by Lyn Gala
“This ship. All the things that don’t make sense. Maybe this is a prison ship. In the lower decks the quarters are cramped and the doors are locked. We couldn't move up-ship without breaking each lock. If the prisoners were confined down below, that makes sense.” Now that Tyce had said it aloud it made even more sense. “If prisoners were brought up using the spiral staircase, the room where I was held could have been a security measure. Prisoners could go back down to the prison but they couldn't get into the upper part of the ship with the guards.”
The grimace on John’s face suggested he didn’t like the idea. “If that's true, these aliens are sadistic because one slip on those stairs and their prisoners would all fall to their deaths. That’s a damn dangerous situation.”
“It may have been an intentional design feature. That would minimize any chance of the prisoners storming the doors in some mass mutiny.” And if the prisoners tried, they’d all end up dead—problem solved in a decidedly sadistic way.
“But I've never seen guard quarters like we have up here,” John argued. “They’re huge.”
“Their culture could value guards.”
“Or the ship had the alien version of lawyers and judges on it.” John shook his head. “Or we don’t know because neither of us is trained to interpret alien motives based on cultural artifacts, and we are no Liam Munson able to bound entire alien civilizations in a single leap.”
That was a tangled knot of cultural references, but John had a point. Sometimes slow and cautious was best when figuring out a mystery, but Tyce was willing to bet this had been a prison ship. He fell silent. They both stood staring at each other. As much as Tyce wanted to find some safe conversation, he didn’t know where to start. John knew why Tyce had turned against his people, and no forgiveness was coming. He had no idea where to go from here.
John broke eye contact and walked the perimeter of the room, his fingers trailing over the designs on the wall. He paused. “Thank you for saving Plat.”
“I wouldn't let a man die.”
John grimaced.
The expression was like a knife to Tyce's gut. He poked a finger in John’s direction. “Don't even make that face. You know me well enough to know I'm not a monster.”
“I thought so, but then the breakthrough at Landing happened. Now I'm trying to figure out which is the real you. Are you the Tyce who talked about ending the war quickly before more people died, the Tyce who played decoy to save two injured soldiers, or are you the Tyce who prolonged this war and shot his own men?”
This was hell. Tyce had died and this was his punishment for fucking up his life. And Ama and the fucker who had given Tyce his tattoo were morons. He rubbed a hand over his face. “Are we going to have this fight again? I am the same me in every single version of the truth. I don't like to see innocent lives lost and I went into service in order to prevent that. I left the service to prevent that.” Tyce stopped before he started yelling.
“So shooting your guys was a better solution than reporting them?”
Tyce threw his hands in the air. “I am not going through this again. I told you, I did report them. Multiple times.” John was the singularly most annoying human being in the fucking universe. He had met sand gnats that annoyed him less than John.
“But you never went up the chain of command—you never went outside the chain of command.” John had such earnestness, and Tyce wanted to punch him in the face.
“What exactly should I have done?”
“You should have done exactly what I did! I screamed to everyone who would listen that something was wrong. I talked to newspaper reporters, soc vid stars, anyone. Hell, conspiracy websites still carry my interviews. I told everyone who would stop and listen for more than three seconds that you never would have turned traitor. I suggested the video footage was faked and the rebels were trying to use this as a publicity ploy. I suggested you'd been captured and forced to act in the vid. I appeared on morning television, on talk shows, anyplace I could get in front of a camera. I suggested all sorts of insane things because I refused to believe that you would turn against your own people.”
Tyce knew the lengths Command would go to in order to preserve their image as good guys. His stomach churned at the idea of John putting himself in the line of fire, and that did explain why the dead commander had poisoned the crew against John. “What the hell were you thinking?” Tyce didn’t mean to lower his voice, but horror made the words come out in a whisper.
“I knew you, and I knew you wouldn't do this.” John ran a hand over his face. “Fuck. I can’t even be in the same room with you without losing every bit of self-control. What the hell are we doing?”
