Hellfire (THEIRS NOT TO REASON WHY)

by Jean Johnson

  Her warning rippled through the bay. Wide-eyed, the other women and men struggled into Attention poses as best they could, some still in their mechsuits, some half-clothed in their pressure-suits or their uniforms. All of them saluted as she passed. Ia did not stop, though.

  Her target was Private First Class Nicholaus Smitt, soldier, clerk, and field medic. He was still working on climbing out of his bulky halfmech, modified as it was to provide on-the-spot medical attention. Awkwardly, he freed his right hand and saluted her, eyes wide with wonder and worry when she stopped in front of his alcove.

  “Sir?” he asked her.

  Ia saluted him back. She kept her voice steady as she dropped her arm and relayed her news. “Private Smitt. It is my deepest regret to inform you that the domeworld colony on Seldun IV, System ISC 197, has fallen to the Salik advance.”

  “No,” he whispered, shaking his head.

  Ia gave him a sympathetic look as she continued. “The colonists did evacuate many of the women and children, and your mother has survived, but your father and sister chose to stay behind and fight.”

  “No,” Smitt asserted louder. “No. You’re a precog. You should’ve told them. You should’ve known. We should’ve been there!”

  “I can say that it was relatively swift,” she continued calmly, quietly. “The colonial mayor rigged the entire chain of domes with explosives. They destroyed most of the invasion force and left very little for the enemy to salvage and use as a base of operations.”

  “No! You should’ve saved them,” Smitt accused, tanned face wrinkling in rage. He pointed at her in accusation. “We should’ve been there!

  “I’m sorry. We had to be here.”

  “Sorry?” he yelled, free hand balling into a fist.

  Ia didn’t dodge. It connected painfully hard with the side of her face, rocking her sideways with the force of the blow. Sidestepping to catch her balance had an added benefit; it carried her out of range of a second punch, since his left arm was still caught in the workings of his suit.

  “Private!” Helstead snapped, hurrying forward even as he tried swinging again. Her scowl overshadowed the fact that she was clad only in her underwear and a single sock, her fury palpable. “I will personally throw you in the brig for that!”

  “Stand down and belay that, Commander,” Ia ordered her, holding out her arm to stay Helstead’s advance. The fingers of her other hand touched her cheek, testing the heat and tenderness of the bruise. “No Fatality has been committed here. I will not punish a man for an action wrought by grief. Not when I am directly responsible for it.”

  Helstead and Smitt weren’t the only ones who blinked at that admission. Ia seized their stunned quiet.

  “Every single second of my day, soldier, I make decisions like this. I know the names of your father and sister. I can tell you exactly what your sister said when she was eight and skinned her knee sliding down the stairs of your home, when you caught her crying from it at the bottom step. I know what you said to her. I know every single person who died on that planet two hours ago,” Ia told him, letting her grief harden her words. “I know them, and I know the names and words and faces of every single person their sacrifice has saved in this war.

  “We came here, to this colonyworld, because the words of the Gatsugi poet we saved will turn the tide for us. In two years and forty-eight days, the High Nestor Conference will hear those words being rebroadcast by sympathizers from the Dlmvlan mining colony located two light-years and forty-seven light-days from here,” she added, pointing off to her left in the vague direction of that other system, “and that poetic speech, coupled with all my other efforts, will finally drag their collective asteroids into this fight. Having the Dlmvla behind us will turn the tide of this war.

  “But no one else could be spared to come here on this day. With all the other battles that have to be fought, no one else could be spared to go there, either,” she stated, pointing first down at their feet, then off to the right, toward his lost homeworld. “Hate me if you like, but I have known for years that half your family would die tonight…and I could do nothing for them but try to save the rest of the galaxy.”

  Dropping her hand to her side, she stared at him, vision swimming with unshed tears.

  “Hate me all you like, Smitt. I know I deserve it,” she admitted quietly. “Take comfort in the fact that there is nothing you could say or do to me that would be worse than having to live with the names, and the words, and the screaming faces of every single living being who has, is, and will be slaughtered because of this war. I have lived with this weight for the last nine-plus years, and I will continue to live with it, year after year, until the day that I die.”

