guard.
She thought perhaps she should consider being a little more impulsive.
Smiling grimly, she pocketed the file chip, then set off for her quarters to
prepare for the flight.
Vesta awaited, and beyond that she wasn’t sure. They all had to survive
Obsidian first.
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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:
ASSAULT
I’m dreaming, she thought.

Voices drifted through the fog of her sleep. Gruff and deeply masculine,
speaking Standard in an accent so thick she could scarcely understand them.
“What is it?” Fretfully.
“What is it? Are you daft, man? It’s one of them who’s come to ruin our
world. The offworlders, fool. Blasphemers, all!” A simmering impatience and
barely contained rage.
“Looks more like some sort of machine. Like one of them robot things.”
Puzzlement.
“By the Daemon’s breath, man, have you no eyes? That’s one of them in
armor, for pity’s sake!”
“Is it dead?” A hint of fear.
“Well now, why don’t you just give it a poke there and see?”
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Silence; and she felt a prodding in her side and heard the muffled thud of
something against her body armor. She stirred, drawing a breath, trying to claw
herself from the depths of exhaustion and pain, through the disorientation that
seemed wrapped around her in a too-tight blanket of confusion. And some part of
her mind thought her to be on the Goliath, in her bunk, being roused from sleep
by her roomy, Ensign Shinmaeri. Go away, Shri, she thought. Leave me alone.
Can’t you see I’m exhausted?
It was always the same. Even after her years in the Academy she could never
quite get used to the different hours ships and the Navy worked on. So different
from the thirty-six hours Standard that was a day on Tartarus. Her first weeks in
the Academy had been absolute misery, and she’d invariably been late for classes
in the morning. “Late again, Cadet Jhordel,” her instructors would assail her with
in greeting, clucking disapproval, but always with an understanding—if
somewhat condescending—smile.
Her body had been accustomed to a minimum of twelve hours sleep a day.
She had tried hard to train herself to work in the Earth Standard of twenty-four
hour days before leaving Tartarus to embark on her Navy career, but she hadn’t
been very successful. Even after four years in the Academy, it had always been a
chore to get up in the morning. But in Fleet they weren’t as accommodating as
they were in school. They couldn’t be. There was no room for that sort of thing in
a fighting ship, for tolerating wayward crewmembers who couldn’t adapt. If you
didn’t fit in you were out, and they’d ship you to some place where your inability
to perform wouldn’t be a threat to your colleagues. Or they’d boot you out
altogether.
She’d always dreaded that, had always been afraid they’d drum her out of
Fleet, all because her body kept screaming for a different daily cycle. And though
it had got better—partly because she’d had her biobots tuned to alter her
physiology so that it functioned more tolerably in the twenty-four hour day—it
was never perfect. Almost every watch was like rising from death, and it usually
took her at least an hour and plenty of coffee to get up a full head of steam. Of
course, the flip side of the coin was that she had better endurance than most of her
shipmates, able to do two shifts back to back without suffering the fatigue that
plagued those who’d been raised in the twenty-four cycle.
But today isn’t a good day, she was thinking as something poked her painfully
hard in the ribs and a voice said too loudly, “Wake up, you!”
“Go away, Shri,” she muttered.
There was a sharp blow to the side of her head and she gasped with pain, a
surge of adrenaline blasting away the cobwebs of sleep. Her eyes opened, and she
lay blinking, trying to focus as her mind sifted through the fragments of
information that began to ascend from her memory. Fear seized her as she
abruptly recalled she wasn’t on the ship anymore. She wasn't anywhere near her
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cabin; and it wasn’t the start of the dog watch to which she was generally
assigned.
It all came back in a rush as she looked up through bleary eyes at two men
silhouetted by firelight. Shadows against the fire from the boat. The boat she’d
crashed in...last night? Maybe not even that long ago. Maybe just hours. Or even
minutes. How long had she been unconscious? How long had she been lying out
here, under this leaden sky? She could vaguely recall struggling out of the wreck,
up this dune. Vaguely recalled crying, then trying to come to grips with her
predicament. Finally she had tried to sleep; but sleep hadn’t been forthcoming.
Yet clearly exhaustion had won out at some point.
“Who are you?” one of the men demanded.
She looked at him blankly.
“By the Daemon’s breath, offworlder, answer me or I’ll blow your head off!”
She swallowed, staring into the barrel of some sort of weapon she had
suspicions was projectile based. Primitive, but effective at this close range.
Particularly since she’d no functioning shield.
“Ensign Lhara Jhordel, United Space Federation,” she said, trying desperately
to tailor her voice so as to sound more calm and self-assured than she felt.
“By the Daemon’s cock! A woman!” the querulous one exclaimed, making it
sound as though it were some unthinkable revelation.
“The heathen way,” said the other man, with undisguised disdain. “They let
their women run wild. They don’t know God’s way. Don’t know that a man must
control the woman.” He announced all this as though he were stating an
observable fact of nature.
“What are we going to do with her, Sean?” asked the querulous one, staring at
her doubtfully, with a look that reminded Lhara of a nocturnal animal caught in
the beam of a light. Stunned terror, her father had called it.
The other man, Sean, who was taller and heavier than his companion, shook
his head and said, “Don’t really want to have much to do with an offworlder. That
way is certain to lead to trouble.”
“Perhaps we should take her to the Elders.”
“The Elders?” The bigger man scorned the notion. “They’re blasphemers!” he
cried. “They’ve brought the offworlders here. Invited them, they did. Least ways,
these Federation types.” And he gestured towards Lhara with the tip of his gun.
“Best we shoot her and be done with it. Nobody’s going to know one way or the
other.”
“But she’s a woman,” the other protested. “Might make a wife.”
“Are you crazy, Jonus? She’s an offworlder.”
The one called Jonus shrugged. “She’s still a woman, ain’t she?” he said. “She
can be broke. They all can be broke.”
Sean stroked his chin thoughtfully. “You might have something there,” he
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agreed. “With the shortage of women there’s not much chance for the likes of you
and me.”
“Specially not since your wife done gone run out on you,” Jonus gibed,
snickering.
Sean cuffed him with the back of his hand. “Don’t you be talking about my
wife, you hear?” he growled. “I’ll find that witch Genevieve, you can be sure of
that. And when I do she’ll wish she’d never been born.”
Jonus cowered slightly, drawing back from the other man. “So you thinking to
take this one to replace her?”
“I just might.” Sean drew himself up. “The Elders look after their own and
give all the good women to their cronies. No reason why I can’t have this one for
myself. She looks sturdy enough, though one can’t be sure with all that mess of
machinery she’s got on. Still, she might make good bedding.”
“Good bedding!” the smaller man said with glee, looking to Lhara
lasciviously. “I haven’t bedded one since my wife done gone died.”
“Well, I might just let you have a poke or two,” Sean said; and he turned to
Lhara and jabbed his gun at her, gesturing violently. “Get up,” he barked.
Slowly, painfully, Lhara pushed herself to her feet, until she stood before
them, aching and unsteady, two guns pointed at her chest. She surveyed the men
warily, sizing them up, trying to assess her chances of taking them. She hadn’t
understood everything they’d said in their thickly accented Standard, but she’d
got the gist of it; and she was damned if she was going to let any man rape her
without a fight.
“There’ll be people coming to find me—”
Whack!
She reeled in agony and fell heavily backwards into the sand, a blinding pain
lancing through the side of her face.
“No woman ever talks to a man unless he gives her permission, you hear,
whore?” Sean stood over her, a mass of flesh, holding his gun poised with the butt
angled towards her, ready to strike again. “You got to learn your place, woman.
That's your first lesson.”
She put a hand to her face, wincing at the pain, feeling the flesh already
beginning to swell. When she looked at the tips of her fingers she saw the dark,
oily stain of blood. It was hard to concentrate through the throbbing ache that
covered the left side of her face, but she was surprised to find the emotion running
strongest through her now wasn’t fear, as she might have anticipated, but a
burning, explosive fury. The blow and his words inflamed her; she hadn’t been
called a ‘whore’ since her first year in the Academy. Back then a boy in her class
had made the mistake of calling her just that when she’d refused his sexual
overtures. When he had tried to force himself upon her she had defended herself,
using the training she’d received on Tartarus during her brief service in the Prime.
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She’d been the far superior fighter that day, aided by the fact that Tartarus had
about one hundred and ten percent Earth gee, giving her a bone and muscle
density that belied her slight frame. Her assailant had ended up in the infirmary
and had later been expelled.
“Get up!” Sean shouted at her; and when she didn’t move fast enough for him
he grabbed Lhara by the arm and hauled her erect.
There was no time to think. No time to consider the possibility she might get
herself killed. As the man dragged her up, pulling her close to him until she could
smell him and feel his fetid breath, she reacted instinctively, driving a fist up and
into his solar plexus, smashing the air from his lungs. And even before she’d
finished this she was turning, raising her left leg and snapping it out straight, so
the heavy boot rammed hard into the side of Jonus’ head. The slighter man folded
like a wet blanket, sprawling haplessly on the sand, his gun slipping from his
fingers.
Lhara swung around and used a sweeping motion of her right foot to disarm
Sean, his long gun spinning from his hands and falling far down the slope of the
dune. She struck at him again, a chop to the side of his neck, but her timing was
off and he managed to evade the worst of it.
“So, you’ve fight in you,” he snarled, backing away from her and assuming a
defensive crouch. “Well, I’ll teach you what we do to women who don’t know
their rightful place.” He lunged at her, head down, arms wide.
Lhara moved to dodge him, side-stepping in the sand, the slope giving out
under her feet so that she was thrown off balance. He caught her on the side, a
glancing blow that spun her around. Then he was on her, throwing her down to
the ground, trying to pin her. But she had an arm free and scooped up a handful of
sand that she flung into his face. He howled and jerked away, reaching for his
eyes, allowing her to kick him in the gut and roll away. She was on her feet at
once, blinking, fighting back the pain that seemed to resonate throughout her
body.
“Bitch!” Sean screamed in fury, spittle flying from his mouth. This time he
leapt at her, flying through the air.
Lhara planted her feet, set her body, and drove a fist into his face with enough
force that she knew she’d broken his nose. His howls of pain confirmed it. But
she didn’t stop, didn’t allow him the chance to catch his breath or gather his wits
and his strength. She kicked him in the ribs with as much vigor as she could
muster. Once. Twice. The impact flung him over. She leapt up, coming down
hard, a knee to his chest. Then she straddled him, pinning his arms with her knees,
raising her arms to deliver a final blow.
The bullet hit her just below the ribs, penetrating the armor at a weakened
seam, passing into her body and burying itself there. Lhara froze, stunned, her
brain not yet registering the pain but already beginning to shut down, trying to
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protect itself from damage. As she felt a cloud of darkness begin to descend upon
her she turned and saw the man called Jonus standing about ten meters away, one
side of his face bloodied, his gun held in his hands, raised and pointed at her. She
could see a thin curl of smoke coiling up out of the end of the barrel.
Then she saw nothing as unconsciousness enfolded her and she fell over
sideways, half across the body of the man she’d been about to kill. Somewhere,
distantly, she heard a voice, but she didn’t understand the words. Before the sweet
bliss of nothingness carried her away she recalled the mantra taught her long ago
by her first hand-to-hand combat instructor: Disarm, disable, destroy. You lived
by that. And if you didn’t, you died.
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CHAPTER NINETEEN:
THE TEN THOUSAND
She had seen Kesselus.

Twenty-three years ago she’d been a major, assigned as commander of the
five hundred strong Marine contingent attached to the destroyer Archimedes.
When word had come of an engagement taking place on a remote planet in the
Fringes, the captain of the Archimedes had altered course and headed into the
fray. It might only have been Marines on that planet whose lives were at stake,
but Marines were spacers and Navy, and spacers and Navy stuck together.
Always. So they’d gone, despite the fact they’d received no orders from Admiralty
to do so; indeed, the Assembly had sent word that all ships of Fleet were to avoid
the planet until further notice.
But the Archimedes had gone regardless, the captain risking his career by
undertaking this action. The Riyadh and the Jakarta had followed, so that
together they’d constituted a small fleet of a destroyer and two frigates, carrying
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between them more than a thousand Marines eager to help their comrades. She, as
ranking Marine officer, had been in command of those troops.
She’d thought herself going into a fight, so when they’d finally arrived in orbit
about Kesselus it had been a shock to discover no sign of life and every indication
the world had been lethally infected by outlawed biotech. She and her teams of
volunteer Marines had fallen to the surface in the boats, expecting nothing but
what they saw: desolation. Rocks. Sand. Desert dry plants. And the bodies, of
course.
Ten thousand of them.
Ten thousand Marines littered across the terrain, every one of them dead.
Killed by micro-biologics. Biobots not unlike those almost every human had
within them. Biobots that had come from orbit, dropped by an unmarked
atmosphere-grazing skimmer going too fast to be properly scanned and recorded.
They’d fallen onto the quiet earth as a deadly rain: Nanotech, which had, when
done its job, simply vanished deep into the soil, breaking apart into its constituent
molecules, leaving nothing traceable. A corporate ‘proxy’ war, as it was called.
Long ago made illegal. But, of course, with no evidence to prove which
megacorps and how many had done it, there was nothing upon which the
Assembly could base a prosecution. So it ended: a cold, murderous reality. More
brutal than any she’d ever seen. And in it a message. That much had been very
evident.
The corporates had rendered the world uninhabitable and useless, a biotech
nightmare that only specially equipped personnel could dare approach. They’d
done this to show they could, and to show that none would be their masters.
She’d walked through the fields of dead Marines, thankful to be hermetically
sealed in her armor, spared the insufferable heat and the choking stench of
sunburnt flesh and rotting corpses. She’d kept her gun slung at the ready, even as
she’d known it was useless; just as guns had been useless to the Marines who had
lain lifeless before her. The enemy on Kesselus had not been something that could
have been shot at. Only other biotech or anti-matter yields would have stopped it.
So she had walked through the ranks of bodies, fully aware that the only thing
separating her from joining her fallen comrades was the special armored suit she
wore: a thin, fragile security against the transformed atmosphere.
It had been a sobering realization.
Boots crunching noisily on the bloodied terrain, she had walked and walked,
across stone and sand and the too dry scrub, slowing sometimes to bend and to
look at fallen bodies, watching for the telltale shine of biobots in blood, the
mercurial liquid within the scarlet effluvia of death. It had been the signature of
the biobots struggling to counteract what their lethal brethren had done; but they’d
failed because the assault upon the Marines had been far beyond the parameters of
their programming, a deadly contagion that had attacked every cell of the body.
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She had stopped countless times to make sure a body was dead, even as she’d
known she’d never find one alive. Not in this kind of war. Not with those
machines, which were an enemy that couldn’t be controlled, an enemy that had
infected this planet as surely as any disease might infect a living host.
She had walked almost ten kilometers, through a vast, impromptu graveyard
where dust and smoke drifted on a hot wind, like some errant mist off a fog-
shrouded sea. And she had kept hoping she’d find someone alive, had kept
believing someone must have survived. Just one life would have made a
difference.
But there’d been no one.
Just the ten thousand dead. Just the bodies strewn across all those kilometers
of rock and sand, all of them lifeless. Motionless.
It had been an eerie, terrifying sight, made all the worse by the awful silence
that had pervaded, disturbed only by the whisper of a sullen wind and the
tramping of her feet.
Hers had been a terrible loneliness that day, the spawn of that rank death and
the unvoiced cries of the dead.
******
“Colonel!”
Suzanne jerked, startled, jarred out of her recollections as she looked around,
away from the debris field that surrounded the boat. Away from the bodies.
“What is it?” she called out, shielding her eyes with an upraised hand and looking
up the slope of the dune to where Corporal Attallah stood over some seemingly
innocuous bits of jetsam. Ejecta from the crash, she assumed.
“I think you should have a look at this, sir,” Attallah called down.
With a heavy sigh she squared her shoulders and set off up the slope, thrusting
the toes of her boots into the sand, feeling it give under her, and hearing the hiss
of it as it slid and slithered away. As she crested the rise she immediately got a
better view of what Attallah was looking at, and recognized at once that this
wasn’t material randomly tossed from the boat when it had crashed: it had been
brought here.
“Looks like someone may have survived, sir,” said Attallah. He squatted
down and poked at some of the rations and medkits.
“Indeed,” Suzanne muttered under her breath as she bent to examine his find.
“But where are they?” she wondered aloud, straightening as she did so and
turning slightly to survey her surroundings.
“There’s this, sir.” Attallah got up and walked a few meters across the top of
the dune, his equipment clinking noisily in the desert stillness as he trod.
“A fight?” said Suzanne, joining him.
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“Looks that way, sir. Clear indications of some sort of scuffle. And blood
from at least three different individuals, according to my scans.
“The question is: Who?”
“Sand can’t tell us much, sir.” Attallah looked grim. “But I would say it’s a
fair guess that at least one of ours made it out of the boat alive.”
Suzanne nodded. “I agree, corporal. But then what? Was he or she found by
soldiers from the corporates, or by some locals?”
“If I were to hazard a guess, Colonel, I’d say it was most likely locals.”
“So would I. I think we’d have heard from the corporates by now if they had
one of our people.” She glanced back at the pile of rations and medkits, then to
the marks of the scuffle. “I don’t think one of our people, no doubt injured from
the crash, would have been able to have mounted much of a resistance if faced
with more than one corporate soldier. ‘Corp and Industries troops may be
somewhat mercenary, but they’re by no means amateurs.”
“Aye, sir.”
Suzanne pursed her lips, considering her next course of action. She removed
her helmet and ran a gloved hand over her damp hair. “Take some samples of
those blood stains to Major Sughali,” she ordered Attallah. “Tell her I want a
thorough analysis. I want to know which one of our Marines survived the crash
and I want to know if the assailants were corporates or locals.”
“Yessir!” Attallah snapped of a salute, then turned to his task.
Meanwhile, Suzanne analyzed the situation from her perch atop the dune. The
wreckage looked as bad, if not worse, from on high; she could see so much more
of it: the scar across the land, the litter of debris scattered out across dunes that
marched towards the horizon, and the cold lumps of bodies amidst it. The bulk of
the boat was a blackened hulk, still smoking in the early morning light. It was
impossible to identify most of the remains within; it would take more detailed
study for that.
“Damn!” she swore, not for the first time since she’d got here. It was bad
enough to lose soldiers in battle, but to lose them like this, before a single shot
had been fired in anger... Well, it was certainly not the way she liked to start
things off; and it seemed to her it didn’t bode well at all for this particular
expeditionary force.
“Mackay,” she said into her com-link.
“Sir?”
“Check with the Goliath and see if they have any scan records that show
activity in this area within the last few hours.”
“Yessir! Something in particular you’re looking for, sir?”
“Just anything, Sergeant.”
“Sir.”
She set off down the dune, her steps long, gliding strides that took her quickly
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to the bottom. Reluctantly she moved towards what remained of the boat,
inwardly grimacing at the sight of it. That anyone could have survived it was a
miracle, and because of that she was determined they would find and rescue the
individual who had. She’d lost more than fifty people in this crash and even if she
could save just this one it would mean something—although she supposed that in
the larger scheme of things it would mean nothing at all. One life, one way or the
other, really meant so little in the statistical analysis of war. When one numbered
combatants in the thousands and tens of thousands, a single soldier really had
little impact on the general outcome of a given conflict—even as she realized that
history was replete with instances wherein a lone individual had effected vast
change. She didn’t think that was the case here, however. On the other hand,
heroes and saviors were found in the unlikeliest places.
Time and circumstance were as often as not the arbiters of such things.
“Colonel?” It was Major Sughali over her com-link.
“You have news for me, doctor?”
“I know who our survivor is, sir,” the chief medical officer replied.
“Don’t keep me in suspense, doctor.”
“Not a Marine, sir.”
“Ah.” Suzanne bowed her head slightly, closed her eyes and rubbed at them
with thumb and forefinger. “Ensign Jhordel.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Any indication of what state she may have been in?”
“Attallah brought me two sources of her blood, Colonel. The first suggests her
biobots were dealing with internal injuries. Nothing that a few days rest and the
‘bots probably wouldn’t have cured.” There was a lengthy pause.
“I take it the second suggests something else.”
“It’s difficult to ascertain from the paucity of the samples I have, sir.” There
was no mistaking the concern in Sughali’s voice.
“But?”
“But from the number and type of biobots active in the sample, I’d have to
hazard a guess that Jhordel suffered a severe wound to the abdominal region.”
“Not from an energy weapon, I take it.”
“No.” Deeper concern.
“A knife perhaps?”
“No. I’d say it was more likely from some sort of projectile weapon. There are
hints of GSR in the blood. Molecular, but evident.”
“Interesting. Gun shot residue. Do you think she could have survived a
bullet?”
“No way of telling, sir.” Suzanne could imagine the doctor shrugging
helplessly. “The biobots can only do so much. I’d suggest she’d probably require
more intensive medical care if the bullet struck anything vital.”
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“Then if she’s not already dead there’s a possibility she soon could be?”
Sughali hesitated.
“Doctor?”
“If the bullet went through cleanly or was removed, then she may be fine,
given time. But if not, then I think we may not have long to find her before it’s
too late. It’s all up to the ‘bots, now, Colonel.”
“Thank you, doctor.”
“The other samples, sir,” Sughali began.
“Are local,” Suzanne finished for her. “It would seem obvious,” she
explained. “Corporates wouldn’t be using anything as primitive as a projectile
weapon, doctor.”
“Of course.” Silence, but the channel was still open and Suzanne sensed
Sughali was waiting for her to indicate some course of action.
“We’ll apprise the local authorities of the situation once we establish formal
contact with them,” she said. Providing, of course, they could do that; the
corporates had already made some sort of arrangement with the rulers of
Obsidian, judging by the presence of Industries troops in Saintus Cecilius and
‘Corp troops in Saintus Vittoria.
This was becoming a more difficult and dangerous mission with each passing
moment, and she was beginning to have an increasingly bad feeling about it. The
rulers of Obsidian had requested Federation assistance, yet now it appeared they
were cooperating with the two megacorps. Perhaps under threat, she conceded;
but how would they respond when they were informed the Federation wasn’t here
to save their world at all? She damn well knew how she’d react.
Somehow she couldn’t see there being much cooperation from the locals
when it came time to round them up and ship them off the planet. Not unless
things became untenable here.
Not unless we make it so, she thought; and that left a particularly sour taste in
her mouth.
She walked beyond the shattered shell of the boat, to where one of her dead
Marines still remained, not yet retrieved by her people. She knelt and turned the
body over so she could see the face; it was bloodstained and plastered with grains
of sand. Giovanni. A coldness seized her, and she quickly stood up and diverted
her attention elsewhere.
This could be Kesselus all over again, she warned herself. She didn’t want
that. She didn’t want her people to die defending nothing, sacrificing their lives
for the sake of political ambition. If they were going to fight it should be for a just
and noble cause, for principles that were worth upholding, and not for reasons that
were contrary and arbitrary and weighted down by hypocrisy. They shouldn’t die
simply to maintain someone's political agenda.
We’re the good guys, she told herself; but it was getting increasingly more
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difficult to view the universe in such black and white terms.
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CHAPTER TWENTY:
THE SHAPE OF MEMORY
He remembered hot chocolate.