Tyce stared at John. For the first time, he imagined the world John had lived in—believing in Tyce and screaming it from the rooftops while everyone backed away. Even if they believed John was loyal to Command, they wouldn’t have wanted to be near that sort of rhetoric. The courts might have given lower ranking soldiers freedom to speak out against the government, but that didn’t mean Command couldn’t retaliate in subtle ways. It would have left John alone. Isolated.
When Tyce had made his choice, he had expected to die, and when Ama had taken him prisoner instead, he had expected a short trial and execution. However, he’d found a cantankerous and difficult family. But if John was telling the truth, he had made himself a pariah. “What did you do to yourself?”
“I didn’t throw myself on Ribelian mercy and get brainwashed,” John said with some derision.
Tyce leaned against the wall. “Ama didn’t brainwash me. I admitted everything—every mission where I failed to stop my men from killing and raping. I described every person they unlawfully executed. I expected her to get angry enough to kill me.” Tyce sighed. “Clearly I was an idiot who did not understand how Ribelians thought.” A rebel from another breakaway planet probably would have pulled the trigger. But Ribelians... they were odd. “But you had to know that people wouldn’t forgive me, so why would you throw yourself into the fire?”
“Because you’re my best friend,” John said miserably.
“John.” Tyce stopped, not sure what to say to that.
“And I’m an idiot,” John added.
“Yeah, but I have to put up with you because I’m your best friend,” Tyce teased.
“You were,” John said. “We lived together for nearly four years. I assumed you already knew that.”
“You didn’t say we were best friends,” Tyce said. “You said we are best friends.”
Another grimace crossed John’s face, but he didn’t disagree.
“Which is good because you are my best friend, even if your crew is full of idiots.”
John scoffed. “Not full, just mostly full. And several of the worst idiots took off for parts unknown, so now I have a higher percentage of inexperienced and worthless to actual idiots.”
“Good to know.” Tyce sighed. “How did you end up a sub-commander?” That was the one part of the story that didn’t make sense. If John had made that much noise, Command should have left him a lieutenant and dumped him on Landing or Monroe or Paititi. The thought of John dying in an assault Tyce had planned turned his stomach.
“They would've preferred to get rid of me,” John said with a darkness in his voice that suggested he had a story or two behind that comment. “But I was the most vocal critic of the war, and that meant newscasters tracked me. They couldn't dump me in a prison cell, because I hadn't technically broken the law and line officers have a constitutional right to free speech. But ranking officers don’t. So they promoted me into silence.”
John crossed his arms. “Don't give me that look. I knew I was tanking my career even as I did it, but the man who saved Plat, the man who took on an Imshee alone? That man deserved to have someone fighting for him and no one else was stepping up.”
John had too damn much loyalty, especially when Tyce hadn’t kept in touch after getting his first assignment. “I didn't expect anyone to step up. I made my
choice and I knew the consequences. When the breakaway planets lost the war, I knew I'd end up in an Earth prison.” Tyce hadn’t expected John to arrest him, but the universe did like shitting on his head. “But like you said, I'm the sort of man who would do that to give other people cover.”
“Like that stupid plan of yours to economically strip Ribelo.”
“My plans are often dangerous and sometimes impetuous, but they're never stupid. It will work,” Tyce said firmly. A war of economic attrition was the only kind Ribelo could win, and if the other breakaway planets joined, it would work quickly. Tyce wasn’t sure the others had the will to follow through. It would mean years of deprivation, but Ama had sent around a bunch of Thomas Paine’s writings from before the birth of the United States. He’d been a persuasive author, and if Ribelian beliefs about reincarnation and duty didn’t get through, maybe a centuries-dead philosopher would.
John shook his head. “And you were the martyr they planned to throw on the fire. If you couldn’t find a base out here, your shipmates would have returned to Earth space and surrendered you, wouldn’t they? And that was your dumbass plan.”
