by Tony Daniel
Chime spin, loyalty spin, kerosene burning, ammonia spin, khaki gasping, vanilla spin . . .
Jasmine march. Doublequicktriplequickrunrunrun. Ginger spin . . .
The face before him had once been human. Maybe it still was. Part of it was, bruised purple above one eye, opposite a melted mass. The bruised part was crying, noiselessly.
The universe was quiet.
He shivered. His mouth was full of frozen spinach that filmed his teeth as it dissolved into bits like crushed apple seeds. Teeth? It seemed odd to have teeth. He tried to fold his wings over his body, but they weren’t where he had left them.
Where was his father? His mother? Was this ruined woman his human? Why was she sad? Why was he so, so cold?
The sky was steel, and very close, and crisscrossed with lines and lights. Not star lights.
Another woman, big but without a bruised and bloodied face, touched his neck. She moved her lips, but no sound came out.
He could not remember how to sing.
He felt suddenly tired, as if he had flown the breadth of a continent without anything to eat. But warmer . . . warm enough that soon he didn’t mind that he’d lost his wings . . .
“Ricky?”
He could hear, but words were no substitute for starsong. What he heard sounded . . . clinical.
“We need you up and about, spacer.”
He could speak, he thought, but it seemed . . . mundane. He could move his head. No.
“Come on, now. You’ve got the next watch.”
He felt . . . something. Hungry?
“Lieutenant Biermann?”
Different voice, more melodic. Still not the stars. Sounded . . . official.
“Sully?” His voice was a rough croak. He did not sing. He knew not how.
“Sir, we’ll come up on Tristemon in about thirty minutes, ship’s time.”
That was . . . important. “Okay. Good.”
“It would be best if you could join the watch.”
He seemed to be missing something, but he could not decide what it was.
“Does he know about the captain?”
The captain?
“Not yet.”
What—
“Lieutenant Biermann, I’ll tell Lieutenant Darzi that you’re not available. He’ll handle the system entry and make our reports.”
What?
He could . . . open his eyes. Dim, yellowish light. Not stars, not a star. Ship lights. Hair that shade of red should be Ensign Sullivan . . . but her face was different. Burned? “Sully?”
“Yes, sir?”
He had . . . questions. “Where’s . . . Captain . . . Norris?”
Ensign Sullivan stepped back, and Doc put his hand on her shoulder. Doc leaned over, thin . . . with fatigue? Worry?
“The second hit we took breached sickbay, Ricky. I was responding to injuries in the fore quarter from the first hit, but everybody—” He covered his mouth for a second. “We lost everybody who was in there. Including the captain.”
Second hit? First hit? Why had the captain been in sickbay? Ricky—his name was Ricky . . . Biermann. He remembered that much. And if the captain was gone . . .
“Doc?”
“Yeah, Ricky?”
He wasn’t sure he could stand. “Give me some go juice, then Sully can help me to the bridge.”
Sullivan and Doc looked at one another, then Doc said, “The bridge is gone, Ricky. Ever since we got hit at Descartes.”
An avalanche of memory buried him.
Seven hours later, Biermann and Brevet Lieutenant Sullivan sat together in Captain Alcor’s quarters aboard the Interceptor. Just a little over two weeks before, Biermann had dined on this very ship with Captain Norris, and shortly thereafter Tigris left Interceptor to watch over Tristemon and headed on its way to Descartes.
Sully had done most of the reporting. Biermann was content to let her and the log recordings tell the story, especially since part of it involved him sitting naked and largely unresponsive on the CIC deck after they had pulled him out of the tank.
Captain Alcor praised his honor and integrity and action. She lauded Tigris and marveled at how they had sailed into Tristemon like a comet, spent of missiles and nearly of crew as well. Her compliments washed over Biermann like a zephyr and left him cold. He tried to listen between the words, to pick out the stars singing in the background, but he was deaf to them now.
“The alert’s going out,” Captain Alcor said. “I’ve assigned two couriers as scouts until we get more ships here, and one has already sailed to Grendel to verify whether that task force is still there. No one’s reported any contact from the Kellador government, so we don’t know if this is just expanding and shoring up their sphere, so to speak, or actually trying to invade ours.
“I don’t know about you, but I worry about what the politicians will do. You can’t placate a truly determined enemy. Try to appease them and they take it as weakness and attack again, harder. Counterattack without destroying them, and they’ll store up their anger and resentment until they’re strong enough to strike again.” She drank some of her coffee. “If we’re fortunate, the Kellador will turn out to be a casual enemy. I just hope we’re not too casual about responding to them.”
Biermann nodded, mostly out of politeness. His coffee was untouched, surely cold. If the Kellador came to Tristemon as quickly as they had massed at Grendel, there was little the Fleet could do. Lieutenant Garzi was out piloting Tigris to find a good asteroid for Gaines to use as refit material, but it would take months to undo what the squids had done. In the whole of Tristemon’s gravitational influence, only Interceptor and Del Vecchio were in fighting trim; but at least they were on the alert now.
