Enigma

by C. F. Bentley

  Mac blocked her with his body. As he shifted, he loosened his secondary limbs from the fabric confines of his clothing. “I think General Jake will argue that he controls this station. I will argue with you that it is mine by right of family as well as knowledge of the inner workings. I dare you to try removing either of us.”

  Mac made a mental list of information about Pammy and her spies that he could leak to the media on a dozen worlds.

  “Get out of my way, beast.” The spymaster pulled a miniblaster from the back waistband of her trousers.

  Panic flared deep within Mac. The last time he’d been shot, it had nearly crippled him for life.

  His feet shuffled backward.

  “We both know I can hurt you. Now get out of my way. I have forces to deploy and officials to inform about the treaty.”

  Mac noted the order of her chores: she’d get her spies in place before she informed her government.

  “I think you need to attend the others in Temple,” Mac said, more firmly than his quaking insides felt.

  “I agree, Pammy.” General Jake appeared on the lift behind Mac.

  “Jake, you don’t understand,” Pamela hedged.

  “I think I do. Now either give me the gun or holster it.”

  Mac took the opportunity to sidle away down the corridor to the maintenance tube.

  “Do it, Pammy.”

  “You can’t order me around, Jake. I’m your boss. And I have the superior weapon.”

  “Superior to a Badger Metal stiletto?”

  Somehow Jake had moved quickly enough to restrain Pammy’s gun hand and thrust his pointed weapon against her throat.

  General Jake was the only person on station who could handle the spymaster. Mac was more than happy to leave him to it.

  “We will meet again, Mr. Mac, but for now you’d best get out of here before blood is spilled,” General Jake said, keeping his gaze and weapon focused on Pammy. “Admiral, I believe our presence is required in Temple. Now come quietly or come in restraints. But you will attend when Laudae Sissy requests,” Jake said with a quiet authority similar to the High Priestess.

  “This is the last time we meet as allies, Admiral,” Mac whispered as he disappeared. “Consider me your enemy until you leave my station.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Jake stretched and yawned. The data charts on his desk swam before his eyes. Once more he wished for the spectacles to make order and sense of the shipping manifest and routes, the personnel dispositions, the fallout of the new treaty obligations, and the legal entanglements from granting citizenship to Mara and the refugees.

  He had the next best thing: Sissy. She looked more overwhelmed than he felt.

  “I need to stretch my legs, Sissy,” Jake said. He’d waited until she’d sent her girls to bed for the evening. They still had mountains of detail work to attend to, but it looked as though they had a steady chain of supplies lined up to help with disaster cleanup on Harmony Prime.

  Their only reports of damage and casualties came from the ships in orbit around Harmony. Communications, power, water, sewers, everything was out or barely working in the city.

  Sissy looked from him to the long list of memos on her desktop screen. She reached to activate a flashing icon by a new folder.

  “No more work tonight, Sissy. Please. My head is reeling with facts and figures and plans and plots and schemes and . . . and just too much.” He held his temples with his fingertips, as if the pressure would hold his brains inside his skull.

  “Where would you like to walk?” She folded her hands in front of her, though her fingers twitched to search out that new file. “I hear that the starlight in the hydroponics dome is spectacular.”

  He’d never known her to pass up an opportunity for physical activity over reading reports. The sheer magnitude of the work of rebuilding Harmony Prime occupied her every waking thought.

  “Not walk so much. I know a viewpoint where the stars are even more spectacular than the garden dome.” He grinned like a schoolboy planning hooky.

  She looked at him quizzically.

  “I need to fly.”

  “Certainly we can stretch in the zero G levels.” She stood up and looked around the perimeter of his desk for a pair of shoes.

  “More than that. I have a private shuttle at my disposal. Come on, Sissy, let’s go check out the new planet.”

  “I can’t leave my girls that long . . .”

  “It’s only a single jump through hyperspace. We’ll go there, fly one orbit, and come back. Four hours max.”