Tyce shrugged. He hadn’t expected John to figure that out, but that had been plan A. They would gather intel on this part of space and sell the intel and Tyce to Command in return for a right of free passage for the Dragon. If they found a safe world that didn’t require heavy terraforming, then they would work to make a new Ribelo. But that was a dream more than a plan.
“You idiot.” John punched him in the arm.
“Hey! If Earth controlled all the colonized planets, I wouldn’t be able to run for long anyway. I was maximizing benefits.”
“Your so-called family should have stopped you.”
“Yeah, well Ribelians don’t see the world the way we do.” Joahan in all his helpfulness had offered to kill Tyce so he could start over in a new life without Command chasing him. That had emotionally scarred him, but sadly Joahan had been trying to help. Yoss hadn’t even bothered. When Tyce was hurt that a friend didn’t offer to kill him, he had been hanging out with Ribelians far too long.
“They’re strange,” John said. At least that was one step down from calling them murderous terrorists, although a few could be that as well. “So, what’s the plan with the Imshee?”
“It would help if we could figure out their strategy.” They attacked one at a time even when there were several who had boarded the ship, reacted to close-contact like unthinking animals, and fled when they had the superior weaponry. If Ribelians were weird, Imshee were bizarre and inexplicable.
Chapter Twenty-Four
AS SOON AS THEY ENTERED the engineering room, Ama asked, “Have you decided to be reasonable human beings?”
Tyce recognized that tone. He also feared it. When Ama decided to do a little attitude adjusting, it was generally a positive force in the long-term, but in the short-term, it hurt like hell. He was about to drag John out of the general vicinity when John made the mistake of engaging.
“I don’t think our reason was in question,” John said dryly, “our ability to work together was.”
“I questioned both,” Yoss said from across the room.
There was no way Tyce wanted to get in between Ama and John, so he headed toward the far side of the room. The wounded were laid out on the floor, the worst with thin mattresses under them. Command crew and Dragon worked side by side, and several Dragon engineers hovered around an open console. Tyce had expected Command crew to push the Ribelians to the perimeter, but no doubt Ama had used John’s absence to offer her own version of “helpfulness.” And that always included a healthy dose of self-benefit.
“How is Joahan?” Tyce asked softly.
Yoss’s frown made it clear the news was bad. “Better than some of the Command people, but the docs say those guys will die.”
Tyce winced, but at least Joahan was still alive. If they pursued Tyce’s plan to carry out strike-and-run guerrilla battles against Imshee, more men and women would be in the same situation. In school, planning required hypothetical losses and when Tyce had been a lieutenant, he had secretly hoped the rebels would kill his guys. That made him a shitty human being, both in wishing death on someone else and in hiding behind his fantasy to avoid stopping them earlier. When they actually had died, Tyce had felt only relief. But every death now felt like a knife in his guts. Across the room, John and Ama had a quiet, intense conversation.
“Why did those fuckers stop attacking?” Yoss asked after a long silence.
“Damned if I know,” Tyce admitted. From a tactical standpoint, it made no sense, especially when the Imshee had superior strength and weaponry. Hell, the best human weapons could achieve was tripping the bastards.
“Doesn’t make sense.”
That much was obvious. However, there must be some alien logic behind their moves. “You brought a lot of Dragon crew,” Tyce said. That surprised him. As much as Yoss hated Command, he had expected Yoss to ask for one medic and a few supplies. Instead dozens of engineers, medics and two of their three doctors were here, and the room was dangerously crowded. If one Imshee fought his way to the door, this room would become a shooting gallery. It would be impossible for the damn alien to miss, and there wasn’t nearly enough cover for humans to mount any sort of defense.
They were in a horrible position.
“Ama wanted them alive,” Yoss said. From his point of view, that probably was a stronger motive than anything as irrelevant as saving human lives.