  She held his gaze, implacable in her resolve. Unrelenting in her message. Smitt finally blinked and looked away. Ia drew in a ragged breath and let it out slowly, collecting herself.

  “I am sorry—more than you will ever know—but in war, some may have to die so that others may live…and some must die, so that others will live.” Ia met his gaze as he looked back at her. “I am sorry for your pain. I am sorry that I could not save your kin. I am not, however, sorry I chose to give up the lives of 4,179 brave and undeserving Humans and the fifteen valiant Tlassians sharing that colony with them in exchange for the continued existence of the trillions of sentients who will still be alive in the Alliance five-plus years from now, thanks to the Dlmvla finally joining our side.”

  He blinked at that. Ia twisted up the corner of her mouth in a humorless mock-smile. The bitter grimace accompanied her final, quiet words.

  “This is but a very small fraction of the hell that I have had to live through every single day of my life. My gifts can save this galaxy, but they come with a very heavy price. Yes, you have paid with the loss of your family. I have paid with my soul…and I may have to ask more than this tragedy from all of you in the days ahead.

  “As you were, Private Smitt, meioas. We still have a lot of work to do before we can rest.” Turning on her heel, she left him and the others in the bay to contemplate her news.

  Behind her, Helstead growled at Smitt. “You may be off the hook for hitting your CO, Private, but you will not do that again. You’re on filter duty and floor-mopping until I say so!”

  “She admitted she murdered my f—” Smitt started to argue, raising his voice.

  “Welcome to Hell, soldier!” Helstead snarled, her words echoing off the bulkheads and alcoves as Ia left the bay. “They only call it a war to make it sound better!”

  Ia tapped the control panel for the prep-bay door as she stepped through, cutting off whatever else her second officer might say.

  AUGUST 16, 2496 T.S.

  SIC TRANSIT

  Bennie stared at her friend and commanding officer, who slouched low in the seat across from her.

  Ia knew why the older woman stared. She looked like hell. She’d seen her own face in the mirror, shadows under her eyes, skin a little too pale, and other signs of exhaustion both mental and physical.

  “So. How have you been sleeping?” Bennie finally asked her.

  “I haven’t.” The admission was blunt.

  Pausing with her mug halfway to her lips, the chaplain lifted her brows at that. “You haven’t?”

  “Not a wink. Well, not more than five or six hours since the Golden Glitters fight,” Ia dismissed, flopping a hand on the armrest. “And that’s only if you squeezed it all together, minute by minute.”

  “That’s not healthy for a Human,” the redhead observed warily. “You don’t seem cognitively impaired…”

  “I’ve been running on electricity. And some other stuff,” she said, thinking of Harper’s attempts at shooting her with low-level pulses from his prototype gun.

  Or rather, his shooting her with Helstead’s help, since the new design did indeed require a psi to power the weapon. Both lieutenant commanders were staying silent on the existence of the gun and how it worked, but then she knew they could be discreet enough. She hadn�
�t told either friend that she wasn’t sleeping, though, only Bennie. As a side effect of the design, the energy from the weapon was acting like fuel for her body; otherwise, Ia wouldn’t have been in as good shape as she still was.

  A twitch of her instincts warned her that her statement was about to be misinterpreted, so she quickly added, “Relax, Bennie. It’s nothing illegal. Just a bunch of caffeine, vitamin complexes, that sort of thing. Nothing addictive. You know I won’t do anything to mess myself up. Not with the fate of the galaxy depending on my mind.”

  “So what have you been doing with all that extra time?” Bennie asked, changing the subject. “Since you’re not using it to sleep?”

  Ia didn’t believe for a minute that her DoI-appointed counselor wouldn’t bring it back up. “Combing the timestreams for more prophecies and probability contingencies. I’m almost a week ahead of schedule, which isn’t a bad thing. I have only a finite amount of time in which to direct events down through the ages to come. It’s allowing me to flesh out some of my orders and fill in some of the otherwise neglected corners.”

