Hellfire (THEIRS NOT TO REASON WHY)

by Jean Johnson

  Ia shook her head, then wobbled it. “No, I mean three centuries, sir, as in a vague figure of inexactitude. It wouldn’t do to give everyone in this day and age an exact date of their arrival because the moment the invaders are actually noticed will depend on who does the noticing, and how much of that information gets back to my prophesied agents. It’s enough for people in this era to know that it will happen at a rough date in the future because there is nothing we can do to stop something that’ll take place long after we’re all dead. We have other problems on our hands right now.”

  “Charming. And so very cheerful. So. This gunner, Private N’Keth…Wait, is that N’Keth, as in that holy lineage from V’Dan? The one with the special blue jungen marks?” Myang asked her, frowning.

  “Sir, yes, sir,” Ia confirmed. “He doesn’t have any himself, but he is of that bloodline. He’s from Eiaven, which is a jointly settled heavyworld, and chose to go into the Terran service rather than the V’Dan. Just as Helstead, who is also from Eiaven, chose to go into the Terran Space Force, and just as I chose that way as well, coming from Sanctuary.”

  Again, Myang mulled over her words for longer than the hyperrelay’s turnaround time would allow.

  “…He’s really that important?” she finally asked Ia.

  “I wouldn’t have panicked so badly that Helstead reacted to my psychic broadcast without a thought for the rules and regs if he wasn’t, sir,” Ia pointed out dryly. That much was the truth, if one counted the way the shorter woman had given chase, trying to prevent Ia from killing Private Sung. “If I could’ve saved him myself, I would’ve, regardless of the consequences…and I would accept the punishment for Grand High Treason during wartime as part of our agreement, but you still need me to be very much alive, sir.”

  This time, her reply came back within the allotted turnaround time. “Alive and uncaned?” Myang asked her dryly, sitting back from the screen a little. “Is that what you’re going to ask for next?”

  “Sir, no, sir,” Ia denied crisply. “I accepted my double-indemnity with the willingness of full foresight of all possible consequences. However many strokes the tribunal assigns to Private Sung, I will endure them, blow for blow, without restraint or hesitation. It is only being hung, drawn, and quartered that I object to, sir. It’d be a little too difficult to continue saving the galaxy this week if I’m not alive to do it. You still need me at the helm of this ship, and its replacement…but there’s nothing in there that says I have to be comfortable while I’m in the pilot’s seat, sir.”

  Myang studied Ia for several seconds, then nodded. “Very well. Dispensation granted, so long as this Private N’Keth is kept sedated the entire time he remains on board the Hellfire…and in the understanding that you will disembark and revive him the moment you are safely docked at…uh, Battle Platform Hum-Vee. Since that is the nearest source of the Judge Advocate General’s branch of the Special Forces, assuming you haven’t left the Helix Nebula?”

  “Sir, no sir. We are still within the same cometary knot as the rest of the local fleet and are inbound to the Hum-Vee as I speak,” Ia reassured her. “Private Sung has been a valuable member of my crew. I’m not quite sure what possessed him to keep shooting despite my clearly issued orders to cease fire. But the timestreams suggest he will recover from his punishment and serve on this ship with a greater level of obedience and devotion, so I shall suggest to the tribunal judges that he be given a caning only, with no incarceration.”

  Myang lifted her brows. “No time in the brig? You don’t have to be afraid of incarceration yourself, you know. Your double-indemnity clause only covers corporal punishments, so you wouldn’t have to be stuffed into a cell alongside him.”

  “I know I don’t have to, Admiral-General,” Ia admitted. “But I need good gunners on board, ones who aren’t needed on other ships. Despite his extreme lapse in good judgment, Private Sung is still a good gunner, and I can still use him as I continue to fight for you.”

  That made Myang grunt. She looked tired again, tired and sleepy. “Unfortunately, you have a point. Preliminary intelligence culled from the wreckage of that shipyard base suggests there are several others out there. We will need every good gunner we can get. I’ll pass along a recommendation of my own to keep him out of the brig. I trust that, stroke for stroke, you will be even more careful in the future not to abuse your carte blanche.”

