Contagion

by David Ryker

  Flying this thing was a pilot’s dream. Foyle, a pilot born and bred, must have been creaming his shorts. The fighter responded to every movement as soon as I did it, almost before. It was like it was reading my mind.

  Wait. It couldn’t be reading my mind, could it? I mean, what did we really know about their technology, after all?

  I set that thought aside. That was just being paranoid. And if the Dri’kai and their alien friends wanted to read our minds, they wouldn’t find much of interest, just a low-tech species looking for a home. They knew that already.

  “You two learn quickly,” R’kk’kar said. “Follow me. We have selected a training ground. It will take a few minutes to get there. Study your weapons systems in the meantime.”

  He shot toward the sun in this solar system, an eye-piercingly bright blue giant. The dome darkened as soon as I squinted. Interesting the computer could tell the difference between me squinting because of too much light and me squinting to see something in the distance. Were the two movements all that different, or did the thing check out my eye’s focal point too? That could be useful for targeting.

  I did what the Dri’kai suggested and ran through the systems. A nice battery of smart missiles on the wings, a heavy autocannon with explosive slugs on the nose, and a pair of smaller ones on the dorsal and ventral sides.

  Soon I saw where R’kk’kar was leading us—a dead gray planet close in to the sun. Its moon had broken up at some time in the past, I supposed from a meteor strike or something similar because most of the chunks still clustered close together. A faint ring had also formed around the planet from some of the debris.

  “Follow me!” R’kk’kar said, putting his thrusters on maximum and heading for the densest part of the meteor field.

  I gritted my teeth and did as I was told.

  Our fighters plunged between several large fragments of the destroyed moon, each at least a hundred meters across. I came right behind R’kk’kar and Foyle, who had been wasting time showing off some crazy maneuvers, came right behind me.

  We ended up flying single file. There was no room to do anything else. We wove between several smaller fragments. My readout told me of several small impacts, none of them dangerous. A couple of them I could feel, jarring me inside the cockpit and feeling like turbulence in an atmospheric craft.

  “This is not challenging enough,” R’kk’kar said. “Let’s make it more difficult.”

  He swerved to the right, angling his fighter so he could squeeze through two large fragments of rock each as big as a house.

  A third floated right in his path.

  “Time for the real test,” he said, and blasted it with the autocannon.

  As the explosive slugs battered into it, the huge chunk of rock burst into a thousand fragments. Many were bigger than our fighters, and all flew at high speed in random directions, impossible to track.

  “We’ll go right through!” R’kk’kar shouted.

  Oh, crap.

  10

  The meteors came in a thick swarm. I flicked off the safety cover of my nose autocannon, cursing myself for not doing that earlier.

  It was almost a fatal mistake. That extra quarter second it took me to complete the movement brought me way too close to a spinning hunk of stone surrounded by countless smaller fragments. I swerved to the right, blasted a large rock out of my way, felt the shudder of several small impacts, then banked to the left to avoid a fragment that was too big to blow apart.

  I had lost track of R’kk’kar and Foyle. They had swerved off in different directions, choosing their own paths to get through this deadly 3-D maze. I didn’t even have time to think of them.

  I kept the autocannon on almost constant fire, clearing a path as I ducked and swerved to find a direction where I had to blow apart the least number of meteors. A grin slowly spread across my face. This ship was amazing. I was getting the hang of it.

  Clank!

  The fighter spun. I struggled to right it as a red warning light flashed on screen. No time to look at what it said. I got my fighter leveled out just in time to fire at a trio of couch-sized meteors coming at me fast.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw another meteor moving in at an odd vector. I banked to avoid it. Damn, I had been so focused on what was in front of me I had forgotten that the meteors in this swarm of moon fragments were bouncing off each other, careening every which way. My wonderful fighter had distracted me and made me make a foolish mistake.

  Actually, the foolish mistake was flying in here in the first place.

  R’kk’kar was fucking crazy. He took a pair of newbies into this on their first training flight?

  No time to think. All I could do was react. I decided not to use any of the missiles. They’d only take out one meteor and judging from the ammo readout, I still had heaps of autocannon slugs. They must have been pretty small but they packed a hell of a punch. If only I could fire them faster.

  Wait a minute. I had the dorsal and ventral turrets! Why wasn’t I using those? Firing the nose autocannon took almost no attention. Flying took most of it, but maybe I could make my job a bit easier.

  “Computer, activate turrets. Fire at any meteor that comes within a hundred meters.”

  The sky lit up with a flurry of exploding autocannon slugs. Some were blowing up in places I didn’t even see meteors.

  “Computer, stop! Only fire turret guns at meteors larger than five meters.”

  “Given the speed of some nearby meteors, some with a width of 3.2 meters would impart sufficient force to breach the hull.”

  “Fine. Shoot at anything wider than 3 meters. No, 2.8 meters.”

  Best to be on the safe side.

  Yeah, right. I hadn’t seen a “safe side” since the Biospherists woke me up.

