Trace the Stars

by Nancy Fulda

  “Is that the whole story?” the voice repeated. Xenon shook himself back to reality.

  “Yes,” he replied bitterly. The computers around him blinked and flashed as they analyzed the information.

  “Your actions have been found in violation of laws G-117 and E-523. Destruction of government property and waste of diminishing fuel. Do you accept these charges?”

  The voice from the speakers was cold and vicious—as all council rooms were programmed to be.

  Xenon gazed around the room, not knowing where to direct his voice.

  “Accept these charges? What are you doing, offering them to me on a platter? NO, I won’t accept them! I saved three lives—”

  “And put us that much closer to the last of our resources,” the computer butted in. “Waste cannot exist! Waste must not be allowed. Do you accept these charges?”

  “Can’t your primitive components analyze what I just said? I will not accept the charges!”

  Xenon began to break into a cold sweat as a large glowing object swiveled into place over his head.

  “Accept the fact that you caused waste. Accept! Accept! Accept!”

  Xenon quaked in fear as the object above his head began to hum.

  “Oh, what’s the use. Yes, I broke the laws. If a life is worth less than a gallon of fuel, then yes, you bet I broke them. But your programming can’t understand that, can it?”

  The computers totally ignored his words.

  “He accepts,” stated one machine, recording it to its memory cells. “Violation will be punished by termination.”

  Xenon clutched the arms of the chair, knuckles white. The hum intensified above his head.

  A blinding flash of intense red light reflected off the shiny metallic sides of the computers.

  Cycle 335

  Beth Buck

  An alarm sounded aboard the Imperial Space Vessel Aryalle. It startled Julie back to the waking world, away from what she called the “in-between place” she seemed to inhabit so frequently these days. Before she shrugged on her uniform jacket and propelled herself onto the command module, she heard a quiet voice in her head say, initiate cycle number three-hundred and thirty-four.

  Julie winced. She took a minute to recollect what she had been thinking about: continuously rotating harmonic wave theory. It was very important she not forget. She knew she’d remember when she needed to, but that didn’t stop her from wishing she could write it down.

  “What have we got?” she asked Lieutenant Draper, the only one currently on duty. She already knew the answer, of course, but she still needed to ask. Although why she still needed to ask she couldn’t say.

  “Another vessel,” Draper said.

  “We’ve been in orbit around this world for hours and haven’t picked up anything,” she said. “Why didn’t we see them before?”

  “They were in a lower orbit on the far side of the planet. They didn’t enter the range of our instruments until just a few minutes ago.”

  “So the planet is inhabited, then,” Julie said to herself. She turned back to Draper. “You alert Colonel Miller. I’ll be down in the lab taking some more readings. Inform me when we enter communications range. This is the first sign of sentient alien life we’ve seen and I want our first contact to go well.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  Of the four old colony sites they investigated so far, this was the first that—apparently—still had people living in it. Butterflies and nervous jitters wrestled in her stomach. Julie propelled herself below deck to the lab as quickly as she could in the microgravity of high orbit and willed herself to calm down. It had to go well this time, it had to. Or she’d wind up doing all of this over again.

  The colonel’s voice sounded over the intercom. “You seeing this, Julie?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir,” she replied. “Looks like the hull is a composite of—”

  “I don’t need your report. I just wanted to know if you saw the ship,” he grunted. “We’re still not picking up much radio traffic from the planet, so it could be a ghost ship; some relic from the early days of the colony. Keep running your scans until further notice. I want a full set of readings.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Julie. She switched on the voice recorder as she continued. “Hull composition: metal alloy. Spectrometer indicates inclusion of aluminum, platinum, and beryllium. Low but constant energy signature, directed towards us, probably scanning. Wait, what’s that?”

  She double-checked her readouts. Infrared scans showed two heat signatures consistent with humanoid life. No, not humanoid—human. She felt the thrill of discovery. This was it: the reason for which the Empress had personally invited her to be a part of this mission, and the reason why she accepted. A chance, after centuries of isolation, of reunification.

  The intercom crackled, and Colonel Miller’s voice ordered, “All crew report to the command center and prepare for battle!”

  Julie panicked. She didn’t want to blow this again. Julie pushed the communicator button. “Colonel,” Julie shouted into the mic, “weapon ports are closed, I am not reading any energy surges that would indicate an increase in shields. Scans indicate the other ship is holding their non-aggressive position. Recommend you cancel preparations for military engagement.”

  “Quit the save-the-world trash, Pandergast,” growled the colonel. “I said battle stations!”

  Julie ignored him. “Recommend attempt at communication, colonel. The psionic translators won’t work over such a distance, but they may still have in their database methods used before the Diaspora. Ancient Morse Code—”

  “Battle stations,” the colonel insisted, enunciation every consonant in those words as if Julie was a deaf toddler.

  Julie ground her teeth. She unhooked herself from her workbench and propelled herself back through the hatch and through the corridor into the command center.

  Lieutenant Draper already wore the rail gun targeting goggles. She grabbed a stabilization bar to keep from drifting around the room but did not take her station.

  Colonel Miller sat strapped in the forward command chair, muttering. “Useless pacifistic female bureaucrats, always getting in the way of the real work . . .”