He let Sullivan lead him to the cutter they had been assigned. He presumed they would go to the LaGrange outpost—he wondered if Captain Norris would have considered that to be “key” ground, equally advantageous to friend and enemy alike—until Tigris returned. While the pilot ran the preflight checks, Biermann gazed out the window, wondering where the Kellador were going, where their advance would end, what the Fleet would do with him, and whether he was as broken as he seemed to be.
He listened, and listened, but could not hear the stars.
We stride across the galaxy and we spin, we whirl, we pirouette beneath the wailing stars . . .
But on all the frequencies that matter, the stars are silent.
Gray Rinehart is the only person to have commanded an Air Force satellite tracking station, written speeches for presidential appointees, and had music on The Dr. Demento Show. He fought rocket-propellant fires, refurbished space launch facilities, “flew” satellites, drove trucks, processed nuclear command and control orders, and did other unusual things in his rather odd USAF career, and now he is a contributing editor for Baen Books, a singer/songwriter, and an author. His first novel, Walking on the Sea of Clouds, was published by WordFire Press, and his short fiction has appeared in Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, and several anthologies. His alter ego is the “Gray Man,” one of several famed ghosts of South Carolina’s Grand Strand, and his web site is graymanwrites.com.
EXCERPTS FROM TWO LIVES
Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
In the heyday of sail, a ship of the line, properly oriented toward the enemy and with cannons unlimbered, was the most awesome weapon of her day—if she were captained by a capable commander fighting under the right circumstances. A starship with equivalently scaled power might protect a world as it is being born. Or destroy it. Yet in the wrong circumstances, such awesome power may find itself yielding to a mere scratch. For Time and Change are the universe’s ultimate ships of the line.
Averil 21, 407 Confederation Standard Year
“Beam Banks One and Two, go live as leads. We have identified and targeted a threat. Prepare to fire on my command, on radar’s central target. This is not a drill, you will go to full combat power. Saturate the disc
at all wavelengths.”
Proper quiet, proper response. The ship’s routine went on but the air circulators changed speed and life-support panels grew angry red as combat-power overrides initiated. Small bells echoed the necessities of combat: hatches, airlocks, and pressure doors sealed.
“Combat power up.” Nerves in that voice, but it didn’t squeak.
“Lead banks, we’ll need three consecutive full-power bursts from each—lock that in! Bank Three, slave to Bank One, two point seven five second delay, wide angle. Bank Four, slave to Bank Three, ultrawide angle. Banks Five through Twelve, go to high alert. Missilery Section, watch for bulk breakaway going in-system, target at will. Section leaders, you will particularly react to bulk breakaway coming our way.”
The crew shared glances. They’d deviated, on captain’s orders, from what was to be a calm and peaceful direct rendezvous with the RosaRing.
Meteor shields went live automatically. The target was a little over a tenth of a light-second away, so energetic debris wasn’t an immediate threat.
The captain said nothing, watching this crew’s first live-fire action. The sub-captain was sweating: His experience on this system was simulations. His battle experience had been on ships whose entire beam output was negligible compared to any single projector in any of the battleship’s twenty multibeam projector banks. There was a reason these beams were called planet busters, as they were about to prove.
Radar showed the target, distance and rotation. Like many planets, there was ice at the poles. Like many planets there was atmosphere. Like many planets, one might target the broadside equator, where rotational stress assisted the destructive effects of incoming beams.
The captain and the sub-captain had spent several sessions in the captain’s cabin perfecting this plan. The crew thought it merely the third drill, but the target was a danger to Trikandle; the sub-captain had done the math the captain required.
The sub-captain’s orders from the captain: develop an attack sequence, prepare the crew through drills, and then give the deck commands required for the kill, on the captain’s signal. The captain required excellence from those who served under him.
In return, in those sessions, he displayed excellence. He’d shared the words and codes of exigency—the ship’s self-destruct sequence, the code of relinquishing command, the codes for . . . all of them. Smit had taught him, and he passed the ship’s necessities on.
The captain listened to the deck, the radar, the hum of power that underlay the deck, the stars beyond, just as he’d seen Admiral Smit listen. The form was Admiral Smit’s axiom: Effective command radiates power; those under command bask in the rays of their orders.
Watching the screens, feeling the universe flow around him, the captain radiated command, looking firmly at the sub-captain and saying “Ni faris,” into the mic that reached only the sub-captain’s headset.
A startle there, a so brief pause. The sub-captain’s glance fled from the captain’s face to his command screen, and he echoed the captain to his crew. “We commit! Fire!”
The deck thrummed and the power was an audible rasp ending in a noise that was . . .
“Zap!”
The sotto voce comment by a crewman unseen barely beat the squeal of discharge that thrummed the entire fabric of the battleship. On screens crew throughout the ship saw what happens when a bank of planet-buster projectors hurls the forces of chaos.
The captain blinked. Some teaching moments have more impact than others. When he’d accepted this mission on that Day of Changes, when he’d last held Verita in their own bed, he hadn’t expected to train a crew so raw, nor to have orders on file permitting such a mission. Things were going well, seventeen days in system.
Change Year Day, Sumtap 01, 404 CSY
They’d begun that Day of Changes knowing there’d be changes.