  A smile flashed across her face.

  He imagined a halo of enthusiasm radiating from her head.

  “How did you get the coordinates?” she whispered as if she expected secret listeners.

  “There’s more than one computer hacker on this station. I found that my passcode overrides top-secret clearances. Mara made sure of that before she—uh—changed positions.” He couldn’t help the smile that stretched his face so wide he felt as though his skin would crack.

  She returned his grin. “Okay. I just have to find some shoes.”

  “Don’t bother. I’ll fix you up with a flight suit. Built-in boots.” He grabbed her hand and dashed for the doorway and the lift before she could object further.

  “This ship doesn’t have a lot of jump power, but it will do for a short trip,” Jake explained to Sissy as he ran down his preflight checklist. He used to do this automatically, running the routine and numbers in his head. His duties aboard the First Contact Café had kept him grounded for too long. He needed to double-check everything, make sure he didn’t miss a vital glitch in any system. Besides, he had Sissy aboard. He’d not take any unnecessary chances with her safety.

  “I’ve never flown in anything this small,” she said, avidly watching his every move.

  “It’s bigger than the helicopters we used back on Harmony.” Everything shipshape. He ran through the ignition sequence. A comforting rumble of raw power revitalized his entire body and mind.

  “With a helicopter you have ground beneath you to catch you if you fall and air to breath if you open a window. This thing doesn’t have any windows.” She continued to look around, absorbing every bit of data.

  “No windows, but we do have screens that will show real time any vista we need. Kind of hard to have windows in the cockpit when the cockpit is dead center of the ship—better protection against radiation on a ship this small and light.”

  “I like computer screens for reading.” Sissy looked at the array of data spilling across the one in front of her seat at the copilot position. “But I prefer windows for looking out.” She sighed. “I miss hearing the wind in the trees and feeling rain on my face, and seasons, and night and day.”

  “So do I, Sissy. So do I. Soon. We’ll land on the planet soon, but for now we’ll just do a flyby, and you can glimpse trees and rivers and meadows and such.”

  They shared a moment of silent understanding. Then the gut-wrenching shift as they dropped away from the station’s gravity.

  “We’ll have microgravity from acceleration once we’re clear of the station,” Jake said.

  She nodded, eyes glued to the images on her screen. Tentatively she touched an icon on the side. A rear view of the station expanded to fill the screen.

  Jake did a quick loop to put him on the proper trajectory to the jump point. Then he punched up the speed. They were thrown back against their chairs with a crushing weight.

  “I thought you said microgravity,” she ground out. The light of adventure still animated her face.

  Jake kept the acceleration higher than normal for a bit longer, needing to feel the extremes after months of stagnation.

  Too soon they reached the jump point. “Sleepy drugs in your handrest if you want them,” he said. He hesitated over shoving his own hand into the rigid glove. As a solo pilot he needed to be awake, though the ghosts he’d encountered the last time he stayed awake during hyperspace scared him.

&
nbsp; “I . . . I don’t need the drugs,” Sissy replied quietly. She didn’t look convinced.

  Jake took a deep breath and clenched his jaw. “You can sleep. I’ll stay awake.”

  “We’ll watch during the long darkness and the empty and lonely paths together.” She reached over and placed her hand atop his.

  “Thank you.” He shifted his palm to hold hers, then with his free hand punched in the sequence to jump to hyperspace.

  Abruptly reality tilted to the right. Colors took a dramatic shift to the left. The screens blanked, taking the view of the stars away.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  “What does hyperspace look like?” Sissy asked. She slitted her eyes and glanced at her blank screen.

  “I don’t know. Screens don’t work. The few times I’ve had real-time views out a port hole, I’ve seen nothing but black. Or I’ve been so occupied with my ghosts I didn’t take the time to notice. Friends report swirls of red energy against a black backdrop. Others say it’s all white, as if all the energy of the universe combines.”