That smell. That taste. The warmth of it. Keys opening the locked doors to
another time. A happier time, when he had sat huddled on a couch in the living
room of the old family home with a mug cupped in his hands to ward off a
winter’s chill. Huddled for warmth and for security, a barrier between him and the
icy world beyond. A world changed by a night’s fall of snow. Transformed
beyond recognition. Beautiful and eerily poetic. Yet distant and alien.
In one simple cup of chocolate there was an awakening. When he drank it and
smelt it and felt the blissful heat of it as it penetrated him and flowed through him,
resonating with his soul, he felt himself step through a doorway into moments
once buried deep in his subconscious. Memories stirred from the depths of him,
from places he didn’t often visit: childhood innocence and yearning youth. And
this moment, with this taste and touch and smell, a cold winter evoked. Snow and
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ice, fallen on the trees, bending spindly gray boughs, covering the roof and
decorating the eaves of the house in a silent poetry of white. And on the
mountains that rose in the distance—mountains that had long ago lost much of
their white mantle to the ‘Great Melt’—there was a fresh white cloak settled upon
the shades of blue-gray rock, so that it all resembled nothing so much as a
painting from some museum, harkening back to another time, when the world to
some had seemed a much better place.
Cold and the snow. They went hand-in-hand. Like marshmallows in hot
chocolate. Like the wisps of steam curling aloft from the surface of his drink and
touching his face with a kiss of moist heat and memory. For in memory one could
be oh so close to reality, to living the past again in silent recollection. Memory,
which could be so visceral, even as it was at times far too ephemeral, as transient
as the snow, which under the warm ministrations of the sun melted away to
nothingness.
Memory: reality and illusion. The real and the unreal. As like a sim, or
something one might find in the Virtuality. And yet illusive, intangible, to the
point where one couldn’t always distinguish what was fact and what was fiction.
Memory was too variable and never quite trustworthy. Memory was fickle.
And it was an impermanence, subject to the ravages of time, to changes that
occurred within one over the course of one’s life. So that looked back upon, it was
shaded by the bias of one’s current perceptions. It wasn’t the Virtuality, not the
fixed equations of existence locked inside machines, where one could find
practically any experience and live it and relive it again and again: birth, sex,
death, and everything in between.
Living without living, his father had called it; his father, who’d been a man
out of time, born to the wrong century, belonging to a day when men had sought
adventure in places and by means that tested the very limits of their fortitude. His
father, the academic, who’d despised the machine-dependent world of today and
had tried vainly to eschew it, seeking his adventures outdoors, doing real things.
Things that men had once done as matters of survival, or as a challenge to their
own existence. The very sort of thing that had in the end swallowed his father up
and taken him from the world forever.
His father had so desperately sought escape. Out on the sea, or in the
mountains. Or in the pages of old-fashioned books in a time when but a handful of
academics could even read. Academics and spacers. Spacers, who, in what some
considered a supreme irony, were condemned to never have that connection to
machines that would truly allow life without actually living it. That connection his
father had so utterly despised.
“Spacers are the only true humans left,” his father would often say. It was an
exaggeration, of course, but not by much. On some of the colonies there weren’t
the networks and world mind AIs that existed on Earth and the more prosperous
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member states of the Federation. On those ‘lesser’ planets humanity lived without
that soul-sucking tech his father had so reviled, and they seemed no lesser for it.
Quite the opposite. But other than these isolated pockets of humankind, it was
spacers who came closest to what some called the ‘pure flesh’ human—though
that of course was in its way wishful thinking, given that spacers were a highly
engineered gene pool.
Still, he understood the arguments, even if he didn’t necessarily agree with
them. All he knew was that in the Virtuality he wouldn’t have just remembered
things. He’d have truly lived them: felt them, tasted them, smelt them, and even
loved them. He’d have seen his father, and talked to him, and hugged him, and
felt things he hadn’t felt in far too long a time. Things he should have felt before it
had been too late, before his father had been a lifeless body pulled from an angry,
unforgiving sea.
The Virtuality offered immortality. So long as the ‘Net and its plethora of
chained together AIs existed, the image of a soul captured within it could live
forever. And sometimes he couldn’t help but wish he’d access to that, that he
could jack in and submerge himself in a world where his father wasn’t dead, and
where he wasn’t an outcast because of the nature of his genetic signature.
There was so much he’d always wanted to say to his father: the things that
were never spoken between them because of that awkwardness and
contentiousness that too often arises between father and son. There were words
that had been said that never should have been said, and others that never had
been that should have been. He’d often railed against his father, and on occasion
had gone so far as to tell him that he hated him; he had never said ‘I love you’,
except in the days and weeks and years following his father’s death, when it had
been too late and he’d known it to be and had felt a great sorrow because of that.
A guilt and a shame he’d never been able to overcome.
Why is it, he wondered, that we only appreciate the fullness of our emotional
bond to someone when they’re truly gone?
Because of the absolute nature of their absence, he supposed. He recalled his
mother whispering an old adage about such things, but it had never meant
anything until the days and weeks that had followed his father’s untimely death.
Then he had understood. He had understood too well. So well, in fact, that
sometimes tears had come upon him unbidden, filling his eyes; and emptiness had
swelled within him, so vast and profound that it had made him believe he’d be
lost within it, swallowed up, drowning in its fathomless enormity.
He had been left alone with his mother, and that had seemed almost like he’d
been left with just half of what he’d been. Without his father, he and his mother
had been like two separate worlds orbiting a common grief, sharing a familiar
pain, yet ever separate and never quite able to overcome the gravity of the sorrow
that kept them forever circling.
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His mother had handled her grief with rage; she had never liked her husband’s
propensity for seeking escape in activities that threatened life and limb. He had
borne his father’s death by suffering a terrible guilt that had torn at him and made
him hate himself for having been less of a person than he felt he should have been
and knew he could have been.
We weep for what we no longer have, he told himself. Even if what we have
is only the simple pleasure of knowing that those whom we love so dearly are still
there. When they’re gone forever we’re left only with our memories of them. Our
memories and a great hollow within ourselves that can never truly be filled.
The past is with us always; it haunts us day-to-day, because it’s a part of us, of
what we are. It informs our character. It is thread in the fabric of our
consciousness. Without it we’re something else. Someone else. It only grows
dimmer with time. And when it is stolen from us we aren’t quite what we once
were.
But sometimes he wished to be free of his remembrances, to be bereft of those
memories that caused him eternal grief, to not be quite what he was. There was no
solace in the belief that time would heal such wounds as were the stuff of
memory, because he knew otherwise. Time hadn’t diminished his guilt, it hadn’t
carried away the weight of his loss.
We’re forever changed by things we once were, until the things we once were
become a part of our memories and we move on to other realities. What did it say
of him that he could not seem to get beyond his loss, to have that long ago reality
fade into ephemeral memory?
Memories, ever fleeting, like snow in a winter thaw. Memories rooted in the
consciousness and the conscience, ever threatening to spring forth and cause a
fever of nostalgia and bitter lament. They were the warmth of hot chocolate on a
cold day, cupped in bare hands against a chill, while one huddled in the corner of
a plush couch and tried to pretend one was somehow secure against the harsh
world that blew like winter wind, too cruel and brutal and menacing by half.
He closed his eyes and dreamed of snow and stormy seas and his father’s
voice and his mother’s tears and the stinging kiss of hot chocolate against his lips.
He drank and remembered; but reality slipped through his fingers like smoke.
It was but memories.
His remembered realities.
Less than truth; better than lies; ever fraught with sorrow.
******
“Hot chocolate,” she said, slipping into a chair across from him and shaking
her head disapprovingly. “Now that's never a good sign.”
Carter raised his head and stared at her, as though seeing her for the first time.
He set his mug down slowly, still holding it with both hands, fingers wrapped
about it, the sting of its heat a warm welcome against the chill of his melancholy.
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“Is there something I can do for you, Number One?” he asked, slightly annoyed
she’d intruded upon his moment of quiet reflection—even as he realized the folly
of submitting oneself too freely to such potent wistfulness.
“Just concerned,” she said.
He stared at her. “About what?” he asked.
“I know you, John.” Anna nodded towards the mug of chocolate. “I’ve
watched you for a couple of years now.”
“And that makes you an authority on me?” he snapped—a bit crisply, perhaps.
“It makes me an executive officer attuned to her captain’s moods, among
other things.” She rested both arms on the table and studied him closely, her pale
green eyes fixed on his, as though she were challenging him to deny her words.
“You didn’t send Jhordel down there, Captain,” she said sternly, when he
didn’t fill the silence between them. “I did. She was my responsibility.”
“And you think that makes her death easier to accept?” he asked, shooting her
an acerbic look.
“You’re jumping the gun,” she said. “She might not be dead.”
“More than fifty others are, Anna!”
She pushed herself back from the table and folded her arms across her chest.
“How many times do we have to go through this, John?” She sounded vexed and
impatient, and the scowl she wore was a reflection of this. “How often are we
going to have this pointless debate?”
“I didn’t ask for your company, Commander,” he said. His face clouded with
resentment.
Anna said nothing at first, but sat studying him, a stricken look on her face.
Finally it was clear she could stand it no more. “We all know it can happen,” she
said. “From the first day we enter the Academy—if not before.”
“She was barely more than a kid,” he said.
“Yeah. But she’s not the first, and she won’t be the last.”
“Is that supposed to make it more acceptable?” Archly.
“No. But you have to put these things into perspective.”
“And what perspective would that be, pray tell? That this is fucking war and
we should just fucking ignore the fact we’re human beings?” He slammed a fist
against the table, causing heads to turn and look their way.
“Well, it is war,” she said. “And in war people die. Mostly people who don’t
deserve to. And that hurts. Of course it does. Always. Because when they
genengineered us they forgot to make us into fucking heartless machines.”
“Better they had, I sometimes think.”
“No, you don’t.” She leaned forward and put a hand on his. “You’re who you
are because of your passion. That’s the root of what you are, it’s the foundation of
your moral code. It’s why things like this are never easy for you. And maybe they
shouldn’t be, because what sort of human beings would we be if we could so
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effortlessly shrug off the misery and suffering of others?”
A silence fell between them again, Carter staring pensively into his mug of
chocolate, and Anna waiting with uncharacteristic patience for him to open up.
They were like priest and confessor; it was a role they played with the facility that
could only be found among people who had an intimate understanding of one
another. Not in the way of lovers, of course. Perhaps not even in the way of old
friends. But there was a bond between them, the pedigree of which could be
traced to the fact they were both spacers and shipmates; they had shared horrors to
which few humans had ever been forced to bear witness. It was the sort of thing
that simply couldn’t be explained in terms of love and friendship. Some called it
‘the company of war,’ that union of soul that could only be forged in the heat of
conflict.
Carter called it being ‘family,’ because often he thought it was the only true
family he’d ever known. The people he had served with over the years had been
closer to him than he’d ever been to his father or his mother, even though he
couldn’t argue he’d loved them in the same way. He knew, though, that they’d die
for one another and weep for one another; then life would go on. As it had when
his father had died. And there’d be, as there’d been with his father, that emptiness,
that enormity of loss that could never be filled.
“Do you ever think about your family, Anna?” he asked suddenly, lifting his
gaze to fix her with his steady, sorrowing eyes.
She squinted at him, puzzled, and said, “My parents are still in Luna. It’s been
a while since I’ve talked to them. Longer still since I last saw them.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why haven’t you talked to them? Gone to see them?”
“I don’t know.” She appeared discomfited by his questions and tried to
dismiss them with a shrug.
“There must be a reason.”
“We’ve lived apart for decades,” she said. “Ever since I entered the Academy.
On holidays I’d usually go see them. But once I was assigned to Fleet it just...”
She waved a hand as though to brush it all aside—as though to suggest it was
unimportant. And Carter thought, with some dismay, that perhaps it really didn’t
matter to her, that perhaps she was comfortable without that connection to her
parents, that she didn’t need that anchor and might even consider it an
impediment. He, on the other hand, sometimes found himself missing it sorely,
wanting to regain something he knew in truth he’d never really had, wanting his
memories to have a different shape, to be other than what they’d been. Wanting
that he had loved his parents and had made them understand that. But he never
had. He never had had the courage to overcome the differences that had separated
them and to tell them in words and in actions that he loved them more than life
229
itself.
“I suppose other things became important in my life,” Anna continued, “and I
just couldn’t make as much time for my parents. Nor they for me, I think, busy as
they were with their research.”
“And you don’t miss them?”
“Sometimes. But they’re not dead. I know they’re there. I know I can go see
them when I want to.”
“Yes,” said Carter, looking grim. “I guess you can.”
“And you? What about you?”
“You know about my father. And my mother lives in an artists’ colony, on an
island just off the coast, not far from Cascadia.” He swirled the last of his hot
chocolate about in the bottom of his mug, then lifted it to his lips and drank it. A
too sweet and too tepid mouthful that he would rather not have swallowed; it
tasted of stale memories and a rotted past, of opportunities delayed too long until
they’d been all but lost.
“I miss my father,” he said, putting the mug down with a degree of finality.
“All these decades and I still miss him.” He heard the disembodied timbre of his
voice and wondered how it had come to this, that he could speak of it and feel
nothing but the hollow that had transcended his grief. “Sometimes I just wish so
much that I could see him and hear him and talk to him. I wish I could tell him the
things I never told him, all the things I should have said when he was alive.” He
felt his throat tighten and heard the raw emotion bursting from him. Even after all
these years, he thought. Then he blurted out, “I could never bring myself to say ‘I
love you’ when it was really important. When it mattered.” He shook his head.
“So simple a thing to say, don’t you think?”
“No, John. I think it’s the most difficult thing to say. At least, to say it and
mean it. But sometimes we don’t have to say the words. Don’t you think your
father knew what you felt?” Anna smiled gently. “He was your father, John; you
didn’t have to say the words. When people love one another it’s an unspoken
contract that transcends everything else. Sometimes words just get in the way.”
“I wish I could believe that. But there was so often so much enmity between
us. Resentment on my part, I guess. Hating the fact my life had been laid out for
me, without me having had a say in the matter. Hating that this was something
he’d wanted so much and not necessarily what I’d desired. And I think it hurt him
to know those things. I think he was hurt that I couldn’t show him respect, that I
sometimes treated him horribly. Not with kindness and patience and
understanding he deserved, but with anger and intolerance and a lack of charity
and compassion.”
“There must have been good times,” she insisted. “There always are, when at
some level people honestly do care about one another.”
“I suppose.” He inhaled sharply. “But all I remember is what I didn’t say, and
230
what I didn’t do. And that has always preyed on my mind.” He lifted his hands
and cupped his face in them, massaging the flesh. “All I remember is that I
couldn’t save him, that he died and I was helpless to prevent it and suddenly the
chance to tell him I cared for him was gone forever.” He swallowed and added:
“There are times when I wonder if he died because he wanted to, because he
couldn’t live with my hate and disapproval.”
“You can’t think like that,” she insisted. “That’s crazy. What happened was an
accident.”
“Maybe.” He licked his lips. “All I know is that I wish I could believe in God,
just so I'd have something that would speak to the issue of redemption and
reconciliation.”
“You’d like a second chance. An afterlife to make amends.”
“It’d be nice to think there were such things.”
“Do you really think we’d be any different there than we are here?”
“I take it you don’t.”
“I think we have to make do with what we have,” she said. “We can’t waste
our time believing that the mistakes we make in this life can somehow be
corrected in another. Religions created the concept of an afterlife as a way of
conditioning humanity on Earth. The notion that our conduct among the living
might somehow presage our place in the afterlife must surely have tempered the
spirits of men and women alike. It certainly made them more religious and more
obeisant citizens under the authority of the church.”
“Ever the cynic,” he mused.
“No, John, just a pragmatist and realist. Like most of the human population in
the Federation, I’ve no room in my life or a need for the mumbo-jumbo spouted
by theologians. If there are people who find solace in believing in a God, then
I’ve no complaint against them so long as they keep it to themselves and don’t go
around proselytizing and forcing their notions of morality onto me. But as far as
I’m concerned, we have what we have. We have to live with this life. There are
no second chances after this one, so we have to get it right the first time. That’s
the foundation that should guide our morality.”
“Religion isn’t all bad,” he offered.
She snorted. “The bad of it far outweighs the good, as I see it,” she said. “The
pages of history are soaked in the blood of those who died in the name of their
faith or killed because of it. What men and, to a lesser extent, women have done
in the name of their God or gods has often been nothing short of unspeakable.
War. Murder. Torture. Genocide. Infanticide. You name it and people at some
point in history have done it and have claimed to have done it for the sake of their
faith, in the glorification of their God. But what sort of God would demand that of
people? Certainly no God I would ever want to worship.”
“But there have been good things done. Good people helping others in the
231
name of God.”
“You don’t need religion to do good deeds, John. You don’t need religion or a
cultivated spirituality to be a decent and honorable person. People who don’t
subscribe to any faith at all do good and proper things every day. And they have
done so since the beginning of humankind, I’m sure. And I would argue they’re of
a higher moral character than anyone who ever believed in God, because they do
what they do with no notion that somehow, at some point they’ll be rewarded for
their successes or punished for their failures. They do what they do because it’s
right—because they have an innate quality about them that is wholly humanistic
and governed only by the conviction that as human beings we’re duty-bound to
assist and care for one another. They don't act out of fear of God's retribution or
the belief of a holy redemption and a heaven to which they might one day ascend.
They act because of the here and now, because of the idea that we can’t exist if
we try to live in isolation and ignore the needs of others. Hell, it’s what we’re all
about, isn’t it?”
“Is it?”
“Dammit, John!” She slapped a hand hard on the table between them, startling
others in the Goliath’s mess.
Carter was unperturbed by her reaction, and went on: “I question the notion
that removing these people from their world is right by any measure. How can we
even truly consider that a winning proposition? Our duty should be to protect
them and to ensure the stability of their society.”
“I’ve been examining some of the Federation data on these people,” said
Anna, her face darkening. “I’m not so sure they’re worth saving at all. Not the
men, anyway.”
“We’re not the moral judge of their character, Anna.”
“The treatment of women in their society is barbaric!”
“By our standards.”
“By anyone’s fucking standards!”
“So our help should come at a price? Isn’t that contrary to what you were just
saying? Didn’t you just say we were duty-bound to help others.”
“No, I said there are people who don’t believe in God who have that moral
conviction,” she said. “That doesn’t mean I believe I’m one of them. My own
opinion on the matter at hand is that the Reds never wanted to be a part of the
Federation and they should live with the consequences of that decision. I don’t
accept that good men and women should die because now a bunch of religious
zealots suddenly want membership in the Federation and all the rights and
privileges that entails. But if that’s to be the case, if they’re to be accorded our
protection, then I think that gives us the right to expect them to adopt some
reasonable standards when it comes to human rights. If that makes me an immoral
person in the eyes of those who fall over themselves to worship God, then so be
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it; but I won’t apologize for putting humanity before some fictional deity.”
“To force our ways on these people would be changing their culture against
their will, and that would inevitably lead to resentment and hostility. History
informs us that that can never lead to any good. Change has to come from
within.”
“A culture in which women are treated as nothing more than property, where
they’re beaten and raped and murdered with impunity, and where mere children
become wives, is a culture bereft of moral probity and one that deserves to have
change forced upon it or die,” said Anna briskly. She was tense, an undercurrent
of rage visibly simmering beneath the surface of her rigid demeanor. “If slavery
or murder or torture or female circumcision or the eating of human flesh were a
part of their ‘culture,’ would we turn a blind eye to it and pretend it was
acceptable? I don’t think so. All those things were once 'traditions' among cultures
on Earth, but as times changed and humanity changed we no longer tolerated such
things. It should be no different now.”
“I’m sure you’ll find most of the Assembly in agreement with you,” he said,
“And that opinion has no doubt had much to do with shaping the manner in which
they’re addressing this issue.”
“Removing the Reds from Obsidian won’t change who they are.”
“Of course it will, though perhaps not in ways we care to entertain.” Carter
heaved a sigh. “I think we risk laying the groundwork, here, for something in the
future that could come back to bite us.”
“That can’t be our concern for now.”
"But it should be, Anna." He smiled wanly and said: “It’s all so ambiguous,
isn’t it? There’s really no black and white to it all. Just shades of gray. They ask
for assistance even though they once eschewed us. We give it to them, even
though their morality impugns their faith. Their cultural practices are repugnant to
us, yet here we are—because even without the membership they have sued for,
the constitution of the Federation bids us to protect any and all citizens in the
Empire. Yet to save ourselves, so that we may still be here to save others, we
must essentially sell them out. Rip them from their world and scatter them
through the Empire. Destroy their culture, their religion, the way of life they’ve
known for centuries. And while in some respects that may seem good, in others it
is a complete corruption of what we’ve always pledged to do. Ironically, if we
don’t do this, then the corporates win. And a win by the megacorps could mean
the end of us. Yet, in some way, we’ll have ceased to be what we were if we do
this, because this is not what we’re about. Not as I ever imagined it, anyway. And
if it is, I’m not sure I want to be a part of it anymore. I’m not sure I can be.”
“We’re saving their lives, John. Hell, some of us have already died doing it.
That counts for a lot in my books. And it should be enough. More than enough as
far as the men of Obsidian are concerned. What happens to them after this is all
233
over is up to them, just as it was for the Bed’wan and Khalud on Inkasar.”
“The difference is that the Bed’wan and the Khalud still have their world.
They remain what they were before we tried to intervene. But when we’re
finished here, the Reds will have nothing.”
“They’ll do what people in their situation have done throughout history,”
Anna said matter-of-factly, with no palpable unease. “They’ll survive and build
anew. They’ll adapt, and find a new place for themselves. And maybe they’ll
change for the better.”
Carter looked away, to one of the large viewports that cut the sternward
section of the mess. He could see the enormous, fluted cylinders of the sub-light
engines massed beyond, clustered around the Goliath’s Pearson FTL. Nearly a
third of the ship’s total length was taken up by this massive complex of
engineering. It was a technological feat of stunning proportions. If ever there were
a symbol of just how far humankind had come, then this ship and others like it
were surely just that. And yet, for all that, humankind hadn’t really come so far at
all.
We still have so much to learn, he thought; he just wished it didn’t always
have to be done the hard way—too often with the letting of blood and much
shedding of tears.
“You realize," he said, "that there’ll be no winners.”
“Just as long as we're not among the losers,” she grunted.
“Aye,” he said; but he could only think to himself that they’d already lost. He
more than any other.
234
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE:
ASHES
The fallen did not return.

It was custom in Fleet to bury the dead where they had died. On a ship that
meant consigning bodies to the deeps of space; for Marines it was invariably a
grave on some foreign world, under an alien sky, light-years from home—
whichever home that might be, in a corps that was assembled from across the
Federation.
On Kesselus she had seen ten thousand such graves. It had taken ten days to
dig them, because she had refused to dishonor any of those fallen Marines with a
mass burial. So each man and woman had had his and her own place beneath that
sullen, alien sky, their interred remains marked with simple stone slabs upon
which Suzanne and her people had lased the names. Grave markers fashioned
from outcroppings that peppered the field of battle, sitting like a lonely army of
sentinels in that forbidding desolation.
235
It wasn’t the way she liked to do things; and when it had all been done, and
she had stood overlooking that vast plain, she had felt a greater sorrow than any
she’d ever known. Because there hadn’t only been Marines out there; she had laid
to rest her brother. And she had felt an unsurpassed grief because she hadn’t been
able to identify him and take him home, back to his family, to his brothers and
sisters, to his mother and father. Instead, they’d learned of his death in the ancient
way of an officer delivering an official ‘gram,’ informed that the brother and son
had been among the thousands who had perished on some useless bit of rock too
far away from Earth to be of any seeming consequence.
She had never liked to think that anything they did was pointless, but it had
been difficult not to reach that conclusion on Kesselus. Ten thousand men and
women had died for a world the Assembly had too quickly ceded to the
corporates. Ten thousand deaths that could have been avoided if not for what had
seemed the sheer idiocy and incompetence of politicians and bureaucrats on a
world hundreds of light-years away. She had wanted answers then, but she had
never got them. And if she hadn’t been a Marine, born and bred, she might well
have walked away from it all right then and there.
Rationalizations had been made, but none of them had ever rung true to her. In
the end she’d come to suspect the rumors of what had happened on Kesselus had
had more than a little substance to them, that what had happened had been
something of a warning to the military not to press the issue of its authority and
semi-autonomous status. Quite simply, the Assembly had feared that Admiralty—
like its corporate naval counterparts—had been assuming too much of a
leadership role in determining the political complexion of the Federation.
Admiralty had had the ships and all the power that had entailed—which hadn’t
been inconsiderable. The politicians had become decidedly wary of where that
might lead, and so they’d been proactive in ensuring the Navy understood that
they, too, had considerable power and that they wouldn’t be hesitant in exercising
it. They wouldn’t be intimidated.
The generals and the admirals of course always denied this, always stuck to
the official, political line, but Suzanne doubted there was anyone in the Navy who
believed the 'official' explanation. She was certain her parents didn’t. Especially
her mother. But then, soldiers seldom trusted politicians, any more than
politicians trusted soldiers. Not in these times, when the captain of a warship
wielded enough power to threaten an entire world with destruction. She supposed,
in that regard, the fears of the Assembly hadn’t been wholly unfounded. Perhaps
she, too, would have been wary of the Navy had she been in their position.
And now here she was, far from Kesselus, doing the bidding of politicians,
burying the first of her dead—though she imagined they’d by no means be the
last. How far removed was this, she wondered, from Kesselus?
How many more graves would there be before this ended?
236
******
Her father had once said that one couldn’t fully appreciate the value of life
until one had faced death. Until she’d been on her first mission and had been
confronted with the prospect of dying, Suzanne had never quite comprehended
just how true those words could be. Now she stood over the graves of more than
fifty men and women and found herself evermore mindful of that pearl of wisdom
bestowed upon her so long ago. And suddenly the world seemed in much tighter
focus, and she could feel the wind like a hand stroking her face, taste the salt of
her sweat as though it were a mouthful of ocean brine, and hear the movement of
her people as they stood in silence, in their armor, waiting as she delivered her
words of tribute to the fallen.
It was as though she were jacked into a different reality, one of sharper,
pricklier sensations, all hard surfaces and too bright colors, with sounds that were
like shrieks and angry drummings. Even the words of the book from which she
read stood out in sharp relief from the age-yellowed pages, like raised metal
letters on a plaque. And the leather binding under her hands felt warm and buttery
smooth, speaking to her across the ages, reminding her this was a relic that had
been passed down through her family from generation to generation over the
course of centuries, given into her safekeeping when she had made colonel. Now
more a curiosity than anything else—especially in a world where spacers and
some few academics were the only ones who knew the almost dead and forgotten
art of reading—it nevertheless held meaning for her. She felt the weight of that
meaning as she’d never felt it before, somehow conscious there’d been others in
her long family line who had held this in their hands while presiding over the
burial of lost family, fallen comrades and too-soon departed friends. She could
only begin to imagine the richness of that past, and to feel some connectedness
with it through this book: an unbroken line that bound her to men who had served
in the Royal Navy in the eighteenth century and all those through whose hands the
battered tome had since passed. It wasn’t an inconsiderable thing, she thought, to
hold in her hands something that had been held by people who had lived in worlds
so vastly different from her own and through battles every bit as bloody as any
she’d ever seen.
Vastly different worlds, perhaps; but then, there was that common thread that
bound them all: that they were soldiers, from first breath to last.
She was an atheist, but in those well-thumbed pages of fine type were
passages that had become tradition among Marines: words to be spoken over the
dead, delivering them unto the dust of worlds, where one day they might become
the ash of stars. And there was some measure of solace in speaking those words,
even as they truly had little meaning to her in any spiritual context. It was the
237
comfort of tradition, of ways that had been handed down for centuries, purposely
designed to do just what they were doing: make it easier for the living to
transcend loss and accept that in death there could be some sort of dignity and
honor and salvation.
Nothing in the Universe was lost forever. There was the stuff of stars inside
her; and the dust of these men and women might possibly one day be the makings
of yet another star. And, in time, perhaps the substance of another life.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” she intoned solemnly; and the wind stirred and
blew sand from her hand across the graves.
******
She sat in her quarters, one arm propped on the table, her hand resting on the
closed bible, her eyes unfocused. Occasionally a gust of wind rattled the plaz
panels from which the officers’ accommodations and headquarters had been
assembled. She paid the wind no mind, absently filing away the fact that the tail
end of the storm had yet to pass them by. There’d be clear, calm weather ahead,
the mets said—if they could be believed. They’d done a botch job of predicting
that little tempest that had carried away the lives of more than fifty of her people,
so she wasn’t inclined to have a great deal of faith in them.
There was a knock at the door; the facilities were simple, so no com-link or
AI; just basically walls and a roof and essential amenities. Roughing it, they’d
have called it on the ships, but she was well used to it, having done it so many
times before. There were moments when she could even admit to herself she
actually liked it, insofar as it sometimes afforded her the chance to become almost
disconnected from the world—which was something you could almost never do
in the cramped confines of the ships.
Another knock and the voice of Lieutenant-Colonel Menendes: “We’ve just
received a message from the Industries land force, sir.”
Suzanne shifted in her chair, sitting up straighter. She ran her hands in a
sweeping motion over her short hair, combing it back. “Come in, Colonel,” she
said.
The door opened and Menendes stepped across the threshold, hesitating at the
sight of her. “Uh, I can come back later, sir,” he said hurriedly.
She looked down and realized the reason for his discomfort: She had removed
her armor and sat dressed only in the tight-fitting ‘glove’ that soldiers wore
underneath; it left little to the imagination. Among the common Marine it was no
embarrassment for male and female to see one another attired in such, and often
in far less. But among upper ranks it was generally different. Officers in the
Marines had acquired a somewhat affected culture over the centuries, rooted
somewhere in the past, when there’d been a notion that inferior ranks should
238
never see a superior in anything that might be regarded as a ‘weaker’ or
‘compromising’ position. Somehow that had evolved to the point were it was
construed to mean that even seeing your superior in his or her skivvies was
unpardonable. It was something Suzanne had never encouraged among her own
people, but she knew many in the officer ranks were unbridled traditionalists who
adhered to the old ways out of some misguided notion that to do otherwise might
risk discipline among the enlisted ranks and blur the lines between officers and
the common Marine. She thought that nonsense, and didn’t particularly care for
the classism it implied; it was too reminiscent of the sort of foolhardy distinctions
that had long ago saddled militaries with incompetent officers whose only
qualifications were their positions in the aristocracy and the wealth of their
families. Such commanders had played war with the lives of their men and as a
consequence had successfully butchered millions.
Suzanne held out her hand for the com-board he was carrying. He gave it to
her and stepped back respectfully, keeping his eyes fixed ahead, looking above
her. She sat studying the board, reading the message on the screen. “You can
relax, Jose,” she said, without looking up. “It’s not like you haven’t seen a woman
before. Naked ones at that, I’m sure.”
“Yes, sir. I mean—” He stopped, flustered, his cheeks burning.
“I know what you mean.” She put the board down on the table and sat back.
“After some prodding, it would appear I've managed to get myself an audience
with Colonel Bezukov,” she went on, ignoring his embarrassment.
Menendes glanced down at her, a frown of concern furrowing his brow.
“Surely you’re not seriously entertaining the thought of just walking into the
lion’s den, sir.”
“Surely I am. We didn’t come down here to just sit on our duffs.” She got up
and walked over to a cabinet in the corner of her room, moving easily and
gracefully without the bulk of the armor. “Drink?” she asked.
“Please,” said Menendes, clearing his throat.
“I’ll take Mackay and a few Marines with me,” she said, returning to him and
handing over a glass of whiskey.
“I can’t say I much like it, sir.” Menendes took a sip of his drink, then stood
staring into it reflectively for a moment.
“I think Bezukov would be a bit more imaginative than to set a trap.”
“She’s not spacer bred, sir. She’s unpredictable. Unconventional.”
“Which tends to make her a good leader and tactician. Definitely a threat. But
I don’t think she’d ever be so obvious as to do away with me before any official
hostilities have started between us. She may well be unpredictable and
unconventional, but she sure as hell isn’t stupid. She stands to gain nothing by
initiating an armed confrontation with us. It would only serve to weaken her
position against the ‘Corp.”
239
“She doesn’t respect who we are.”

Suzanne shrugged. “There are a lot of people who don’t have much regard for
spacers, Jose. But I think she’s closer to us than she is to groundhogs back on
Earth. She was natural born, remember, so she lived without the weight of the link
in much the same way we did. Besides, I don’t think that’s the issue right now.”
“I suppose not,” said Menendes, not sounding completely convinced. “I still
don’t trust her and I’d still rather she came here than have you go there.”
“There are advantages to my going there,” she observed, with a sly grin.
“Ah, yes, of course.” His face brightened marginally. “Although I suspect
they’ll be screening for any scan equipment you might have.”
“They can’t do anything much about these,” she said, pointing to her eyes and
ears.
Menendes shifted uncomfortably. “One hopes not,” he said; and there was
unspoken in that brief rejoinder what they both knew could happen, what they
both had seen happen. On a past mission, when a scouting party of Marines had
been sent into enemy occupied territory and had been captured, those Marines had
returned, upon being released, with their eyes gouged out, their ears cut off and
their tongues removed.
“That wasn’t corporates,” she said, aware of what he was thinking.
“Their proxies, Suze. Maybe not biotech, but still...”
“Like Kesselus,” she finished for him. “Point taken,” she added gravely.
“But you’re still going.”
“Of course. I don't scare easily.”
“Maybe you should.”
She laughed.
He drained the last of his drink, winced as he swallowed it, then set the glass
on the table. “Well,” he said, looking up and doing his best not to show his
misgivings, “I guess I’d best get word to Mackay and have him round up his
finest.” He smiled cheerily, if unevenly, his expression faltering as he moved to
depart.
“Thanks.” Warmly.
“Sure.” He stepped through the open doorway, then hesitated, looking back.
“And Suze,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“Wear the goddamn armor.”
******
It was, by any measure, a frontier town. From a distance, through the viewers,
she could see a sprawl of shabby, dusty, one story buildings lining narrow,
shadowed streets of plaz. It sat there, amidst desert and rock, more like the rubble
240
of a ruin than a foothold of humanity on the Fringe. Few trees. Few signs. And
almost nothing that would indicate anyone took pleasure or pride in the place.
She’d seen worse, certainly, but for some reason there was something about
Saintus Cecilius that didn’t sit well with her. Possibly that sentiment had more to
do with her opinions of the men who ran it, rather than the maze of grimy streets
and the drab grayness of it all. Only the church that dominated the center of the
so-called ‘city’ had a patina of ostentation, though nothing on a scale of the
elaborate edifices various religions had erected on Earth over centuries of belief,
and definitely not to be compared with the stunning synagogues of New
Jerusalem and the magnificent mosques on New Arabia.
“Delightful,” Mackay muttered sardonically as the flitter flew in low over the
desert. “An absolute fucking paradise,” he added in undisguised contempt. He
was from New Hebrides, a lush, wet planet, among the oldest of those aligned
with the Federation and quite arguably a genuine candidate for the status of
paradise. A thoroughly modern world, with over a billion people and cities that
rivaled those of Earth in their modernity, though perhaps not in their decay and
sprawl.
Suzanne, still peering through the viewers, quietly observed that there were
few vehicles moving in or over the city and no people walking its streets. If they
were there they were holed up in their homes, hidden from view; and she
suspected that had much to do with the presence of Industries troops. “Clearly a
simple people,” she remarked.
“If by that you mean primitive, then I’d have to agree,” Mackay said, the
expression on his gruff demeanor souring. “Their brutality would earn them a stiff
sentence on New Hebrides. Memory wipe and all.”
“Perhaps we shouldn’t be too quick to judge them by our standards,” said
Suzanne.
“Wouldn’t have thought you’d be defending them, sir.”
She lowered the viewers and returned his look with a pointed one of her own.
“If by that you mean excusing the way they treat women, then no, I’m not
defending them at all, Sergeant,” she said brusquely. “That behavior is
inexcusable as far as I’m concerned. But it’s also not my place to judge them. I’m
here to do a job, and that’s all. Judging these people, if they’re to be judged, will
be someone else's job. Someone more qualified to do so than I.”
“And you think that’ll really happen, sir?”
“Perhaps it already has, Sergeant.”
Mackay knit his brow, puzzling over that cryptic response.
“Retribution can be visited upon a people in many ways,” she explained.
“Maybe losing their world and their power is the punishment the men of Obsidian
will suffer for their abusiveness.”
"Hardly seems enough, sir."
241
“We’re past hangings and firing squads, Josh.”