  “Well, if you’re ahead of the curve for the moment, that’s good. That means you’ll cooperate when I tell you to go see the doctor for a brain scan to make sure you’re not damaging yourself, and a prescription for a sleeping aid. No arguing,” she added, as Ia drew in a breath to speak. “You said it yourself, we’re in transit for the next three days, trying to get to the other side of the known galaxy for the next crucial battle. You have time to sleep right now, and you will take it.”

  “…Yes, Mother,” Ia muttered, subsiding.

  Bennie choked a little on her caf’, coughing into a hastily raised hand. “I am not your mother, young lady! I have never earned that lofty title through the sweat and tears of raising a child. At best, I’m an honorary aunty.”

  “Then, yes, Aunty,” Ia managed to tease. She grimaced. “Do I have to go do it now?”

  Coughing again, the chaplain nodded. “You’d better. Do you want me to tell Harper and the other officers that you’re standing down for a bit of sleep, or would you rather?”

  “Me,” Ia stated. Drawing in a deep breath, she dredged up the energy to push herself upright. “Better that it seems like it’s my idea, so that it doesn’t weaken my command.”

  “Smitt will forgive you,” Bennie told her, rising as well. “The others will, too. Just give them a little more time.”

  That made her snort; if she’d been drinking, Ia would’ve choked, too. “Time is the one thing I have very little of to spare.”

  AUGUST 20, 2496 T.S.

  BATTLE PLATFORM KAISER’S COACH

  INTERSTITIAL SPACE

  “Captain, I have an incoming link from a Lieutenant First Grade Gregory Bruer, Navy,” Private Kirkman stated. “It’s on an open channel, sir, uncoded. Is this a legitimate call, sir?”

  His mellow low tenor interrupted the relative quiet that pervaded the bridge whenever the Hellfire was docked somewhere for repairs. In other words, between the distant clunks and bangs and drill-rasping sounds of various broken chunks of the ship being swapped out for undamaged ones by the Battle Platform’s repair crews. Ia knew why her communications tech hesitated to mention it. Most of their messages were heavily encrypted.

  She hadn’t remembered that this call might happen, but it was a legitimate one. Nodding, she lifted her chin at her workstation screens. “It’s legit. Scramble our end with the beta codes for the day and put it on my left secondary when it pings through.”

  “Aye, sir.” His fingers shifted over his console controls for several moments. “…Receiving pingback on the beta, sir. It’s been routed through five different hubs, so you’ll have a seven-second delay.”

  It might have been only three years since she had last seen Cadet Bruer at the end of their time in the Academy together, but the dark-haired man had picked up at least two strands of grey in the interim, and about six years’ worth of aging in his face. He looked like someone could stand to order him to bed for several hours of drug-induced sleep, too.

  “Hello, Bruer,” Ia stated, waiting for his end to catch her signal. “I’m glad to see you’re alive.”

  “Ship’s Captain…oh, God,” he breathed almost at the same time, staring into the pickups with a slightly dazed look. “You have no idea…or maybe you do…” He paused, receiving her greeting, and nodded fervently. “Oh, yes, yes, I am alive! And most of our crew is, thanks to you. I mean, you told me I’d be on a crippled ship, about to be reeled in and boarded by the Salik, but…

  “I did it, you know,” he stated. He did so somewhat proudly, pulling his shoulders back. “I advised the Commodore to fake a greater incapacity, and to manually fire the weapons when they launched the boarding pods. It was an ugly fight once they boarded, but the majority of us survived. We kited our ship barely ahead of theirs so they couldn’t grapple on and board in full, until two more from the fleet came to our rescue. We had to be towed off for repairs, but that was yesterday. We’re very much alive today, thanks to you.”

  She smiled. “Then I’m very glad you remembered, Bruer.”

  “Thank you.” Bruer’s words were simple, but heartfelt. “I can’t say it enough. Just…thank you! I’ve heard you’re a precognitive, and I wish I’d known back then…but then that does explain why you were so good in the combat simulations—I’m not taking you from anything important, am I?” he added quickly. “I mean, Ship’s Captain, already! Look at you! If you can do for even a fraction of the fleet what you’ve done for me and my crew…”

  “I work directly with the Command Staff and the Admiral-General these days,” Ia told him. “So yes, I am doing it. And I’m currently at dock, undergoing repairs. They’re almost through, though, then it’s back into another highly classified patrol.”

