by Scott Rhine
“You think they blew up their own star? To what end?”
“I don’t know Omar. If I had more time, I might be able to find out. I can’t even confirm what I’m saying right now.” Franklin turned to his former squad mate. “Zane, if you don’t mind I’d like a moment alone with the captain. Oh and Zane, it has been an honor to serve with you.” Zane saluted the small man, unsure if it was the right thing to do.
“I will miss you, my friend.” Zane said, as much for Omar’s benefit as for Franklin’s. He wondered how true the words really were.
Franklin died later that day. Life on the ship returned to a semblance of normalcy quicker than Zane could have imagined. He had assumed that the sensitive emotions of the other humans would be in disarray. Omar seemed more concerned with having Pulan extract as many of the nanocytes as he could from both corpses for study than mourning for either man. Bella withdrew from sight for a few days and then returned as though nothing had happened. Zane asked Omar about her resiliency. The man had only replied, “She’d already buried two husbands before you were hatched. Loss like that doesn’t get easier to bear but it does get easier to hide.”
Chapter 9
Months passed and after reuniting the Fleet returned to business as usual. The crew of the Moving Finger and Omar in particular had become polarizing figures in the ranks of the Fleet since the incident. For some he was a rogue element whose rash decisions had almost brought down the entire Fleet. To others he was a savior who had managed to not only warn the Fleet of their impending doom but managed to avert an enemy plot to stop them from leaving.
The upside was that the Moving Finger was nearly always involved in the action when the Fleet entered a new system. Those who supported him wanted him at the forefront of negotiations in new systems while his opponents sought to put him in harm’s way as often as possible.
Zane saw more planets up close than most men in the Fleet. His inborn talents for tactics made him an ideal leader in combat situations. He gained a fierce reputation even among the hardened soldiers of the Damascus, the sole surviving battleship in the Fleet. Zane knew that even as Omar relied more and more on his superior skills in war that the man pitied him. Zane might not have been designed for love but anger was something which had not been bred out of him. Even as he wished he could change and become a man worthy of Omar’s respect he questioned why he should have to. Who was to say that Omar’s view of the world was any better than his own?
It was easy for him to convince himself during the light of day that his way was the better. On missions his ruthless tactics won the day in a way that Omar’s moralizing never would have done. He was well liked by the soldiers from the other ships while Omar was nearly always a solitary figure. At the end of the day though, when he lay down to sleep he felt empty inside and all the victories in the world did nothing to fill that void. He could not deny at those times that something essential was missing from his life.
Zane leaned against the side of the Moving Finger, his rifle slung by his side casually. The Fleet had opted for a quiet agrarian world to visit after a particularly nasty encounter with an alien species known as the Klath. They had seemed harmless and the Fleet had tried to muscle them as they often did. The Klath ships had been altered literally overnight into warships which inflicted serious casualties on the Fleet’s finest. By choosing a primitive world, they hoped to gain some breathing room while they made repairs.
The world was a quiet one and other than a few rabble rousers upon landing, there had been no trouble with the locals. Zane waved at the young messenger girl as she left the ship carrying Omar’s message to some local headman. The girl waved back and smiled before skipping across the ruined landing field.
“Nice kid, that one.” He said to Bella, who stood guard across from him. He had grown more comfortable with Bella over the past months, finding her outlook less judgmental than Omar’s. She seemed prepared to accept him for what he was, a trait he attributed to her age.
“You think so?” Bella replied. “You know she has a crush on you, right?” Zane shrugged.
“So? She’s just a kid.”
“She’s got a decade of life on you, Pinocchio.”
“That’s not the same thing. Soldiers are created as fully formed adults, mind and body. We are made mature.”
“Keep telling yourself that. Maybe one day you’ll believe it. By the time I was her age I had already had four boyfriends. How many girls have you been with?”
“That is an unfair question.” Zane bristled. Bella knew quite well that his experience with women consisted of a few women soldiers eager to try out the supersoldier. None had attempted to form any kind of relationship with him, much to his relief. “Are you trying to say I should hook up with the kid?”