  “I am very determined to avoid anything like this in the future, sir,” Ia vowed fervently. “One more thing. Please remind Admiral Genibes to pass along the design corrections I sent you last week to the crews working on the Hellfire’s replacement. If they’re applied now, that should speed up the construction process.”

  “I am not your personal messenger service, Captain…and I’m getting tired of your little ‘one more thing’ quips. Myang out.” Shifting her arm, she thumped what had to be the controls for a bedside screen, and vanished from view.

  The monitor replaced her oversized face with its default display of their dead-ahead view. Ia wasn’t offended by Myang’s retort. She knew the woman would remember to tell Genibes within twenty-four hours.

  Sitting back, she contemplated the field of stars and the slowly increasing, green-highlighted dot that would eventually resolve itself into the prickle-burr shape of Battle Platform Hum-Vee. Ia had once used it as a base of operations for the two years she served on the now-broken Salik Blockade. A glance at the chrono showed Ia the time—near midnight. If Myang had been asleep, either she had been forced to work off-shift for Aloha City and the Tower, or she had gone halfway around the world for some reason, perhaps to the Space Force Intelligence Division headquartered in Paris. Ia didn’t know, and right now, she was too tired to care.

  Regardless, the interview had taken place, successfully navigated. Sighing in relief, Ia slumped back in her seat. “Well. That’s one obstacle down. Nabouleh, finish docking us at the Hum-Vee. Kirkman, coordinate with the JAG office on board the Battle Platform to arrange a quick tribunal for Private Sung. I’m going to advise him not to contest the charges since we have him dead to rights with all the onboard surveillance equipment. This isn’t some dirtside battlefield where it’s a case of he said, she said.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kirkman agreed, moving to comply.

  “While you’re waiting for them to get back to you, inform the entire crew that the moment we dock, the ship is to be sealed and secured at dock, and all personnel—all personnel, from bridge crew through to engineering and lifesupport, asleep or awake, are to report to the boardroom, excepting only Doctor Mishka, Lieutenant Commander Helstead, and the patient in the Infirmary.”

  “Sir?” he asked her.

  She knew he was questioning the unusualness of her order. Once military starships left a construction yard and filled with a crew, until the day they were decommissioned or destroyed, they were always monitored. On the bridge, in engineering, and in lifesupport, the three most vital parts of any vessel, there was always, always someone on duty in case of emergency. On civilian ships, the rules could be relaxed, but never on a military vessel.

  In this case, though, damage control had to come first, and it had to include her whole crew.

  “Company Bible rule number one, Private. Orders issued by Ship’s Captain Ia take precedence over all other orders, rules, and regulations. They may be questioned, but they still take precedence.” Rising from her seat, she crossed to the back door. “If you’ll excuse me, I have had a very long day, one made even longer by having to spend the last three hours cleaning up the mess Private Sung made. And now I need to go change into a Dress uniform since my day doesn’t end when we dock.

  “I will explain what I can at the boardroom meeting, once I have freshened up. You have your orders, gentlemeioas. Dock the ship, secure it, and make your way to the boardroom.”

  FEBRUARY 4, 2497 T.S.

  Once again, she paused just inside the alcove to the boardroom. Paused, breathed slow and deep, and squared her shoulders. It was just past
midnight, Terran Standard Mean Time, which meant she had been up for over thirty hours, not counting her four-hour nap almost a day ago. Every time she let herself feel anything about this situation, icy-sick waves of dread kept sweeping through her body from skin to bones, leaving nausea in its wake. That nausea mixed badly with her exhaustion, leaving her drained with the fear that it could happen again.

  But “fear is the mind-killer,” as the old saying goes. I accept my fear. I embrace my dread. I know what my worst-case scenarios are, Ia reminded herself. I have met one, been overwhelmed by it…and yet I survive. The universe—the rightful path in Time—survives. Duct-taped back together, but it still survives.