“Just doesn’t seem like we’d be making much of a point,” Mackay argued. “I
mean, surely at some juncture someone has to take responsibility for establishing
a baseline of values to which all humankind must be held firmly accountable.”
“That’s what the constitution is all about. But there have to be limitations on
the authority that even the Assembly can wield in situations that might have
cultural and historic implications integral to the makeup of a particular segment of
human society.”
“Sorry, Colonel, but I don’t see beating and murdering women as integral to
anyone’s culture.” The sergeant screwed his face up into a scowl of disdain.
“Nor I,” Suzanne confessed. “On the other hand, I always rather regarded men
wearing skirts to be something of an affront to human sensibilities.” She stared at
him solemnly.
“Kilts! For the love of Mike, they’re kilts!”
She patted him on the shoulder, a quirky grin teasing her lips. “Don’t worry
about it,” she said. “I’m sure the Assembly won’t be sending warships to New
Hebrides any time soon to deal with the problem. Now, as for the matter of
haggis...”
Mackay started to lob a suitable retort, but something caught his eye outside
the flitter and he uttered a brisk, “Looks like we’ve got company.”
Suzanne twisted in her seat and saw the flitter he’d spotted, flying parallel to
their course, just a few meters above the landscape. This was soon joined by
another, off to their starboard—it, too, bearing the markings of RussoAsia
Industries. Both were heavily armed and armored vehicles, much like their own.
There was nothing overtly threatening about the actions of the two craft, but
Suzanne had the distinct impression they were there to serve as intimidation as
much as they were there to escort her to her meeting with Bezukov. She knew the
Industries colonel well enough to know it was exactly the sort of one-upmanship
in which Bezukov was inclined to indulge. Bezukov liked to be in control of any
situation in which she was engaged. She had called Suzanne to see her, in her
territory, for just that reason; it was a given, as far as Suzanne was concerned, that
Bezukov would never have consented to a meeting in the USF camp.
“Probably been tracking us for some time,” Suzanne mused. “Rather thought
we’d see them a bit earlier, actually. But then, Alex always did have a flair for the
dramatic. Always likes to make sure people get her point.”
“Umm,” Mackay grunted, casting a surly eye in the direction of the closest
flitter. “Never could stand the woman myself,” he muttered.
She regarded him with an amused air. “Now, Sergeant, that wouldn’t be some
personal bias, would it?”
“Seen her handiwork, sir.” Mackay’s mouth was a grim line. “The woman
takes far too much pleasure in her work, Colonel.”
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“Yes, I’m not inclined to disagree. One suspects that’s one of the reasons
she’s risen so far in the Industries’ ranks, despite her background. And no doubt
her background has had a great deal to do with the way she is.”
“Aye,” the sergeant said in a low voice. “There’s a ruthlessness in her that is
sure as fate no part of spacer gene-typing.”
“The world can be a hard place,” Suzanne observed. “Sometimes as spacers
we tend to think of ourselves as having been cheated out of something because we
can never experience true linkage. But imagine someone natural born who had to
grow up on the streets. We lived lives of luxury and privilege, never having to
really worry about our day to day life or our futures, about where we’d be in a few
years time. From the moment we were born it was determined we’d grow up and
enter the Academy and become spacers. Everything was laid out for us, whether
we liked it or not. But she had no such comfort. She probably seldom had a
moment when she didn’t have to wonder where she was going to sleep from one
day to the next and whether she’d have anything to eat. She had to live in a world
few of us see, where she couldn’t rest at night without fearing she might be
assaulted or even killed. Add to that the constant need to avoid the authorities
intent on hunting her sort down and shipping her off to one of those horrid
‘education communities’ that are probably no more than clever euphemisms for
what we once called prisons, and it’s no surprise you’d end up with something
like Bezukov.”
“You’re saying she has the right to be the way she is?” Mackay sounded
astonished.
“I’m saying you have to be a student of a person’s past to understand the fine
nuances of their present. If you want to predict their behavior you can’t afford to
ignore the mechanisms by which they have become what they are. And
understanding one’s enemies is essential to achieving victory over them.”
They were coming in for a landing, the flitter hovering over the church where
Bezukov, perhaps in pointed irony, had established her headquarters. Suzanne
looked down at the building, remarking on its size and location, on how it
dominated the surroundings, an overpowering presence in the city. Of course, that
was intentional; and of course Bezukov was of a nature to use such an
arrangement to her advantage. For her part, Suzanne thought it a mistake: In a
society so highly charged with religious fundamentalism, the occupation of such a
prominent architectural icon of its faith couldn’t constitute anything other than an
affront to the sensibilities of the community. Such an act would almost certainly
breed resentment among the people of Obsidian. Even the women, as maltreated
as they might be, were known to be generally strong adherents of their faith, and
they’d likely view such a flagrant disregard for their religious convictions as the
arrogance of faithless offworlders. And in the case of Bezukov there was an
unfortunate ring of truth to that.
243
That might ultimately work to my advantage, Suzanne told herself. The more
the residents of this world resented the incursion of the megacorps troops, the
easier it might be for her to convince the people of Obsidian to cooperate with the
Federation—though she had her doubts as to how successful she and her people
could be in getting these people to abandon their home. Ultimately, war might be
the only instrument by which this could be accomplished, and that was something
that didn’t sit too well with her conscience.
“Never start a war you don’t think you can win,” her instructor in war
philosophy at the Academy had told his students. “And only a fool charges in
without having weighed the possibility of defeat and accounted for it
accordingly.”
She was mindful of that now; but it disturbed her that it appeared events were
being steered against her will towards a singular option. Indeed, she couldn’t
shake the sense that the intent had been for war from the outset, and that this was
the result the Assembly had been seeking to attain. That made her shudder,
arousing unsettling thoughts of Kesselus: Ten thousand Marines lying dead for
the sake of someone's political ambition. And she had to wonder whether the
Assembly had ‘weighed the possibility of defeat and accounted for it
accordingly.’ Somehow she doubted it.
“Be on your toes,” she said to Mackay as the flitter settled to the ground and
their escorts dropped down beside them.
“Expecting trouble?”
She gave him a lopsided grin. “Always,” she said.
******
To be sure, the woman was something of an enigma.

Or so Bezukov had always seemed to Suzanne. But Mackay’s feelings aside,
Suzanne had never been able to thoroughly dislike her Industries counterpart;
indeed, she had a grudging admiration for the woman, who had accomplished as
much as a spacer without the advantages in early life that a spacer had.
Nevertheless, that given, it was hard to ignore the ruthless degree to which the
Bezukov applied her craft, sometimes exceeding what Suzanne considered the
boundaries of ethical conduct inside the context of war. Of course, there were
those who argued it was for that very reason Bezukov had been so successful a
practitioner of the art. Where others might be restrained by their sense of right and
wrong, it could be fairly said that this was seldom if ever true of Bezukov. She
didn’t make the distinction between the so-called ‘honorable’ killing in the field
of battle and outright murder. To her the notion of a debate about the ‘ethics’ of
slaughter in the arena of war as opposed to killings outside of its purview was
simply ludicrous. Dead was dead, and it didn’t matter in what manner it was
244
arrived at; for one was a killer whether one executed the task in the name of
justice and the lofty ideals of democracy or whether one simply did it for money
or in the commission of a crime. Bezukov saw such differences as nothing more
than philosophical semantics, with even less merit than the distinctions placing a
higher moral value on individuals who hunted animals as food for the table and
those who hunted them as a trophies for sport.
It was all a matter of perspective, and to Bezukov that boiled down to the fact
that war was war and you couldn’t pretend there were 'good' wars and 'bad' wars
because such a judgment was predicated solely on where you stood in the conflict.
So you couldn’t say there were ‘just’ killings. You couldn’t argue morality could
be reasonably applied to war. Because in the theater of war, in Bezukov’s opinion,
all combatants were alike, aspiring to the same singular ambition: to kill the
enemy. It was as simple as that. And as brutal. It had to be, because the moment
one let conscience and moral suasion enter the picture, the moment one allowed
for compassion, one was surely to be disillusioned and very likely to end up dead.
Suzanne recalled one rare occasion at a party, years ago on Isis, when
Bezukov had regaled them with her wisdom, proclaiming that one must never
carry notions of fair play into war, because there was nothing 'fair' about war to
begin with. It was killing and maiming and dying. It was destruction and
annihilation. It was all the worst of human nature, even while at times it could
reveal some of the very best of it. But most of all it was simply a means to an end;
and when it was done, humans left it behind and carried on with their lives—as
though for those few moments, within the contracted circumstance of war, they
had never been killing machines bent on rendering death without judgment,
without trial, and certainly without any consideration of the ethical validity of
what they did.
As Bezukov had said then: “When someone is firing at you with the intent to
kill, you don’t sit down and debate the whys and wherefores of it, or consider
whether one is ‘morally’ justified to shoot back. If you’re a soldier and you value
your life, then when someone tries to steal it your primary instinct, overriding all
else, is to kill the fucking bastard before he kills you.”
Straight and simple, and it brooked no argument.
Suzanne had never forgotten those words, though often she wished she had.
Or better still, wished she’d never heard them in the first place. They were
disturbing, to the degree they’d always imposed, for her, a certain ambiguity on
what she was and what she did. Doubt, some might have called it; and she didn’t
like having doubts. It was better to see things as black and white, as Anna so often
did, rather than to acknowledge that gray area that John too often allowed of
himself and which inevitably seemed the source of much personal angst.
“So,” said Bezukov, pouring tea into delicate china cups that seemed so
incongruous when contrasted with her tough, military bearing, “to what do I owe
245
this pleasure, Colonel? Surely you’ve not made such an effort to get this little
tête-à-tête merely to pay your respects.” She lifted her gaze from the tea and
settled a penetrating look on Suzanne.
“I thought it might be prudent to discuss the matter of what is to be done about
Obsidian’s native population,” Suzanne explained, accepting the cup of tea
presented her. She raised it to her lips and took a sip, then set it back down on its
saucer and regarded her Industries counterpart evenly. “I’m sure you’re well
aware there’s a USF directive to evacuate the citizens of this planet so as to place
them out of harm’s way.”
Bezukov sat back in her own chair, holding cup and saucer in both hands, her
face a study of controlled emotion. “Of course, it’s not our desire to see any of
these people hurt,” she offered airily. “That’s why we’re currently observing the
imposed ceasefire. However, one must note it hardly seems in the best interest of
the Red Catholics to remove them from their homes and dump them elsewhere. It
scarcely seems in keeping with the usual practices of the USF. And it’s certainly
at odds with your much vaunted sense of morality, wouldn’t you agree?” She
lifted her cup and drank from it, but her eyes remained fixed on Suzanne, their
intense gaze harboring a glimmer of what Suzanne perceived to be amusement.
“Our objective is simple,” said Suzanne, ignoring Bezukov’s implied
accusations.
“Ah, yes, and what would that objective truly be, my dear Suzanne? I’d argue
it’s not the interests of these good people of Obsidian you’ve at heart. I’d suggest
to you the Assembly is intent upon rendering this world effectively neutral, so as
to establish some sense that it’s still an authority to be reckoned with in the
Empire. And the only way that can be achieved is to remove the population and
then essentially sterilize the planet. I think we both understand what I mean by
that.” She looked at Suzanne sharply.
“None of that precludes the fact that there remains a decided threat to the
welfare of these people so long as they remain on the surface of the planet.”
Bezukov set her cup down on the large wooden desk that separated them.
“That’s so much bullshit,” she retorted. “You know as well as I do that had
Industries and ‘Corp been permitted to pursue our engagement without
interference from the Federation the likelihood of any of the native population
being harmed would have been remote. We weren’t conducting our war near the
cities, or any of the other heavily populated areas.”
“And yet you’re here.”
“Practicality, Colonel,” she said, with a diffident wave. “We didn’t arrive on
the surface with the means to establish any sort of permanent camp. Most of our
equipment is mobile in nature, so it became necessary that we find somewhere in
which to wait out the Federation edict.”
It was, of course, nonsense, and Suzanne was inclined to say as much to
246
Bezukov's face, but then realized Bezukov knew she knew this and that they were
merely playing a game here. So she said, “One wonders how the locals consider
your ‘practicality,’ Alex. Particularly in light of the fact that you’ve taken over
their church.”
Bezukov spread her arms wide and beamed munificently. “They’ve tended to
accept us with open arms,” she claimed. “Indeed, the women and many of the
young would seem to be quite taken with the notion of offworlders in their
midst.”
“Really?” Suzanne eyed her skeptically. “It was my impression women and
children were kept under pretty tight control here,” she said.
Her Industries opposite shrugged dismissively. “Things have changed
somewhat since our arrival.”
“I imagine. Still, one doesn’t change a culture overnight.”
“I’ve no desire to change it. What these people do among themselves is no
concern of mine, Suzanne.”
“Funny, I’d have thought you, of all people, would have regarded the
treatment of women on this world as intolerable.”
“I’m a soldier, Colonel. I fight wars. Saving people is not on my agenda.” Her
eyes narrowed and she stared straight at Suzanne and added, “I used to assume it
was on yours.”
Suzanne stiffened, taken aback, and not quite sure what to make of that last
remark. She recovered quickly and said, “I suppose you’re right. And I suppose
that’s why I’m here, isn’t it?” She lifted her tea cup in a slight salute to Bezukov,
took another sip and waited for the reaction.
“Allowing you to move freely in Cecilius and evacuate the citizens of this city
might be arranged,” said Bezukov. “But I wonder, Colonel, if this might not be a
task you’ll find more onerous than you think. I suspect the people here won’t be
so eager to follow you when they realize your notions of salvation include
wresting them from their home and scattering them throughout the Empire. I
especially think they’ll be less enthused when they discover there’s another option
open to them, one the USF, to which they’ve so misguidedly entrusted
themselves, has neglected to inform them of.”
“And what would that option be, pray tell? Or do I really need to ask?”
Bezukov smiled larcenously. “I think they might be most amenable to
remaining here under corporate authority once it’s been determined by Industries
and ‘Corp as to which of us will control this world.”
“I rather think they’d look upon such an offer as being somewhat suspect,”
Suzanne observed dryly. “They fled Earth and other worlds because they wanted
the right to practice their faith as they saw fit, without interference from outside
forces.”
“They’d have no order imposed upon them by Industries,” said Bezukov. “We
247
wouldn’t even require that they become corporate citizens. They’d be free to carry
on practicing their faith as they see fit and expanding their settlements to pretty
much anywhere on the planet, exclusive of those zones Industries would claim for
its own needs.”
“How generous,” Suzanne said, with flat-toned cynicism. She felt anything
but calm as she considered the implications of Bezukov’s words. Just how would
the citizens of Obsidian react if they were apprized of this proposal? Then it
struck her they might already know, that Bezukov may well have informed the
Elders who ruled this world of Industries’ offer. Indeed, given what she knew of
Bezukov, it seemed more than likely that was one of the first things the Industries
colonel would have done.
“More tea?” Bezukov proffered with a broadening grin.
“No, thank you.”
“So where were we?”
“Discussing improbabilities.”
“Ah, yes.” Bezukov sat back and drank some tea. “Quite a quandary for the
Federation, don’t you think?” she said, still holding her cup close to her lips.
“The Assembly must do what is best for the overall welfare of the
Federation,” Suzanne argued. “More than the lives of a few thousand people are
at stake.”
Bezukov cocked her head slightly, an eyebrow raised. “You think?” She took
another sip from her cup, affecting an air of abstraction. “And how do you see
that, Colonel?” she asked, without looking at Suzanne directly.
“You know the Federation can’t let you have this planet.”
“Why? Because it injures the Assembly’s sensibilities as regards their notions
of power within the Empire?” Bezukov scoffed loudly. “Or is it because they’re
afraid of the precedent it’ll set? Ignoring, of course, the fact they’ve set their own
precedent by interfering in this situation when they’d no legal right to do so. Then
again, it could be they fear the potential inherent in this world, on the Fringes as it
is, so close to a transit point. They must have figured out that whoever controls
Obsidian controls the transit point and all that that might entail. Such a boon
would surely present the possibility that the corporation with the controlling
interest would go on to become the single most powerful political and economic
force in the Empire.”
Bezukov had, in the fashion that was so typical of her, hit the nail on the head.
The reasons were all that she had stated, and perhaps even a few she hadn’t. And
when presented in that light, Suzanne was immediately reminded of Bezukov’s
words of some years before, those words spoken at that party, with their implied
ambiguity and the unsettling effect they’d had upon her.
How do you reconcile doing something that is ostensibly wrong for the sake
of achieving some greater good? she wondered. Was it right to destroy a world
248
based simply on the notion of its potential threat to the lives and welfare of the
citizens of the Empire? It was rather like convicting a criminal on the basis of
what he or she might do and not on anything he or she had actually done. On the
other hand, there was no question of why Industries and ‘Corp were interested in
Obsidian, nor was there any doubt that whichever of them had control of it would
put it to good use and quite likely then become, as Bezukov had remarked, ‘the
single most powerful political and economic force in the Empire.’ The risk, then,
was that the remaining megacorps might seek to consolidate as one to offset this
new corporate behemoth. Or, barring this, the megacorp in control of Obsidian
might quickly move to swallow up its smaller brethren and form a staggering
colossus that would essentially control the lion’s share of the Empire. In either
scenario the threat to the Empire was enormous, for consolidation would lead to a
confrontation of two massive forces that would be far beyond the capacity of the
USF to control in even the most fundamental of ways, thus endangering the
stability of the Empire. Likewise, a single megacorp forming out of the current
disparate group would signal a dire threat to democracy; it would bring a majority
of the population under the rule of a unified corporate entity, beyond the
accountability of democratic institutions like the Assembly.
“Have you ever considered the possibility, Suzanne, that you just might be
working for the wrong people?” Bezukov’s words seemed to boom in the silence
that had fallen between them. She regarded Suzanne shrewdly. “I’m sure any one
of the megacorps would be more than eager to acquire someone with the field
experience you have.”
Suzanne forced a smile. “Wouldn’t want to put you out of a job, Alex,” she
said drolly.
“Seriously,” said Bezukov, ignoring the gibe, “you might consider a career
move, my friend.” She drained the last of her tea and set the cup and saucer down
with an air of finality. “I’d so hate to see you lost to us for no reason.”
“I’m touched by your concern.”
“Better life under the corporates than an early grave.”
“Is that a threat, Alex?”
“Just a friendly piece of advice.” Bezukov leaned forward and in a lowered
voice added, “You can’t win this one, Suzanne. In the end you’re just going to get
a lot of people killed. Including you. And I’m just wondering why you’d do that
for those self-proclaimed guardians of democracy who are little more than a
bunch of corrupt, self-serving politicians. It’s more hypocrisy they practice than
any notion of democratic rule. Some of them come from brutal dictatorships.
Some of them are representatives of societies every bit as oppressive as this one.
So you have to ask yourself, Suzanne, whether that’s really what you want to be
associated with. Are those really the people whose ideals you want to uphold and
protect?”
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“Well, you know what they say?” said Suzanne as she stood up, signaling the
meeting had come to an end. “Sometimes even bad people do good things.”
“Yes,” Bezukov agreed, a canny look in her eyes. “But sometimes, my friend,
it is sad to say that good people do bad things.” And she smiled, in a way that was
anything but friendly.
******
“You’ve been awfully quiet,” said Mackay.

“Have I?” Suzanne looked at him blankly. “Yes, I suppose I have.”
“Must have been some meeting.”
“It was...illuminating,” she conceded.
“Hmmm.” Mackay frowned. “Seems like it must have been more than that to
trouble you like this,” he said.
“Bezukov is never the easiest of people to deal with. But I have to admit she’s
probably one of the more honest.”
“She’s also the enemy, sir.”
“Is she?” Suzanne shrugged. “One wonders, sometimes.”
“Sir?”
“Have you ever thought, Josh, that perhaps there are times when the things we
do are just not...right?”
“I’m just a soldier, sir. I go where they send me. I do what they tell me.”
“You’re also a human being.”
“I learned long ago that you have to put your personal feelings aside, Colonel.
If you don’t, well...” He gestured helplessly. “The fact is, sir, if you were to talk
to a thousand different people on a given matter you’d probably get a thousand
different points of view on what should or shouldn’t be done. That’s why direct
democracy doesn’t always work. It’s why we have politicians to sift through all
the crap and filter everything down into a handful of choices that are practical.”
“Maybe. But does that really change anything? Isn’t it still possible that
sometimes in our system political ambition might lead to the wrong sort of
choices being imposed upon us?”
“No system is perfect, sir. There never has been one that was. Probably never
will. Maybe that’s because we’re human, and flawed from the get-go. And maybe,
too, it’s because we’re all different, all individuals, and no system can possibly
hope to accommodate us all or equitably deal with everyone.”
“Winners and losers,” she said, staring out the flitter cockpit, watching the
dunes race by below in a beige blur as the flitter flew back towards the camp.
“I suppose that’s the simplest way of putting it,” Mackay agreed. “You can’t
satisfy everyone. If you try to, you just succeed in satisfying no one. And in the
end I guess it’s the majority you have to consider first and foremost.”
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“But isn’t one of the fundamental principles of democratic belief the dictum
that minorities must be protected against the excesses of the majority?”
He scratched his head. “Never was very good in poli-sci, Colonel,” he
confessed with a sheepish grin. “Probably my worst course in the Academy.
Guess I really never thought I’d have much use for it. I wanted to be a soldier and
I just couldn’t see much sense in knowing all that political crap. I suppose I
should have paid more attention in class, eh?”
“No doubt.” Suzanne grinned crookedly.
“Bezukov really got to you, didn’t she, sir?” Mackay regarded her with a
measure of concern.
“No, I’m just anxious we do the right thing. I don’t want to look back on this
mission years from now and regret I was ever a part of it. If we’re going to move
tens of thousands of people from this planet and then essentially render it
uninhabitable, then I want to make sure there’s a reason for that. And a good one.
Not because some twits back on Isis think they can gain some good political
mileage out of it.”
“There’ll always be that sort, sir. One way or another. There’s nothing we can
do about it.”
“Maybe not. But in the end we’re the front line, Josh. We’re the eyes and ears
of the people. Not just those of the politicians and bureaucrats in the Assembly
who seem to see it as incumbent upon them to decide the fate of an entire empire.
And as representatives of the people, surely it behooves us to act in the best
interests of them and not for some politician whose sole aim is to pad his pockets
or further his career…or both.”
“We have our orders, sir.”
“Everything is subject to interpretation, Josh.”
Mackay looked doubtful. “I’m not sure what kind of latitude you have in
interpreting an order to evacuate fifty thousand people and raze the surface of a
planet, sir. That’s pretty straightforward.”
“I know,” she said, gravely. “But there has to be room for some humanity in
all that somewhere.”
“Maybe the humane thing is exactly what we’re doing, sir.”
Suzanne sighed wearily. “And maybe I’m a fool trying to put a square peg in a
round hole.”
“All I know, Colonel, is that if we start making the choices we have to stop
and ask ourselves what right we have to do so? Why should we be any better at it
than those political hacks back on Isis? Who’s to say that what we might decide is
in the best interests of the Federation? Once we start venturing down that road,
then we risk becoming something I’m not sure any of us wants us to be. It sure as
hell wouldn’t be democracy, sir.”
“I wish I could say you were wrong,” she said.
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“But you know I’m right, sir. The thing is, it’s like I said: We’re soldiers. Best
we just recognize that and accept our limitations. So long as they don’t have us
killing innocent people, I have to trust they know what they’re doing. They’re
ultimately accountable to the people, but we’re accountable to them. If we stop
doing our job or start doing things the way we think they should be done, then we
become the threat. We become the destabilizing factor. We become the problem.”
“I hate to tell you this, Josh, but there are already many who consider us just
that.”
Mackay nodded. “Yeah, I doubt there’s a single spacer in the Fleet who isn’t
aware of that, sir,” he said, his solemn mien suddenly aging him; and Suzanne
was abruptly aware that he was older than she, and that he’d probably seen more
horrors in his time than the ones visited upon her in her years of service. “No one
has ever forgotten Kesselus, sir,” he added, as though reading her thoughts.
“And that’s what I don’t want this to become,” she said, her voice reserved,
emotions contained. “I was there, Josh. I saw what was done to us on Kesselus.”
“I know.” He put a paternal hand of reassurance on her shoulder.
“It’s not something I ever want to see again.”
“No, sir. But in our line of work it’s something of an occupational hazard.
We’re bound to witness its like again, sooner or later.”
“I’ve this horrid notion we’ll see it sooner rather than later.”
Below them the dunes drifted past in silent retreat, like an army marching
towards a distant horizon and vanishing beyond it. To the west the light of a
setting sun stained the sand a blood red. Suzanne stared at this and saw in it an
ominous portent.
Sooner, she thought. Much sooner.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO:
THE DEFIANT ONE
She didn’t know the girl before her. Not this youth on the cusp of
womanhood, who wore strange clothes the Elders would have decreed a
blasphemy. A young woman in a black shirt and pants, with a black scarf
covering her hair and encircling her face and neck.
This was no ordinary girl from Obsidian. Indeed, she was like no girl or
woman she had ever seen until but a few days ago, when her world had suddenly
changed dramatically, in ways that even at her most fanciful she could never have
imagined. Because no girl or woman on Obsidian would ever dare be so openly
bold as this. A woman who wore ‘men’s’ clothing would almost certainly be
flogged in public and thrown in prison, if she wasn’t stoned to death outright.
Any act of defiance, no matter how minor, took supreme courage on a world
where women weren’t free to speak, where their education was limited to what
was considered essential to making men happy, and where it was acceptable to
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beat and rape and murder them—if you simply justified it in the name of God and
proclaimed that it was a matter of honor. So seemingly a simple thing as wearing
pants and shirts—even if not in public—was tantamount to standing on a street
corner and shouting denunciations at the Elders and God.
So she stood, and stared, regarding the ghostly apparition in the dirty glass
with a mix of emotions, seeing not the girl she was, but the young woman she
wanted to be. The young woman she knew she could be. And it both excited and
frightened her. Excited her, because she had never believed a life like this
possible—feeling free, no longer fearful of the cruel retribution too easily visited
upon her by her father. Frightened her, because she was afraid it was all a dream,
and that if it wasn’t a dream, then perhaps it was something that would all too
quickly end as dreams inevitably must. Something that would evaporate into the
abyss of lost hopes, leaving her condemned to what she’d been, to that horrid
existence she was now certain would soon have killed her had her life not taken
such a remarkable turn.
“It suits you,” said Claudia, coming to stand behind her, putting her hands on
Sylvie’s shoulders and smiling reassuringly. A bright smile, which even in the
dirty glass shone clearly.
“The uniform,” said Genevieve, with her characteristically sardonic aplomb.
She sat by the upturned crate that served as a table, observing Sylvie and Claudia
with a lazy disregard. “Don’t get too used to it, kid,” she added. “It’s not like it’s
something you can wear out in public.”
“That will change,” said Claudia, with an unabridged confidence.
Genevieve made a face. “Do you honestly believe that?” she asked, making it
clear by her tone she didn’t.
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”
“Oh, come on. You’re here because of your husband. You pretend to be some
sort of liberated woman, yet in truth you’re just Gabriel’s tag-a-long.”
“Genevieve!” Mara admonished.
“It’s true,” said Genevieve, looking around at the other women in the
warehouse. “None of you would be here if it weren’t that your husbands were
involved in this. And don’t fool yourselves they’re doing this for you. They’re
doing this for themselves. They’re doing what men always do: looking for
advantage, for ways to gain power, so as to attain some degree of control. That’s
what all this is really about, kid.” She stared directly at Sylvie, who felt herself
color under the intense scrutiny. “It’s about them and not us.”
“Then why are you here?” asked Soroia, an older woman Sylvie had not met
her first day in the warehouse.
Genevieve glanced at her sharply. “Because it’s better than being beaten and
raped by the man the Elders chose to be my husband,” she replied smartly. “Better
than this!” she said as she stood up quickly and pulled off her shirt in front of
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them.
There was a collective gasp, and Sylvie, standing beside Claudia, felt the other
tense. It was easy to understand why, for Genevieve’s body from the waist up was
a portrait of abuse, the signatures of burns, knife cuts, and whippings forming a
battlefield of scars. These were the evidence that remained, but it was easy to
imagine there’d been worse, that the woman had probably suffered beatings that
had left her black and blue and with broken ribs and internal injuries. Wounds the
doctors, who were all men, would have patched up but said nothing about—if
Genevieve’s husband had even taken her to a hospital (and no woman would ever
go there alone).
“Do you think it’ll really be so easy to change them?” Genevieve demanded,
glaring at them all defiantly. Slowly she slipped her shirt back on and adjusted the
scarf about her neck, rebelliously leaving her long hair exposed. “They’ve lived
centuries of this sort of thing. They think it’s their ‘divine’ right. You’ve all heard
it yourselves, in Church. That can’t be changed overnight. Even if we get rid of
the Elders and make ourselves a new society, there’ll still be nothing to stop a
man from beating his wife behind the closed doors of his house.”
“There’ll be laws,” Claudia insisted. “And they’ll be enforced.”
“Laws!” Genevieve spat in scorn. “Laws won’t stop the likes of Sean, or any
of the thousands like him. Do you really think any man who wanted to retain
power on this world could ever stop this sort of thing? He’d be a fool if he tried,
because they’d turn on him and get rid of him in an instant.”
Sylvie didn’t want to believe that, yet in her heart she sensed it was true. Her
father was probably not the worst offender by far, but she could never imagine
him giving ground to the sort of world Claudia and most of the other women were
talking about. She knew he’d fight any such proposition, and do so with violence
if necessary.
No, it was easy to see the basis of Genevieve’s cynicism, and it was easy to be
swept along with it, however unwillingly. Because men like Gabriel and the few
who followed him were a distinct minority on Obsidian. Of that Sylvie was
convinced. Had it been otherwise, she was certain things would have changed
long ago. And even at that she had to wonder, like Genevieve, whether men could
ever have anything but the interests of men truly at heart. For although she
wouldn’t have said as much to Claudia, it was difficult not to question the motives
of men like Gabriel. Could anyone really be so altruistic?
She supposed it all came down to trust. Claudia trusted her husband implicitly,
simply because she knew him better than the rest of them did, and probably
because he’d never given her reason not to trust him. And, of course, because she
actually loved him. But for a woman like Genevieve, and for someone like
herself, Sylvie thought there was cause for suspicion. There was no reason she
should trust Gabriel or any of the other men involved in this enterprise; and in the
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back of her mind there preyed the fact that he had seemed on such good terms
with her father. Was that all just show? Perhaps over the years he’d cultivated
friendships for a purpose, with a notion that a day might come when they’d prove
useful to him. She couldn’t know. She supposed there would be a need to
establish something of a fictional front, for him to pretend he was like the rest of
the men on Obsidian while in fact he was working against them.
If indeed he is, she found herself thinking; and her thoughts regarding these
people were now contaminated with doubt.
“No one can deny you’ve suffered,” Claudia said gently to Genevieve. “But at
some point you have to trust someone. You’re too inclined to think the worst of
everyone.”
“And you’re too quick to ignore it,” Genevieve rebuked.
“I know my husband.”
“And we don’t.” She glared at Claudia, her look and her stance a belligerent
challenge.
“What would you have us do?” Claudia demanded. “Fight the Elders and their
backers on our own?”
“It’s the only way we can assure the world that comes out of any victory we
might have is to our liking,” Genevieve insisted. “If it's men who lead the
rebellion, it’ll be men who decide the shape of the future. And just how much of a
part do you think they’ll let women play in that?”
“We would have absolutely no chance of success on our own,” Claudia
argued. “Not even if we could get every woman on Obsidian to work with us.”
“You have too little faith in what we might achieve.”
“No, you have too much. I’m being pragmatic.”
“If you were, you wouldn’t be trusting men to determine what your life should
be in the next few years.”
“And you’d condemn us to almost certain death.”
Genevieve shook her head. “Our lives are already a living death,” she said
quietly. “Can you think of any woman who could honestly claim to be happy on
Obsidian?”
“Isn’t that what this is all about?’ Mara asked. “Aren’t we supposed to be
trying to change all that? To make our lives better.?”
“Better, yes,” Genevieve mused. “But how much better? It’s not enough that
they stop the physical abuse. There has to be much more than that. There has to be
change that’ll ensure we’ve an equal place in society.”
“Are you sure that’s what you really want?” asked Soroia.
“Why would one want less?” Disbelief.
“Because with the sort of change you propose comes a great deal of
responsibility.”
“And you think women couldn’t handle that?” Genevieve regarded her with a
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look of derision and contempt.
“Some, perhaps. But you’re under the illusion that every woman on Obsidian
wants the sort of world you want.”
Genevieve laughed and said, “And I suppose you’re suggesting there are
actually some women on this world who don’t mind being beaten and raped, who
don’t care that they could be murdered at any moment, with no one to pay the
price!”
“Not every woman has suffered as you have. Not all the men on this world are
monsters, Genevieve. Some of them are kind and gentle and caring. They treat
their wives with respect and honor, as human beings. Not as animals.”
“Even were that true, it doesn’t alter the fact that women are still no more than
property.”
“Perhaps,” Soroia conceded. “But it does mean that many women here may be
more than content to have things remain as they are. They’ve grown up in this
culture, in this way of life. For some of them there may even be a sense of
security in that. The thought of having to take on the responsibilities of a man and
assuming a more active, political role in society may be something they’d find
intimidating.”
“Then they would be fools,” Genevieve snapped.
“But surely by changing their world and imposing your view of how it should
be upon them would be no better than the existence they have now,” the older
woman argued.
“The difference is, they’d be free. Free to make choices and not have those
choices made for them. If they chose to live under the thumb of their husband
than they could, but if they wanted it otherwise, they’d at least have that choice
too.”
“But would they be so free? If we change the world to conform to your vision
of equality, we may find that no woman who thinks other than as you do will have
a place in your utopia. Will women who wish to continue the old ways be
accepted in your world of absolute equality? Or will they be forced underground,
like us, to live lives of deception and deceit?”
“You talk as though you would like this world to remain as it is,” Genevieve
accused.
But Soroia shook her head. “I’m only trying to point out that we must be
careful in what we wish for; and that if we should achieve our goal of effecting
change in this world we must be careful of what sort of changes we bring about.”
She looked around at the other women in turn, finally switching her attention back
to Genevieve. “Do we want to destroy our culture completely and adopt the ways
of the offworlders? Or is there some way we can still be what we are and have
greater freedoms? My husband and I came to this world to escape persecution on
Hephaestus. We came here so that we could practice our faith without fear,
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because we both had strong religious convictions.”