“No!” She replied. “That you even thought that’s what I meant is my point. She may be young but her decisions are at least informed by her own experience. Any decisions she makes are her own to make. Yours are more suspect.” Zane was starting to think he shouldn’t have said anything at all.
“Are you trying to start a fight with me, Bella?” The woman sighed and leaned her oversized rifle against the ship.
“I’m sorry, Zane. I don’t mean to be snippy. I’ve just been thinking about those damned nanocytes. I’m starting to worry that Omar is getting obsessed with them, trying to find answers to impossible questions.”
“You don’t think he’d try to use them himself? Franklin told him they weren’t designed to interact with an adult brain. The only reason Franklin didn’t die instantly is because his brain was designed for increased activity and was young enough to retain some inherent plasticity.”
“Omar doesn’t always act rationally. If he thought it would help him save the galaxy, he might do it. After Franklin told him the Fleet wasn’t responsible for the stellar collapses it’s like he’s obsessed with finding out who was. He thinks the nanocytes can get him the answers he needs.”
“You could destroy the stuff.”
“No, he’d never forgive me for that.”
“Well unless you’ve got a prepubescent kid up your sleeve to put the stuff in its not going anywhere.”
“My only child is older than me by now. I have no idea where we could find anyone willing to put that stuff in their child’s brain. There aren’t a lot of children in the Fleet.”
“What about that local girl, Sasha? I bet with a little persuasion she’d go for it.”
“You want to abduct a girl and put nanocytes into her brain just to satisfy Omar’s curiosity?”
“Not abduct, persuade. She’s curious and smart as a whip. You should have seen her face when I showed her the feeds from orbit. I bet I could convince her to come with us in a day, two tops.”
“That’s pretty callous, even for you Zane. Not only would you take her away from her family, but you have no idea what the bugs would do to her brain. They could turn her into a monster like Price or kill her like…” Bella didn’t finish the sentence. Zane jumped in to distract her.
“As you said Bella, I’m not a real boy. I was designed to solve tactical problems. You asked for a solution that will keep the boss safe and I gave you one. The nanowhatevers will only work in a kid’s brain. Omar wants them used. The kid is here, ready and near enough to willing. Plus, she seems nice, like she maybe won’t use the machines to kill us all or anything.”
“It’s still pretty cold. We chose this life, Zane. Each of us had a good reason to leave behind our homeworlds. What reason does Sasha have? She seems happy here.”
“We left because we were all running away from something. Me from the war, you from old age and Omar from poverty. Sasha might want to run toward something instead. She wants to learn more than this backwater world will ever be able to teach her. That seems like it might be a better reason than any of us had.”
“Maybe so. Omar will never go for it though.”
“Don’t be too sure. You always see him as a good guy but I know he’s
a pragmatist at heart. If he thinks plugging Sasha into the machines will give him his answers and possibly prevent other systems from blowing up, he’d do it. He’ll act all torn up about it afterward but it wouldn’t stop him.”
“One thing I know for sure is that he doesn’t like being talked about behind his back.” Omar’s voice startled Zane. He turned toward the silver haired man standing behind him in the open hatchway.
“Sorry boss.” Zane said, pulling himself up into a more formal stance.
“It’s ok. I found it… informative. Don’t worry Bella, I was never planning on trying to inject the nanocytes into my brain. Pulan showed me Franklin’s autopsy. I may be foolish but I’m not suicidal. Zane’s idea has merit, but I’m not inclined to lure a child away from her home so that we may use her, even if it could ‘save the galaxy’. If she were to come to me and ask to come with us that would be a different story.”
“You’d really do that to this girl?” Bella’s voice had more than a hint of accusation in it.
“I would. We have some leeway with the Fleet captains but there are still many that would like to see me gone. We saw what one individual with limited access to the interface was capable of. An asset with full access could give me just the leverage I need to hold back the hawks in the council permanently so we can avoid situations like that last one.”