  I was right; my job did get easier. The turrets fired every couple of seconds as I shot through a denser area, the turbulence growing as smaller meteors—a few centimeters or a meter across—banged into the hull. A couple of times the fighter rocked or spun out when a larger one hit, but nothing dangerous got through. The computer and I worked well together.

  Then I noticed something. The red light had turned to yellow. I had been so preoccupied I hadn’t seen when it changed, and I still didn’t have time to glance at the readout.

  “Computer, why has the warning sign changed from red to yellow?”

  “Damage to left wing is healing.”

  “Healing? How?”

  “Via the in-ship self-healing mechanism.”

  Wait. What?

  “Computer, describe in-ship self-healing mechanism.”

  “You are not authorized to access that information.”

  “Figures. I’ll just have to get R’kk’kar drunk and ask him.”

  “General R’kk’kar is not authorized to access that information.”

  Huh?

  And suddenly I was out of the meteor swarm and flying through clean space. Foyle was flying not far off, practicing hitting small meteors from long range and doing a damn fine job of it. R’kk’kar appeared out of the swarm.

  “Left wing healed,” my computer informed me.

  Interesting.

  “How damaged was it?” I asked.

  “Left wing sustained an impact from a meteor 3.07 meters in diameter. Structural integrity was reduced to 16%. Structural integrity has now returned to 100%.”

  “Seriously? You did that in a couple of minutes?”

  “Three minutes and eight seconds.”

  R’kk’kar flew up next to me.

  “Do you like your new fighter ship, my friend and comrade in arms?”

  “Oh yes. It’s … surprising.”

  R’kk’kar’s next words were music to my ears.

  “That’s enough for today. I think you have the basics down.”

  I tried not to turn my fighter too quickly in the direction of the space station. Even with a crazily well engineered ship that could somehow magically heal itself, I didn’t want to roll the dic
e in that broken-up moon again.

  As we headed out, Foyle hooked back and blasted a couple more meteors before looping around a big one with meters to spare and racing past us.

  “Good of you to allow your subordinate to show off, Commander Ayers,” R’kk’kar said. “Less experienced officers need to be encouraged.”

  When Foyle didn’t freak out, I asked. “Did you put us on a private channel?”

  “Yes.” Pause. “May I ask something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Has Executive Officer Foyle been neutered?”

  I almost lost control of the ship. “Excuse me, what?”

  “Did he get punished for some transgression in an earlier posting and get neutered as a punishment?”

  Why, oh why wasn’t this a public transmission?

  “Um, no. He has not been neutered. At least not to my knowledge.”

  Hey, it would explain some things, wouldn’t it?

  “Curious. He acts as one who has been neutered. All through his captivity he boasted of how he was better than any ten of our pilots. He shows off his ability as if he has to make up for some lack.”

  “That he does, my friend and comrade in arms, that he does.”

  “A good pilot, though,” the Dri’kai said as Foyle performed a complex series of hard turns in the distance. “He catches on quickly.”

  “He is an excellent pilot,” I conceded. “His statement that he is the best in our fleet is not a boast.”

  “Then what is the lack? It would be good for me to know, if I am going to war with him.”

  I paused. Thought. “I don’t know, my friend and comrade in arms. Some humans always feel a lack. They are always boasting, always trying to prove themselves. With most people like that, they never achieve anything since they spend more time trying to prove themselves than actually improving themselves. Others, the minority, use the lack as a motivation that drives them to succeed. Foyle is one of those. He’s come far. But he’s unusual because most of the driven ones get over their lack. He never has.”

  R’kk’kar was silent for a minute.

  “Commander Ayers?”

  “Yes?”

  “I do not understand humans very well, and I do not know Executive Officer Foyle very well either, but I would like to give you some advice.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I want you to know this advice is not meant as an insult to your armed forces or the commander who chose him to be an officer.”

  “I get it, R’kk’kar. Speak your mind.”

  “Be careful with him. I think he may be a danger to you. I think he may be a danger to all of us too.”

  I sighed, rubbing my eyes and suddenly feeling very tired.

  “I will, my friend and comrade in arms. I will.”

  We docked at the space station again. The shipboard computer took me through post-flight procedures, all of which were made easy by this wonderfully designed ship, and I put on my respirator and got out.

  The first thing I did was examine that wing. It didn’t have a scratch. Amazing.

  R’kk’kar was waiting for me. Foyle had not yet emerged from his fighter.

  “Let us go to the bar,” he suggested.

  “Why? Is it customary in your culture to beat the shit out of each other after a practice run?”

  R’kk’kar stared at his translator, as if the little box had said something confusing.

  “Your species defecates when you are struck?”

  “It’s an expression. Actually, that may happen in extreme cases.”

  “Interesting. I did not notice any stool on the floor of the bar. Further proof of your fighting prowess, my friend and comrade in arms.”

  “Right.”

  We entered the bar to find it much the same as the last time we had been there. If any of the various aliens took any special notice of us, they didn’t show it in any way that I could recognize. Maybe they were used to Dri’kai beating up other species and then getting all buddy-buddy with them.

