Ship of Destiny

by Frank Chadwick

  Cedric thought that over. Ramirez y Sesma had a lot at stake here as well. He probably wasn’t bullshitting him. He was laying out what was real, what was attainable, and what was not. Cedric was not going to be the next US Navy CNO. He wasn’t that old, though. There was still time. And there was the Guardian K’Irka, and her promise of immortality. Probably not for everyone, though. He’d have to get in touch with her, figure out what she really wanted. But first . . .

  “A fighting command,” he said.

  The senator frowned. “Have you ever actually fought?”

  “Hell, who has? Aside from a handful of people, I mean, and most of them don’t have the rank.”

  “Admiral Stevens does.”

  Goddamnit! Gordo Stevens again. The senator was right, though. Stevens would be the hero of the hour. There were only going to be so many commands, and damned few of them would go to Humans unless the Cottohazz changed a lot more than he thought it would. Cedric wouldn’t get anywhere trying to tack into that wind.

  “Stevens may be a good front-line admiral, but he needs someone to back him up, a superior who knows how to run political interference for him, and knows how to get the resources a major campaign needs. Hell, let him fight the battles, We’re a proven team.”

  Ramirez y Sesma contemplated him as he thought that over. Finally, he nodded.

  “Bueno. Perhaps something can be done.”

  And today that was as close to victory as Cedric could expect, but it still left a sour taste. He would survive, perhaps to triumph another day, but until then simple survival fell far short of what he knew he deserved.

  Te’Anna stood with the other two in the docking bay of the K’tok highstation. She already knew the Varoki named Nuvaash, but Bitka made the introduction anyway. She thought Bitka seemed uncomfortable or distressed, and so they stood together wordlessly for a while before he spoke again.

  “So, you’re going?” he asked her, and Te’Anna saw both affection and regret in his eyes.

  “What you call an executive council has asked to meet with me in person. I think that is a logical first step. After that, I want to see your Cottohazz, meet its people. Doctor Däng and K’Irka will stay here and assist you with the survival of the Troatta. I will not be gone forever. Not for so very long.”

  “You won’t be welcome everywhere, you know,” he said.

  “I would have asked you to guide me, but I am sure you will be very busy for quite some time, with very little time to answer my annoying questions.” She saw sadness flash across his face, loss.

  “Not really annoying,” he said. “Not once I got used to them. To you.” His voice sounded different, strained.

  “Vice Captain Nuvaash, would you leave us alone for a short while?” she said.

  “Of course,” the Varoki said, and walked into the station interior.

  “You are the first Human I ever embraced, but because of you, you will not be the last. It is important to me that you do not allow yourself to die while I am gone.”

  Captain Bitka smiled. “Well, you know, that’s actually important to me, too.”

  “Yes, but there are things more important to you, Bitka, and that is dangerous. All your emotions and your ridiculous rules. I have been thinking a great deal about death since the passing of P’Daan.”

  “You don’t mourn him, do you?”

  “Yes, I do. He was alive, and now he is gone forever. Someone should mourn that.”

  Captain Bitka’s expression darkened and he shook his head in disagreement, or perhaps frustration. “He was a killer. He wanted to destroy Earth just to settle a grudge with me. He was a mad dog that needed to be put down.”

  “Oh, yes,” Te’Anna agreed. “But I have been reading many of your stories, and one I found was about a mad dog which needed to be put down. It was owned by a young male of your species and they had bonded. When it contracted a disease, it became dangerous and so was put down, but the story presents this as a tragedy, not a triumph. A necessity, but a tragedy nonetheless. P’Daan could not be allowed to live, but had he lived, he might eventually have become well. Now he never will.”

  “The animal in the story was a good dog before it got sick,” he said.

  “Do you imagine P’Daan was not a good dog before he got sick?”

  Something flickered in Captain Bitka’s eyes, his respiration changed slightly, and she knew this thought surprised him. But he shook his head again.