“Told you so.” Zane couldn’t help but prod Bella. He knew it would turn her rising anger toward him but it would defuse the argument she was about to start with Omar. It was part of a soldier’s job to keep the heat off his CO.
“Shut up, Zane.” Bella jumped onto the ramp and pushed past Omar as she entered the ship. She paused for a moment and Zane heard her say in almost a whisper. “I’m disappointed in you Omar.” After she closed the hatch to her room, Omar nodded turned to Zane.
“Zane, I don’t want you pressuring that girl to join up. If she wants in, she’ll come to us. Do you understand?” Zane nodded and Omar returned to the cockpit of the Finger.
Zane took his orders with a grain of salt. He never said anything outright to Sasha about joining the Fleet but he did take extra time to show the girl some of the more exciting aspects of Fleet life over the next few days. She was endlessly curious so his job was easy. The hardest part was glossing over the fact that the Fleet was a pretty tough bunch. Zane had been sure he had her firmly on the hook when he slipped up.
“This is my LPW rifle,” He said one day while showing off his favorite rifle. “It was the best I could get at a bazaar on Jilk IV. The handgrip is a bit wonky since the weapon wasn’t designed for humans but its still one of the best firearms in the Fleet. I had the geeks on the Westinghouse fab this interface so that I could use it. There was no way I was going to learn all the squiggles the Jilks used as language.” Sasha was always interested in technology beyond that on Lanis. Alien tech even more so.
“What does LPW mean?”
“Light, Projectile and Wavelength. It’s a multipurpose weapon adapted to virtually all combat situations. It can hit with a focused beam strong enough to cook a target from a hundred meters, shoot flechette rounds capable of tearing through hardened steel and emit broad wavelengths of sound to incapacitate crowds.”
“Incapacitate? You mean it doesn’t have to kill?”
“Nah, hit a target with the right wavelength and you can drop them without injury. Good for when your team is in the line of fire or you want hostages.”
“So you didn’t have to kill the councilor?”
“Who?” Zane was genuinely confused for a moment before he realized what she was saying.
“The man you murdered when your ships first landed.”
“Hey!” Zane stepped back indignantly. “Murder is a strong word and has a specific meaning. First of all, I was following orders, good ones at that. Also, killing him probably saved a dozen more lives.”
“Probably? So you admit you killed him over a might have.”
“Yes, I did. I’d do it again too. Life isn’t all easy choices, Sasha. I’ve seen the consequences of letting guys like that live. It’s ugly.”
“Ugly for you, maybe. He never harmed anyone before you showed up and shot him.”
“Guys like that stir up trouble, it’s what they do best. If I incapacitated him, he’d have convinced a bunch of locals to attempt an attack to drive us away. Then we’d have to kill more in defense of the ships.”
“You could have stunned them as well though, couldn’t you?”
“I could. Omar would probably even ask me to do so. Thing is, you see those guys over there?” Zane motioned to the milling soldiers from the other ships. “They wouldn’t have used stunners even if they had them. They would have killed anyone attacking them and might have gone into town afterward looking for trouble if any of them were unlucky enough to get hurt.”
“Don’t they have to listen to Omar as well?” Zane snorted in derision.
“Yeah, but only so long as he has the situation under control. The second they think things have gone sideways they’ll stop taking orders from him and start shooting. A lot of those guys think Omar’s weak because he tries to minimize casualties. It’s only because he has the backing of a few of the Fleet Captains that he is even in charge down here.”
“I didn’t realize. You’re saying that the rest of the fleet is worse?” Zane decided a modicum of truth was necessary now.
“Much worse. From what Bella tells me, before Omar became a captain the Fleet had very different ways of dealing with planets like Lanis. They’d blow any defensive positions from orbit and drop troops directly into the city. Any resistance would be met lethally.”
“How did Omar manage to change that? You told me that his ship isn’t very big or well armed compared to the others in orbit. Why do they listen to him?”
