by Diann Read
On her way back to her quarters she wondered what it would take, outside of Jonican whiskey.
She didn’t have time to think about it when she arrived. A message line flashed on her desk terminal. She sat down with a sigh and keyed in her code. The text rolled down the monitor.
She scanned it quickly first, then leaned forward in her chair and read it through again:
IMMEDIATE
131638L 2 3308SY
TO COMMODORE C CHESNEY, ABOARD UWS SENTINEL
FM ADMIRAL L SERGEY, ABOARD UWS DESTRIER
S E C R E T
1. CONTACTED ENEMY ON SCHEDULE. IMMED THREAT TO SOSTIS CONTAINED AT COST OF ICHOREK AND BD TO DESTRIER.
2. ATTK ON SAEDE STILL ON SCHEDULE UNDER CMD OF CAPT RASSAT NIGHIA OF OURAY DUE TO BD TO DESTRIER. YOU HAVE YOUR ORDERS. WILL JOIN YOU WHEN ABLE.
3. DARCIE CONFIRMED NOT ABOARD S'ADOU THE'N. POSSIBILITY SHE IS AT UNKAI UGF ON SAEDE.
4. MASUK MORALE APPEARS SERIOUSLY DEGRADED. EXPECT SUICIDAL TACTICS AND DESPERATE ACTIONS.
E N D O F M E S S A G E
Chesney cleared the terminal’s memory, but one paragraph of the message kept repeating itself in her mind. Maybe it won’t take Jonican whiskey after all.
She returned to sickbay when Evening Watch began and the ship’s lighting dimmed to simulate nighttime. She paused in the doorway of Tristan’s cubicle.
The boy didn’t appear to have stirred since she’d left. “You awake, Tris?” she asked.
He didn’t answer at once, and when he did his pillow mostly muffled the single word. He didn’t move at all.
She went in and unfolded the seat and sat down again. She didn’t say anything at first, just reached out to run her hand up and down his bare arm where it lay on the bed.
After a while she said, “You’re blaming yourself for whatever happened, aren’t you?”
He turned his head to look at her then, the agony in his eyes undiminished. “They were trying to help me. It should have been me that died! I never should have—”
“Tris, don’t.” Chesney placed her hand over his. “This is war. Nemec was a soldier—a Spherzah. He knew the risks when he accepted the Issel assignment. The medic and—your friend—probably knew, too. They chose to do what they did for you.”
The boy lowered his gaze. “For me,” he whispered. “It’s not fair. Why would they do that for me?”
“Probably,” said Chesney, “for the same reasons you chose to risk your life for your mother.”
His vision shot up to meet hers. “My mother is dying! All I wanted was to help her!”
Chesney tightened her hold on his hand and leaned closer to him. “When I left here this morning,” she said, “there was a message waiting for me. She’s still alive, hotshot, but this little crisis is far from over.”
She saw how his face changed at that, how his jaw tightened and the pain in his eyes retreated before an edge of anger. “She’s at Issel!” he said. “They brought her to Issel!”
“She’s not there now,” Chesney said. “The night you were flogged, they took her aboard another ship and left the system.”
Tristan pushed himself up on his elbows. “For where?”
“We believe for Saede,” she said, “and we’re going after them.”
“I’m going with you!” Tristan turned over and sat up fully.
“Wait, wait, throttle back a minute!” Chesney said. “You’re getting the wrong message, hotshot. You’ve been through more than your share already. You just had major surgery three days ago.”
“I have to go,” Tristan said, suddenly solemn. “I have to keep my jwa’lai.”
“Your what?” Chesney wrinkled her brow.
“My duty—my promise—to my mother.”
“Tris,” Chesney said, “you’ve already done your part. I think your mother will forgive you if you leave this one to the trained troops. Your duty right now is to get yourself well, you got that?”
He didn’t answer.
* *
When Schey brought him dinner a short time after Chesney left, Tristan asked, “How long until we get to Saede?”