  “I don’t know about that. But I can’t and I won’t mourn him.”

  “I would not expect you to. But do not expect me not to. And please, Captain Bitka, do try to stay alive until I return. Think of all we will have to talk about. Think of all the questions I will have!”

  Four hours later, Nuvaash was surprised to see the special envoy waiting for him as he disembarked from the needle’s passenger capsule. He nodded to him but first turned to Bitka, with whom he had ridden down from Highstation, and shook his hand, a Human gesture he had learned many years ago.

  “Goodbye, Captain Bitka. It has been a very interesting and exciting trip.”

  “Not captain anymore,” Bitka said. “Lieutenant commander, or just commander works if you’re in a hurry.”

  Nuvaash shook his head. “Your bewildering interchangeable uses of ranks and positions with the same name is . . . well, bewildering. I will plead unfamiliarity and continue to address you as captain. You know, before I even knew your name, I knew you. I spent hours, days actually, going over the ground recordings of your duel with the uKaMaat salvo cruiser, the battle you call Third K’tok, trying to see how you not only survived, but destroyed that ship which should have beaten you easily. I never understood until it was too late, until your ships were among us at that final battle. You will always be Captain Bitka to me.”

  Bitka appeared surprised by that and looked at him with genuine, if guarded, interest. “Even if we’re not on the same side?”

  Nuvaash smiled. “Oh, especially then.”

  And Bitka actually laughed. After they took their leave, Nuvaash made his way quickly to Special Envoy e-Lotonaa, who stood flanked by his two thugs . . . that is to say security specialists.

  “My apologies, Honorable Special Envoy, for the delay, but I felt an obligation to—”

  “Of course, Nuvaash. I would never expect you to show disrespect to a colleague. Let us walk together. The battle must have been very exciting.”

  “It was, although I had no real part to play once the action began. The Varoki ships performed very well, had a critical role to play both in forcing the Troatta to turn away from the main attack force, and also in their volume of fire.”

  e-Lotonaa nodded but Nuvaash had the feeling this was simply a conversational preamble to what interested him.

  “I met you because I have a proposition to make,” the envoy said after a few more steps. “It seems I will remain employed by the Executive Council in . . . in a variety of roles in the coming months, and I think the times ahead of us may end up being even more exciting than your battle. There is some question whether there will even be a Cottohazz a year hence, but it will take much bungling to bring that dire a result about. Given the continuing threat from the Guardians, which we cannot yet accurately gauge, but know to be truly daunting, the six sentient species of the Cottohazz must remain united. So, the question is not so much if as in what form? It will be demanding work bringing that new infant forth. I would like you to join my staff. In fact, for the most part you would be my staff.”

  Nuvaash broke stride for a moment and when e-Lotonaa stopped and turned to him he caught up and they continued walking, but in silence. Nuvaash felt his color change and he fought to keep his ears from folding back in surprise. He had never expected an offer like this, in part because of the obvious impossibility of it working.

  “I am deeply flattered, Honorable Special Envoy, and yet confused. You are aware I am not simply an officer of the uBakai Star Navy. You know my other service would render this arrangeme
nt unworkable.”

  “Oh? Why? Field Marshal Lieutenant e-Loyolaan, your superior at CSJ, has expressed an interest in working closer with the Khap’uKhaana. I am confident that if I requested your services as my official assistant, but also as an unofficial liaison between our organizations, he would agree at once. I am sure he would delight in having a spy so close to my inner council, and for my part I would benefit from having a better insight into his thinking and decision-making. Both of us will expect you to spy on us for the other, as an unspoken condition of the arrangement, and each of us will expect your true loyalty to lie with us. I need hardly add that it will be delicious for you to know both I and e-Loyolaan will undoubtedly spend many hours privately grappling with the question of who you are really spying on, and for.”

  Well, that last part was undeniably true, but Nuvaash still hesitated.

  “Why would you imagine, if I may ask, my primary loyalty might be to you?”