“Then you fled one prison for another.”
“As you might see it, I suppose. But my husband has always been a kind and
fair man, who has treated me with the utmost respect. He honors me, and never
once in all of our years together has he ever laid a hand on me in anger.”
“But don’t you see?” Genevieve protested impatiently. “That doesn’t mean he
couldn’t if he wanted to. And if he were to do so, there’d be nothing you could do
about it.”
“And you don’t see that that doesn’t matter.”
“But of course it matters! It makes all the difference in the world. How often
do you think a man will refrain from taking what he wants if there is nothing to
stop him from doing so?
“I just know that you would sacrifice even the good of our religion for the
sake of an intangible only you and a few others desire.”
“If you believe that, then why on earth are you here?” Genevieve demanded.
“Because I believe there can be a better way than the Elders’ way. I believe
our world doesn’t have to be like this. The Elders claim they interpret the word of
God in the Red Catholic religion, but in truth they corrupt it and turn it into
something it isn’t. There’s nothing in the Barkanauk that speaks to the matter of
treating women as property. And there is certainly nothing that countenances
beatings and rapes and murders. These are all things the Elders have imposed
upon us. They’re men whose souls have been corrupted by the narrowness of their
theological beliefs and by the fact that they’ve so much power it’s simply too easy
for them to abuse it. Remove them and replace them with men of a greater,
broader and more compassionate vision, and then you might see change for the
better.”
“Or not,” Genevieve said sourly. “Because replacing those aging monsters
with more men might simply perpetuate the current situation. How long do you
think it would be before these new men you propose would also become
corrupted? How long before they, too, would begin to abuse their power?”
“I’m willing to take that risk,” said Soroia with great dignity. “Better to start
off with small changes and go from there.”
“And the rest of you?” Genevieve shifted her piercing glare from one to the
other, the obdurate look in her eyes making Sylvie flinch.
“I think you know where we stand,” said Claudia, meeting her gaze with one
that was every bit as intense and resolute.
Genevieve seemed to shrink into herself. She sat down slowly, slouching,
staring at the floor, hands held together between her legs. She looked defeated, as
though she’d been betrayed; and Sylvie, watching her, thought that perhaps in a
way she had been.
“Your trouble,” Genevieve said at length, “is that none of you have ever really
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been afraid to be a woman on this world.” She didn’t look up at them. “You’ve
been privileged, the lot of you. So here you are, playing your little game of
rebellion, thinking that dressing up in forbidden clothes is somehow a great act of
defiance that will change a world. But in truth you’re afraid. Afraid of destroying
what you do have. Because you’re among the very few lucky ones who have
found something most of the rest of us never had and never likely will have.”
Sylvie looked at her and was surprised to find she agreed with her, that many
of the sentiments Genevieve had expressed weren’t so very far removed from her
own. She wanted to say as much, but somehow couldn’t bring herself to be so
bold. Or perhaps, she thought, it was because she didn’t want to fall out of favor
with the other women in the group. Though she’d been with them for but a short
time, she had come to feel she was a part of what they were, that she was a ‘sister’
to them. It was something she had never felt before. Not with her mother.
Especially not with her mother, who she believed had betrayed her many times
over the years. Her mother, who would have said nothing when her father shipped
her off to be wife to some wizened old coot old enough to be her grandfather. Her
mother, who would have said nothing except to admonish her to be good and
dutiful and trust in God.
“Only when you’ve known what it’s really like to be a woman on this cursed
world, when you’ve had a man whip you almost to the bone or beat you until you
could hardly breathe because of the agony of your broken ribs...only then can you
even begin to understand. Only when you’ve had a man take you and do it to you
until you bleed, until you beg him to stop and then have him break your jaw
because you dared speak...only then will you even begin to understand the way I
feel and why what you propose isn’t good enough for me,” said Genevieve. Tears
spilt down her cheeks, reddening her eyes and wetting her face. A few formed
drops at the edge of her chin, then fell and spattered on the dusty floor. And to
Sylvie it was as though they were blood.
“My father had sex with me when I was ten,” Genevieve said, her voice
catching. “My mother was sick with a child on the way. So he came and took me.
My mother knew it, but she never said anything. I think she actually blamed me. I
think she saw me as a threat to her, to her place with my father. So when I had my
first bleed and the Elders decided I should go to Sean, she was only too happy to
see me off. My father took two head of cattle for me, and proudly proclaimed
he’d got the better of the bargain.”
She lifted her head and threw back her long hair. She wiped away her tears,
and once more confronted Claudia. “So now you can see,” she said, “why your
dreams aren’t big enough for me. Because your dreams won’t free me. Your
dreams won’t let me escape the fear I live with every day. And they won’t
guarantee I’ll never again have to suffer what was done to me by my father and
Sean.”
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No one said anything; and Sylvie suspected it was because there was nothing
they could say that would have any validity in light of what they’d just heard.
None of them had borne what Genevieve had endured, and it was impossible for
them to even imagine what this woman had been through. Of all of them, only
Sylvie probably came closest to understanding, but she knew the punishments her
father had meted out to her paled in comparison with anything that had been
inflicted upon Genevieve.
They were standing there, the uncomfortable silence like a wall that separated
them from one another, when they heard the door to the warehouse open. Breaths
caught, and they all instinctively looked towards the far entrance that was hidden
from their view by boxes and crates. Footsteps sounded on the concrete, then Carl
came into view. At the sight of him a collective sigh of relief went up from all the
women.
Mara rushed to her husband and he caught her up in his arms and hugged her
and kissed her, all with a passion Sylvie found unfamiliar but which she secretly
coveted. She’d never really thought that men and women could feel that way
about one another; in all her experience, male and female relationships had been
predicated on fear and there’d never seemed to be anything remotely like love
involved. Naturally, as with any girl, she had fantasized about such things, and
had always hoped there might be some miracle that would make such love happen
for her—but always there’d been the cold truth of her real life facing her. It was
the sort of reality she saw every day in the relationship that existed between her
parents.
When Mara and Carl were done, he set his wife back down on her feet and
came over with her to the others. Sylvie watched him guardedly, realizing she was
still not comfortable in the presence of strange men. Certainly not comfortable
enough to talk to them in the way the other women did. And as she stood there in
her new garments, she felt especially self-conscious and not without some
measure of fear—even as she realized such a fear was irrational.
Carl sat down and looked around at them all, his eyes settling for a moment on
Sylvie. He smiled warmly and she felt herself blush. She had the urge to run and
hide, but stood her ground, waiting with the others, sensing that Carl had
something he was eager to tell them.
“I was out at Kiarson’s place,” he said. “While I was there old Jonus Kliempt
came by. Must have been on his way back from Hyster’s, because he stank of
beer and had clearly had a few too many. Celebrating, he claimed. So I asked him
what he’d been celebrating and he told me Sean has himself a new wife.” He
stared at Genevieve.
Genevieve sat bolt upright, halfway between shock and despair. “The
Elders—” she started; but Carl held up a hand to silence her. “I don’t think it was
the Elders,” he said hurriedly.
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“I don’t understand,” said Claudia. “Only the Elders can approve a marriage.”
“Seems old Jonus and Sean were out in the desert hunting for deiktras when
they came across the wreckage of a spaceship of some sort.”
“From the offworlders?” Mara asked excitedly.
“Seems so. According to Jonus there were a lot of dead bodies about, but they
found one a ways from the wreck that was alive.”
“Oh, God!” Claudia gasped, putting her hand to her mouth. “You mean to say
Sean has an offworlder?”
Carl nodded. “Apparently some woman soldier they shot. She nearly killed
them both, even though she couldn’t have been in too good a shape—if Jonus’
description of the state in which they found her is anything to go by.”
“An offworlder,” Claudia said again, shaking her head. “But surely her people
would have been looking for her?”
“Seems they were. Jonus went back later and said that a lot of other people
had been around the sight and all the bodies were gone. But Sean has this woman
locked up in his house, and by all accounts he intends to keep her.”
“He must be mad!” exclaimed Claudia.
“Of course he is,” Genevieve interposed fiercely.
“We have to do something,” Claudia said, ignoring Genevieve. “We can’t just
leave her there with him.”
“That’s why I came here,” said Carl. “I was hoping to find Gabriel.”
“He’s at the farm,” said Claudia. “He should be coming back soon to pick me
up. Our neighbor has been making inquiries as to my whereabouts, so I have to
put in an appearance. Gabriel told him I was visiting my mother, but we have to
be careful and not raise too many suspicions.”
“Of course,” said Carl. “Everybody is a bit anxious now the offworlders are in
the cities.”
“Perhaps we should try to get word to the offworlders that one of their people
is being held against her will,” Soroia suggested.
“The Elders have forbidden contact with the offworlders.”
Genevieve laughed dryly. “Why would that matter to us?” she asked. “We’re
supposed to be the makings of a rebellion, aren’t we? We thrive on doing what the
Elders forbid.”
“Going to the offworlders is too risky,” Carl insisted. “Besides, which
offworlders would we go to? I‘ve heard there are three different groups here, now.
Two of them were fighting one another before the third arrived.”
“Which begs the question of just what it is they‘re doing here,” said
Genevieve.
“Whatever it is, we have to use it to our advantage,” Claudia insisted.
“If we can.”
“Must you always be so negative?”
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“This isn’t the time to be bickering,” Carl interjected, scowling impatiently at

the two of them. “We have other things to worry about.”
“Why should we even be bothered about what happens to this offworlder?”
Genevieve demanded.
“I’d have thought,” said Soroia, “that you, of all people, wouldn’t want any
woman to endure what you suffered under the roof of your husband‘s house.”
Genevieve said nothing, but Sylvie could see a strong emotional reaction
written across the young woman’s face. There was a lot of hate there, and a hurt
that was far deeper than the physical wounds for which the scars lay as evidence
about Genevieve’s body.
“What about the Elders?” said Mara, breaking the silence.
They all turned and looked at her, dumbfounded.
“No, wait,” she urged them. “Listen, the Elders are cooperating with the
offworlders. Maybe if we told them one of the offworlders was being held by
Sean they’d do something about it. I doubt they want to upset the offworlders.”
“Maybe not,” Claudia agreed, “but there’s really no guarantee the Elders
would actually do anything. From what I understand their cooperation with the
offworlders is far from voluntary.”
“You’re right,” said Carl. “Besides, there’d be the risk of someone letting slip
what was happening and Sean getting wind of it. There’s no telling what he’d do
in that case.”
“I can tell you what he’d do.”
He raised his eyebrows in a silent question mark as he looked across at
Genevieve.
“He’d kill her,” she said bluntly.
“Why on earth would he do that?”
“Because he could. Because he wouldn’t want anyone else to have her.
Because it’s just the sort of Goddamn bastard he is!”
The other women looked somewhat scandalized by her outburst, but Carl
merely sat looking thoughtful.
“If we want to save this offworlder,” Genevieve said, not waiting for him to
speak again, “then we’re going to have to do it ourselves. And we’re going to
have to kill him.”
“You can’t be serious,” Mara cried.
“She’s right,” said Carl. “The only way of rescuing this woman would be to
approach Sean directly. That’s the only way we could ever get close to his place.”
“The problem is, you’re not his friends,” said Genevieve. “He’s not likely to
trust you as strangers and let you get that close. Especially not if he has some
offworlder captive in the house.”
“We can hardly storm the place,” said Soroia.
“No,” Genevieve agreed, “but perhaps there’s another way.”
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“And that would be?” Carl, along with the others, had his eyes fixed upon her,
waiting expectantly.
“The only one who could reasonably get close enough to him would be me,”
she said.
“Are you insane?” Claudia cried, staring at the other woman wide-eyed and
flabbergasted. “You know very well he’d likely kill you if he got hold of you.”
“We’d have to make sure he didn’t get the chance.”
“I don’t like it,” said Carl, shaking his head. “It’s far too risky.”
“I still think it would be better to inform the offworlders,” Soroia insisted.
“Surely the risk is less great.”
“Not to this woman it wouldn’t be,” said Genevieve. “Don’t you think Sean
will have anticipated someone trying to come and rescue her? The only way to get
to him is through someone he knows, someone he wouldn’t suspect. Moreover,
someone he wouldn’t fear. If the men in this group simply went up to his place
they’d just make matters worse. But I can get close. I can get close because he’ll
want me to. He’ll want to punish me for leaving him.”
“He’ll want to bloody well kill you!” Carl charged.
“Of course,” she said simply. “That’s why he’ll let me get close. That’s why
I’ll have the best chance of pulling this off.”
“We should wait for Gabriel,” Claudia announced, as though everything
would be made right by the arrival of her husband.
There was a murmur of consent, but Genevieve said, “It won’t change
anything. Gabriel will agree with me, because he’ll be smart enough to see I’m
right, that this is the only way.”
“We’ll see,” said Claudia, not wanting to concede anything.
Genevieve shrugged and fell silent, staring blankly into space, seemingly
unaware of them all, the expression on her face one that struck Sylvie as hard and
cold and decidedly inflexible. It made Sylvie shiver; and she was suddenly
reminded of the vengeful look she’d seen on her own face, in the mirror, on those
occasions following a whipping when she had felt a particularly fierce hatred for
her father. But Genevieve’s hate and lust for vengeance clearly ran far deeper.
Thinking of the marks on the young woman’s body, Sylvie could clearly see why.
Genevieve had told Carl they were going to have to kill Sean; but looking at
her, Sylvie had the sense that what Genevieve had actually meant was that she
was going to kill Sean. That was why she wanted so desperately for them to adopt
her plan. The idea of a woman doing such a thing might have seemed incredible
to Sylvie at one time, yet no longer. Now she could well imagine that if
Genevieve were given the chance, she’d do it without hesitation.
Genevieve would kill Sean; and to Sylvie, reborn as she felt herself to have
been, this was neither particularly disturbing nor unjustified. Surely any man who
would do to a woman what had been done to Genevieve deserved to die.
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Sylvie looked askance at the dirty mirror in which she had earlier admired
herself, and realized it wasn’t only her outward appearance that had changed in
the last few days.
How far can I go? she wondered.
How far do I want to go?
Was there any reason to believe there was a limit?
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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE:
PATHWAY TO VICTORY
There had always been thoughts of glory.

Even as a child she had dreamt of great triumphs, of making history, of being
more than just ‘ordinary.’ Because to be ordinary was to be forgotten, to simply
be one more passenger on the long train of time, one more faceless participant
among the billions in the annals of human endeavor. She had never wanted that,
so growing up there’d never been any doubt in her mind that she’d one day
achieve a certain renown, that she’d be more than her father or mother had ever
been. She had known that she’d take her place beside the notables of history, the
men and women who had changed the world and worlds. Men and women whose
actions had left an indelible mark on time, lasting far beyond them, far beyond
when they’d become nothing more than dust and even the memory of them had
perhaps become suspect. So she had necessarily aspired to the highest office in
the Empire, never once supposing it would ever be beyond her grasp, always
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certain she’d one day be Secretary General of the United Space Federation.
It had meant sacrifice. These things always did. Family and friends had
become secondary to her pursuit of that long yearned goal. And sometimes even
she had to admit to herself that that had been a painful price to pay. But never so
much that she’d ever considered giving up. Never so much that she’d ever wished
for her life to take a different path. And certainly never so much as to have her
show any desire for it to have been ordinary.
Never that. Not even at the height of her relationship with Carter, when she’d
had to make a choice. Because in the end there’d really been no choice. Not for
her. Because ambition trumped love. Easily.
And yet...
She didn’t like the feelings that tugged at her, deeper than her consciousness,
down into that part of her she had thought well and truly buried after all these
years. Quite simply, it had been decades since she and Carter had been lovers, so
it made no sense to her that she should suddenly have this passion for him
growing within her, this insatiable lust that had her thinking of him at the most
inopportune times.
Why now? she asked herself for the umpteenth time; but there was no answer.
There was no logic to it. Before this business with Obsidian she’d scarcely taken a
moment to consider him; and even when she had it had usually been with faint,
fond recollection, like someone recalling a childhood pet.
In the years since they’d gone their separate ways she’d had other loves. Some
of them deep and lasting, though ultimately, she supposed, they’d never been the
equal of her ambition. But Carter almost had, and she had never been sure why.
When he’d first come into her orbit he’d been little more than a callow youth, an
inexperienced young officer, fresh-faced, not long out of the Academy. In many
ways an innocent; and yet, so unlike the others of his age. She’d seen in him
something deeper and wiser, as though he’d been aged beyond his years. He’d
been a man who had carried an air about him that had suggested he didn’t belong
in the world he was expected to inhabit. It had been as though he wasn’t
comfortable in his skin; and she’d always seen in that something tragic,
something that had drawn her to him. Something almost maternal: the need to
protect, to take care of him, to shield him from the sorrows that worried at him, an
inner turmoil she’d seen as one day having the capacity to destroy him.
There’d always been a guardedness about him, a wariness about life, as
though he hadn’t trusted it or anything in it. By turns he’d been brightly
optimistic, then as quickly the dark pessimist. He’d been, in short, a bundle of
contradictions, existing beyond the parameters of predictability. And maybe, in
part, that, too, was what had attracted her to him.
She knew that whatever the reason had been, it had been more than lust—
more than an older woman seeking affirmation of self in a relationship with a man
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many years her junior. The age difference had simply never meant anything to
them. Certainly not to her. No, she’d felt herself drawn to him for reasons she’d
never been able to fathom—though she hadn’t lacked for trying. It had always
seemed to her that if she could have understood that intangible within herself she
might then have better understood him. Then there might have been hope for
them, instead of the void that was their separateness.
They had met at a grand ball. One of those lavish affairs of state, where the
military, politicians, diplomats, aristocrats and the upper echelon of the
bureaucracy came together and mixed with cordiality, forgetting for a time the
personal and professional rivalries and enmity that invariably festered between
them. It had been all gowns and pressed uniforms and tailored tuxes, harking back
to days of a distant past, when elegance had meant something and there’d been no
shame in indulging in it so glibly.
Of course, she hadn’t been Secretary General then; just one of the many
diplomats in the sphere of Parma Surynan Churinstiyseni, the head of the USF at
that time. But even then she’d been outshining her colleagues and attracting the
right sort of buzz in the circle of those who’d have the power to elect the next
Secretary General. Her star had been on the rise, and she’d accordingly drawn a
great deal of attention from those in attendance at the ball. Through the evening
she had danced with many men, most of whom she’d quickly forgotten, with only
those she’d deemed politically important being carefully filed away for
remembrance at a later date. When not dancing she had made the rounds,
skillfully inserting herself into conversations, chatting up the legions of men and
women who controlled an Empire.
Then it had happened.
She had been gliding around the dance floor with an aging admiral when the
signal to change partners had sounded in the grand waltz and she’d found herself
face-to-face with him. He had startled her, and she’d not known why. It was as
though in the instant of their touch there’d been a melding of spirits. Chemistry,
she had heard it described. Electricity. And, indeed, there’d certainly been
something charged about the instant of their contact. Her hand into his, her other
on his shoulder while he slipped one about her waist. And thus matched, so close
they could feel the heat of one another, they’d stepped about the dance floor, she
suddenly oblivious to everyone and everything else in the room, just staring into
his eyes and feeling drawn down into him, as though he were a great emptiness
she must fill up.
In that moment—perhaps one of the rare ones in her life—she had lost her
focus; and the importance of goals long sought had abruptly faded, evaporating
like a mist under the brilliance and heat of a summer sun. She’d felt consumed by
emotions that had been, for the most part, foreign to her. The ambitious woman in
her had railed against it, but that side of her had been no match for the other
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woman in her, who was like a girl on her first date with a boy she’d long
worshipped from afar.
A gathering she had initially seen as no more than yet another event to be used
as a rung on the ladder of her climb to political fulfillment had suddenly become
an intoxicating evening of passion and physical desire. Throughout the rest of the
ball she’d found herself maneuvering to be with Carter and conspiring to keep
him close at hand—even to the extent of bribing one of the staff to switch his
place at the dinner table so that he’d be beside her.
She had engaged him in conversation, and even when he’d talked about things
for which she’d had little or no understanding, and for which she’d normally have
had absolutely no interest, she had found herself fascinated. She had sat
enraptured, just wanting to hear his voice, to watch him caught up in his
enthusiasm for his subject, moving his hands in such an animated fashion as he
described piloting a shuttle and being caught in a storm on Mars. Somewhere
within her, she was sure, there’d been a part of her that had been appalled by her
behavior, infuriated that she could become such a prisoner to her emotions and
physical needs, forgetting what was really important in her life. Indeed, she’d
been a teenager that night, in ways she’d never been even when she’d
chronologically been one. And she had reveled and delighted in it, never wanting
the evening to end, never wanting him to vanish from her sights.
It was inevitable that she’d somehow managed to get him back to her quarters
on Isis when the party had finally broken up. All surreptitiously, of course—
because she supposed that even then there’d been some part of her that had
wanted to do nothing that might have jeopardized her career ambitions. Not that a
liaison with an officer in Fleet would have been a scandal, but she’d never been
one to take chances. And perhaps, too, in keeping with the raft of emotions that
had made her feel like a lovesick girl again, there’d been almost something
exciting about keeping it all secret.
Exciting and doubtless pragmatic. Pragmatic, because she’d known it to be
unwise to reveal to anyone that you might have a weakness. And lovers always
had the potential of being that; they were a means by which an enemy could get to
you. They’d been the downfall of more than one great man or woman in history.
Sometimes, when she was being honest with herself, she wondered if in some
way she had sabotaged her relationship with him because of that, because she’d
feared weakness within herself. Maybe her ambition, in time, had exceeded her
love for him. But it was also true, ultimately, that they were simply two very
different people, with very divergent views on many things. Their love had
meshed, but their lives had not.
In the early days, after their separation, she’d sometimes felt angry that he
hadn’t been able to bring himself to give up the Navy. If he’d done that she was
sure they’d still have been together. But he hadn’t wanted to be anyone’s shadow.
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He’d had ambitions of his own, even as she knew there was a part of him that
loathed that his destiny had been predetermined to a great extent by the choices
his parents had made before the moment of his conception.
It’s in the genes, she told herself. We can fight it, but in the end we can’t deny
it. We can’t be anything other than what we are, and what we’ve been chosen to
be. For good or bad, our DNA is us. We are our genes.
Of course, life and living had an influence on things, but she never felt that it
was ever quite as important as the genetic maps within. And that had always left
her wondering about herself and Carter, and how that relationship fit into such
genetic predestination. Was there, as was sometimes claimed—most often by
pseudo-scientific mystics—a perfect bonding built into each person? And if so,
had Carter been hers? Had that instant connection they’d felt for one another on
that dance floor so long ago been some biological response rooted in their very
genes?
She wasn’t sure how to regard such a proposition. She had never been a
romantic at heart, primarily because she’d always viewed such sentiments as
irritants in the quest to attain the great heights to which she’d always aspired.
Nevertheless, there was something decidedly too clinical about considering the
infection of love to be wholly attributable to one’s genes. Even she, the
pragmatist, felt there had to be something in it that was simply not accounted by
the logic of science. Something that wasn’t found in chemical bonds. Something
that was, in short, magical.
All of this was going through her mind as she reviewed the latest information
coming from Obsidian. Dispatches from her long ago lover, which she found
herself viewing with as much intensity and eagerness as she might have had they
been personal letters from him to her. She found herself watching his face and
listening to his voice and recalling all too vividly that first time they’d made love.
It had been a giddy, intoxicating experience. One she hadn’t wanted to end, and
which she now found herself so fervently wishing to reiterate.
But he was hundreds of light years away, out on the Fringes, unimaginably far
removed from her—both in terms of distance and in terms of time. Perhaps too far
removed in the case of the latter. So much life lived—for both of them. Yet she
couldn’t help wondering if that magic between them mightn’t still be there were
they to meet again, face to face. Could they really have changed all that much? Or
could they fall into the old ways, when each touch had been electric, when each
kiss had been like fire that had branded them and burned down through to the
very core of them?
She would have liked to have believed such things possible, and on some level
she did. But there was a more realistic persona in the back of her mind that told
her it was doubtful. He’d gone on to become something she couldn’t quite come
to terms with, as she’d undoubtedly become something he would never fully
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comprehend. Theirs were simply two incongruent worlds, too vastly dissimilar to
permit appeasement. Two worlds that seldom had a true confluence, and when
they did it was invariably in a disagreeable fashion. Like it was with her and
Novarro.
Then, of course, there was the matter of Obsidian and what he was being
asked to do there. She knew him well enough to know it wouldn’t sit well with
him. Not, at least, if he still had within him something of that idealistic youth she
had so desperately fallen in love with.
What she feared most was that he would know it to be her, that he’d see
beyond the veil of the Assembly and deduce that these political maneuvers were
her doing. And if he saw that, she knew it would irrevocably change everything
between them beyond all redemption. Everything of the past they’d shared and
which had been so good and right and wonderful would be tarnished and sullied
and turned to ruin.
A wreckage of memories; it would be all that would remain of that singular
beauty they’d had between them.
She felt a tightening in her heart at the prospect. It was foolishness, she told
herself; they’d had nothing for so long. They’d meant nothing to one another in
decades. Yet here she concerned herself with holding onto that past they’d had
together, clutching it firmly to her heart, afraid it would be destroyed, and that
along with it some part of her would be lost forever.
How do you hold on to the past when the present storms blindly ahead into the
future with reckless abandon?
She had set into motion events she knew could very easily spiral out of control
and destroy them all. And yet, she’d seen there was no choice; for there were
some things one must do, even at the expense of all else. There were some things
that called to one beyond considerations of self, things which demanded sacrifice,
and sometimes, perhaps, the heroic measures of selflessness that emboldened
those whose visions were loftier than aspirations of personal gain.
She had become what she’d become because she’d craved power. She was
honest enough with herself to admit that. But she hadn’t lusted for that power
merely for the sake of having it or for personal gain; she’d wanted it because of
what she had believed and still believed she could do with it. There was no sense,
as she could see it, in having such authority if one didn’t use it to effect change.
And from the very beginning she’d known something of the changes she’d
wanted to make, having watched the Empire slowly slip into the unyielding grasp
of the corporates.
So here was Obsidian: Opportunity falling fortuitously into her lap; and she
wasn’t disinclined to grab at it quickly and do with it what she could, knowing as
she did there might never be another chance.
The Federation’s last gasp, she sometimes thought. If Obsidian was lost to the
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corporates, if the mission there was a failure, then she had no idea what came
next. She knew only that it wouldn’t be good. A megacorp victory would shift the
balance of power in the Empire, and such an imbalance would inevitably lead to a
corporate oligarchy, wherein the best interests of the Empire as a whole would be
subservient to profit margins and the bottom line. That wasn’t conducive to
harmony, for such a narrow focus would in time lead to intense dissatisfaction and
eventually strife. It was the pathway to the sort of war she and her colleagues in
the Assembly had been working to avoid for decades. Unfortunately, the
megacorps couldn’t see the threat. Or if they could, they studiously ignored it.
The potential for disaster was enormous, and there were moments when she
felt she was alone in recognizing this.
She found herself staring into the holocube on her desk, looking at the man
who’d been entrusted with the job of carrying out the plan she had set into
motion. Once, she would never have doubted him. Now, she was afraid—for the
very reasons that had made him so attractive to her in the first place.
His record spoke well of him. But it also implied a man driven by his
convictions, who was constantly at odds with his conscience, torn between the
absolutes of duty and the imperatives of his humanity. Unless he had changed
dramatically in the years since their time together, she didn’t think he’d have an
easy time abandoning his notions of fairness and justice and the inalienable right
of anyone, anywhere, to live free and safe, without fear, without suffering, and
without the misery that even humankind’s great technological triumphs couldn’t
eradicate.
In short, she wasn’t sure whether he was the sort of man who had what it
would take to tear a people from their world and then destroy it.
I should send a message to him, she thought; and in it she would bind the past
to the present and thus reveal to him the future. She had to show him that to
hesitate was weakness, and that weakness led to certain doom. She had to make
him understand that sometimes one must do terrible things for the greater good.
You killed thousands or destroyed a culture and its world in order to spare the
lives of millions or billions and prevent a far greater suffering.
You start a small fire to prevent a larger one.
Or a small war to stop one that would be bigger.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR:
QUESTIONS OF MORALITY
She hadn’t changed.