  “Good. Good,” he praised, looking relieved. Fervently relieved. “You tell me to do anything, Ia, I’ll do it. I will do it. Uh, so long as it doesn’t break any Fatalities, of course.”

  “Of course,” she agreed, amused by the hedging. She dipped her head in acknowledgment. “I’m not going to hold you up any longer. I know you have a lot of repairs to make so you can get back out there.”

  “Of course—just, thank you. And heed your own advice, young Cadet,” he ordered her, pointing his finger at the screen. “I’d like you to still be around when this all ends, so I can thank you in person, and buy you a drink.”

  Ia smiled wistfully. “I’d like that, too. I’ll see if it can be arranged. Oh, ‘Cadet’ Harper says hi…or he would, if he weren’t busy cursing my name while trying to put our ship back together. He’s now my first officer and chief engineer.”

  Bruer grinned. “Good! Tell him he still owes me twenty credits for that last targeting game we had…and our comm tech says my time is up,” he added, glancing to the side. “Just…thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” Ia told him before ending the transmission on her end.

  “Old Academy friend, Captain?” Kirkman asked her once the signals stopped going through.

  She sighed, slumping back in her seat. “An alive Academy friend. Not everyone will be by the time this is through.”

  “So…you really do know who’s going to live and who’s going to die?” he asked, turning in his seat to glance at her. The comm tech wasn’t one of the ones who had asked to see the timeplains for himself. “You’ve always known?”

  “For the ones I’ve bothered to look up, regarding the vast majority of their possible futures, yes. When, where, how, and why.” She met his gaze wryly. “Smitt’s family wasn’t the first, and I’m very sorry to say they won’t be the last.”

  He turned back to his boards, muttering under his breath. “…I am very glad I’m not you, sir.”

  “Oddly enough, so am I,” she sighed. “I wouldn’t wish this kind of hell on anyone.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Yes…you would ask that question, wouldn’t you? I suppose it’s only fair to ask it. This interview is supposed
to be the most candid one I’ll ever give, and I haven’t exactly been candid on that particular fiasco. I cannot—will not—answer your question directly. There are forces at work which, if disturbed, would shatter the duct tape I’ve applied to the universe. But indirectly, I can.

  Have you ever worked so hard on something that it became your whole world? Some project so deeply close and personal to your heart that it defined you? No? Plenty of people have, of course, but many more have not. Those who have often try to explain it in metaphor to those who have not. Allow me to try that with you. Maybe you’ll finally understand.

  I had a teacup, once. A very special and precious cup. This teacup was something of an heirloom, not very special to anyone else, but ancient and irreplaceable in its value to me. I guarded it, and used it, and valued it…I treasured that teacup until one day, one unexpected day…it fell, and it broke.

  It broke so badly that all of my horses and all of my men could not put that teacup back together again.

  ~Ia

  NOVEMBER 15, 2496 T.S.

  MIDSYSTEM ICE BELT

  KELLINGS 588

  She had a pixie in her living room. Sighing heavily, Ia tapped her office door shut. “No.”

  Belini arched one brow, hands going to her blue-clad hips. “I think yes.”

  “No. I am tired, and just…no.”

  She was sleeping better these days, but Harper’s gun had left her nerves a frazzled mess. Her first officer and chief engineer was still trying to tune the crystals just right for maximum effect, but that meant using Ia for both the test subject and the tuner, and that took energy. Ia didn’t have time to get any sleep right now, but she did have enough time for a hot, reviving shower…if she could get rid of the persistent pixie in her presence.

  “Hastings’ World isn’t that far from here, even by FTL,” Belini reminded her, following Ia toward her bedroom. “It won’t take more than five or six hours to get close enough to drop me off if you’re already going that way, or five or six minutes if we slip out that way via OTL.”