  We ordered some drinks from the computer and a drone buzzed over with them, plus a pair of metal straws for our respirators.

  “The others will join us shortly,” R’kk’kar said.

  “And Foyle?” We had left without him.

  “I did not extend the invitation to him.”

  I thought for a moment, then said. “He is too important to ignore in this way.”

  “Then invite him, if you wish.”

  I waved over a messenger drone and instructed it to find Foyle and tell him where we were. The merchants’ association that ran the space station only allowed its own transmissions within the station and so made a swarm of messenger drones available to visitors. It seemed like an odd precaution, but what did I know? It reminded me how far in over our heads we all were. Nobody on the Nansen had any clear idea what was going on, except that we had been recruited for an interstellar war.

  I hoped we hadn’t been recruited as cannon fodder.

  “I must tell you, Commander Ayers—”

  “Call me Mitch, it’s more informal. We’re going to be fighting side by side, after all.”

  “Very well, but only in informal settings. It would not be right in battle. As I was saying, Mitch, we must find some more pilots for these ships. The other species want a coalition of the races to fight the Centaurians. They think that will help rally the planets to our cause. It is a wise move. There have been … troubles in the past. These need to be put aside so we can face the common threat. So think of some other human pilots. We can put them through the same tests as you.”

  “All right,” I said, trying to think of anyone besides Qiang who could survive that wringer we’d just been put through.

  He took a sip from his drink, then turned and stood as the science and engineering delegation came in. Valeria and Iliescu were chattering away with a crowd of different races, a Subine leading the group to our table.

  I got up and offered Valeria a seat.

  “How’s it going?” I asked her.

  “Wonderfully!” she said. I could see her face light up even though it was half obscured by the respirator. “These different races know so much. I felt like I’m back in grade school.”

  “Or recovering from a long night drinking vodka,” Iliescu said and laughed. “Trying to understand Subine speech gave me a killer headache.”

  “Sit and join us for a drink!” R’kk’kar said.

  Valeria sat next to me. The drones whizzed around and served us. Valeria got a beer again. Any woman who can drink beer through a straw has my respect. Our chief engineer got a vodka and orange juice. Of course all of this had to be synthesized, but the beer now tasted pretty good. They were learning, although I wasn’t sure how. I wondered if they’d share their synthetic brewing technology with us too.

  “So what have you learned?” I asked Valeria.

  “They gave us an astromap and an encyclopedia of this section of the Orion Arm. So much to learn! More to the point, they have done a full parsing of the data sent in the Ofran probe. Those poor people managed to send a fair amount of information before they got wiped out.”

  Interesting that she referred to those things as “people.” I had been making that connection too. I had started to think of R’kk’kar as a man, although I had no clear idea if that was even an appropriate term for his species, and I thought of all of these strange creatures as people. Looking around this space station bar, I could see more similarities than differences among us. Friends, lovers, and colleagues assembled in a public location to drink mind-altering substances in order to increase their enjoyment of one another’s company. Sounded pretty human to me.

  “What have you learned about the Centaurians?” I asked. No point romanticizing these “people” if we couldn’t save them from genocide. It was already too late for the Ofrans.

  “Not much yet,” Iliescu said, pulling his drink off a drone’s tray as it hovered next to him. “There’s so much to analyze. The first thing we look
ed at was the estimated maximum speed of the Centaurian ships. It looks like we have a little less than a month to get ready.”

  “That’s not much time,” I said.

  “A year wouldn’t be much time,” the chief engineer said grimly.

  R’kk’kar slammed a fist down on the table. “We will defeat them. The Dri’kai defeat all enemies!”

  “We’ll do everything we can to help,” Valeria said.

  “I was impressed with Commander Ayers’ flying ability. You have chosen your mate well. Are you in heat yet?”

  Iliescu sputtered. I’m pretty sure some vodka and orange juice came out his nose. That couldn’t feel good, especially in a respirator.

  Valeria blushed. “That’s … rude to ask in our culture.”

  “My apologies, mate of my friend and comrade in arms. We will speak no more of your sexual cycle.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” she said dryly.

  Iliescu used the emit button on his respirator to clear it out, leaning away from the table and letting a big gob of vodka, orange juice, and nasal matter onto the floor.

  “Eww,” Valeria said.

  “Sorry.”

  “Is this some human ritual we should know about?” a Vrimjlen asked from further down the table.

  “Just a respirator malfunction,” I explained.

  A messenger drone buzzed up to R’kk’kar. He listened to it but the translators didn’t translate the robotic voice into human speech. I guessed it was encrypted.

  R’kk’kar stood, clenching his fists.

  “Commander Ayers, remember what I told you on our test flight? It has already come to pass.”

  Oh crap. Foyle.

  11

  Foyle stood between two Dri’kai warriors. They each had him by an arm as he swore and struggled, looking like a juvenile delinquent who was being dragged into boarding school.

  “What happened?” R’kk’kar and I asked in unison.

  The Dri’kai on the left replied. “We caught this human making detailed scans of the fighter.”

  The alien gestured at a hand scanner lying smashed in pieces on the floor.