Carter stared into the holocube and studied the face from his past, remarking
to himself how the intervening years had been kind to her. That and the rejuv,
which made this woman, whose life encompassed more than eight decades, look
extraordinarily young. Had he not known she’d had rejuv, he might have guessed
her to be no more than forty. Only her eyes gave her away, in that there was
something in them that suggested a life that had seen much and had hardened to it.
And he supposed that was not surprising; he saw it in himself when he looked in a
mirror.
The body ages slowly, but the mind races on, filling up with the experiences
of the years that pass, until there are remembrances that defy the smooth flesh of
youth. Somehow, he supposed, the body had to make allowances; and it was
there, in the eyes, in their haunted depths, where sorrow and hurt and the simple
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pain of living so long could be rooted out if one searched hard enough.
There had been a time when he had thought he knew her, then things had
changed. He had. She had. The circumstances surrounding their relationship had.
It was inevitable, he told himself; but when it had happened it had
nevertheless hurt.
That first time he’d seen her he’d thought himself in love. The touch of her,
the scent of her, and just seeing her had all been overwhelming. He hadn’t
understood why. He still didn’t. Just as he didn’t understand why seeing her in the
holocube and listening to her could have such a profound effect upon him.
It wasn’t the same sort of feeling he had for Bobbie. Bobbie had been his first
true love, the first woman he’d ever felt he wanted to be committed to for life;
and on and off over the years their relationship had grown into something that
encompassed more than just the passions of two lovers. It was friendship built on
trust and understanding, on the shared experiences of being spacers and soldiers
of Fleet. Those were things Danielle had never been able to understand. She’d
been born something else, with a full link to the Community that existed within
the Virtuality, and with ambitions that necessarily circumscribed the world he
wanted to live in. It had made her such a polar opposite of what he’d been.
Ironically, he sometimes thought that was perhaps what had drawn her to him:
He’d been different from her other lovers. He’d been someone more ‘separate’
from her than anyone she’d had a relationship with in the past. That had made him
somewhat mysterious and elusive. And unpredictable.
In the end, he supposed, that fact as much as anything else had conspired to
drive them apart—because in time she’d wanted more of him than he’d been
prepared to give. Perhaps more from him than he’d been capable of giving.
Then there’d been Bobbie, who’d been such a big part of his life in the
Academy. When they had graduated they had hoped for the same ship, but fate
hadn’t favored them, placing them on vessels serving opposite ends of the
Empire. He’d seen nothing of her during the course of his first tour, and then he’d
been temporarily assigned to Isis, as one of Admiral Ghali’s junior aides, which
had ultimately brought him to the ball that night when he’d first met Danielle. For
a while, then, it hadn’t mattered that Bobbie had been hundreds of light-years
away. Indeed, for a while, then, nothing at all had mattered except Danielle.
He had gone on to other ships, rising in rank, and somehow the relationship
with Dani had been sustained. There’d been several occasions when he’d thought
it close to being finished, but then he’d go back to Isis and it would be as though
he’d never left. Sometimes he thought it had been like that because they’d both
feared the alternative, because they’d both been afraid of what would happen to
them if they ended it.
But it had ended. Ambition had eventually come between them. Hers, he
thought, more than his; he’d never seen himself as being particularly motivated
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along the career path. On the other hand, she had wanted him to give up the Navy
to be with her full time. Oddly enough, when presented with that, he hadn’t even
hesitated in saying no. He, who had so hated that his destiny had been chosen for
him, and who had had, on some level, a degree of consistent ambivalence towards
being a spacer. Yet in the end, when she had confronted him with the possibility
of losing that identity, he had balked at the prospect.
Danielle hadn’t understood why, and neither had he. Not for the longest time,
at least; and perhaps even now, not fully.
It shouldn’t have been easy to walk away from her, and in some ways it hadn’t
been. It had hurt in ways he couldn’t describe. But at that moment Bobbie had
walked back into his life and it had been as though she’d never left. And he’d
known then there was something between the two of them that could never be
matched by anything he and Dani had ever had.
And yet...
He found himself staring at the image of Danielle Grenier and feeling as
though the years between that first night they’d met and the present had never
really existed. He couldn’t quite understand why; it wasn’t as though he hadn’t
seen her face in the news over the years. But there’d never been anything personal
about that; she’d just been another diplomat or politician recorded and
transmitted, and he supposed he’d purposely compartmentalized her because he
hadn’t wanted to feel anything.
But now there was this: a message directly from her, meant specifically for
him. And it was personal, even though it talked of nothing but the mission. There
was just a lot of stuff that was said in the tone of her voice and in the look of her
eyes. The unwritten things. The things he could see she wanted to say but couldn’t
because of protocol—or because she was afraid to speak them aloud.
There were words in her eyes and on her lips: Unspoken, perhaps, but loud
and plain, nevertheless. They voiced the things she knew he’d see and understand.
The things she couldn’t say in a such an unrestricted forum. The things she’d
never said in public because she’d always tried to keep what was between the two
of them as quiet and as private as possible. For both their sakes, she’d always
argued, though he’d often doubted that. As much as he had loved her then, he’d
also been very much aware of her intense focus on her place in history. She’d
once confessed to him she saw no purpose to living if one didn’t endeavor to
make some monumental contribution to the perpetuation of humanity. Initially
he’d thought that goal of hers an ego trip of sorts, but in time he’d modified that
perception, believing, instead, that she had some genuine sense that it was her
duty.
Of course, what she meant by duty and what he considered it to be were not
always one and the same. He’d learned that she tended to think on a much
grander scale, with a broader sense of history. There was no such majestic design
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for him; he was inclined to regard things with a somewhat narrower, more
parochial perspective, seeing himself as simply one more cog in the complex and
vast machinery of humankind—and, as such, of no profound importance in the
overall equation. Life, he’d always thought, would go marching on perfectly well
without him. He’d always had the sense, however, that Danielle had wanted it to
be otherwise for herself, that she wasn’t content to be little more than a footnote
in the pages of history.
Hence Obsidian, he thought.
There was a knock outside his office. He pushed the cube aside and looked
towards the open doorway.
“Got a moment?” asked Anna, speaking from where she stood just beyond the
opening.
Carter beckoned her forward and waved her to a seat. Anna stepped lightly
from the corridor and settled in the chair opposite him. She glanced at the
holocube and raised an eyebrow, then quickly focused her attention on him. But
her interest in the cube hadn’t escaped his notice, and he said, “The Secretary
General, personally making sure we understand the importance of this mission.”
“Ah,” said Anna, as though that explained everything—even though her face
suggested it explained nothing at all. “A bit out of the ordinary, no?” she observed
rather pointedly.
He shrugged. “Danielle is no ordinary woman,” he offered.
“So I understand.”
“She takes her role as part of history very seriously,” he continued, for some
reason feeling somewhat defensive of her. “I believe she perceives Obsidian to be
one of the most critical events in her personal history, as well as that of the
Empire. As a consequence, she has no desire to see it go south on her.”
“You mean that what we do here might make a difference to whether she’s
seen to have been fundamental to the future or whether she just becomes nothing
more than another scarcely remembered name in the legions that pepper the
annals of history?” There was a sardonic edge to Anna’s words, and she clearly
made no effort to conceal her scorn and the caustic nature of her opinion. “I take
it lives are secondary to all this?”
“Don’t be too harsh in judging her, Number One.”
Anna glanced again at the holocube. “Ah, yes, I forgot,” she said. “You two
have something of a history of your own.” She looked at him coolly.
“I’m not defending her, Anna. But remember that we just follow these orders.
She, on the other hand, has to give them.”
“And she does it so well.”
“It isn’t easy.”
“Her choice, John.”
“Like being spacers was ours?”
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“The gene-typing is one thing,” Anna argued, “but we’re still masters of our
own destinies when it comes to making choices that involve matters of honor and
principle.”
“Exactly my point,” he said. “So consider that when we’re ordered to remove
the people of Obsidian from their world and perhaps destroy the planet, we’re in
the fortunate position of absolving ourselves of guilt by simply assuring ourselves
that we were only obeying orders. We may choose to disobey and face the
consequences of such action, but that’s a different issue. Danielle, on the other
hand, has to make the final choice. She’s the one who has to decide to do these
things in the first place, and she’s the one who must ultimately bear the
responsibility for those choices. She can’t just shirk off that duty and make no
decision at all. History will be her judge, Anna.”
“All the more reason that when she makes a choice it should be the right one,”
Anna countered sharply.
“You make it sound so simple.”
“On questions of what is morally responsible, surely it is.”
Carter scoffed. “You know that’s specious. It’s not all black and white when it
comes to the bigger issues of life.”
“It used to be for you.”
He flinched, stung by her words because he was aware there was a measure of
truth to what she said. “I’ll admit that sometimes it’s straightforward,” he said.
“Sometimes you can see an issue clearly in such terms. But not this time. Not
here.”
“It’s that ambiguity that bothers me,” she muttered. “I worry it’ll be used
against us at some point. If not here and now, then sometime in the future.”
“There’s always that risk.”
“I suppose. But it makes one necessarily cautious.”
“Danielle would have weighed all the consequences.”
“For herself, no doubt,” Anna agreed severely. “But I wonder if she’s
concerned herself with anyone else.”
“She’s not a machine.”
“No, you’re right: She isn’t. If she were, she’d never be able to make choices
like the ones she’s made in this matter. At least the AIs are limited in that respect;
they can’t harm humans.”
Carter sighed and thrust himself back in his chair. “You didn’t come here to
debate this all over again,” he said wearily. “And God knows I’m in no mood to
do so.”
“Sorry.”
“Never mind. What is it you wanted?”
“Latest word on Lhara Jhordel.”
He sat up straighter. “Have they found her?”
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“No.” She shook her head. “But they’ve a notion she may have been picked
up by some locals. They asked Industries in Cecilius, but Bezukov's claiming
ignorance of the whole thing.”
“And you doubt her?”
“I doubt she'd tell us if Industries had our girl even if they did. With the way
things stand at the moment, they might consider her as something of a bargaining
chip.”
“I don’t think they’d be that naive.”
“Probably not. On the other hand...” Anna gestured helplessly. “Who can
know what they might be thinking? Their priorities are quite different from ours.”
“The local lead seems the most probable.”
“Should we pursue it then?”
Carter wiped at the bottom of his face with one hand. “I’m not just going to
forget about our ensign,” he said at length. “But I don’t want to stir up trouble
with the natives at a time when we’re soon going to need their cooperation.”
“You seriously think they’re going to play along when they find out what’s
going to happen to them?” She gave him a look of unvarnished incredulity.
“We have to make them see it as their only option,” he said, glancing towards
the holocube.
She followed his gaze, clenching her jaw. “I see,” she said slowly. “And what
pearls of wisdom does our grand Madame Secretary have for us regarding this
matter?”
“She thinks it may be necessary to start a little war.”
Anna sighed and rolled her eyes. “Why am I not surprised?”
“It makes sense,” he argued.
“Since when did war ever make sense?” she said. “It’s bad enough we’re
involved in this shit in the first place, but then to unnecessarily endanger these
people—” She threw up her hands in disgust. “We have no business being here,
John. These people should never have been our problem. They should have
suffered the consequences of the choices they made years ago. But now, for us to
come here under the guise of being a humanitarian mission and then to start a war
that may kill thousands, well, that just sucks!”
“You told me this is just a job,” he pointed out. “You’ve always said I
shouldn’t get emotionally involved.”
“I don’t care about them, John. They brought this upon themselves. But I do
care about all of us. About this crew. About the thousands of Marines down on
the fucking planet. I care about what this sort of thing might do to them—if it
doesn’t get them killed to begin with. Because when all is said and done, you
know damn well we’re the ones who will end up paying dearly for this fucking
shit.”
“Didn’t you also say that’s something we’re all aware of when we sign on?”
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“To fight for what’s right, yes, but not to be pawns in these political
shenanigans.”
“But we’re always just a piece on the board, Anna. That’s the nature of the
game, isn’t it? Politicians and diplomats far removed from the battlefield make
judgments and choices that affect us directly, yet we’ve little or no voice in the
matter. It’s always been that way. A soldier is a soldier and he or she does as he or
she is told. Even if it means to march forth into a hail of enemy fire and be cut
down in the prime of life. That’s the only way it can work. That’s democracy. We
have one vote like everyone else, and we can never use the force we have at our
disposal to turn one vote into many. That way lies tyranny.”
She studied him, frowning deeply, looking perplexed. “Those are fine
principles, but they’re not worth shit if we’re all dead.”
“Look,” he said evenly, “I’m here to make the best of a bad situation. I don’t
like this any more than you do, but this is the way it is. This is the way it’s going
to remain. We can’t change that. What we have to do is try and do our best for the
people, given the circumstances in which we find ourselves.”
“Which people, John? The Reds? Or the rest of the Federation?”
“They’re not mutually exclusive.”
“Aren’t they? Those Reds down there certainly used to think they were.”
“Things change.”
“Yes,” she said guardedly. “So they do. But not always for the better, no?”
“Time will tell.”
"Maybe." Anna rose to leave. “But the funny thing about time, John,” she said
casually, “is that you can’t turn it back. What’s done is done and you have to live
with it. And I just wonder if we’ll be so happy to accept what we’ve wrought here
a few decades down the road.” Her face hardened. “We’re laying the groundwork
for something bad here. We may yet wish we’d just let the corporates have their
way.”
“So now you see the future?” he joked.
“Don’t need a crystal ball to see this one coming.”
Carter said nothing, primarily because on that point he agreed with her. In the
past they hadn’t always seen eye to eye on matters of the Fleet’s moral obligations
to maintaining peace in the Empire and the ramifications of their actions, but in
this instance his thoughts weren’t so contrary to hers. Unfortunately, he didn’t
have the luxury of being so openly critical of the decisions his superiors were
making. It was profoundly ironic that he now found himself in the position of
having to regard this mission in the way Anna had always said such things should
be considered: a job and nothing more. His duty was to carry out the wishes of the
Assembly, even when those wishes ran counter to his personal beliefs. It wasn’t
his job to become emotionally involved in the matter, to have his judgment
impaired by a troubled conscience.
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“I just want to know one thing, John: Do you honestly think what we’re doing
here is right?”
“Does it matter?”
She shrugged. “To me,” she said softly, a sadness in her eyes.
He smiled, in spite of himself.
“Did I say something funny?”
“It’s just that in the past it’s always been you counseling me about the need to
put such considerations as right and wrong on the backburner.”
“Maybe in the past those issues didn’t matter,” she said. “Or maybe they were
just so much more self-evident.”
“Are you so sure?”
She hesitated. “Of course not. Only a fool would be sure of anything in this
world, in these times.”
“Then there are a lot of fools around,” he said.
Anna looked toward the holocube image of Danielle Grenier. “Yes,” she
drawled. “A lot of fools indeed.” Then she gave him a sloppy salute and left.
Carter stared after her for a moment, then turned back to look at the holocube.
Her words rang in his ears, and he couldn’t help but wonder just how close to the
mark they’d come.
The question was, who was the greater fool? The one who led, or the one who
followed?
History will tell, he told himself; but history was never kind to those who
claimed they were innocent dupes following orders. At some point even the most
disciplined and loyal of soldiers had to make a stand. At some point every human
being had an obligation to question the execution of policies that ran counter to
the greater human good and ignored even the most basic moral standards.
Because bad things happen when good people simply stand aside and do
nothing.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE:
SCALING MOUNTAINS
“Coffee?”
“I’d prefer tea, if you don’t mind,” she said.
“Tea? Really?” He raised an eyebrow. “My, you’ve got rather exotic tastes,
Colonel. I thought tea went out of favor decades ago.”
Suzanne shrugged. “It’s a family thing,” she said. “We’ve always been great
tea drinkers. It goes back to our roots. I grew up on the stuff and just never
acquired a taste for coffee.”
“Well, if you’re talking about that awful stuff they make on the ships, then I
can understand why.” He made a face. “Wretched. Absolutely disgusting. Never
touch the stuff if I can avoid it.”
She said nothing; just sat waiting.
“Interesting,” he muttered to himself, nodding slightly. Then he straightened
in his chair and looked to the young man attending them. “See if you can rustle up
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some tea for the colonel, if you please, Hanson. And I’ll take coffee. My usual
blend.”
“Yessir!” The corporal saluted and back-stepped neatly to the door of the
office, hastening to retreat and carry out his task once he’d withdrawn into the
corridor of the NorAmicorp field headquarters in central Saintus Vittoria.
“I’ve always marveled at how you British seem to find time for tea in even the
most dire of situations,” he observed dryly.
“I’ve never noticed,” Suzanne said. She paused a breath, then added, “Not
being British and all.”
“Oh?” Colonel Blackwell tilted his head slightly and regarded her with a
quizzical eye. “The accent...” he began.
She thought to say, “What accent?” but held her tongue. He wasn’t the first to
have made that particular observation, nor was he likely to be the last. And it was
undeniable that anyone growing up in Isis did have a certain lilt to his or her
voice, though she’d never thought it sounded remotely British. Some had jokingly
referred to it as the ‘interstellar brogue.’
“I was born and raised on Isis,” she said, with more patience than she thought
he deserved.
“Ah, well now, that would certainly explain things. All those foreign
influences, I suppose.” He looked pensive, stroking his smooth chin with a long-
fingered hand.
“Tell me,” he said, “does being born on Isis not make the issue of citizenship
somewhat problematic? Am I not correct in understanding that Isis has no
citizenship of its own per se?”
“For diplomatic reasons Isis has always remained essentially a neutral point
for the Federation,” she agreed.
“Still. No one is without some allegiance,” he insisted. “We’re all citizens in
some way or other. Surely even those born on Isis.”
“Anyone who resides there must assume the citizenship of one of the myriad
of enclaves, or within one of the corporates. Even those of us born there. For
purely legal purposes I’ve retained the family citizenship, which has been carried
down through generations, since well back in the days of the Nations period. Of
course, it’s no longer associated with a country, since they’re all just political
distinctions that only exist in the Community these days.”
“So that would make you?” He looked at her expectantly.
“North American-Canadian, although one of my grandparents was North
American-Mexican and another East-Asian Chinese.”
“Canada is such a beautiful country,” he said. “Or it was, I suppose, when
countries actually still existed.” He grinned anemically and sighed. “Now we’re
all just one happy little world.” But it didn’t sound as though he was convinced.
She stared at him in silence.
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“I’ve been there many times,” he noted. “North America, that is. Mostly to the
north, where you can still find some great untouched expanses. Alaska. The
Yukon. Nunavut.” He fell silent a moment, lost in recollection. “You must have
gone down to visit your homeland often, being so close and all,” he added, eyeing
her with interest.
She shook her head. “No, I’ve never been.” Although she had sometimes had
the compulsion to go, to see what it was like, to touch something of her roots—
even if they were distant.
“You haven’t been? Really?” He couldn’t contain his astonishment. “By
shuttle it’s only a few minutes. By elevator not much more than a few hours.
Surely you must have been curious, knowing it was your ancestral homeland and
seeing it pass beneath you several times a day.”
“We weren’t encouraged to explore such things,” she said, hearing some of
the old tension in her voice, the frustration that had consumed her as a child, when
she’d begged to go down to see the surface of the planet and had been constantly
refused.
“Seriously?” Blackwell scratched his head. “Why?”
“Stationeers have a rather narrow view of groundhogs,” she said. They had a
rather narrow view of a lot of things as she recalled, but she didn’t say as much to
him.
“I suppose I can understand that, in a way.” He sniffed and shook his head,
smiled wanly. “Earth’s no utopia, despite efforts to make it so. I daresay it would
seem wild and threatening to someone brought up in the more restricted and
carefully monitored atmosphere of a station.”
She thought she detected a note of condescension, but that might have been
her sensitivity to the issue. She still remembered the low regard some groundhogs
in the Academy had had of stationeers, and how she had bristled at the snide
remarks and name calling.
“I guess most parents are protective of their children,” she said. “But when I
was in the Academy I went surfaceside on several occasions, despite my parents'
entreaties not to. Africa, mainly.”
“Africa? Really? An odd choice.”
“Not especially. It’s always had a certain attraction.”
“Indeed.” His face brightened. “I imagine you’ve been to the Serengeti, then?”
She nodded. “You’re familiar with it?”
He laughed. ”You might say so,” he said. “I was born in Nairobi. Spent most
of my youth traipsing about East Africa with my parents. They were
paleologists.”
“Really.” Now it was her turn to look surprised. “Can’t be much call for that.”
“Not much,” he agreed. “But my grandparents on both sides were rather
radical academics. They were scientists in the same field and knew each other
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well. My parents grew up together. And I think my grandparents chose the same
careers for my parents because they wanted something that would keep my
parents close at hand and not off on some wild adventures elsewhere in the
Empire.”
“And your parents didn't want the same thing for you?”
“They weren’t much for the Virtuality, though they both had full implants.
When they could afford to, they bought into NorAmicorp. Full citizenship for
themselves and me. They always said that was why they chose spacer for me.
They saw implants and life on Earth as something of a prison, and corporate
allegiance as a way out for their son.”
“An unusual point of view for groundhogs.”
“Isn’t it, though?” He smiled again. “But they were never conventional. Most
of us have a hard time seeing things one way or another—particularly when we
can view things from only one perspective. But they weren’t blinded by the thrall
of the Community. They saw its weaknesses.”
“You sound almost ambivalent about the choice your parents made for you,”
Suzanne said. “Surely you wouldn’t rather be a groundhog?” She couldn’t
imagine any spacer actually wishing that.
“I’m not unusual in that I’d have liked the opportunity to have stayed where I
felt most comfortable. Africa was my home, Colonel. We had a house there, in
what was once Tanzania, in a place called Marangu, in the foothills of
Kilimanjaro.” His expression warmed with fond recollection. “Whenever I get the
chance I go back there, back to the family home. You can’t begin to imagine how
different it is to sit out on the wide veranda of that house and just relax and enjoy
the world as it should be.”
“And how should it be, Colonel?”
“Certainly not driven to ruin by personal agendas,” he said, eyes fixed upon
her.
“You might want to remind your corporate bosses of that when you get the
chance.”
“Their interests aren’t Earth.”
“For now.”
He shrugged. “Earth doesn’t have the value it once had. The rest of the
Empire is only bound to us by virtue of the fact that we’re the homeworld and
currently the largest repository of humanity. But one day that’ll change. One day
Earth may even be forgotten, as we’ve tended to forget so much of what has made
us what we are. Outside of spacers, too much of our world has been distilled into
the electronic ether. Too much of humanity seems content to surrender itself to
the imaginary, to closet itself in the Virtuality, as though that were any measure of
existence. Too much of humankind no longer understands the simple pleasures of
life, like watching rain fall on a warm summer day.”
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She couldn’t disagree, and felt a sudden empathy for this man, a connection
that went beyond being a spacer and a soldier. A connection rooted in something
else, in a shared belief, and simple pleasures. She almost wanted to say, “I
remember the rains.” She wanted him to know how she’d stood out there on the
Serengeti, letting the rain soak her to her skin, and how she’d reveled in it, never
before having experienced such a thing. She wanted to tell him how weather was
something one only read about on the station or watched from above as it rolled
across the surface of the planet. She wanted to talk about the times she’d seen
lightning from orbit, never realizing the sheer power of it until she’d stood out in
a storm and watched it flash between sky and ground and then had heard and felt
the thunder roll across her.
“You understand,” he said; and for a moment she thought maybe he was an
empath, until she looked again in his eyes and realized he wasn’t, that he’d simply
read her silence and understood it for what it was.
“I understand there’s always a risk of losing ourselves,” she said. “There’s
always a risk of being subsumed and subverted by ideas and beliefs and the
seductions of technology. Sometimes we allow it because that’s better than
hewing to nothing. It’s better than believing in nothing.”
“And what do you believe in, Colonel Morrow?” He eyed her shrewdly. “Not
God, I suspect.”
“No,” she said. “Not anymore.”
His eyebrows peaked. “Then there was a time?”
“Yes. I suppose.” She was surprised she could admit it. “Maybe in the
foolishness of my youth. But I’ve seen too much to hold to such provincial
notions now.”
“Ah,” he said. “The cynic.”
“I just don’t believe there’s anything divine in death.”
“There are many who’d certainly argue the point with you.”
“And they’d be people who haven’t seen a horror like Kesselus,” she said
bluntly.
“Death is all part of the cycle, Colonel. Eventually we all die.”
“It isn’t that we die that bothers me,” she said, “but the manner in which we
do so.”
“Spoken like the truly faithful,” Blackwell said with a dry chuckle.
“Excuse me?”
“Probably every religion has held that some deaths transcend others,” he
elaborated. “But I’ve always rather maintained that dead is dead, myself. It never
seemed to me that how you died or why you died ever made much difference in
the end. Ultimately we’re all pretty meaningless in this Universe, wouldn’t you
agree?”
She wanted to say no, but that would have been a lie. Similar thoughts had
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entered her mind on more than one occasion. No more so than on Kesselus, where
she’d stood amidst the field of the dead and had wondered at the sense of it all,
trying to find some meaning in it and realizing there wasn’t any. If she’d had
doubts before, surely they’d been put to rest there: There could be no God,
because it was unimaginable and beyond all reason that any god would let so
cruel and brutal a tragedy occur. We’re all just the result of the inherent
randomness of nature, of a Universe that simply became because it had always
been, she thought.
It was at that moment that Hanson returned with a servobot in tow, the latter
bearing a silver tray upon which were arrayed a tea service and a coffee pot. The
young corporal busied himself in silence, arranging all this carefully on the
colonel’s broad desk. When he was done he poured tea from an elegant porcelain
pot into an equally fine cup, which he then offered to Suzanne. She nodded
graciously and sat back, teacup and saucer in hand, waiting as her opposite
number got settled in with his coffee.
“Ah, that hits the spot,” Blackwell breathed, closing his eyes and savoring a
mouthful of the brew. When he had finished doing so he looked across at Suzanne
and smiled. “The day never quite feels right until I’ve had my java,” he said.
Suzanne drank from her cup, startled by how good it was. She was used to the
pallid taste of the synthetic tea they dished out on the ships; and the ‘real’ stuff
she had packed along with her gear was something she only rarely permitted
herself, knowing as she did that the occasions were rare when she could replenish
her personal stock.
“Apparently you don’t suffer for want of the finer things in life,” she
remarked.
“Existence is transient,” he said. “One should enjoy it while one can.” He
eyed her cup. “But as for the tea, let’s just say that young Hanson has a way of
acquiring the impossible on short notice. Generally I don’t ask how, just so long
as it’s nothing too illegal.”
“I know the type.” There was invariably one in every unit: the scrounger and
hustler who could work miracles when it came to wheeling and dealing to obtain
the unobtainable. She’d had her own encounters with them; and it was generally
accepted among most field officers that such men and women were to be
tolerated. When you had a broken piece of equipment and couldn’t get
headquarters to issue you a replacement in a timely fashion it helped to have
someone like a Hanson around. Somehow, someway, you could be assured that in
a prompt, forthright manner the needed piece of equipment would materialize.
The Colonel finished his coffee, tipping the cup far back to drain it to the last
drop. Hanson moved quickly and quietly to refill it. He did the same for Suzanne,
topping up her cup of tea, after which Blackwell dismissed him. The corporal
retreated once more, this time closing the door securely behind him, leaving the
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two officers to face one another across the desk.