  Miller gave Julie half a glance and turned back to Draper. “Power up the forward rail guns.”

  “Colonel, what are you doing?” Julie asked.

  “Fulfilling the parameters of our mission,” he replied.

  “You can’t just attack them! We were sent to make contact.”

  The Colonel snapped at her, his blue eyes alight with cold fire. “I know what we were sent for, Pandergast. Much better than you do.” He asked Draper, “Are they in range? Hopefully we’ll be able to dispatch them quickly. Then we will evaluate how to deal with the rest of the colony.”

  “We’ll be within firing range in twenty seconds, sir,” said Draper.

  “No!” Julie yelled at the top of her lungs. Draper, do not fire. The Empress charged us with initiating peaceful first contact with our sister colonies we can’t just attack without provocation.”

  “I told you to sit down, captain. We do not have time for this.”

  “Ten seconds,” said Draper. Julie didn’t move.

  “I GAVE YOU AN ORDER!” Miller bellowed.

  “The Empress—” she protested.

  “The Empress isn’t here! She has no idea what we are up against and neither do you, so SHUT UP!”

  “I will not! Stop this now!”

  “Firing,” Draper said dispassionately.

  Julie’s blood froze as a spate of fire tore across the space between the two ships. She braced herself for the scene of firey carnage she expected would follow.

  Nothing happened. It took a full second for her to realize it. Nothing happened. The projectiles didn’t bounce off, they didn’t penetrate the hull, they . . . stopped existing.

  The colonel’s face turned purple as he rounded on Draper. “What kind of stupid idiot could miss the only target within a million miles o
f here?”

  “I didn’t miss. I couldn’t have. You saw it yourself, sir.” Draper looked pale and shaky.

  “Then what just happened?” he shouted.

  “I don’t know, sir,” confessed the lieutenant.

  “I thought you said they weren’t as technologically advanced as we are?”

  Draper shifted uneasily in his seat. “I said they didn’t look like they were.”

  Julie broke in, “If you had asked me, I could have told you that the scans were inconclusive. If we’re lucky they’ll refrain from blowing us out of the sky. As we are in orbit around their planet, it’s not unlikely that they’ll launch more ships to finish us off.”

  Anger flashed across the colonel’s face. “This is your fault, Pandergast,” he said.

  Julie scoffed. “My fault that you failed in killing the two people on that ship?”

  “If you hadn’t been screaming in his ear . . . ! But no! You just had to assert your petty little female ego!”

  Before she could deliver a well-placed retort, but Draper said, “Sir, I am reading some activity coming from the alien ship.”

  “What kind of activity?” Colonel Miller asked urgently.

  Julie glided to her chair and strapped herself in, the better to see the events unfolding on the view screen.

  When Draper didn’t answer right away, the colonel barked, “Well? Are you stupid as well as blind?”

  Draper squinted at his computer screen. “They . . . they appear to be launching some kind of analog weapon.”

  Julie looked through the viewport. “Confirmed. It looks like a mace. If a mace can also be like a sword.”

  All three of them peered at it quizzically as inertia carried it inexorably closer to the Aryalle.

  Miller’s face tightened suddenly. “Evasive action!”

  Too late!

  Boom!

  “REPORT!”

  Draper cursed. “That thing went right through our shields like they weren’t even there. So far we don’t have much damage, but I hope they don’t have many more of those.”

  “Return fire,” ordered the Colonel.

  “I can’t. I can push the button, but the rail guns aren’t responding.”

  Another projectile hit seconds after the first.

  “Repolarize the shields,” suggested Julie. “Maybe that will keep the next volley out.”

  It didn’t.

  Draper said, “I don’t think we can take another volley, sir. Recommend we run.”

  “Negative,” Julie said. “The deployment mechanism for our solar sails got shot to bits. Unknown whether the sails themselves are still intact. Either way, we’re stranded until they can be repaired.”

  Julie took a quick look at her stuttering instrument readouts as the Aryalle shuddered. “Colonel, that last one punctured our hull! Automatic airlocks are in place to seal the breach, but we’ve lost 75 percent of our power. If we want to survive, we’ll have to make an emergency landing.”

  “Oh, God,” Julie didn’t know if Draper was praying or swearing. “Their hatch is opening again.”

  Draper locked eyes with Julie for a second. She did not like the look on his face at all, but it reminded her about what she’d been thinking about just before the alarm had awoken her. She knew what she needed to do.

  “Colonel,” said Julie as she calculated the parameters at lightning speed. “I’m inputting a continuously rotating phase harmonic algorithm into the shield matrix. If we can constantly repolarize our shields’ electromagnetics quickly enough, it should work.”

  “Proceed!” he ordered.

  Julie held her breath as the last projectile made its way toward them. She felt relieved when it bounced harmlessly off their shields, but horrified when the rebound made it strike the alien ship.

  “No,” Julie cried, knowing that this would undoubtedly mean failure.

  Colonel Miller did not share her horror. “Good work, captain,” He said. “Lieutenant Draper, what’s their status?”

  “They’re losing power, sir. Atmosphere is leaking.”

