Cryptikon Far Freedom Part 2

by Warren Merkey

whether to turn back in failure or commit themselves to a new level of investigation that will likely compromise their ethics. At least, that is my interpretation.

  "If you can, imagine these four men creeping about barbarian space in an old, slow, starlight-drive ship for thirty years, trying to learn something about an enemy that uses jumpships. Think also about a volume of space much larger than the Union and containing a low-density population of humanity perhaps numbering just as many people as the Union.

  "For thirty years these four men had to sit and watch the Fleet raid settlements, then experience the tragedies of the victims while trying at the same time to extract useful information about the enemy. It had to be both demoralizing and infuriating.

  "Then they decided on a course of action that would bring them into direct and repeated contact with jumpship crews of the Fleet, with the goal of eventually gaining control of a jumpship so they could get strategic information from it. Their lives went from despair to hell. They were mortally wounded and resurrected many times. And they were never able to capture a jumpship.

  "What we will retrieve from the lost ship are four strangers. I can hardly force myself to read their journals from the later times. Their lives became insanely brutal. It changed them horribly. Whether we can tolerate the changes to them or ameliorate their mental condition is uncertain. But we must try. They were good and extraordinary persons, and we loved them."

  A man's image appeared behind and above Zakiya. Alexandros Gerakis was aged, bearded, and sad. He sat in a small dim room, a fold-down bed visible behind him. He was about to speak when the image froze.

  "You need not stay and watch this," Zakiya said. "I can't bear to see it again, so I'm taking Sammy home. Before I leave I want to thank everyone for their patience and fine behavior under these strange and dangerous circumstances. For those who will be leaving the ship I wish you a safe and rewarding life."

  Zakiya stood up. Khalanov and Horss both reached for Sammy, to carry him through the crowd. Jon gave way to Iggy and stayed in the gym.

  = = =

  "You just want to know everything," Zakiya said to Sammy.

  He shrugged. "Don't you?"

  Sammy had thoroughly questioned her on the culture of the Malay people, because he had met one of the Malay children and was intrigued by the differences he saw. She was glad he had such an interest, since she was once an anthropologist and still liked to think of herself as one. Sammy was particularly fond of Phuti and that was also a good sign. But the Malay child had a father and an uncle and Sammy seemed to be looking for such relationships in his own life. He had plenty of substitute uncles. He even had Freddy and Jamie as brother and sister. Now he was curious about Alex.

  "Yes, indeed," Zakiya said. "Living is learning, Sammy. If you don't want to learn anything new, then you are not very alive."

  "Gerakis is a Greek name," Sammy said.

  "Yes, Alex was of Greek heritage. You've been reading about him, haven't you?"

  "Phuti showed me where to look. He was the best starship captain there ever was."

  "Yes, he was. But more importantly, he was the best friend anyone could have."

  "Maybe he'll like me." She knew he was already contemplating having a father and perhaps even thinking about sharing her with him. He didn't mind sharing her with Freddy and Jamie but maybe he understood more about husbands and wives than she thought. Or was she being too analytical? She had never had her chance to have a real family. She wanted that chance.

  "The old Alex would love you, Sammy. But a lot has happened to him since I last saw him. I'm afraid he won't be the same man."

  "He's been fighting barbarians."

  "Yes."

  "But you will make him good again!"

  "I'll certainly try!"

  "Can I call you Mom?"

  Sammy had a way of coming out with a question that was important to him, throwing it into the middle of the discussion of another topic. This was a pleasant surprise. "I want you to call me Mom, Sammy! I want you to be my son. Did Freddy give you the idea?" She already knew Sammy had used the word Mom when referring to her to other people. Freddy had told her.

  "Then we can be even more like brothers," Sammy said.

  "Freddy likes you a lot. You know that, don't you?"

  "I kind of did. I see him a lot. He's fun to talk to! You should hear his imitation of Uncle Iggy!"

  "I'll have to ask him! That does sound like fun. How are your language lessons going? Is Standard difficult for you?"

  "I know lots of words. I just don't put them together good yet. And everybody talks to me in English so I don't get much practice. Why can't I have one of those language augments?"