  “Hyperspace reflects what is deep within your soul.”

  He looked at her more closely. Her face had gone blank and slack, eyes closed. Her own swirl of multicolored energy made her glow all over.

  A vision from her Goddess. If she’d only acknowledge it.

  He’d barely formed that thought when the alarm chimed gently. “Coming out of hyperspace in two minutes. Antidotes to sleep drugs available,” the computer told him.

  Of course, two minutes computer time could be any stretch of time in hyperspace.

  Sissy roused and shook herself, as if coming out of a deep sleep.

  Another jolt to the gut and reality twisted back to where it belonged. Except, Jake had begun to think of the distortions in hyperspace as closer to reality than normal space.

  Hyperspace reflects what is deep within your soul.

  Truer words had never been said.

  “Are we there already?” Sissy asked. She fixed her eyes on her screen as it burst to life again.

  “We’re about an hour out from the planet at two Gs. I can take it slower if you want.” Jake busied himself with taking back control of the shuttle from the computer. “Odd to have a jump point within a solar system.”

  “Can we see the planet from here?”

  He directed her to a magnified view of the inner planets, five of them, with another ten smaller ones on the outer reaches. The jump point had dumped them into the large gap between the two groups. She found the formula for zooming in on the fifth planet from the sun, a slightly larger version of Earth’s yellow Sol.

  “I can see a fair amount of blue water and brown and green land. White clouds here and there. It doesn’t look so very different from Harmony,” she gasped.

  “Nor that different from Earth, or any other planet habitable by humans. We kind of take Earth with us in terraforming. This one has a little less water, a lot higher mountains. Arable land and forests mostly on the coastlines. Continent interiors tend toward desert.”

  “Mountains? Does that mean caves?” She held her breath.

  “Don’t know. Surveys are still preliminary.” Jake divided his attention between flight controls on his own screen and the growing image on Sissy’s. Soon the planet overflowed her screen. She keyed it to zoom back and keep the entire thing in view.

  “Survey crew is on that big island in the northern hemisphere above the equator. Temperate climate from ocean breezes. A small mountain range inland from the southern coast. The rest is arable. Room for delegations to have separate embassies and a central core of buildings. We plan to keep the population small at first so that the island can support us with food and drinking water. Opening the rest of the planet to settlement will wait. We haven’t done enough tests yet to determine long-term fertility of the land and the extent of natural resources. It’s enough for a CSS headquarters. That’s most important.”

  “Previous inhabitants?” she asked, tracing a chain of foothills rising from a broken coastline toward the mountains.

  “I didn’t see any reference to an archaeology report. Either we’re the first, or any ruins are buried too deep for us to find with preliminaries.”

  “It’s a pretty planet,” Sissy said. “Jake, please, can we land? I need to feel land beneath my feet and wind in my face. I need to dip my hands in clean running water and taste the air.”

  Jake checked his chronometer. They were ahead of schedule. “Just a short stop. No more than ten minutes.”

  “Long enough to do an abbreviated ritual. I need to make this place my own.”

  “It smells like home,” Sissy whispered. “Lilacs!” Her nose twitched with the soft scents of spring flowers. A raindrop touched her cheek. Another plopped onto her head. She lifted her face to greet the elements. “But it vibrates differently. The sun sings a different song to the galaxy than Empathy and Harmony do.”

  The air tasted clean, and had a texture of moisture and wind and dirt and . . . and life! Different but alive and vibrant.

  “We can’t linger, Sissy,” Jake warned her.

  “I know.” She gathered the disappointment into a tight ball and tucked it away. “Soon, though. I’ll come back soon.”

  “Don’t go too far.” Jake sounded worried. As he used to back on Harmony, when every shadow hid a potential assassin.

  “There is nothing dangerous here, Jake. Your surveyors ruled out poisonous critters, predatory plants, and hostile natives.” She stepped a little farther away from the shelter of the boxy shuttle. With its stubby atmosphere wings, it looked alien in the lush paradise. Not a sharp angle in sight.