“So,” began Blackwell, taking on a more sober mien, “you didn’t come all this
way for a philosophical debate and a ‘spot of tea.’ ”
“No,” she said. “More mundane matters, I’m afraid.”
“The locals, I assume.”
“Just here to gain assurances from you that you won’t interfere with their
removal from the planet.”
“I’ll be honest, Colonel Morrow,” he said, leaning forward, “the ‘Corp isn’t
especially enamored of the prospect of the entire population of Obsidian being
transported off the planet.”
“I never imagined you would be.”
“You’re disrupting the lives of thousands of innocent people for no good
reason.”
“The Assembly apparently begs to differ.”
“And you, Colonel? How do you feel?”
“It’s not my place to have an opinion.”
He regarded her skeptically. “We’re not machines,” he said.
“But we are soldiers. And I swore an oath to protect the Federation, to
maintain the laws and the government that sustain it.”
“Even when what you’re asked to do is wrong?”
“I’m not the judge of that. I can’t begin to pretend I’m qualified to make those
sorts of decisions.”
“Come on, Colonel! We’re all qualified by virtue of the fact that we’re
human. That should be enough.”
She stared into her cup of tea a moment before looking up and again and
meeting his gaze. “You say we aren’t machines,” she said, “but are we really so
different from them? We were born and bred for specific needs, to fulfill a
particular purpose in life. How far removed from the machine does that really
make us?”
“Far enough to know right from wrong,” he charged. “And even the best AI
has no genuine instinct for that.”
“But by whose measure would you determine such things? Right and wrong, I
mean.”
“There’s an unscripted morality inherent in all human beings,” Blackwell
insisted. “There are certain values that are surely absolutes.”
“Even were that true, they’d still be subject to interpretation. And that’s no
more true than in the matter of Obsidian.”
“Really. And what would the rationale be in this matter?”
She afforded herself a faint grin. “Even to you it should be evident,” she said.
“We’re not the ones proposing to tear a people from their world.”
“But your presence here makes issue of their safety in a war zone. The
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Assembly wants to ensure that these people don’t become a part of the equation in
the struggle for dominance between the ‘Corp and Industries.”
“I can assure you that ‘Corp would offer these people a safe environment in
which to continue to live, free of any constraints.”
“Industries has promised much the same, for obvious reasons. But you must
surely see that from the Assembly’s perspective this would be tantamount to
rewarding you for having violated the Federation treaties governing the
annexation of any planet. After all, any claim to the transit point would be largely
predicated on establishing authority over the nearest inhabitable planet. In this
case, Obsidian. You’d have to prove it was a corporate entity, and you could only
do that legally by ensuring the planet had a resident population exceeding the
minimum required for recognition under treaty statutes. By co-opting the people
already settled on this world you’d quickly and easily achieve the necessary
requirements for that recognition.”
“The people of this world weren’t signatories to any treaties or the
constitution of the Federation at the time we submitted our claim to this world,”
Blackwell said heatedly. “Our rights are quite clear under those circumstances.”
“The treaties and the constitution still apply, Colonel. Even if they don’t
directly, by letter of the law, surely you’d have to concede they do morally.”
“I concede nothing of the sort,” he retorted. “And let's not pretend this is
about morality. If it were, the Federation would have left well enough alone and
allowed ‘Corp and Industries to conduct our business as we see fit. It’s only your
insinuation into this conflict that has destabilized the situation. Had you not
interfered, ‘Corp and Industries would have quickly settled the issue of ownership
and the people of this world would have been none the worse for wear.”
“Except their world would no longer have been theirs and the Empire would
be faced with the prospect of a megacorp of unmanageable proportions.” Suzanne
met his look of indignation with a level stare. “Any stability you might have
offered Obsidian would quickly be undermined in an Empire where such a
singularly powerful corporate entity would essentially reign unopposed.”
“Idle speculation,” he proclaimed in a dismissive tone. “All based on the
supposition the transit point in this system is a gold mine of untapped
opportunity.” He hooded his eyes and grinned quirkily. “There’s the very real
possibility it leads to nothing at all.”
“But not likely. And you know that as well as I. The probes have suggested
this might be one of the richest points of any yet discovered—at least in terms of
routes through the Matrix. And given that almost every jump point into the Matrix
that has been discovered since the advent of the Pearson FTL has led to expansion
of the Empire, the potential for this one is enormous. New worlds. New colonies.
New sources of wealth in terms of resources and markets. The growth of the
megacorps is dependent upon that; it’s what has turned you into the powerful
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economic and military forces you are. But this jump point threatens to make one
of you more powerful still, presenting us all with the prospect of an Empire
thrown into chaos by virtue of the instability that would result from such an
imbalance.”
“You exaggerate.”
“Do I?” she challenged. “What do you think the response of the other
megacorps would be, should either ‘Corp or Industries gain control of this jump
point?”
“The system has worked well enough in the past.”
“In the past Fleet was still more powerful than its corporate counterparts. Or at
least equal to the task of policing the various megacorp navies. But that’s no
longer the case. You’ve grown at a pace Fleet can’t hope to match. Should one of
you win control of this jump point, Fleet would almost immediately become
obsolete. We’d be capable of performing nothing but the most perfunctory of
tasks. Our capacity to bring law and order to the Empire would be compromised
at best, and in the long run almost certainly eviscerated to the point of uselessness.
The result would be an Empire under the control of a single corporation. It would
mean the billions in the Federation would be ruled by a mere handful of unelected
individuals.”
Blackwell grinned sardonically. “Are you so sure that’d be any worse than
what we have now? The Assembly would hardly win any accolades for its
contributions to the pantheon of democracy. At least the heads of the megacorps
earned their positions.”
“For better or for worse, the Assembly remains the lesser of evils. You’ll
recall that on Earth, at the beginning of the megacorp ascendancy, the majority
rejected the notion of corporate political rule. It was that very thing that led to the
rise of the USF as the key arbiter in the Federation.”
“I don’t need a history lesson, Colonel.”
“Just trying to show you it’s history that informs the present,” she said. “If
you want to know the future, you look to the past. And the past tells us that a
corporate monopoly would threaten the peace and stability of the Empire. It
would inevitably lead to an abuse of power.”
“Again, this is all just supposition,” Blackwell protested. “Who’s to say a
single corporate entity within the Empire wouldn’t lead to greater peace and
prosperity for all?”
“History says so.”
“History be damned. You can’t translate the future of the Empire in terms of
the historical precedence set on one planet. The very nature of the Empire is
subject to a whole set of parameters that never existed on Earth or any other
world. It’d be like saying the socio-economic and political structure of bacteria in
a petrie dish can be reasonably extrapolated to give fair representation of the
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Nations period on Earth.”
“Bacteria aren’t people. We’re talking about Earth and the Empire. About
people. And people are the same, whether in the Earth’s global dynamic or when
taken in the galactic context of the Empire.”
“You’re still applying the micro to the macro, and the comparison is
necessarily flawed—if not outright odious.”
“And I’d suggest you’re ignoring the assumptions of classical statistical
analysis and game theory in favor of a decidedly parochial view.”
“Are you so sure I’m the one being parochial here?”
“Look,” said Suzanne, after a moment of silence between them, “it really
doesn’t matter what you or I think, does it? In the end we’re just two soldiers
doing our jobs. It’s not really within our purview to give consideration to the
broader ramifications of what we’re ordered to do.”
“Isn’t it? Just a while ago you were suggesting there were moral issues
involved in all this. Shouldn’t we, as soldiers, still be governed by some sense of
probity?”
“When you order your troops to attack an enemy, do you sit down and
consider the morality of sending men and women to slaughter other men and
women? The integrity of a soldier is necessarily constrained by the limitations
placed upon it by the exigencies of war. What is and isn’t morally acceptable in
the context of civilian life stands in marked contrast to what we accede on the
ethical issue with regard to war.”
“So war makes it all right to turn thousands of men, women and children into
stateless refugees?” Blackwell sneered.
“If it means ensuring their safety and well-being and the maintenance of
stability within the Empire, then yes, it’s right. Better a few thousand wayward
refugees than the possibility of an Empire spanning conflict that could cost
millions or even billions of lives.”
“Even if Obsidian were to fall into our or Industries’ hands, I don’t think that
would precipitate a war on the scale you’re imagining. There’d be no profit in it,
and the bottom line is what every one of the megacorps puts before all else.”
“You’d be incapable of stopping it if the weaker megacorps decided they
wanted no part of some super corporate entity,” Suzanne persisted. “And even if
they did, and a massive single megacorp was created, it would, in time, face
opposition in the Empire. Rebellion would be inevitable.”
“Predicting the future is a fool’s game.” Blackwell scowled and made a curt
gesticulation, as though throwing something. “It’s a roll of the dice, as much as
anything else.”
“Loaded dice.”
“Assuming what you believe were to come to pass, it would hardly be so
different from what we have now,” he insisted. “There are wars throughout the
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Empire. There have been for centuries. It’s human nature. If anything, a powerful
corporate force such as the one you imagine would likely reduce the level of
conflict considerably. At the very least it’d be a force equal to the task of ensuring
a degree of law and order Fleet hasn’t managed in decades.”
Suzanne drew a slow, calculated breath, her thoughts racing as she thought to
refute him; but she knew she couldn’t do so with any conviction. To a degree he
was right in what he said: Such a future might seem unpalatable in many respects,
but there was no denying that a corporate monopoly with the fleet strength of
combined navies would be an overwhelmingly powerful obstacle to anyone
considering rebellion. It was difficult to imagine any opposition being mounted to
such an overarching monolith of socio-economic and political might. And, of
course, therein lay much of the true threat: historically a concentration of wealth
and power in the hands of a few was a recipe for the sort of corruption that led to
the eventual collapse of such monoliths.
It was that old maxim laid bare: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts
absolutely.
“The thing is,” she said to him at length, “this conversation is really pointless.
I came here seeking your cooperation regarding the relocation of the people on
this planet, but whether I have it or not, Colonel, the relocation will take place.”
She set her cup down and stood. Blackwell rose to his feet and faced her
across the breadth of his desk, which suddenly seemed to Suzanne like a great
abyss now opened between them.
“I can give you no word one way or the other,” he said with a stiff formality.
“I await orders from the admiral, who himself waits to hear from corporate
headquarters.”
“I understand,” she said. “But that changes nothing. One can only hope your
superiors have the good sense not to make an issue of this and to allow us to
proceed as the Assembly has ordered us to.”
“And if they don’t?”
She unconsciously chewed at her lower lip, looked down at the cups on the
desk, and finally said, “Then the next time we face one another it may be to
exchange something distinctly less pleasant and decidedly more lethal than tea
and conversation.”
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CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX:
IN DARKNESS BOUND
She remembered other darknesses.

Other pain.
Fifteen hours of it, down in a cave, wrapped in the chill of an impenetrable
black shroud, unaccompanied but for the sounds that had sent a shiver through her
and had had her wondering just how alone she really was.
Fifteen hours. It had seemed an eternity; and she had thought she would die
before she was rescued. Fifteen hours of waiting, listening and thinking to herself
that she was going to perish, alone and forgotten. Fifteen hours of thinking she’d
been abandoned, that by the time someone thought about her it would be too late.
Fifteen hours in which she‘d become convinced she was going to die because
of a stupid, stupid dare.
There’d been a cave, once, when she’d been a child: a cool, damp tunnel
leading down into the hard granite of the low mountains behind their homestead
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on Tartarus. A narrow shaft that time and the ravages of water had bored into the
rock, its cold, lightless end lost in the far depths of ancient stone. The ‘linkers,’ as
she’d been inclined to think of them, had issued the dare, knowing her pride
would get the better of her and that she’d succumb. As, indeed, she had.
And so she’d found herself venturing into darkness, down into the bowels of
the mountain, despite her parents’ strict proscription against doing so. Perhaps
had she not been gene-typed for spacer on a world where literally only a handful
ever had been, and as a consequence something of an outsider amidst the other
children, she’d have shrugged off the dare and heeded the warning.
But she’d been an outcast. Betrayed by her genes, as she’d often been given to
regard it. Betrayed, because that code of life had made her a cripple, incapable of
sustaining the permanent bio-electronic implant that all other citizens wore,
condemned to the limitations of a temporary one. Set apart, and thus alone. Apart
from the linkers. And because of that she’d always felt it necessary to prove
herself to everyone—and to herself. That had meant taking chances others
wouldn’t, doing things that could easily have got her killed. Things her parents
had constantly lectured her about—to no avail. Like venturing deep into a
mountain known for minor seismic activity of a sort that could occasionally
trigger an avalanche or collapse the walls and ceilings of a cave.
The linkers had taunted and teased her, calling her the ‘weird one’ and the
‘half-brainer’, telling her she was a coward, and daring her to prove otherwise.
And she’d seen in their goading eyes a certainty they were right. So she’d
determined that she’d prove them wrong, that she’d wipe those supercilious grins
off their smug, we’re-better-than-you-are-and-can-ever-hope-to-be faces.
In defiance, she had shouldered her pack and had marched forthrightly into
the dark maw of the cave without once looking back. Just beyond their view she’d
stopped dead, her sudden anger cooling enough that she’d paused to consider the
sanity of what she was doing. Time, too, to question why she so badly needed to
prove herself to a bunch of kids she despised, and with whom she wouldn’t have
to live much longer.
But their voices had followed her into the cave’s cold recesses, and she’d
known they were monitoring her through her temp-implant. To have backed out
then would have been worse than to have ignored the dare in the first place—
which she had started to wish she’d done as she had stood there trying to summon
the courage to go on, to endure and overcome her fear, and to do what she knew
none of them would ever have had the guts to do.
She’d taken a glowglobe from her pack and set it free, tethering it to her
biorhythms, so that it had hovered above her left shoulder to light the way,
following her like some sort of faithful pet, moving at a steady pace as she had
walked. Thus equipped, she had set off into the dark, narrow shaft, pretending to
herself she wasn’t in the least bit afraid.
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An hour, they’d said. You have to walk as far as you can in an hour. Which
had meant two hours of being alone in that claustrophobic nightmare.
Since they’d been tracking her through her implant, there’d never been the
option of just going far enough to be out of sight and then waiting for the time to
pass. She had had to spelunk, down through the eroded corridors of rock, deeper
into the cold and the damp and the awful, encompassing darkness that even the
brilliance of the floating glowglobe hadn’t been able to banish.
Time and again she’d told herself there was nothing to fear, that it was only
the dark, that there was nothing dangerous down there, and that she’d make it and
prove herself. Had to make it, because she hadn’t been able to abide the thought
of losing to the likes of them.
Ah, foolish, foolish pride.
At the forty-five minute mark the tunnel through which she had been working
her way had abruptly opened out into a large cavern. The solid rock upon which
she’d been alternately walking and crawling had seemed to fall away from her in
a plunge of a hundred meters or so, down to a shadow-shrouded floor that had
been replete with stalagmites—sharp-edged pillars of calcium carbonate that had
formed over tens of thousands of years and which had seemed, in the eerie white
glow of her light, like nothing so much as the teeth of some savage carnivore.
Overhead had been their counterpart, stalactites: they, too, resembling the canines
of a ravenous beast, slick with wetness, as though saliva coated them and dripped
from them into the dark below. When she had listened, she had heard the drip-
dripping echo faintly throughout the cavern.
“Well,” she’d said to herself, poised at the end of the tunnel, engulfed in light
amidst the sobering dark. “Now what?”
Of course, she’d quickly realized that it had been foolishness to voice such a
query aloud, for almost immediately a reply had come back to her via her implant,
ordering her to go on and warning her that if she didn’t she’d be proving they
were right and that she was indeed a coward.
Since going forward hadn’t been an option, she had looked to the left and the
right and had quickly discovered a narrow ledge that had seemed to extend around
the cavern for as far as the light of the glowglobe had permitted her to see. It had
been a toss-up as to which way she should go, so she had decided on the left.
Accordingly, she’d set forth along the ledge, pressing herself tight against the
cold, rough stone face of the cavern’s inner wall, cautiously shuffling her feet
along. Occasionally a small pebble dislodged by her foot had rolled over the edge
and fallen into the darkness below, reaching bottom with a wet clatter that had
resounded loudly in the voluminous expanse of the cavern.
This isn’t insane, she’d kept trying to convince herself, but with each step
she’d taken she’d found it decidedly more and more difficult to persuade herself it
was otherwise.
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Sheer madness to be so far in that cave, alone, with no back-up, scrabbling