“Did you have a chance to observe the Imshee?” Tyce asked. He needed to find every person who’d had contact with the Imshee and get a first-hand report on how they acted. If they had been closer to Earth and if they had any communications equipment, he would have even considered calling Earth for information. John had precious few details, but after he had described the colorful way he had tanked his own career, that wasn’t a surprise. No wonder Command had assumed John could still predict how Tyce would react. He had made himself look like a worried lover, not a guy randomly assigned to the same room at the academy.
Yoss gave him a withering look that Tyce interpreted as “no.” Yoss hated failure in any form, so if he had been forced to run away from an enemy, that would have made him cranky.
Tyce retreated and headed back to Ama and John. They were still discussing strategy, and the second Tyce approached, Ama’s glare made it clear she questioned his intelligence, his parentage and his ability to think his way through a game of tic-tac-toe. “You want to antagonize the Imshee?” she demanded.
“I wouldn’t call it ‘antagonize’,” Tyce said slowly.
“I would.” She sighed before saying, “Walk me through how this is logical.”
Tyce shrugged. “They retreat in the face of near-certain success and target us even when we’re leaving them alone. If they’re stuck in opposite world, we need to meet them where they are.”
“You only assume they act irrationally.” Her tone made it clear she disagreed.
“No. I’m assuming they have some sort of alien tactics, but I don’t understand them. So, since their version of logic looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I’ll treat it like a duck until I have enough information to figure out what the hell else is going on. And I’m defining duck as the opposite of anything that makes sense. One- or two-person teams can strike and run, and I’ve proven that we’re a lot faster than those bastards.” As deeply flawed as the tactic was, Tyce had nothing better.
“And do you agree?” She turned on John who suddenly looked much less sure of himself.
He straightened. “Yes.”
Ama blinked. Maybe she was surprised about someone siding with Tyce over her, but after a second, she nodded. “Then we’ll try. I know the universe respects all life, but I am flawed enough to dread dealing with these aliens.”
“You and me both,” Tyce agreed.
“And as much as I dislike the idea of putting our people at risk, you’re right that we are too vulnerabl
e to allow the Imshee to set the pace on this conflict.” Ama sighed again. Sometimes Tyce wondered if she had given up the captain’s chair because she couldn’t send people out on dangerous missions when she’d known them from childhood. That made more sense than the two excuses she usually gave—that Tyce had better tactics and that she was of an age to focus on enlightenment and death.
“That’s true of both our groups,” John said.
“No,” Ama said sharply, startling John. She poked a finger in his direction. “Do not talk about us as if we were separate groups. We are the humans, united, determined to defend one another against the Imshee.”
“I... I didn’t mean to suggest we wouldn’t work together.” John looked at Tyce with thinly veiled desperation.
“But words create reality,” Ama said. “Do not use words that define a universe we don’t wish to live in. If you define us as separate, we will live that reality.”
“Yeah, John,” Tyce said, a little amused at how flustered John was at Ama’s moralisms.
Ama narrowed her eyes. “Your enlightenment is rather limited, Tyce Robinson.”
“Yep,” Tyce easily agreed . “And I know better than to argue with you. So, since we have all stopped being angry and hating each other...” Tyce hesitated. As much as he wanted John to forgive him, he didn’t know if they had truly turned that corner.
John rolled his eyes. “I was furious at you, both for turning against your unit and for getting caught, but I’m over it. Mostly.”
That was as much forgiveness as Tyce needed. He smiled, grateful to have his friend back again. The warm fuzzy feeling lasted a good solid half-second before Ama stepped between them.
“Anger doesn’t exist,” Ama said firmly. “Fear, joy, desire, and confusion all exist, but fury and hate are the result of you ignoring your true emotions. I could say I hate Command, but the more honest answer is that I fear my own helplessness in the face of economic injustice. But if I call that rage or envy, then I have projected my feelings out onto objects I cannot control instead of owning my emotional state.