  Reassured, she moved out of the alcove and onto the dais. And nearly stopped. Lieutenant Spyder wasn’t seated at the head table as expected. Instead, he stood in the aisle next to one of the front-row tier seats. He did so with his muscular arms folded across his lean chest, looking tired but still as tough and competent as any Marine she’d known.

  Beside him, hands in his lap, thumbs cuffed together in restraints since his wrist was being held immobile in a cast while the bone-setting enzymes did their work, sat Private Sung. For a moment, Ia closed her eyes. I did not expect Sung to be brought here…but I guess I’m a victim of my own exact wording. Every single crew member except for Doctor Mishka and Lieutenant Commander Helstead…which means I’m hoisted up into the air on my own exploding petard.

  Brilliant. At least I know for sure that some of my crew are willing to obey my commands to the letter…and the timestreams say I can use this to my advantage. She still couldn’t see very far, but that might have been from the fact that working with Belini to imprint Hollick’s mind and body with everything the original N’Keth knew had drained a lot of energy out of her.

  Gathering her wits, Ia continued forward. Not to the table, but to the front row. Pointing at Sung, she swept her finger behind her. “You will take a seat at the officers’ table. You will sit there and be respectful of the authority that table represents while I explain to everyone who you are and what you have done.”

  Not quite meeting her gaze, he nodded and rose. Spyder followed him, and stood behind him when Sung took one of the empty seats at the end. Moving around the other side of the table, Ia stepped in front of her chair but did not sit down. To underscore the severity of the moment, Ia had donned her Dress Blacks and the full complement of her glittery, which required wearing a modified, knee-length version of her jacket. The only thing missing was the cap back in her quarters. She didn’t need it just yet.

  She began with the facts.

  “Just a few hours ago, during the battle against the Salik and Choya forces yesterday, Private Second Class Goré Sung willfully committed an act of Fatality Five: Disobeying a Direct Order, which resulted in an act of Fatality Thirteen: Friendly Fire. The evidence for these charges is absolute. Surveillance scanners pinpointed the offending laser turret as being under his control, and diagnostics prove his headset was fully functional the entire time that I gave repeating orders for all starboard gunners, including him, to cease fire at a specific time.

  “Fatality,” she stated coldly, “is exactly the word for it. For whatever reason Private Sung disobeyed my direct, precognitively backed order, his willful act of disobedience resulted in the death of Private First Grade Joseph N’ablo N’Keth, from the impact of his Starstrike laser on an emerging projectile missile being launched from Private N’Keth’s turret.

  “Make no mistake about this: The original Joseph N’keth is dead. Dead. Dead. Dead,” she repeated. “And with his death, Private Sung single-handedly destroyed an entire bloodline necessary to prevent the destruction of our entire galaxy three hundred years into the future.

  “That is why I ordered everyone down our starboard flank to cease fire, because I knew the Salik shipyard of Station 5 would fall apart under the force of the incoming blossom bombs. I knew there was a chance that one of our weapons would damage the Hardberger’s hull if we kept firing. Private Sung is personally responsible for the end of the Human race—the end of every race in this galaxy—starting three centuries from now, defeated by an alien race so advanced, the Greys fled from them in terror.”

  She turned to face him. Sung looked pale, sitting there with slumped shoulders and a crumpled air about him. No one spoke, though a few of his fellow crew members shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

  “I had one shot at getting it right. One path to carefully tend, to make sure that every person, every moment, every chance encounter was not by chance but instead instigated by need and design, to create the one person capable of stopping the advance of that enemy race. And you shattered it, Private Sung. For whatever reason you thought you had, you shattered it.” She let that sink in, watching him blanch and crumple inward a little more, huddling awkwardly in his seat. “But by a twist of luck, and the grace of a good man of deep and abiding faith…I am able to repair most of the damage you made. Not all of it, but most.