  The Aryalle jolted to one side.

  “What was that?” asked Miller.

  “The power core, Colonel,” said Julie. “It must have destabilized. We will have to jettison the aft section.”

  “But if we do that,” said Draper, “We won’t make it through the atmosphere. We’ll burn up!”

  “Not necessarily,” said Julie, as she madly entered more calculations into her console. “When we unload the aft section we can use the forward momentum to bring us closer to the alien craft. We can extend our shields around them and with the extra mass we might just make it.”

  “It’s too risky,” said Draper. “The shields will fail, and we don’t have the hull integrity –”

  “No, but they do. They’re dead in the water. Use the grappling claws to attach to them, and use the thrusters to reorient our descent so that we’re riding in their wake. Their hull can take it.” Julie insisted.

  “It’s suicide!”

  “Shut your whiny mouth, Draper,” said Colonel Miller. “Do what Pandergast says.”

  Julie considered the large number of things that could go wrong. The other ship could fire at them again; or explode, taking the Aryalle with it; or perhaps she had miscalculated their hull density when during her initial scans, and they’d both incinerate.

  Draper executed Julie’s instructions exactly, which was to his credit. Julie was pleasantly surprised, as she always thought of Draper as a sycophantic toady who only existed to do whatever Colonel Miller told him to do. Those maneuvers were tricky; there was more to him that met her eye after all.

  After docking successfully, both ships careened as one toward the planet. The Aryalle rocked and swayed as extraneous bits not shielded by the alien craft melted in the heat of atmospheric friction and broke off. For a second Julie wasn’t sure her harebrained scheme would work.

  Draper’s shoulders relaxed. “We’re through the atmosphere,” he announced.

  “Very good,” said the colonel. “Take us in for the landing, Draper.”

  “Undocking.”

  As they neared the planet’s surface, Julie saw many cities, roads, and other settlements arranged over the craggy landscape. The colony didn’t just survive, she thought to herself, They thrived. They’ll have so much to teach us, so much to trade. Excitement over the possibilities fluttered through her. But then she thought, They won’t be happy to see us when we land.

  The colonel noticed something different. “Lieutenant, why aren’t we slowing down? Reverse thrusters full!”

  “I can’t, colonel! My controls must have been damaged upon reentry, unless the thrusters themselves are shot.”

  “Pandergast, do something!”

  “I’m good, colonel, but I’m not a miracle worker!”

  “Brace for impact!”

  Julie was back there again, floating in that in-between place once more. She didn’t know what else to call it. There was no light, no color, neither cold nor heat. She wasn’t aware of having a body, so she assumed she existed only as a consciousness.

  End cycle three hundred and thirty-four, announced that soft voice, so quiet that Julie might have thought she had imagined it if she didn’t know better. Outcome: failure. Only one possible option remains.

  “No, don’t send me back again,” pleaded Julie. “I can’t, I can’t.”

  “There is only one acceptable outcome. Only one possible option remains.”

  A sob escaped Julie’s throat.

  “How many times are you going to make me relive this?”

  Until there is a satisfactory outcome.

  “I’ve tried everything. Everything! I’ve even piloted the Aryalle myself. We always crash, every time. And it’s all Colonel Miller’s fault. He is the one who always orders to fire on them first.”

  There is one thing you have not yet tried. One possible option remains.

  “What is that? What do you want me to do?”<
br />
  You will figure it out. Initiating cycle number three hundred and thirty-five.

  “No!”

  Sirens blared. Julie opened her eyes and found herself back in her cabin aboard the Aryalle, just as she had three hundred and thirty-four previous times.

  “Only one possible option remains,” she repeated to herself in a half-whisper. After hesitating for only a moment, she reached under her bunk and pulled out the locked box the Empress had given her. She opened it and saw the silver pistol inside. It gleamed red in the glow of the flashing alarm lights.

  She took the pistol and headed straight for the colonel’s cabin across the hall.

  He opened the door just as she was about to knock, as if she was waiting for her. “Captain,” the colonel said. “What is this meaning of this?”

  “I cannot let you ruin our only chance of peaceful first contact,” Julie explained.

  “Pandergast,” Miller said, “I don’t think you understand what is happening here. This situation isn’t what you think it is.”

  “I won’t let you lead us to our deaths again,” Julie said.

  “Captain,” Miller warned. “It’s the alien ship. Don’t look surprised, of course I already know about it. They have this weapon, it messes with your head. If you knew, you wouldn’t—”

  Julie fired. Her heart tore all around the edges and through the middle to take the life of another person. But she had no choice. All other options had already been explored in great, excruciating detail, and ­Miller’s death was the only way out.

  There was no blood, the energy beam cauterized the wound. In the weightlessness of space, she merely had to shove his body back into his cabin and let inertia take care of the rest. She threw her pistol in after him and closed the door. She’d have to pay for what she had done later. She went straight to the command module.

  “How soon will we be in communications range?” asked Julie.

  “Only a few minutes,” Draper answered. “Should I summon the colonel?”

  Julie paused. “No,” she said deliberately. “I informed the colonel. He’s probably still sleeping; he was up all night last night typing out paperwork, from what I understand.”