along a narrow ledge above a yawning pit that had seemed more and more
threatening the longer she’d looked into its seemingly fathomless black void.
Her breaths had become more rapid and fear-tinged, which she’d hoped her
tormentors couldn’t hear. Progress had been slow, and she had kept expecting that
at any moment the ledge would end, thus forcing her back the way she’d come.
And that prospect had become increasingly more inviting the farther away from
the tunnel opening she had got. Indeed, when she’d reached the point where the
opening vanished into the shadowy dark, lost to her in the cavern’s cold, wet
gloom, she’d felt unbearably alone and far more frightened than she’d been in a
good long time.
One hour, a reluctant voice had finally said through her implant, a stirring in
her mind that had triggered a wave of relief and an exhausted sigh. She had
steeled herself then and started back, but she’d only taken a few steps in retreat
when the rock wall under her hands had trembled. She had frozen, then, caught in
the grip of panic, her breath held tight in her lungs as she’d waited with mounting
apprehension.
After a moment all had seemed well and she had continued on, but she’d gone
no more than a half dozen meters when the rock of the mountain had shivered and
heaved again. This time more violently, so that stalactites had shaken loose and
fallen like enormous spears into the dark wound that was the cavern floor.
There’d been a tremendous crashing of stone against stone, a sound that had
cannonaded through the cavern, until the vast space had seemed to reverberate
like an enormous bell.
She had heard another sound amidst that din, only later realizing it had been
her own voice: a shrill scream of terror as the ledge she’d been standing on had
slid from beneath her. She had flailed wildly, trying to grab onto something, to
grasp a bit of protruding rock, or anything that might slow her fall. But down she
had plunged, and it had been only through sheer luck that she’d managed to
wrestle the grapple gun from its holster and shoot an anchor line into the rock far
overhead. The line had snapped taut, the gun had been viciously wrenched from
her hand, and only the safety lead connecting the gun to the harness she’d been
wearing had spared her. Even at that she’d been yanked so sharply in the harness
that the breath had been torn from her and a lance of pain had stabbed at her, so
intense that for a moment she had blacked out.
She had never been sure how long she had dangled there, unconscious at the
end of the grapple line, twisting slowly about, head thrown back, arms and legs
limp, with stalagmites and rocky debris mired in the black unknown directly
beneath her. At some point she had felt the voices in her implant, tickling her
mind, intruding on the dream running through the dark vault of her
unconsciousness. At first they’d been like gnats, irritating, annoying, and she had
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tried to swat at them. But then they’d become more insistent, until finally she’d
somehow roused herself through the fog of her blackout, emerging into a flood of
pain and confusion. It had taken her several seconds after that to re-orient herself
and to realize the true nature of her predicament.
Courage, her father had always said, comes to those who have the heart to
accept their fears and see beyond them.
She had known, then, as she’d hung there, suspended on a thin line that was
bound to a tiny metal anchor fused in the cavern ceiling, that it was quite likely
she was going to die. And once she’d faced that fact, it had been easier to address
the issue of trying to find some means of saving herself. Because, after all, she
had had nothing to lose by trying.
The glowglobe had gone, shattered in the fall of debris, so she’d been trapped
in an utter darkness more uncomfortably terrifying than any she’d ever
experienced. That had been intimidating enough, but then to have known she was
suspended somewhere over a treacherous floor of shattered rock and jutting
stalagmites...well...
She had concentrated, trying to link with the others through her implant, but
there’d been nothing but silence. At first she’d told herself it was just because the
rock and all were interfering with the transmission, but in her heart and the
rational side of her mind she had known this wasn’t the case, that they had, in
fact, abandoned her. After all, she’d been talking to them only minutes before, so
if they had remained just outside the cave entrance her transmission should have
continued to reach them. Later on she would discover they’d panicked and run
away, having feared that she’d died, and frightened they’d be blamed for her
death. Regardless, their flight had taken them out of range of her com-link.
Strangely, she hadn’t felt the sense of alarm she would have anticipated upon
realizing they’d ditched her. She had never been sure why, though later she’d
thought that in no small way it had had something to do with the fact that she’d
never felt a part of them, that she’d always known she was separate from them,
and that when push had come to shove she’d never really considered any of them
remotely close to being friends. Leaving her there, alone, possibly trapped,
possibly injured or worse, had been just the sort of thing she’d come to expect of
them. Indeed, she would probably have been shocked if they’d done otherwise.
Not that they could have done much. There’d been some irony in the fact that
of all of them she’d been the most capable, having been brought up in a military
family and having already had some training in the Prime. The girls who had
needled her into entering the cave in the first place had been typical of their sort,
more caught up in their little social cliques and the latest holodramas and virtuo-
novels than in engaging in such earthy pursuits as survival skills and weapons
handling. While they’d mooned over the latest male lead in Rake’s Quest, she’d
been learning the basics of being a soldier in the Prime. Of course, they’d all
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come from families with a tradition in the bureaucracy. Mandarins. Her own
family, on the other hand, had always been military, on her mother’s side and her
father’s. And on Tartarus the military had always been somewhat discrete,
disconnected from the rest of the populace. Both revered and reviled for the same
reason: a century before they’d stood united against an offworld-inspired rebellion
and had quashed it, killing thousands of people who’d been members of some of
the original settler families.
That was the way of things on Tartarus: people stuck to their own kind,
seldom straying out of the sphere in which their families had tradition. Because
tradition meant everything to the people of Tartarus; it was the cultural imperative
that served to forever separate the classes—and another reason she’d regarded
herself as something of an outcast. She’d only escaped it when she’d finally left
her home world and entered the Academy.
Until her parents had chosen spacer for her, there’d been no others born on the
planet in the previous ten years who had followed that path. Being a young world,
with plenty of opportunities, there’d never seemed the need or the inclination for
the young to be chosen for life elsewhere. But as part of its obligation to the USF,
and in order to maintain its signatory status on the Assembly, it had been required
of Tartarus that it sustain at least a token presence in Fleet. Accordingly, every
decade or so the military families had selected one among them to gene-type and
birth a child that would be sent to the Academy. She’d been one such child—
which had made her feel even more the outcast and stranger among her own
people.
Because it was in her genes, she’d always yearned for space, but from the
moment she’d truly understood what had been done, she had felt some measure of
anger and frustration over what her parents had committed her to—even as she’d
realized that they’d had no more choice in the matter than had she. Still, it had
hurt to feel she was somehow different from everyone else, from her peers, from
almost everyone on Tartarus, and most especially from the other members of her
family. She had been created not out of love and desire, but simply to fulfill a
treaty obligation. And it had hurt to know that even though she’d been unique
among her people, there’d been few who had been able to see her as anything
other than a freak and something for which her parents should be pitied rather
than applauded.
Her saving grace had been the knowledge that as bad as things might get,
there would come a day when she would escape it all, leaving Tartarus behind her
and flying to the freedom of the stars where none who would torment her could
ever do so again. She would escape and join others of her kind, who had lived as
she had lived, never quite a part of the Community of linked individuals who
made up the Virtuality, never quite a part of what was considered by the majority
to be ‘normal’ society.
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In that cave, in that cold and dark, she never had had so much time as then to
consider the magnitude of the differences that divided her from the girls who had
left her there, and to realize, perhaps, that it wasn’t she who’d been short-changed
by the genetic choices of her parents.
Out of communications range, and thus unable to call for help, she’d been
forced to explore options for effecting her own rescue. But dangling at the end of
a thin line in the pitch black of a cold cave, suspended over a threat she couldn’t
see, had presented her with something of a conundrum. If she had released herself
from the line it would have been a drop into the unknown and the risk of serious
injury. She had considered swinging back and forth until she could reach out and
grab onto the wall of the cavern, but she’d quickly dismissed that proposition
because it had presented a risk nearly as great and as potentially lethal as simply
dropping into the abyss beneath her. The fact was, she’d had no idea of how
securely the anchor bolt she’d shot into the ceiling of the cavern had fused.
Imparting too much lateral force on it might have disengaged it from the rock,
with easily imagined results.
So for a long time she had remained there, suspended in darkness, her pain
increasing even as other parts of her started to go numb, all the while trying to
figure out some way of extricating herself from the quandary in which she found
herself. Wait, she had told herself. Wait for help. Wait until someone comes,
because at some point someone was bound to come. Indeed, at some point
someone would realize she was missing. Or perhaps one of the girls who had fled
would do the right thing and tell someone.
These things she had told herself over and over again in the first hour or two.
But then the pain had begun to grow more intense, to be too much for her to bear,
and she’d found herself entertaining all manner of wild notions as to what she
might do to save herself.
Of course, she had come equipped, but the pack holding most of her gear had
been torn from her in the fall, so she’d been left with only the few items on her
belt. There’d been the ubiquitous knife, which had accompanied her everywhere
since the day her father had given it to her two years prior when she had first
joined the Prime. And she’d had a small scanner unit; but when she had tried to
use it, she’d found the readings ambiguous and had thus surmised that it had been
damaged in the fall. There’d also been a water bottle, so she’d been able to slake
her thirst, though she’d been reluctant to drink too much at once for fear of having
none for later when she might feel a more pressing need for it.
It had all come down to the knife; it had been the singular tool at her disposal.
She had spent a few moments debating with herself, trying to decide whether
she should stay as she was or cut the line. The inclination had been to stay, but
she’d sensed that her chances of survival were as slim in that position as they
might be in falling—however much distance there was between her and the
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bottom of the cavern. With her arms and legs beginning to tingle with numbness,
she’d quickly drawn the conclusion the choice had to be made soon, or there’d
soon arise a point at which she could make no choice at all.
She had drunk more water, then had taken the scanner and dropped it directly
below her, listening carefully for the impact. There’d been a faint splash, but it
had come at a greater interval than she’d hoped for, indicating the rocks and water
below were still a considerable fall away. But there’d been nothing for it. Even as
she had determined that variable, it had become apparent time was running out.
The knife had grown heavy in her hand, which had increasingly felt awkward and
clumsy, her fingers remote, their touch dulled. So much so that it had taken
several tries to get the blade of the knife extended.
Finally she’d been ready, knife poised, her breathing labored as she’d pressed
the blade against the line and had summoned the courage to do what she’d felt she
must.
The line had parted only after several vigorous sawing strokes of the blade.
She had plunged down, the air rushing past her, its touch cold and damp and
frightening. Frightening, because it had been the only real sensation she’d had, the
only real sense she’d had of falling. Then, at last, she had struck a stalagmite a
glancing blow, crying out in agony as she’d gone ricocheting off its too solid rock
and into ice cold water. The shock of the freezing liquid had so stunned her that
she’d almost fainted. But she had struggled to the surface, breaking free and
gasping for breath, trying to orient herself because she’d been all too aware that
time was short and that she could not long survive in the water. She had struck out
for the cavern wall, splashing noisily as she’d thrashed her way through the icy
pool, quickly making it to a pile of rock that had been wet with slime and which
she’d deduced must have been rubble from earlier falls of stalactites. Onto this
she had scrambled, dragging herself up out of the water, despite the pain in her
arms and legs and the agony of the cold that had seemed to penetrate right down
into the core of her.
It had been all she’d been able to do. The walls had been unscalable in her
condition and with her meager resources, so she’d simply collapsed on the rock,
wet and cold and battered, but thankful that she hadn’t yet died, and determined
more than ever that she wouldn’t go easily.
She’d lain there, huddled in a fetal position as she had shivered against the
cold, her teeth chattering so hard it had almost hurt. Some part of her had been
certain she would die of exposure, but she’d kept fighting that notion of defeat,
had kept telling herself she’d make it, if for no other reason than to see the faces
of those girls who’d provoked her in the first place. See their faces when they
discovered she’d lived.
For the first hour or two after her fall she’d drifted in and out of
consciousness, sometimes stirring from particularly potent dreams to find herself
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confused and not knowing exactly where she was or what had happened to her.
As time had dragged on she’d become increasing anxious, even as her thoughts
had become less coherent, until she’d found herself hallucinating, hearing and
seeing things that weren’t there, babbling to people who couldn’t possibly have
been in that cave with her. People like her old Gran, whom she’d only ever known
from holos and AI recreations. People like her older sister, who was on the other
side of the planet. Or her brother, Jhonny, who had died only a year ago in a
hunting accident, leaving her devastated and feeling truly deserted. He, of all of
the family, had been the one who had seemed to understand her, the only one
who’d had real sympathy for her. When he had died it had been as though some
part of her world had ended, ripped from her and destroyed; and for days and
weeks after she’d been disconsolate, certain she wouldn’t survive, and not sure
she even wanted to if she did.
“Hi, Small Stuff,” he’d said to her; and she had opened her eyes and blinked
at him in confusion and disbelief. “Got yourself into a bit of a mess, eh, kiddo?”
“Jhonny?” she had croaked, barely able to speak. “What are you doing here?”
He had smiled and said, “Because you need me, Small Stuff.”
“Are you going to help me?”
“You bet. We’re going to make it through this together.”
“That’s nice,” she’d said sleepily, lowering her head and resting it on the cold
flesh of her arm.
“You’ve got to keep awake, Small Stuff. You can’t fall asleep.”
“Just a little rest,” she’d pleaded. “So tired.”
“I know you are, kiddo, but you can’t sleep. Not if you want to wake up
again.”
“I’m cold, Jhonny,” she had whispered after a while. “I’m so cold.”
“It’s going to get colder, Small Stuff, but you’ve got to hold on. Someone’s
going to come and get you.”
“I wish Daddy was here,” she had said, thinking of how nice it would be to be
at home, snuggled up under the thick covers of her bed, a fire roaring in the
fireplace. “I want Mommy.”
“They’re going to come, Small Stuff. You just have to hang on. You can do
it.”
“I can’t,” she had cried. “I can’t,” she’d said again, her voice a broken
whisper, punctuated by sobs.
“Yes you can, Small Stuff. You’re strong. You’ve always been strong.
Stronger than us all.”
“I can’t,” she’d moaned. “I’m not good enough. They were right. I’m not as
good as they are.”
“No, they were wrong, Small Stuff. You’ve had to face things they never had
to, things not many people on Tartarus understand. That’s why I was always so
299
proud of you, kiddo. You always kept your head high and soldiered on. You never
gave up, you never allowed yourself to be defeated.”
“But they’re going to send me away. Mom and Dad are sending me away.”
“Because that’s where you belong, Small Stuff. Not here, on this narrow-
minded world. You belong out there in a place of bigger dreams. You were born
for that. I always envied you that, always wished I’d been the one chosen.”
“I’d rather stay,” she’d said, the words a slur of sound.
“No, you don’t want that. You know you don’t. You’ve been waiting to go.
Wanting to. The stars are where you belong. And you might even have wanted
them if Mom and Dad hadn’t chosen them for you.”
“Tired...tired of being different.”
“But soon you won’t be, Small Stuff. Just think: Soon you’ll be among other
spacers. Soon you won’t be alone anymore.”
“I wish you hadn’t gone...gone away.”
“I’m still here. I’m here when you need me, Small Stuff.”
“But...but you’re not alive. You died and left me. I needed you and you left
me.”
“That’s why you can’t die, kiddo. People need you. People are counting on
you.”
She’d shaken her head, or had imagined herself doing so. “Don’t want that.
Don’t want people counting on me. Just want to be like everyone else.”
“But you’re not like everyone else, Small Stuff. You’re special. Think about
it: You were chosen. The first in a decade. You’re all of us out there, kiddo. You
represent us. What Tartarus is to the Federation is embodied in you. So you have
to do us proud. You have to show them we’re the equal of any others.”
“I just want to sleep,” she’d protested. “I just want to die.”
“No, no you don’t. You have to prove to them they were wrong about you.
You have to show them you’re special. You have to live, Small Stuff. For me. For
Tartarus. And especially for yourself.”
“I don’t think I can. So cold. So tired. I hurt, Jhonny. I hurt bad.”
“Just a little longer, Small Stuff. Just hold on a little longer.”
“Okay.” She had tried to smile.
“That’s a good girl.”
“I love you, Jhonny.”
“I know, kiddo. I love you too.”
“Good-bye.”
“Good-bye, Small Stuff. Don’t worry, you’re going to be fine. Just fine.”
Half a day later they’d rescued her, though soon after she had slipped into a
coma. She hadn’t awakened from it for nearly a week, and when she had, she’d
wanted to see the stars.
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******
"Jhonny?"
“I’m here, Small Stuff.”
Lhara fought through the pain and forced open her eyes, staring out into an
unfamiliar room that was veiled in a wan light. Her thoughts were muddled,
cluttered with images and memories that didn’t seem to make sense to her as she
lay there trying to figure out where she was and what had happened to her.
Everything seemed so murky, and for a moment she thought herself on Tartarus,
in the days following her rescue from the cave, when she’d finally arisen from out
of the fog of her coma.
But this wasn’t the hospital. Nor was this her room in the homestead manor. It
was small and closed and filthy, as though it hadn’t been cleaned in weeks or
months. And the air was rank with a man’s odor, a sharp, pungent scent of sweat
and urine and unwashed clothes. For some reason it set her on edge, trembling, an
uneasiness rising within her, her flesh crawling with the chill of apprehension.
Her body was numb and almost distant from her. She tried to rouse herself
from the hurt-inspired lethargy that had besieged her, struggling to sit up; but that
was when she realized she’d been bound by each of her wrists and ankles with
coarse rope, each length of which was secured to one of four stout wood posts that
were the corner supports of the crude bed upon which she lay. Some memory
abruptly returned to her; and she was filled with a revulsion and mental torment
that brought an uncontrollable flood of tears to her eyes and shuddering sobs from
up out of her gut.
“Steady, steady, Small Stuff.”
But she couldn’t calm herself, couldn’t stop the crying and the soul-piercing
wail that spoke of the horror of her defilement. Now she remembered the man on
her, his suffocating smell, the clamminess of his flesh pressed against hers, his
hands grasping at her, touching her in ways that she’d never been touched before.
It had been a vile thing. A vicious, sadistic violation.
Rape.
She began to recall what she had forgotten in the black eclipse of her pain: the
crash in the desert, the struggle from the wreck, the two men finding her. Like
pieces of a puzzle the fragments of memory fell in place. She remembered the
fight, being shot and falling into darkness. She remembered awaking in agony,
her mind a blizzard of incoherent images, voices in the background arguing. A
man and a woman. An old woman, by the sound of it—that deeper voice that
wasn’t the shallow, gravel tone of a man, but hinted at the weathering of time, of
weariness and wisdom, of unbound years lodged in a tired heart and an empty
soul.
Perhaps she had groaned or said something—she wasn’t sure—because the
man had turned and strode to her side. The woman had stepped close behind him,
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and the two of them had stood staring down at her, and she’d seen something in
the eyes of both that she hadn’t liked at all.
“She’ll make a good wife,” the man had said—the one she remembered the
other man in the desert calling Sean.
“A strong one,” the old woman had observed with what Lhara had felt sure
was a certain measure of delight. “She’ll be making you fine babies, my boy.”
And she had patted the one called Sean on the arm.
“True enough, mother. Better than that bitch Genevieve.”
Their conversation had sent a surge of panic through her, and she’d been
consumed with the sudden imperative to flee, to get away as quickly as possible.
Reacting instinctively, she had tried to get to her feet, but the man had hit her,
striking her hard across the face with a ferocity she couldn’t recall ever having
encountered before. She had fallen back onto the bed, blood in her mouth, her
head swimming as the room had seemed to wheel about her.
“You don’t move or speak unless I say you can!” Sean had shouted, pressing
his face close to her, until she could feel his fetid breath against her skin. “Do you
understand, bitch?”
She hadn’t answered; her silence had been rewarded with another strike across
her face. A gasp of pain had escaped her and she had felt the fog of
unconsciousness creeping back into her mind. Some part of her had told her to
fight it, had told her she couldn’t give up, that she couldn’t let him do this to her.
I’m a soldier, she remembered thinking. Trained to fight. Trained to kill.
But when she’d tried again to rise he had struck her in the side, in her wound,
where the biobots hadn’t yet worked their miracles. And it had been like some
explosion had gone off inside her brain; for after that she’d been like someone
drowning, sinking down into darkness, only distantly aware of hands on her,
pulling her armor off. Then the cold of steel as a knife had slit through her body
glove, and the burn of the rough rope around her wrists and ankles, cinched tight,
wrenching her body so that the pain had finally plunged her into oblivion.
Sweet, merciful oblivion.
Until he had come later, light from the door rousing her as he’d stood there,
silhouetted in the opening, a dingy yellow glow behind him. The door had closed,
and the boards had creaked with his step as she’d watched the blurred shadow of
him moving towards her. There’d been the sound of a belt being unbuckled,
accented by his heavy, fevered breaths, ripe with eagerness and an animal lust.
The bed had groaned as he had settled onto it. Then his hands had touched
her, making her shiver, and recoil. She’d struggled against her bindings, trying to
shrink away from him, even as his hands had slid over her in a foul, licentious
manner. He’d laughed, a cruel laughter, and she had once again felt his breath
against her skin, hot and moist, like a dog’s in the heat of summer.
“Don’t worry,” he’d said. “I’m more than enough man for you.”
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Then he’d penetrated her, thrusting hard, tearing at her; and she had wanted to
cry out, but he had clamped a hand tightly over her mouth as he’d heaved against
her, again and again and again, pounding viciously.
No! she’d screamed in her mind. Please, no! Don’t let this happen. This can’t
be happening.
She’d turned her head from side to side, her body bucking, trying to throw
him off as she’d strained against the ropes, but all to no avail. He’d just kept on
and on, like an animal, grunting at length as a surge had gone through him and his
body had stiffened and quaked with release. He’d lain atop her then, for long
moments a crushing weight on her, his foul breath assailing her. Then he’d
whispered, “Good girl. I like the ones that have a little fight in them.”
Finally he’d got up and pulled on his pants; and while he’d been tightening his
belt he’d said to her, “I hope we’ve made some babies, bitch. You give me a son
and things might not be so bad for you.”
She had wanted to tell him to go to hell, but she’d been afraid to open her
mouth, to let him hear her sobs. Her grief. Her fear. Somehow she’d known that
would have made him feel all the more pleased with himself; and she hadn’t
wanted to give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d wounded her more
grievously than any physical injury. So she’d just lain there, the tears wet about
her eyes, streaming back against her cheeks and the sides of her face.
He had come again, several more times, until the horror of it had simply sent
her mind automatically fleeing into some other place, far from the pain of the
physical desecration, far from the madness of this torture. She’d fled into a dark
space, where no light shone, but where he couldn’t reach her. A safe place within
herself. And there she’d stayed, for how long she didn’t know. Minutes. Hours.
Days.
It didn’t matter. It made no difference.
She only knew that for some reason she’d finally awakened. Not from sleep.
Not from unconsciousness. But from that place of hiding to which she’d retreated,
where she had pretended she was safe. Where she had pretended she was all right,
that the things being done to her were things being done to another Lhara Jhordel,
a different part of her that she could simply close off and pretend didn’t exist so
that she could survive.
In the Academy they’d addressed scenarios not unlike the one in which she
found herself; but you couldn’t simulate a rape without, in effect, causing some of
the same trauma inflicted by the real thing. As a spacer, as a soldier, they prepared
you as best they could, hardening you to the realities of what could happen,
preparing you psychologically to confront the horror of so intimate a breach. How
inadequate, she realized now, had all that training and preparation been.
When she had come out of the Academy she’d thought herself fully prepared
to meet the challenges of being a spacer, of serving on the great ships of Fleet, of
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seeing action in the depths of space between the stars. She’d thought herself
finally free from what she’d once viewed as the burden of her prescribed heritage,
now in the place where she belonged, amidst her own kind. She had felt a part of
something great and grand and magnificent, with meaning and purpose and a
breadth and scope far beyond what she’d imagined as a child growing up on
Tartarus. And while there’d been consideration given to the dangers she might
face—even the prospect of death – they’d been largely overshadowed by the
spectacle and wonderment of inclusion, of being aware that she was a member of
a select group within the Earth Empire, journeying to places beyond the
imaginings of those girls who’d once mocked her.
She’d no longer been outcast.
But now, as she lay there in that gray-veiled room, none of that mattered any
longer; inclusion meant nothing, because she now felt more separated from
humanity than she’d ever felt at any point in her life. She couldn’t have easily
described in words how she felt: it was as though some part of her had died, riven
from her, the woman that she’d been now split asunder. Shattered, she might have
said; for she felt in pieces. Scattered. Incoherent. Irrecoverably broken.
In the Academy they’d spoken of how battle could sometimes overwhelm the
minds of even the best of men and women, of how sometimes the things you saw
and the things you did whilst a participant in the brutality of war could sometimes
too deeply disturb the fundamental core of an individual’s psyche. That, then,
manifested itself in many ways. There were some who became rash and overly
daring, plunging boldly into the conflict without a care for life and limb, while
others withdrew, losing themselves in dark corners of their minds, abandoning the
reality around them. These were the extremes, with many variations in between.
Ultimately, though, it was accepted that war always changed one. Irrevocably.
Now she knew rape did as well—in ways that anyone who hadn’t experienced
it could never fully appreciate. Just as those who’d never been party to war
couldn’t even begin to imagine the ways in which the utter horror of it could so
ravage the mind and be as damaging as any wound to flesh and blood.
And she’d experienced both in the space of hours: War and rape; and she
wasn’t so sure they were all that far removed from one another. She wasn’t sure
the atrocity of men and women inflicting death and destruction upon one another
was all that different from the merciless devastation that came of one individual
willfully violating another in the most primal and vile of sexual acts. In both
instances there seemed to be something of an abrogation of the most basic
elements of the human sense of right and wrong.
She’d once heard an argument in which it had been suggested that rape was
merely a product of the sexual urge unencumbered by conscience, that those who
engaged in it were in a sense driven by the primal imperative of self-perpetuation
inherent in all. But in the case of the rapist the checks and balances of rationality
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and conscience were absent, driving him or—in rare cases—her to act in a
socially unacceptable manner.
In war, to a degree, the same thing happened, though in this case the
uncoupling of conscience was an engineered event, in which men and women
were placed in an environment where the killing of another human being was
deemed acceptable.
She recalled something she’d once read in the Academy: War is the rape of
human conscience.
What then was actual, physical rape? The total absence of conscience? The
murder of innocence?
******
There was a sound at the door and Lhara steeled herself for yet another
assault, but when she looked towards the light she saw that it was the old woman.
Without a shred of self-consciousness, the crone walked casually into the room—
as though it were perfectly normal for her to find a naked and bound woman in
her home. And with some measure of horror and revulsion Lhara wondered if that
might not, indeed, be the case.
The old woman was carrying a white china basin of water in both hands, with
a towel draped over her shoulder. She was bent as she walked, but as she came
closer to the bed Lhara saw that she wasn’t as old as she’d first seemed. Her eyes
and her face suggested someone of no more than fifty—without Rejuv. That sent
a shiver through Lhara, for she couldn’t imagine the hardship that would have
made a woman so young seem so old.
“So, how are you today?” Sean’s mother asked.
Lhara stared at her in disbelief, a wave of nausea overcoming her as she
considered the untailored nature of that inquiry. She couldn’t understand how
another woman could be party to what had happened to her, how this woman
could stand there looking at her, seeing the way she’d been abused, and behave as
though life were continuing on its merry, ordinary course—though perhaps
therein was the greater horror: that this was ordinary on this world.
“My son is much pleased with you,” Sean’s mother said, setting the basin of
water down on a nightstand beside the bed. “He has been so unfortunate with
women.” She cocked her head and looked sadly at Lhara. “His first wife was not a
strong one. And the second was a coward who deserted him.” A sharpness in her
eyes then, and anger in her voice and the set of her jaw.
“Please,” Lhara said, her voice scarcely more than a whisper. “Please help
me.”
The woman smiled. “Why, that is why I am here,” she said. She dipped her
hands into the basin and took out a wet cloth, twisting it to wring much of the
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water from it. “You must be clean before Sean comes again.” Then she bent over
Lhara and began washing her with the cloth, rubbing vigorously, as though she
were scrubbing a piece of furniture.
“Please,” said Lhara again. “You must know this is wrong.”
“Wrong?” The woman paused, straightening slightly and looking up from
where she’d been washing Lhara’s legs. “There is nothing wrong in a woman
pleasing a man,” she said. “And you have pleased my son a great deal. It is a
woman’s place to do whatever a man wills. That is the way of things. That is the
will of God.”
“You’ve no right to do this to me,” said Lhara, hearing the fear in her own
voice, her words swollen with tears. She was aware of the budding terror inside of
her, and realized this woman’s insane notions were driving the fear deeper into
her heart. They suggested no hope, no opportunity for escape.
“My Sean found you and brought you back here,” said the woman. “He has
given you a home, and you should be grateful for it and more than willing to
please him as he sees fit. And it will please him much if you give him a son.” She
placed a cold, damp hand on Lhara’s stomach and grinned broadly. “Perhaps you
already have.”
Lhara was about to tell her there’d be no child from her, that the biobots in her
system were tuned to prevent just such a thing. But she caught herself, suddenly
of a mind that if she revealed as much it might make matters worse for her. It
would mean she’d have little value to them; and she wasn’t indisposed to
believing that in such a situation they’d be quick to dispatch her. Permanently.
The woman continued about her task of washing, now humming to herself,
while Lhara shook with fear and shame, and wept tears that were lost in the damp
leavings of the wet cloth. When she had finished drying Lhara with a coarse
towel, the woman gathered her things and shuffled out of the room, switching off
the light and closing the door behind her. The room was cast in gray once more,
and Lhara lay there, crying, trying to be the brave soldier she’d trained to be,
trying to convince herself that if she could just gather her wits about her she could
figure a way out of this.
But tugging on the ropes only made the rough fiber burn into the flesh of her
wrists and ankles. To fight against her bindings was a waste of energy; and she
felt too weak to sustain the effort. All she could do was lie there, staring into the
unwelcome gloom, listening, waiting, knowing that at some point the door would
open again and the monster would be back.
She closed her eyes and bit at her lower lip and wished she would wake up
and find this had all been nothing more than a bad dream. A nightmare, from
which she would awaken in her bed, back in the cabin she shared on the Goliath.
It was better to believe that than to confront this stark, vile reality.
There was a sound at the door; and against her will she opened her eyes and
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looked towards it. It swung open, and there he stood again, the light around him,
his shadow sweeping across the room, onto the bed and over her. She shivered,
recoiling, trying to draw away from him. But there was no retreat. Not physically.
His footsteps pounded on the wood floor as he entered the room and closed
the door behind him. She could see the dark mass of him, stooped slightly as he
took off his boots; then the sound of him undoing his belt, like a ritual now
engrained in her memory. She felt herself shaking uncontrollably, even as she
didn’t want to – didn’t want to give him any satisfaction.
He loomed over her; and she found she couldn’t look away. The mattress
sagged as he got up onto the bed and settled himself between her legs. She heard
his breathing, close and hot and restless; and his hands roamed over her,
squeezing and rubbing and pinching. Then there was the pain.
Lhara fled to the secure place inside of her, and watched from afar, wishing
she could die. Wishing so because she knew that at some point it would be over
and he would be gone and she would awaken from that dark place to find this
wasn’t a nightmare and she wasn’t back on the Goliath.
It grew darker, and the world fell away.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN:
THE ARTIFICE OF DIPLOMACY
She gazed at Earth, looking down as Europe passed into view, out of the shade
of darkness, into the brilliance of a new day, the grayish line of the terminator
sliding westward with a painful slothfulness. It reminded her of a vast curtain
being drawn back to reveal an enormous stage; and there, upon it, in the bright
glory of the birthing day, beneath a scattering of cloud, were the Alps and the
Rhine and the North Sea, the coast of Normandy and the English Channel. All of
Europe, bounded by waters and mountains, cut by rivers and plains. A repository
of history, where weathered monuments told of great wars and their warriors, of
storied kings and queens, of countless victories and defeats. The triumphs and
follies of humankind.
Once, there’d been those naive enough to dream that humanity would learn by
its mistakes and leave war behind when it went into space, seeking only peaceful
ends for the so-called ‘final frontier.’ And in the early days that indeed had been
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the case. But the missile defense systems of the twenty-first century had been the
thin edge of the wedge that had led to the inevitable militarization of the vast dark
realm beyond Earth’s atmosphere. From there it had been a steady progression
towards the huge fleets that now existed. That, some argued, was simply human
nature, and it could never have been otherwise.
At least, though, the export of war had brought relative peace to Earth. Armed
conflict on any meaningful scale was almost unheard of these days. Most
skirmishes were between small corporations, and these were invariably dealt with
in haste by the USF or by the megacorps. So the Earth, to some extent, now
flourished in the chaos of modernity—even as parts of it choked and died on
many of the mistakes of the past.
Great cities grew, spreading like a cancer across the surface, until disparate
enclaves of humanity merged into one. But for all that, there were still parts of the
world that remained with only slight change, where the past collided with the
future in a mix of brick and mortar, steel and plaz. The old confronting the new:
innovation battling stagnation. No truer was this than in the cities of Europe,
where there’d always been a fight to preserve the remnants of the past, even as
logistics precluded the sentimentality that would have had even the most mundane
of architectural artifacts maintained for the edification of future generations. The
obvious treasures, however, lay under domes or tents, protected from the
elements, preserved in pristine environmental conditions far better than that in
which much of the planet’s population endured. The pickling of history, some wit
had once opined. A waste of scarce resources, had argued the advocates of the
poor and the environment.
And somewhere down there, in amidst it all, in that mix of dappled green and
gray that was land and the glittering gold and blue that was the sea, lost in the vast
islands of human construction that covered so much in fibersteel and plaz and a
labyrinthine maze of structures of a colorless, passionless and nondescript nature,
was Paris, the city of her childhood and youth. Paris, where she’d found her first
love and experienced her first loss; and where, perhaps more than anywhere else
on the planet, the past was writ large in the stone of old buildings and monuments,
and the future was carried on the shoulders of the people who walked there now,
no doubt oblivious to Isis high overhead and to one woman’s quiet scrutiny.
The last time she’d been in Paris it had rained, and after the rain she’d walked
through the streets, through the heart of the city, where the path of the Seine rode
northward past the Eiffel tower and the Palais Bourbon and then curved
southward in a long sweep by the Louvre and around Notre Dame Cathedral.
Much of what was there was under tent and dome, but in places the city was open
to the sky and one could walk over imitations of ancient cobbled ways, where
weathered stone shone wetly under early morning sunshine and windows looked
out into narrow causeways that were like artificial canyons cut deep in the core of
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the metropolis.
It had seemed almost otherworldly to her that day, in a world too often
straying towards the sterile and the clinical. Walking there, in the aftermath of the
downpour, she’d been reminded of the treasured paintings of the old Impressionist
masters. Monet, her favorite of that time, had especially come to mind—no doubt
because of the way in which the morning light slanted between the buildings and
across the roads and open squares, so reflecting his bold, unadulterated use of
pigment. It was like living poetry; and when she walked she could breathe it in
and feel as though she were in a painting that had been rendered centuries before,
in a time and a world so vastly different from her own.
It truly was romantic.
Not in the least like Isis, whose Concourse, with its designer trees and artisan
fountains, its waterfalls and gentle, grassy downs, could never rise above the sum
of its parts and had about it all the character one would assume of an environment
that had been carefully planned down to the last grain of sand and drop of water.
On Isis the world was sterile, even in those few places where there were attempts
to make it otherwise. It was so obviously artificial. So machine-like. But then,
nobody had ever truly tried hard to make it otherwise—because Earth was a
shuttle flight away, or a quick trip down on one of the elevators. If you wanted
trees and skies and rolling seas there seemed little sense in settling for anything
other than the genuine article. After all, Isis wasn’t like one of the far off
waystations, light-years removed from any world, bright pebbles of human
existence dropped onto the dark cloth of space. There, out of necessity for the
physical and mental well-being of the thousands who lived on those closed worlds
of fibersteel and plaz, earnest attempts were made to create some semblance of a
planet’s surface. Bigger concourses, with soaring heights and thick-shadowed
forests, and sometimes even tiny lakes and rivers.
She’d spent so much of her time on Isis, yet it had never truly felt like home to
her; she’d never found herself eager to return to it whenever she’d had occasion to
venture back down to Earth. She wasn’t a spacer, so it wasn’t in her genetic
makeup to be in any way adapted to life beyond the atmosphere of the planet. And
while the years may have habituated her, she’d never become enamored of the
place—though even she had to admit there was one certain beauty that could only
be seen from space: the Earth from orbit, which truly was magnificent from any
perspective.
Earth. One world amidst so many. The ‘mother world’ as some were wont to
call it; and despite the long years of exploration and the colonization of so many
other planets, it remained the single most important center of human existence
within the Empire. The root of power. In a war for the Empire, should ever such a
thing occur, those who possessed Earth and controlled it would hold title to much
and command the loyalty of many. For even among those for whom Earth was as
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much myth as reality, the thread of allegiance ran strong.
Even the megacorps were inextricably bound to Earth, despite having long
outgrown the limitations of the planet. Their future might well be in the further
exploration and exploitation of space, opening up new worlds and continually
pushing back the Fringes, but their past was firmly rooted in Earth. It was the
wellspring of their early existence; and there was a tacit agreement among them
all that it should remain neutral territory. Any conflict or disagreement among the
megacorps was never to be brought to Earth in any manifestation of physical
confrontation.
She wondered, however, how much it would take for them to waver on that
commitment. Not much, she imagined. When it came to the megacorps it was all
about the bottom line, after all.
Loyalty did indeed have its price.
******
“The ambassadors are here,” Eleanor’s voice said in her mind. “Should I send
them in?”
Danielle sighed. “Yes,” she replied through her implant; and to herself she
thought, I might as well get this over with.
Reluctantly she turned away from the view of Earth and moved to her desk,
settling into the chair behind it just as the door opened and Eleanor stepped
through, ushering forth NorAmicorp’s Sterling and RussoAsia Industries’
Voshkov. Sterling was from Mars, and as with all native-born of the Red Planet,
he was an exceedingly tall, barrel-chested man who towered above the squatter,
stocky Voshkov, an old world man who hailed from St. Petersburg. Sterling was
young, even by the standards of rejuv, and had a boyish innocence about him that
belied the rapier ruthlessness and dogmatic attitude that were part and parcel of
the person she knew him to be. Voshkov, on the other hand, looked much of his
one hundred and five years, despite rejuv: he had gray hair and even signs of
wrinkles, and there was something about the manner in which he carried himself
that suggested anything but youth. He was shrewd, however, so she was never
quite sure just how much of his outward appearance was merely for show—
perhaps to project an air of wisdom and experience, and as a consequence to
intimidate.
“Gentlemen,” she said, rising from her seat and putting on her best diplomatic
charm as she welcomed them into her office.
“Madame Secretary,” said Voshkov, bowing in a courtly fashion, a slight
smile embellishing his lips as he looked upon her from under shaggy eyebrows.
“It’s always a pleasure to see you,” he purred; and she suppressed a shiver,
remarking silently that his oily gaze always seemed to make her feel rather dirty.
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There was something shameless and almost vulgar in the way in which he looked
at her whenever they occasioned to cross paths, and she’d no doubts that in his
mind he was undressing her—and perhaps fantasizing other, less savory
endeavors. There were rumors about him and his ‘bedroom’ proclivities that
would have made even the most sexually liberal of individuals blanche.
“Madame Secretary,” said Sterling, restrained to bow to her, merely inclining
his head in her direction as he addressed her. His voice dripped disdain; but then,
it was no secret he held the USF and its representatives in low regard. Very low
regard.
“Have a seat, gentlemen,” she said, maintaining her cheery disposition. But
she watched them guardedly, and not without her own measure of disrespect. She
saw harbored in Sterling’s face the content of his heart, while disquiet and
discontent ruled his eyes. Voshkov, on the other hand, stood in stark contrast, his
jolly demeanor concealing whatever it was he was thinking at the moment. Dark
thoughts, no doubt.
The two men settled themselves in the old-style overstuffed chairs Danielle
favored. Sterling was forced to stretch out his legs before him because of their
length, while Voshkov’s bulk seemed to comfortably fill his chair, making him
appear by turns both smaller in stature but greater in girth as he sat with his hands
folded across his rounded midriff.
“Shall we get down to business?” said Danielle as she seated herself, resting
her forearms on her desk, her hands clasped together.
Voshkov fidgeted and made much of clearing his throat, which brought a
sharp look of rebuke from Sterling. Danielle, on the other hand, could scarce
suppress a grin: the Industries representative was known for many things, but
abstinence was not one of them.
“Forgive me,” said Danielle. “Perhaps a drink before we begin?”
“Much appreciated,” said Voshkov, which earned him a still blacker scowl
from Sterling.
“Tea? Coffee?”
“Perhaps something with a little more bite to it,” Voshkov suggested, holding
thumb and forefinger close together. “It may be a long session, and I could do
with something to stoke the fires.”
“Of course,” said Danielle, this time allowing herself that grin. “I’ll have
Eleanor bring some vodka. Smirnoff, isn’t it?” She glanced to Voshkov for
confirmation, the older man smiling and nodding approvingly. “But while we
wait, perhaps we can address some of the issues at hand,” she concluded.
“There’s only one issue to address,” said Sterling gruffly, sitting like a sullen
teenager, glowering at her from beneath his furrowed brow.
Danielle regarded him archly. “And that would be?” she asked, even though
she knew full well what he meant.
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“The unwarranted USF intervention on and around Obsidian, Madame
Secretary. As you well know.”
“That matter has been before the Assembly, Mister Sterling, and the members
have ruled on the legitimacy of our intervention. Surely debate of the matter is
moot?”
“The Assembly made their ruling by re-writing the very rules they set down in
the Treaty of Arebus.”
“Any steps taken by the Assembly are in the best interests of the Empire,
ambassador. Surely you’d agree. Or would you presume to suggest the Assembly
isn’t the legitimate representative of the peoples of the Federation?”
“The best interests of the Empire are best served by ensuring the needs of the
megacorps are not pointlessly obstructed by the petty aspirations and
machinations of minor politicians and the willful interventionist policies of lowly
bureaucrats in the Federation,” Sterling argued with some heat in his voice. He
wasn’t known in diplomatic circles as being one who played his cards close to his
vest, or for husbanding his counsel and maintaining a cautious aspect in moments
of confrontation. Some openly wondered why the ‘Corp had chosen such a
hothead as their representative in the Assembly, but Danielle had always sensed
there was nothing less than ruthless calculation in his blunt manner and strident
outbursts. And only a fool would ever believe the ‘Corp had become the
powerhouse of a megacorp it was by making foolish choices on such matters as
these.
“My colleague has a point,” said Voshkov, not even sparing a glance in
Sterling’s direction; their antipathy for one another went far beyond the fact they
were representatives of competing interests. The philosophy of worlds separated
them, not to mention the years. Most Martians pretty much despised anyone form
Earth; and most Earthlings were patronizing when it came to anyone not born on
the planet. And when it came to Martians, all too frequently they were simply
outright condescending.
“It has been rather disingenuous of the USF to intercede on the behalf of the
people on Obsidian,” Voshkov continued, “given that the Red Catholic presence
on the planet doesn’t meet the requirements set down in the Treaty of Arebus as
regards the rights of sovereignty.”
“The treaty is subject to interpretation, ambassador. There are no specific
numbers stated, other than those ascribed for use as a reference. But the authors
and signatories surely never intended the numbers quoted be set in stone and
accordingly inflexible.”
Voshkov shrugged. “As you say, Danielle, it’s open to interpretation,” he said.
“One would hasten to add, however, that the interpretation the megacorps have
employed in the past has never been subject to such dissembling from the
Assembly as is the case now.”
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“In the only previous instance of corporate interests staking claim to a world
with an existing population the matter was rendered somewhat moot by the
precipitous actions of the megacorps that were involved,” Danielle pointed out.
“It’s for that very reason the Assembly has decided to respond to the current
incursion by NorAmicorp and RussoAsia Industries in a forthright manner and
with a suitable display of force.” Yes, indeed, it was no sense in sitting back here
on Isis and lobbing ineffectual grenades of righteous indignation at the problem.
The USF and its antecedents had done just that on too many occasions, and it had
oft meant war and suffering and unaccounted misery for thousands and sometimes
millions. Besides, all this was not by chance, she feared, but rather the result of
cunning manipulations on the part of the corporates as they attempted to
maneuver the USF into a losing position. She wasn’t about to let them win. Not
easily, at least.
“We’ve never acted illegally in matters of exploration and expropriation,”
Voshkov insisted.
“Now who’s being disingenuous?” said Danielle darkly. “There are ten
thousand Federation Marines buried on Kesselus whose untimely and brutal
deaths attest to how much the corporates value the law.”
“We had no part in that,” Sterling enjoined.
“Indeed,” Voshkov said. “I don’t rule out the possibility that some minor
corporate interests may have been involved in that sorry affair, but certainly
Industries was not party to that flagrant violation.”
“Which is what your people argued when the matter was first investigated,”
Danielle noted; and it was clear by her tone that whatever the inquiry may have
resolved concerning the matter, she had never given much credence to its
conclusions.
“We’re here about Obsidian, not some matter of ancient history,” Sterling
said.
“Two decades—” Danielle began, but at that moment the door opened and
Eleanor stepped into the room. “The drinks you ordered, ma’am,” she said, a
servobot floating gently in behind her, pausing beside her, close to her shoulder.
“Thank you,” said Danielle, grateful for the respite. She gestured the ‘bot
forward and the machine moved silently through the air to settle near the desk. As
Eleanor retreated, the door hissing shut behind her, Danielle turned to Voshkov
and Sterling and offered them the liquor of their choice. The servobot constituted
it on the spot, dispensing a glass of chilled vodka for Voshkov and a hot cup of
orange pekoe tea for Danielle. When it had performed its assigned task it drifted
away to a corner, awaiting the possibility they might want more at some point.
For a moment or two the three sat in silence, Sterling’s visage growing all the
more grim and stony as his impatience mounted. Looking at him, Danielle was
reminded of the surly and far too earnest youths who’d long ago once briefly
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populated her life. Meanwhile, as Sterling simmered, Voshkov nursed his drink
and sat pondering, eyeing the spectacular view of Earth beyond the vaulted
viewports that ran the length of the office wall behind Danielle, no doubt thinking
of home in much the way she often dwelt on Paris when she was alone with her
thoughts. And there she sat, the planetshine behind her, lending her an almost
ethereal glow and shadowing her face as she watched the two men and tried to
determine how she might best direct this conversation to her favor—were such a
feat humanly possible.
This was a confrontation she’d been studiously avoiding ever since the
Assembly had essentially voted against ‘Corp and Industries; but it was a meeting
she’d known would happen even before there’d been a vote. And now, as they sat
there, she’d already reached some conclusions as to where all this was headed.
She knew these men well, and understood with equal facility the manner in which
the megacorps to which they owed allegiance functioned. She’d been a student of
their schemes for many years, and they were invariably as transparent to her as
water in a glass—but far less innocuous.
“These are disturbing times,” said Voshkov at length, looking away from the
Earth and glancing briefly at Sterling before setting his gaze firmly upon Danielle.
“Unsettling times indeed,” he went on. He swirled the last dregs of vodka in his
glass and looked down at them in a seemingly meditative manner, as though they
might offer up a prognostication, laying out the future to those with the suitable
insight to see it.
“It’s never been easy to balance the diversity of interests that have long
competed for dominance in the hierarchy of humankind’s political spectrum,”
said Danielle. “There’s always going to be disagreement, and always those who’ll
be aggrieved and see themselves as deserving of a more powerful voice and
presence.”
“Humanity’s future is in consolidation,” Sterling pronounced with firm
conviction.
In other circles Danielle would have allowed herself a suitably caustic
outburst of laughter, but with this audience she knew better than to be needlessly
provocative. Nevertheless, she said, “By that one assumes you mean the
megacorps. Or, more accurately, a single megacorp.”
“We’re better suited to the task of providing for the peace and stability of
future Empire needs than the chaos that is embodied in the Assembly.”
“So you would end democracy for the sake of a mess of potage,” she accused.
“The democracy practiced by the Assembly falls nothing short of a joke,” said
Sterling. “The corporates are guided by the firmer hand of people who are chosen
to lead because they’ve earned the right to do so, not because they’re friends of
somebody or because they paid the right people to get where they are.”
“You’ve an overly cynical view of the workings of democracy within the
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Federation, ambassador.”
“And perhaps you’re too naively wedded to the notion there really is a
democracy in effect within the Empire, Madame Secretary. Many of the worlds
and citizenries represented in the Assembly could hardly be regarded as stellar
examples of the democratic principles you claim to hold so dear. At least in the
megacorps we’re certain of our governance. The CEOs and boards that guide us
are ultimately beholden to the interests of the shareholders, who are the citizens of
the corporations. They can’t act out of self-interest. The choices made by the
boards of the megacorps reflect the will of the shareholders. As a consequence,
any board that doesn’t bend to the ear of their shareholders will quickly find
themselves removed from power.”
“If you consider the Assembly so contemptible, then why are you here, Mister
Sterling?”
“Because you’ve got a goddamned fleet parked in orbit around Obsidian and
Marines on the ground interfering with the legitimate business proceedings of
NorAmicorp!”
Danielle set her cup of tea down in a precise manner and sat back in her chair.
She brought her hands together, fingers extended, the tips of the left touching
those of the right, a reflective air about her. “Come, come, gentlemen,” she said,
“let’s not play games. We three know the truth behind Obsidian. Oh, I concede
it’s of great strategic value: The one who controls the planet controls, as a
consequence, the transit point near it. But there’s a darker ambition afoot, of
which I think ‘Corp and Industries are the principle architects.” And now she
turned her regard to each in turn, a scabrous look that hinted at the iron will that
had brought her so far in life.
Voshkov squirmed in his seat, looking immediately uncomfortable. Sterling,
for his part, remained impassively sullen, his expression little altered from when
he’d entered the room.
“Let’s lay our cards on the table, shall we?” said Danielle. She looked again
from one to the other, now purposefully defiant. “It’s been clear for some time
that the megacorps have had an ambition to render the USF ineffectual in matters
of governance and policing. One suspects Kesselus was a first attempt, but by no
means the last. While we and Fleet served your ends you were only too happy to
tolerate our existence, but now you’ve exceeded the political and economic
aspirations that once allowed for the neutral presence of the USF and its fleet.
Thus we’ve had incidents like Inkasar, where corporate interference was
transparently evident, if not in so overt a fashion as on Obsidian. And now, of
course, there is Obsidian.”
“This is utter nonsense,” said Sterling, sitting up a little straighter, so that he
sat at least a head or two higher than the others. “Obsidian is a legitimate strategic
and economic acquisition. Notwithstanding your assertions to the contrary, the
316
Treaty of Arebus permits ‘Corp and Industries and whatever other commercial
interests might wish to do so to lay claim to the world and its attendant resources
and consequently fight for that claim. We legally filed petition to do so, and it’s a
blatant abrogation of the rights of the corporate citizenry of the Federation that the
Assembly has now seen fit to send a sizable fleet and surface contingent to deny
us our rights. This is out-and-out totalitarianism!”
“How odd, then, that you should wait so long to make your claims,” Danielle
shot back. “More peculiar still that you should do it at the same time. How else is
one to regard it, but to suppose collusion was part and parcel of this whole
affair?” She didn’t like staring up at him, so she stood, raising herself so she now
looked upon him from a more commanding stance. It was, of course, the number
one lesson of diplomacy: that one didn’t negotiate from a lesser position.
Figuratively or literally.
“The value of the transit point was only recently determined by us, and thus
the strategic value of Obsidian,” Sterling explained.
“The existence of the point has been known since the first probes and
benchmarking missions determined its position and the presence of Obsidian
nearly a century ago,” Danielle said hotly. “Surely you wouldn’t have me believe
that in all that time neither the megacorps nor their minor affiliates have ever
studied the potential of the point and its possible navigational routes through the
Matrix?” She sniffed contemptuously. “I find that nothing short of incredible,
ambassador.”
“There have been many points discovered in the last century, Madame
Secretary. A large number of them with habitable planets in close proximity.
We’ve expended our efforts on developing several of those, but it’s beyond even
the capacity of all the corporates combined to exploit the full potential of all those
resources we’ve discovered.”
“And yet you’d have us now believe that despite the fact you’ve other points
yet to be fully accessed and developed, Obsidian has become essential to your
future.”
“The recent probes and runs done through this particular point have suggested
a potential for expansion far beyond anything we’ve previously discovered. It’s
now prudent to explore this potential and try to exploit it to the best of our
abilities and to thus enhance the economic viability of ‘Corp,” said Sterling.
“It is the same for Industries,” Voshkov offered.
“Yet we come again to the fact that you’ve waited for this particular moment
to do so,” said Danielle
“I’ve explained our reasons.”
“Not to my satisfaction, ambassador. Not to the Assembly’s.” She moved
away from the desk, walking over to the viewports. She stood with her back to
them, staring out at Earth, wondering for a moment what the weather in Paris was
317
today, the answer coming to her almost unbidden through her implant. Sunny,
with a few clouds and a temperature of twenty degrees centigrade. A beautiful day
to stroll along the Seine, to perhaps see some of the artists at work. She was
tempted to access an avatar, so that she might stand there and watch the day in her
mind, seeing the city and the people in it, feeling them vicariously through the
link, mingling with the artists and others who chose to avail themselves of the real
and the tangible. In a world of virtual realities, where so much of existence
seemed illusion manufactured by machine, there was something quaint and
pleasantly peaceful about seeing people pursue endeavors that were so rooted in a
simpler past. A less complicated past, she thought—although perhaps one’s
historical perspective was informed by the times in which one lived. No doubt in
those days of yore there’d been people who’d also dreamt of living in simpler
times, and who’d thought such existed only in the pages of history.
But the world we live in is perhaps as much a product of ourselves as
individuals as it is the product of the society that surrounds us, she thought. And
we, ourselves, are products of our times; and the shadows of time are cast long,
each age seeing itself as being treated differently.
“We can prevent a nasty little war, gentlemen,” she said at length, drawing
herself out of her thoughts, away from Paris, from the peace of the Seine. Her
back still to them, she went on: “We can spare the lives of millions. And all it
requires is that we advance with caution and reason. Nothing will be gained from
war, unless your objective reaches beyond Obsidian.” She smiled to herself,
knowing that would doubtless make them uncomfortable.
But Sterling was shrewd, and Voshkov no the lesser.
“Recall your fleet, Madame Secretary, and you’ll have no war.”
“You ask me to abandon people who have requested the assistance of the
USF.”
“They’re not at risk,” said Sterling simply, as though there was no debating
the matter. “In fact, your people pose the greatest threat to the Reds. There’s a
very real possibility of major confrontation between the corporate parties on
Obsidian and the Marines from Fleet if you continue to persist in this course of
action.”
“Your people are occupying the cities,” she pointed out. “Which I might add
is a violation in and of itself. So forgive me that I’m inclined to view your
presence on Obsidian as a transgression that severely compromises the security
and safety of the people living there.”
“When the USF withdraws its personnel, then we’ll proceed to conduct our
affairs in a manner that ensures the safety and security of the people of Obsidian,”
Sterling insisted. “But until that time we’re not prepared to place ourselves in a
position of vulnerability, open to unwarranted assault from Fleet forces.”
“You’d have me retreat from the field and leave you to gather the spoils?”
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This time Danielle did laugh. “Really, Neil, do you think me that much of a fool?”
“A fool wouldn’t listen to my counsel,” he said. “A fool would let her people
die needlessly.”
“You assume we’ll lose.”
“You’ve assumed you’ll not, yet recent history would suggest otherwise.
Inkasar a case in point.”
Danielle raised an eyebrow at this, curious he would make such a statement—
especially when it might easily be interpreted to mean that ‘Corp had been
involved in laying waste to the Inkasar mission. She found herself suddenly on
edge, her suspicions inflated, unable to accept that his statement had been an
unintended slip of the tongue. But if not that, then what did it mean? A
suggestion, perhaps, that Inkasar had been but an attempt by the corporates to
assess Fleet, a means of testing the waters, so-to-speak, to determine just how
great the fortitude of Fleet remained.
“To concede Obsidian to ‘Corp and Industries would be to set a precedence
you both know the Assembly cannot allow,” she said at last.
“If it doesn’t happen now, Danielle, it’ll at some point in the future,” Voshkov
argued. “The Empire is expanding rapidly and Fleet isn’t. Already you’re
stretched thin. Before long you won’t have enough ships to do more than just a
cursory patrol of Federation space. And the prospects of commissioning new
ships and engaging new personnel become increasingly more difficult as member
states of the Assembly balk at the expense. Already there are voices calling for an
end to Fleet, advocating that the security of the Federation be handed over to the
corporates in return for letting us act more freely and without unnecessary
government interference in the exploration and exploitation of space within and
without the Federation.”
“Ah, but there it is, isn’t it, my friend?” Danielle turned and faced them, her
eyes fixed on Voshkov, though she was ever conscious of Sterling sitting beside
him. “That’s been the corporate aim for some time, now, hasn’t it? The thin edge
of the wedge. How long before we’re all forced to pay obeisance to the
megacorps? How long until the value of our vote is intrinsically linked to the
amount of stock we own? And what then becomes of those of us refused
corporate citizenship because we’re either too poor or lacking in the necessary
skills to be of any worth to corporate interests?”
She walked slowly back to her desk but didn’t sit down, choosing, instead, to
stand behind her chair, her hands resting lightly on the back of it. “Obsidian,
gentlemen, is all about the future,” she said. “But it’s not so much about the future
economic worth of any one megacorp, rather it’s about the future of the entire
Empire. It’s about whether we choose to be led by those who are duly elected to
lead us, or by men and women who are chosen on the basis of how well they can
achieve profit for the shareholder, regardless of the circumstances by which that
319
profit is arrived at. It’s about whether we want to be governed by people who care
about people, or by people who have only a concern for the bottom line. It’s about
the difference between living in a democracy, or living under the aegis of what is
essentially a corporate dictatorship.”
“In time the citizenry of the corporates will exceed those of all other
affiliations,” said Sterling. “Will you then say to them that the rights of the
majority should be subservient to those of the minority?”
“One of the essential principles of a good democracy is to ensure that the
rights of the minority are not trampled by the subjective will of the majority.”
“Yet the Assembly would now do just that.”
Danielle smiled ironically. “One would hardly consider the corporates as
ranking among the underprivileged and those lacking a voice in the Empire,” she
said. “Some would argue you’re an example of democracy at its worst; for though
you each have one vote in the Assembly, the measure of that vote exceeds its
numerical value.”
“My, but you’re in fine form today, my dear,” said Voshkov, a brittle smile
bracing his lips. “The insinuations are never-ending. Why next you’ll be
suggesting we’re responsible for the set of the Sun and the rise of the Moon.”
“No, Sergei, I’ve no delusions about the capabilities of the megacorps, which
is to say I’m well aware of just what it is you’re capable: Kesselus, Inkasar and
dozens of other skirmishes and confrontations that have harried the USF over the
last two decades. Incidents that have been increasing in their frequency in recent
times, I might add. The sort of thing that has kept Fleet occupied while the
megacorps have engaged in reckless, unchecked expansionism.”
“The problems that beset Fleet aren’t the responsibility of the megacorps,”
said Sterling. “But they signal what has happened as the Empire grows and Fleet
doesn’t. All the more reason to seek a solution in a future wherein law and order
are the assumed purview of the corporates. We’ve the economic means to sustain
the necessary instruments of control and ensure the citizens of the Empire a safe
and secure existence.”
“At a price,” said Danielle.
“There’s nothing that doesn’t come without a price, my dear,” Voshkov
intoned. He smiled innocently at her and shrugged. “That’s the nature of the
beast,” he continued. “Life is a series of checks and balances, and one must live
with the fact that not everything can always be to one’s liking. But one can
envision far worse things than an empire run by the skilled captains of industry
who have taken the megacorps to the heights of the economic power they now
enjoy.”
“Such arguments have been made in the past, when differing ideologies have
collided and clashed in the hearts and minds of men and women,” said Danielle.
“In the great days of the nation states the world was brought to the brink of a
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nuclear holocaust because there were people who felt strongly enough about the
value of democracy that they would rather have died in an atomic conflagration
than lose it.”
“A lot has changed since those days,” Voshkov noted pointedly. “There are no
citizens of the corporates who are oppressed. They enjoy the same freedoms as
anyone else in the Empire. Some would argue more.”
“Yet the majority within the Federation chooses not to be citizens of any of
the corporates, ambassador.”
“We’re not here to conduct a philosophical debate,” said Sterling, somewhat
explosively.
“But indeed we are,” said Danielle, with a calm rigor that ignored his rancor.
“This matter of Obsidian is fundamentally about how we see the Empire and what
we perceive the future of it to be. Choices made now will have consequences
years and decades from now.”
“No one will dispute that,” Voshkov admitted, “but one would venture to
suggest that you’re at risk of making this matter far more significant than it
warrants. What we’re dealing with here is simply the rule of law. Federation law,
I might point out. The Assembly’s own legislation, as set down in the Treaty of
Arebus. It’s the circumvention of that law that’s at issue here and only that. You
may make of it what you will, and insinuate whatever you may wish, Madame
Secretary, but it’ll not alter the fact that in the case of Obsidian it’s you and not
the corporates who are at fault. You’re the transgressors; and it’s you who would
risk war.
Danielle sighed and shook her head. “I can see we’re getting nowhere with
this, gentlemen,” she said. “You plainly know I can’t even for a moment entertain
the notion of ceding Obsidian to you.”
“Then you would force us to war, and in the process not only condemn your
own people, Danielle, but the thousands of innocent citizens of Obsidian.”
“The USF will remove them, Sergei.”
“You’re insane!” Sterling proclaimed. “But if you think we’ll be thwarted by
such tactics, then you’re sadly mistaken.”
“Perhaps,” said Danielle, “but I swear to you this: Obsidian won’t become the
possession of any corporate entity.”
“Danielle, this is madness,” Voshkov said. “I beseech you to reconsider. The
only outcome of such action will be death and misery and endless suffering.
Surely there’s more than enough of that already in the Empire without adding to
it.”
Danielle sat down heavily in her chair and stared at them bleakly. “You leave
me no choice,” she said at last. “War isn’t my preference, but I’ll not sit by and
watch the USF wither and die for want of someone with the courage to fight for it,
to do the things that must be done to prevent its demise.”
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“You’ve let this become personal,” said Voshkov quietly. “But there’s no
room for personalities in this matter. We can’t allow selfish instinct to pervade
and cloud our judgment. There’s more than us at stake.”
“Yes, Sergei, far more than us. There’s a future, and the lives of billions.”
And so there it was; and Danielle knew, then, that she’d just consigned to
death thousands of men and women. She’d done it before and she’d do it again;
for the course she’d set herself allowed for no faltering steps. If she hesitated, if
she dared have second thoughts or let human emotion be her guide, then the
corporates would win, and all the principles for which she’d lived and worked
would be sacrificed for something as banal as fiscal practicality.
Voshkov may well have been right in saying this was not a time for
personalities, for ego to take charge and hold sway over sound judgment; and yet,
history was largely a result of individuals who made the issues of their day
matters of high personal regard. Without those who rose above all else, who took
matters of ideology and principle to heart and used the strength of their
personality and the selfish desire of their ego to drive such notions forward,
history would be without its moments of great triumph...and, yes, moments of
sorry defeat.
She didn’t know which Obsidian would be, only that whatever the outcome
her future and that of the Federation were inextricably linked. They’d rise or fall
together. Now, however, others held her fate and that of the Empire’s in their
hands. She could do naught but sit and wait.
Don’t fail me, John.
Night closed upon the Earth as Isis spun in its orbit. And she thought of a
world far away, which she would never see, and wondered what morning there
would bring.
A rising sun.
And the sound of distant drums.
War drums.
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What you've just read is approximately one half of the novel In Darkness Bound,
which was published in early 2007. Due to contractual issues the author is
precluded from providing readers with the complete novel in a free downloadable
format. However, if you found this portion of the novel interesting enough and
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would like to read the rest of the story you can find it as a reasonably priced
edition in digital (ebook) format at Mobipocket.com
(http://www.mobipocket.com/en/eBooks/eBookDetails.asp?BookID=61310) and
other online ebook retailers. The book is also available for the Kindle,
Amazon.com's new ebook reader. For those who might prefer a hardcopy edition,
such is available from many online book retailers, including the ubiquitous
Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/Darkness-Bound-Lindsay-H-F-
Brambles/dp/1424165601/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=120534028
9&sr=8-1 ). The ISBN numbers are: ISBN-10: 1-4242-6560-1 and ISBN-13: 978-
1424165605. In hardcopy format the book runs 702 pages, with a word count of
roughly 290,000.
For more information on In Darkness Bound and the author of the book, visit
www.freewebs.com/lindsaybrambles. You can also check out other free material
by the author, available at several websites. These works include the popular short
novel Zero-Option, a story that follows the further exploits of Lhara Jhordel.
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Lindsay H.F.