  “As a result of this twist, this trompe l’oeil I have just spent the last duty watch patching, testing, and altering so that the galaxy will survive…Private Sung technically will not be held responsible for the obliteration of this galaxy and all of its native residents.” Ia let the implicit threat that he would still be culpable somehow hang in the air for a moment. She continued, shifting her gaze to the others. “One of you has volunteered to take the dead man’s place. His body has been altered, his mind repatterned, his face carefully imprinted with all the things the original Joseph N’Keth was supposed to do, without my interference, other than making sure he was supposed to survive this last fight.

  “Do not speculate among yourselves who that soldier was. Do not ever mention it outside this ship,” Ia added, jabbing her finger toward the starboard. Toward the Battle Platform holding them in dock. “You mention any of this, and Private N’Keth’s life will come unraveled, his part in being the great-plus-grandfather of the defense of this galaxy will be destroyed, and you will be held accountable for the destruction of every being, every star, and every planet, right alongside Sung.

  “Make no mistake. The Zida”ya are coming to the Milky Way. They will tear apart everything we are and everything we know like uncaring locusts. In all the months you have served with me, you have seen the accuracy of my predictions, down to the very millisecond!” she reminded them, letting some of her frustration and anger color her voice. “Do not doubt me when I say I can see tens of thousands of years into the future, with equal levels of accuracy. I have had to lie to the Admiral-General herself about what has just happened because even she would be held accountable for all those deaths if she ever found out and let slip that she knew.

  “If I could wipe your minds of all incriminating memories over the last half day, I would,” she warned the Damned. “But I am already in debt up to my eyeballs with the Feyori for pulling off this replacement trick, and that is a very ugly price to have to pay. Neither is it the only price.”

  Snapping her fingers, she activated all the main screens stationed around the room, the one behind the head table, the ones on the sidewalls, and the one over the heads of the tier seats, allowing her fellow officers and the silent, somber Private Sung to see. Those screens started scrolling small icons of faces attached to a list of names. Some had military ranks, while many others had none. Some were very old and some were very young, though most seemed to be adults.

  Not all of them were Human, either.

  “Because of Private Sung’s willful disobedience, we have not left this cometary knot. Not left the Helix Nebula. Not flown off to our next port of call. We will not be able to leave here for at least another four hours, and we will need another five on top of that to effect repairs. Even if we commandeered one of the fleet tankers to top us off fully, and wasted fuel traveling OTL to get to our next time-sensitive fight, we will still be two hours too late.”

  The names and faces continued to scroll, six columns wide, and moving so fast
, it was hard to read even a single name. The list of Humans ended, replaced by Tlassians.

  “I will be sending out precognitive directives before attending Sung’s tribunal, alerting those ships who can be spared for the coming fight, and giving them exact instructions on how to salvage everything that they can. Everything we ourselves cannot be there to do…but it still will not be quite enough.” She gestured at the monitors with each hand and explained their purpose. “What you see on the screens is a list of every single person who will die in the next two years because of our inability to be at that next battle. A list of every person that they would have saved, or begat, or influenced down through the next three hundred years would take seventeen hours at this speed to display.

  “Private Sung is no longer responsible for the destruction of our entire galaxy. But he is directly responsible for the deaths of 720,593 people between now and the appearance of the Zida”ya at the galactic edge…and I know each and every one of them.” Turning back to Sung, who swallowed and looked ready to retch, she said, “You will be given the list of these names to contemplate in your spare time. You are free to ignore them if you wish, but understand that I cannot.

  “The only person worse than you on board this ship right now is me, Goré,” she stated quietly. “For I have slaughtered more than you, and will slaughter more, in the name of saving this galaxy. Saving as many lives as I safely can is my sole motivation, and the only reason why I can act, rather than step aside and allow this galaxy to end. When you fired against my orders, somehow I doubt your reasons were quite as noble as mine…and you have added to the screams of the people I cannot save. The loss of Private Smitt’s family and homeworld were necessary.

  “These losses were not.”

  He glanced up at her, a quick peek. Ia met his gaze steadily.

  “Welcome to the hell that is my life, Private. You’re now a full-on, murderous monster, just like me.”