This was not their first Day of Changes; they’d learned the meaning of it together as child scholars, learned the joy of festive food and guessing games, learned later of the small pains that might come from the day, then, the larger ones as schoolmates and first crushes were pared away by the necessities of more adult pursuits.
Eventually they’d pled their cases one to another for more than stolen kisses and learned to trust in each other’s hard-driving ambition. They turned to each other rather than others, asking “How do we solve this?” or, admitting being at wit’s end: “Solve this!” They wore matching bands of custom Triluxian in honor of their plans.
His ambition led him to the fleet, in search of opportunity as it recovered from the debacle of the Battle of Azren Clouds. He’d risen quickly, leading several raiding missions and rescues before being attached to Admiral Smit and Implacable.
She, drawn to research, joined the efforts to extract the most dangerous secrets of the Ligonier Library, where her skills at academic infighting were as recognized as her scientific insights. Nor had Verita shared all her solvings with the academic community, reserving for herself and Kiland the news that she’d moved from theory to actual practice several strains of those life-constructions thought lost in the collapsed universe their foremothers had fled.
While the old guard flailed at the changes wrought by dusty carbon clouds invading their trade lanes, Kiland and Verita shone as beacons for the future. Let the failures retire or suicide—they dealt only in power and success.
On that memorable Day of Change, they played before the clock buzzed them officially into the dawn. Verita began by nipping his ear and spooning him, her hands busy, mouth full of kisses and words; promises, teases—and more, her potent arms pulling his shoulder, aiming his willing mouth and . . .
After they’d sat in their atrium, cheered by their nakedness as ocean breeze brought them spring’s promise of more than mere renewal. What sprang from this year would crown their lives.
By tradition, they arrived at dusk, he from the south, she from the north, at their own front door. Flowers and gifts they each carried in profusion, the promise of change strong in their hands while their faces were a little secret, the mouths a little sad under the smiles.
“I will be your slave tonight, my love,” said Verita, as they exchanged delicate fragrant bouquets on their threshold. “And you will solve my passion.
“Unless,” she added, as she followed him into their home, “unless you demand I solve for you, in which case I will take tomorrow.”
“Slave or solve.” He laughed. “I’ll savor either.”
He trembled with lust, though they were still dressed, and his eyes darkened his smile. But her smile, too, was near fled, dancing on the tip of her tongue.
“Is it well, Katido Volupto?” he whispered, and shed his burdens as she shed hers, the hall table not large enough for the wealth of gifts they had brought.
“It is,” she said. “It is so well it is nearly perfect. The project goes forward . . . yes. But until it is announced, I can hardly tell you more. And for you?”
“Yes, it is nearly perfect. Next week, I return to space!”
She laughed, and was relieved, nearly knocking him down as she wrapped herself about him, filling his eyes with her kisses and his ears with her demand, “Tell me, tell me that you will not be lonely. Next week I go to space, as well!”
Averil 04, 407 CSY
Implacable in a hurry was a sight to be seen, which was good, since there was no way of hiding the fearsome output of its antique power units. The mighty timonium plasma sets spewed neutrons and neutrinos alike while powering the last ship of the line from any of the Cloudgate armed forces. She left behind an elemental thermal signature that might cloud an astronomer’s view of the cosmos for centuries, but the chance of there being such, here, was negligible.
Ship of the line was a misnomer when applied to Implacable, for most ships of its type fielded two centuries ago were gone. Of that generation of batalsipo grandas—a dozen dozen ships more powerful than entire modern star fleets—only Implacable held air. The others were victims of their wars or
, as often, dismantled for resources.
Verita watched the secret news of Implacable’s arrival. Station Ops was slow in this; her own equipment better tuned—she’d had budget for new installs while Ops was stuck with original equipment. So much of the mission was on scant budget, including using the mighty Implacable as a towboat! However, the calculations had worked well for the incoming trip, with the transit from Jump point to Trikandle’s one-hundred-day orbit a mere twelve days. This time Implacable was too awkwardly placed for such a quick run, she knew.
Kiland’s Change Day news had placed him back aboard the vessel that had made him one of the most powerful men in the reformed Confederation. The same Change Day saw Verita leap to her life-long goal—science leader of an expedition that could return the Confederation to greatness.
As principal investigator she was technically second-in-command of the RosaRing, an agricultural lab repurposed into a self-sufficient xenoplanet research laboratory. The administrator’s position was higher in the flow charts, but Prenla Verita was the reason the RosaRing had been dispatched.
Among the last messages from Implacable as it departed system had been several for her, under admiral’s seal—sent by Kiland, with Admiral Smit’s approval. Each was more full of promise than the last, and the final promising what they’d suspected: Smit was retiring, and he favored as commander of Implacable none but Kiland.
Now orbiting the fecund planet Trikandle, the real mission of the RosaRing was daunting: hurry Trikandle through an evolution toward the oxygenated photosynthetic atmosphere required to add it as a populated Confederation world. This was hands-on work—with satellites, imaging systems, drones, rovers, and observer craft.
The Confederation’s directors had risked much in mounting the expedition at all, and they’d cast for glory over stability, rushing their claim on the Trikandle system by making the station a permanent fixture.