  “Two reasons. One will simply be physical proximity, both to me and to the important work I will be doing. I think the task may seduce you. The second reason is I sense you are troubled, have unanswered questions, and I think those question may be about your current service. I would not normally tell an agent such things, so that should be an additional data point for you.”

  How did he know that? Nuvaash prided himself on how little he disclosed through his demeanor. Was this a lucky guess? Was the envoy really this good at looking into another being’s soul? Or did he simply know something about the dark and twisted origins of the K’tok war? That was more likely, and that is what Nuvaash hungered to understand—that and the role his superior at CSJ, Field Marshall Lieutenant Yignatu e-Loyolaan, had played in it. But there was one more obstacle in the way of agreement.

  “Before I decide, Honorable Special Envoy, I must ask you an intrusive and impertinent question. I fully understand if you are unwilling to answer and beg your forgiveness for the affront. But your adoptive daughter is the principle heir of the e-Traak fortune, a fortune which it seems these revelations about the origin of the jump drive will destroy.”

  e-Lotonaa nodded. “You wonder about my true interests and how that will affect my actions on behalf of a united Cottohazz.”

  “Yes, Honorable Special Envoy, I do.”

  “One thing before all others. If you are to work for me, you must never hesitate to question me. I may or may not answer, but questions must be raised without fear. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Honorable Special Envoy.”

  “And simply Envoy will do. Now as to your question, four facts should put your mind at ease. First, I am not the financial guardian of my daughter Tweezaa’s fortune. That responsibility lies elsewhere, so that is no direct concern of mine. Second, Tweezaa’s financial guardian has been quietly diversifying her holdings for the past two years, so her financial future is no longer inextricably linked with that of Simki-Traak. Third, even without patent rights, someone will have to actually manufacture jump drives, quite a lot of them I think, and Simki-Traak does have an excellent industrial infrastructure in place for so doing. Damaging as these revelations will be, Simki-Traak may still survive as a viable industrial concern. Fourth, even the near-total ruination of her vast fortune would leave Tweezaa with a residue which most of the rest of us would consider enormous, and unlikely as it may sound, my daughter’s life is quite austere. I suspect she will eventually give most of her wealth away. In that aim, I believe she has been greatly influenced by the example of her late father.”

  Her late father, Nuvaash knew, was Sarro e-Traak, who four years earlier had tried to turn the e-Traak family fortune into a trust for the Humans on the planet Peezgtaan, and who had only been stopped by an assassin’s bullet. Sarro was a person widely reviled as an insane race-traitor to the Varoki species. Nuvaash had always wondered about him. Well, here was an opportunity to find out more—about Sarro and about other things.

  “I accept your offer, Envoy. I should tell you immediately that I suspect the Humans have been engaged in a research project here in the K’tok system which may be in contravention of the Cottohazz charter.”

  “You mean the jump drive module from the derelict uBakai cruiser?” e-Lotonaa asked casually.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  One hour later, Outworld Coalition Naval Headquarters Complex, the planet K’tok

  10 October 2134

  There was a plaza outside the Fleet Headquarters building, with green groundcover and benches. It faced west, and Cassandra led Bitka here so they could have some privacy. The sun was low on the horizon and Cassandra remembered her first hour on K’tok, walking out of Downstation into the sunset, beside Sam Bitka.

  “I doubt they’ll give me a command any time soon,” he said. “Probably watch me for a while to see if I grow another head or something. Pretty sure they’ll keep me in uniform, though. If they cut me loose, I won’t have anything to do but write my tell-all memoir, and I don’t think anybody wants that. So it’s pretty much down to keep me in uniform or kill me. I don’t think they’ll kill me. What do you think?”

  Yes, what did she think?

  “I think you are a very strange man.”

  “Yeah, but good strange, right?” he said with a grin.

  “Oh, Gawd.” She shook her head. There was something so irrepressible about this Bitka, she was having a difficult time coping. After a moment, she recovered the thread of their conversation.