  “When we build, we shall construct buildings with fluid lines and graceful arches, blending in and enhancing the landscape.”

  She drank in the sight of tall trees with broad leaves, bright flowers, the faint hum of insects, and . . . and the chuckle of moving water.

  She spun in place, arms out, glorying in the natural environment.

  “It looks almost as if someone terraformed the planet,” she said, marveling at how similar the plant life was to her home on Harmony.

  “Yeah, it does. I wonder . . . Sissy, watch out!”

  Her ill-fitting, heavy boots caught on uneven ground. She stumbled and plunged headlong into a clump of spiny shrubs.

  “Oh, ouch,” she moaned as she rolled away from the spikes that were as long as her hand was broad.

  “Good thing you had the suit on,” Jake said as he hauled her to her feet. He ran his hands down her body, brushing aside broken plant bits. “These things would penetrate normal clothes and go all the way in like a stiletto.” He shook his head and frowned.

  Sissy hid the long scratch on her palm from his gaze. They’d both left their heavy flight suit gloves in the shuttle. They didn’t need protection from the mild climate.

  A line of blood trickled from her clenched fist. A burning itch started at the center of her palm and spread to her wrist before she could think of anything to say.

  “Sissy? Are you okay? You look mighty pale.” He caught her around the waist.

  “The spikes . . .” she mumbled as fire spread up her arm and down her body. Sweat followed the inflammation. Too hot. Hotter than noon under the bright sun in high summer.

  Weakness followed the heat. Her head became far too heavy for her fragile neck muscles. She knelt down, placing her forehead on the cool ground.

  Her heart hammered in her ears. Panic licked at her mind like a fire hungry for fuel.

  Jake came down with her, cradling her gently against his side.

  “Damn!” he spat, holding her wounded hand.

  She didn’t have the strength to reply. She could only stare at the rivulet of blood leaking into the cuff of her flight suit.

  “Fragit! Will someone please answer,” Jake yelled into the comm.

  Static. All he got between here and the FCC was static.

  “Isn’t anyone home?” This was as bad as the night the Squid ship cras
hed into the station and there was no one on duty in Control. He slammed his fist into the interface. Sharp pains ran from his little finger to his shoulder. Damn, he might have broken something.

  Temper tantrums accomplish nothing, he reminded himself. The words had a strangely feminine quality inside his mind.

  He’d applied an antihistamine patch from the med kit directly to her wound with no result.

  He had one last chance to save his beloved.

  “Survey One, this is FCC One,” Jake called through the shuttle’s comm. “Survey One, do you read me?” He looked anxiously toward Sissy, stretched out on the cot in the cargo bay. She shivered and moaned, barely aware of anything but pain. Her entire body stiffened and then convulsed.

  “Hey, FCC One, what you doing way out here?” came a relaxed male voice.

  “Survey One, I have an injured passenger. She fell against a plant with long spikes.”

  “Oh, them blue hooks. Nasty things.”

  “Is it lethal?” Dread chilled him to the bone.

  “Not usually. You know we ain’t supposed to be talkin’ to you. You ain’t supposed to be down here yet either.”

  “I need help. My passenger is a very important person to the CSS and to Harmony. Can you send me a medic?”

  Laughter greeted that request.

  “Oh, God, what am I going to do?” he almost cried. He couldn’t lose Sissy. It was all his fault. He never should have offered to take her off station. He should never have let her persuade him to land. All his fault.

  His gut twisted with raw emotion.

  The faint smell of incense that clung to her like a flower’s perfume faded along with her life signs.

  “Look, buddy, we’re out on a two-week survival survey. Required. We have to live off the land for two weeks with no chance of rescue or contact with base. That’s so we know for sure this place is okay for habitation. We’re about a thousand klicks from you and no supplies,” the voice finally explained.

  “Shit!”