“About a standard day and a half,” the med-tech told him. “We’ll make our last lightskip tomorrow morning.”
Tristan grimaced.
“You can take a patch,” said Schey. “You got through yesterday’s ‘skip okay.”
Tristan didn’t say anything. He just eyed the dinner tray.
He made himself eat everything on it, though most of the food lacked any flavor.
“It’s good to see you getting your appetite back,” Schey said when he came back to collect the tray. “You’ve lost a lost of weight in this ordeal.”
Tristan only shrugged.
“Do you want a patch to help you sleep?” the medic asked.
“No,” Tristan said. “It won’t stop the dreams.”
He resisted sleep as long as he could. It wasn’t difficult at first, even in the darkness. His mind tumbled with thoughts of his mother and his jwa’lai.
Then he found himself running through the blue caverns again. It always ended the same: the shield door that cut off Nemec’s escape, the bright bolt of energy that slammed Weil to the wall.
He woke, sweating, at the sound of his own outcry and a hand patting his left shoulder.
“Are you sure you don’t want a patch?” Schey asked, offering him a glass of water.
“Yes,” Tristan said. “It won’t help.”
The next time he dreamed it was of Pulou sagging in his acceleration harness and bleeding from invisible wounds, and his mother’s body on a funeral pyre, enveloped by flames.
He still lay awake after that one, staring at the bulkhead to keep from sleeping again, when Brandt came in. “You need to take a patch now.”
“No,” Tristan said. “I don’t want one.”
“We make lightskip in less than an hour,” the surgeon said.
He didn’t argue further. But he closed his eyes and gritted his teeth when Brandt pressed the patch to his temple.
He woke in mid-morning with Kerin placing his hand on the vital signs sensor. She said, “Hello, Tristan. Don’t move for a minute. Are you ready for breakfast?”
“I want to get dressed,” he said when she took his hand from the sensor plate and let him sit up.
She looked a little surprised, but she said, “I don’t see why not. Go ahead and eat while I see what I can find for you.”
She came back with a battle dress uniform in shades of streaky green and brown. “The stores officer doesn’t have any shipboard uniforms,” she said, “just a lot of these. It may be too big but at least it won’t irritate your back.”
The trousers were loose enough not to pinch or chafe, and the tunic allowed him to move his arms freely. Satisfied, he picked up one of the boots. He examined it, turned it in his hands, then put it aside, wrinkling his nose.
“What’s wrong?” Kerin asked, watching him.
“I can’t walk in those.”
She looked amused. “How far were you planning on going?”
“As far from this box as I can!” Tristan said, and indicated the cubicle with a motion. “I’m tired of being in here.”
She raised an eyebrow. “What brought this on? Yesterday we could hardly pry you out of bed even to go to the head.”
He ducked his head and wouldn’t look at her. “I—don’t like just sitting here and thinking. I need to do something else.”
“Yes, you do.” Kerin’s teasing subsided. “You haven’t even seen the ship yet, have you? Maybe we can find someone who can give you a tour.”
She didn’t return for quite a while. He’d almost given up on it when he heard a step at the doorway and Kerin said, “Tristan, you have a visitor.”
He sat up on the bed as the young man came in, a trooper from Sentinel’s surface assault force who appeared to be only a year or so older than himself.
“Tristan
Sergey?” he said. “I’m Eddie Yedropolappano, Petty Officer Second Class, Unified Worlds Spherzah.”
“Yed-what?” said Tristan.
The other laughed. “Never mind. Nobody else can say it, either; I go by Yeddy. How are you doing? They said you were hurt pretty bad when you escaped.”
“I’m all right,” Tristan said. “I’m just tired of sitting in here.”
“Well, let’s go have a look at the ship, then,” Yeddy said, “and I’ll introduce you to some of the others.”
Starting up the passage beyond sickbay’s doors, Yeddy glanced sideways at him and asked, “What’s it like to have the Old Man for your father?”