  “Of course, they will keep you in uniform. You’re as sharp an officer as any I’ve ever known, and don’t pretend you don’t know it. You think those other blockheads like Admiral Stevens aren’t out of their depths? Good lord, Bitka, we all are. They’re just too bloody thick to realize it.”

  He smiled at her, his eyes sparkling with happiness. “You know, you sound pretty upset over the treatment of an ex-boyfriend.”

  “Yes, I still care about you, as you know very well! But it is also a matter of principle, and a pragmatic consideration of how we can all best survive whatever is coming.”

  “Principle,” Bitka said, and nodded with a solemn seriousness which mocked her. “Pragmatic. Of course.”

  “Oh, sod off, Bitka! I know what you’re on about: love. Everyone goes on and on about love, but what is it? No one knows, no one can tell you.”

  “I can,” he said quietly, and his confidence shook hers, although why that would be so she couldn’t say.

  “Oh really? In prose or poetry—or will you sing it to me?”

  He smiled again, this time with a gentle, affectionate warmth. “If you don’t want to hear, that’s okay. If you want to make fun, that’s alright too. I just like being here with you.”

  Cassandra looked at him, looked hard at him. There was no sign of mockery in his face, no condescension, no guile.

  “What really happened to you out there?”

  Sam laughed. “Oh, so many things. I’ll tell you all about it, everything I saw and felt, every mystery, everything I finally understood. It’s a big story, though. Telling it could take the rest of our lives.”

  Cassandra shivered despite the warmth of the afternoon.

  “The rest of our lives! What if I have other plans? What if I’ve fallen in love with someone else? You know, I believed you were dead.”

  “No you didn’t,” Sam said with a shake of his head. “Believe I was dead, I mean. I’d have seen that in your eyes. You were just afraid to hope I was alive. That’s different. Have you fallen in love? Are you happy?”

  Cassandra looked at him again, even more confused.

  “No, I haven’t. What happened to you out there?”

  He sighed and looked around, taking in the trees the sunset was turning pink, looked at the clouds low on the horizon, as if the answer was written out there somewhere. “I found a new civilization, watched a lot of good people die, started a war I’m not sure how we’re going to finish, made a couple new friends, and then came home.” He turned back to face her. “To you.”

&nb
sp; “But what if I’m not in love with you?”

  “That’s okay.”

  And she thought he really meant it! But how? She stared at him, trying to see past his smile. Did she even know this man? So much of him seemed familiar, but also alien, as if something of the Guardians or whatever else he’d met out there had rubbed off on him. As if time flowed differently for them, faster for her, slower for him. He had a patience she hadn’t seen before. He’d shown urgency, though, when making the case for fighting the Guardians.

  “Stop staring at me,” she ordered.

  He shrugged, his smile still in place.

  “Sorry. It’s just so good to see you. Do you know how we’re not like animals?”

  The question caught her by surprise.

  “Um . . . not like animals? How?” she asked.

  “Any species that’s survived this long only made it because it had a burning, passionate hunger for life. You can’t make it for a couple million years if you’re just so-so about it. But we just won’t give up, so here we are.”

  “The animals are too,” she pointed out.

  “Sure. They have that same relentless drive for survival we do. Here’s how we’re different: we’ve figured out that no matter what we do, we’re going to die anyway. Animals know they could die if they’re not careful, but they don’t understand their own deaths are inevitable. That’s why they don’t have churches.”

  Despite herself she laughed. “Oh, is that why? I always wondered.”

  He smiled back at here. “Well, now you know. It’s also why we’re so nuts. Nothing means more to us than life, and no matter what we do, we know we can’t keep it for very long.”

  “You’re saying our survival instinct kept us alive long enough to recognize our own mortality, and that made us insane?”

  “Well, not actually insane. Just really neurotic, you know? Our grasp of reality is okay. We know just enough to torture ourselves.”

  She didn’t know why they were talking about death and survival drive, what it had to do with their earlier argument.