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Lindsay H.F. Brambles

No man is an island; no book is born in isolation.

of Erin and Jennifer.

This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.

Bed’wan and the Khalud probably consider this a triumph.

Khar, the truce is going to collapse.”

“Commander, I’m getting indications of activity at the Khalud station.”

until such time as Admiralty decreed otherwise.

“Ops, what’s the status on those surface launches?”

somewhat in control of the situation.

This is what death smells like.

scream of a falling projectile, rising in pitch, increasing in volume. Then suddenly

“I am not afraid to die,” she said.

the inertia of something as massive as a heavy cruiser.”

There was silence; and they were blinded in the darkness.

Timing was everything.

was, it was not an exercise in peace-making.” Her face hardened. “Frankly, I

“I need that information, Ops.” Impatiently.

“Yessir! I’m trying.”

Earth. Specifically, a single place on Earth, on the north-west Pacific shores of

It was a matter of degrees; a fine balance, this tightrope spacers walked. On

It was her game: She pretended to listen.

explaining the choice of mission commander for Fleet operations at Obsidian.

“Obsidian? Are you serious?”

men and women faced in these life and death confrontations.

be exactly what the megacorps want?”

meant to believe in nothing—even as he had oft thought he actually did believe in

It was all she’d ever known.

She awoke to the sound of them.

If she gave up now she might be condemning all humanity.

There were no chimpanzees on Earth.

slaughtered primates. Monkeys. Chimpanzees. Occasionally gorillas.

through which a shuttle could pass unimpeded.

Stackpole, his rugged visage ruled by an infectious grin. “Perhaps a little

“Perhaps. But not likely.”

worlds and quite possibly of those belonging to their competition.”

“Yet there you have it,” said Carter quietly.

laughable if it weren't so fucking serious!”

He remembered a night on Mars, in a tent, on a plain, the wind blowing

“You okay, sir?” the burly Marine asked.

She heard the laughter of women.

be recognized as anything other than property, to be used as a man saw fit.

compassion, Genevieve,” said Claudia, with what Sylvie detected to be a touch of

I’m dreaming, she thought.

She had seen Kesselus.

He remembered hot chocolate.

The fallen did not return.

“She doesn’t respect who we are.”

“We’re past hangings and firing squads, Josh.”

To be sure, the woman was something of an enigma.

“You’ve been awfully quiet,” said Mackay.

because we both had strong religious convictions.”

“This isn’t the time to be bickering,” Carl interjected, scowling impatiently at

There had always been thoughts of glory.

She hadn’t changed.

two officers to face one another across the desk.

She remembered other darknesses.

Sheer madness to be so far in that cave, alone, with no back-up, scrabbling

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