  "You're still growing. Aylis doesn't want to put any hardware in you until you stop growing."

  "I know! That's what she always tells me! She says I drive her crazy. She likes me, doesn't she?"

  "Everybody likes you, Sammy, and especially Aylis. Aren't you getting just a little bit sleepy?"

  "My toes go to sleep first, then my feet, then my legs, on up to my hands and arms. My brain has to wait its turn. Jamie kissed me, last time I was in the hospital!"

  "Do you want me to call her in from the bridge, so she can put your brain to sleep?"

  "No, that's alright. She's too busy. Are you going to the bridge?"

  "No, I'll be here all night, sound asleep."

  "What are you doing?"

  "I'm about to kiss you good night. Do you mind?"

  "Heck, no! That's what moms are for!"

  "And that means no more questions! Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Go to sleep." She kissed him.

  "I gotta go to the bathroom."

  2-27 Jumpship Fight

  "That's how they attack another ship?" Khalanov queried. "They cut it with their jump envelope?"

  "How else could the Titanic have disappeared so completely?" Direk replied.

  "But matter can't be cut like that, not without releasing atomic forces."

  "Hey, Uncle Iggy," Jon interrupted, "I've seen it in person. It cuts cleaner than a particle beam and there's no sign of nuclear reaction. You had to jump upward to keep Direk's preview gate from carving a spherical bowl in the deck, but I saw just such a bowl back on Earth. Cut myself on the sharp edge!"

  It was their first conference on the subject but Jamie was not able to listen carefully, being in close proximity to Direk.

  They had taken her mother's recording of the death of the Titanic, enhanced it, and analyzed it again and again. The flurry of dots was resolved into thousands of individual spherical vessels, many of them tagged by faintly discernible markings. Their discontinuous movements could be verified and their method of attack analyzed. They were fretting over the military implications of the Freedom's jump capability. Jamie already accepted and understood how lethal a weapon the ship's method of movement could be.

  She was more interested in the nuances of Direk's interaction with the other men. She had always studied the group dynamics of men under her command and tried to predict how each would perform under duress within the unit. That expertise was useless in studying Direk. He seemed unaware of her, unless that fact alone was proof that he was more than aware of her. In other words, he was behaving in the classic Direk manner, showing no emotions, when she suspected from recent clues that he was able to express emotion comfortably.

  "The first barbarian jumpships had the most difficult task," Direk lectured. "They were much like a pack of small predators trying to bring down a much larger prey. The Titanic was a fast ship but its crew couldn't understand what would happen, even if they knew there were predators they needed to evade. The barbarians would plot where the ship would be and jump to it. They must have made many attempts to disable the ship, being careful not to cause its catastrophic destruction. They kept jumping closer until one of them intersected a critical part of its structure and disabled its drive."

  "They didn't just shoot at it with some form of cannon?" Jon asked.

/>   "I don't think so," Direk answered.

  "This happened a long time ago," Iggy said. "We can't assume they don't have other offensive capabilities by now. Something they would use on static targets. We need to capture one of those little vermin!"

  "There was a staging area which we don't see," Direk continued. "The jumpships would jump from this staging area to the Titanic, taking a bite from it which was exchanged back to the staging area. They must have salvaged the pieces later with cargo ships, leaving no evidence of the fate of the Titanic."

  "Wouldn't that have killed thousands of people?" Jamie asked. She knew the answer. She was readying herself for an extreme change of topic. It was not the place and time for such a tactic, but when would she ever dare to catch Direk alone? She was actually afraid of him, afraid of how he could change everything about her life, including perhaps even rejecting her as too different from how he might remember her.

  "If they were not careful," Direk replied, waited for Jamie to say something else, and when she didn't, he continued. "There were four stages to the attack. The first crippled the ship. The second boarded it, suppressed resistance, and organized the evacuation of passengers and crew. The third wave of jumpships provided transportation for the passengers. They also blocked our view of what happened to the Titanic. The disassembly of the Titanic was the fourth stage. Based on the data and a few difficult assumptions, I think anywhere from five to ten per cent of the ship's personnel may have died in the attack. There just wasn't enough time to safely evacuate