“You got me there. His way is usually cheaper I guess. Munitions have to be replaced but I’d guess there is something else going on. Omar has this way of making you question the easy path. He somehow got under the skin of the captains of two of the biggest ships out there, the Sikorsky and the Westinghouse. He doesn’t make waves often, but when he does they listen, at least for now. Anyway, let’s get on with the weapon training. This is where you toggle between firing types.”
Zane thought he had maneuvered Sasha pretty well into the slot for Omar, getting her to ask him for a trip up to the Sikorsky. He was sure once she saw the ships she wouldn’t want to go back to her farmworld. He was right too. By the time they docked she was signed up and had even agreed to the implants. He expected a pat on the back from Omar but the man’s voice when he called him into his cabin on the Sikorsky was anything but congratulatory.
Zane entered the cabin tentatively, traveling mostly on inertia. Bella was already there and several parts of Pulan lounged in a small pile together, not merged but in contact. Omar had pulled himself to the far end of the room, separating himself from the others.
“Shut the hatch, Zane.” Omar’s voice was tense.
“What’s up boss? I thought things were going pretty well?” Zane tried to break the ice but Omar was having none of it. He stared at Zane for a long moment before speaking.
“When I give orders I expect them to be obeyed, not skirted. I told you not to pressure the girl into joining.”
“I didn’t…”
“No, you just made our life out to be a grand adventure, full of mystery and excitement. I note that you left mass murder and wanton mayhem out of your descriptions of life in the Fleet. Then you convinced her to ask me for a trip up here, knowing that it would give her a glimpse of a world she would never know if she remained home. You walked her into this every step of the way. I’d be proud of your ingenuity if you weren’t acting in direct opposition to my wishes.” Zane started to counter but one dark look cut him off before he could speak.
“However, you believed you were acting in our best interests. Bella, on the other hand flat out disobeyed my order and told Sasha directly to ask me to let her joi
n our crew.” Zane was surprised at that. He had never known Bella to disobey an order and had thought she had disagreed with the idea in the first place.
“Omar, let me explain…” Bella started to say.
“No, you don’t need to explain. I can already guess your motives. You disregarded my order and did it on the ship so that I would know that you had done it. You figured you could force me to turn Sasha down since you goaded her into asking, effectively making her decision for her.”
“She just a child, Omar. She doesn’t know the kind of life she’s giving up. She doesn’t understand what you’re asking of her. When I think of what life in the Fleet will do to her…”
“Well it’s up to you to make her understand. I told her that her decision isn’t final until we break orbit. I want you to tell her the truth. Give her all the facts, including your own deception and let her make a fully informed decision. I’m truly disappointed in the both of you. Dismissed.”
Zane followed Bella into the corridor but the woman didn’t seem inclined to speak. Still, he had something he wanted to say and she was going to hear it. He caught her arm, causing them both to spin slowly together in the corridor.
“Bella, do you know why I tried to convince Sasha to come with us?”
“You wanted to use her brain to help Omar. I get it. You’re a great little soldier Zane, congratulations.” The woman’s voice was almost a growl. Zane ignored the tone and continued.
“In the beginning, yes, but hen I got to know her. She’s brilliant, smarter than all of us put together, except maybe Pulan. She’ll be stunted if she stays down there. She won’t ever have the chance to live up to her potential. I wanted to give her the same chance Omar gave me.”
“What do you mean?”
“You call me Pinocchio but I think sometimes you still don’t really get it. Leaving my home opened the world to me in ways you can’t imagine. It’s about context. Who I was before made sense because that person fit the world I lived in. I didn’t move the world, it moved me. Now I can see how stunted I am. Maybe I still live in the shadow of what I was designed to be but at least now I have a choice. It’s the same with Sasha, except she already senses how limited her world is. There is a part of her that wants more. How can I let her remain down there, copying manuscripts on paper for the rest of her life? You worry that we will be pulling her out of her life. I’d say that we’ve saving her from it.”