“The old man?” Tristan cocked his head.
“That’s what we all call him,” Yeddy said. “It’s sort of a—title of respect.”
Tristan glimpsed unabashed admiration in the other’s eyes. He puzzled over that for a moment. “I don’t know what it’s like,” he said at last. “I don’t remember.”
They went forward from sickbay, crossing the recovery bay where Tristan’s shuttle had been taken aboard, and climbed a ladder up one level to the troop quarters. Coming into the first bunking area, Yeddy said, “Be glad you have a room to yourself. There’re twenty-four of us in here, and seven more areas just like this one.”
Yeddy didn’t take Tristan through all of them. Half the combat company was on its sleep shift. But he seemed to know everyone he met, and he introduced them to Tristan by name. The troops gathered around, asking questions and wanting to talk, until the faces lost their individuality and melded into a crowd. Tristan shot a desperate look across at his guide.
“That’s enough, people,” Yeddy said. “Give him some space.”
Beyond the bunking area, the passage opened into a small dayroom furnished with holovids and cabinets full of chip texts. Several more troops sat there, occupied with some kind of studies.
“We spend our off-duty time in here and working out in the rec deck,” said Yeddy.
Tristan scarcely heard him. The far bulkhead consisted mostly of viewpane, and in the center of it drifted a teal green globe. Tristan crossed to it, Yeddy still at his shoulder, and touched the pane. “Is this a holograph screen?”
“No,” Yeddy said. “That’s really Saede out there. That’s where we’re going.”
“Why does it look so blurry?” Tristan asked.
“Because we’re under cloaking,” Yeddy said. “Do you know anything about jamming?”
Tristan remembered something from an academy class. “A little,” he said.
“That’s kind of how it works,” Yeddy said. “It makes us invisible to Saede’s detection systems until we’re close enough to launch the landing craft. The rest of the attack force is probably out there by now, but they’re under cloaking, too.”
Tristan acknowledged with only a nod, his vision narrowing on the planet. “They’ve got my mother there,” he said.
“They won’t after tomorrow.” Yeddy shot him a tight smile. “We’re going hunting for hairballs in the morning.”
“Hairballs?” Tristan furrowed his brow.
“You know, masuki. We call ‘em that because they’re all hairy.” Yeddy’s smile turned mischievous. “That’s not a title of respect!”
Tristan recognized the expression in the other’s eyes. He studied Yeddy for a moment. Then he said abruptly, “You said there were landing craft. Where are they?”
“Right under us, forward of the recovery bay,” said Yeddy. “I should’ve shown you on the way up. You’ll hear the klaxon in sickbay. You’ll probably hear all of us running down there, too.”
Tristan turned back to the viewpane and lowered his head. “Probably,” he said.
He felt Yeddy watching him. “You’re dying to go with us, aren’t you?” the other said.
“I have to go,” said Tristan.
Yeddy hesitated. “We’ll get your mother out,” he said. “I promise.”
Tristan glanced back at him, then out at Saede. His right side had begun a dull throbbing with all the walking. He rubbed at it for a few moments, and suddenly realized how weak he was, how worn he felt. “I need to go back to my room,” he said.
He didn’t speak, climbing the ladder back down to the recovery bay and crossing its ringing expanse. He kept his teeth locked against the growing ache, and his vision fixed on the deck. Yeddy didn’t say much either, until they stood at the doorway of his cubicle. Then he said again, “We’ll get your mother out. You just take it easy, Tris, and don’t worry.”
Tristan didn’t answer.
Alone, he undressed and dimmed the lighting in his cubicle and lay staring at the bulkhead. Thinking. Planning. Reviewing in his mind what Yeddy had showed him about the layout of the ship. . . .
He was still lying there when Brandt came in on his evening rounds. Tristan barely glanced up when the surgeon put the sensor plate on the bed beside him and motioned for him to place his hand on it.
“Your blood pressure’s up a little,” Brandt said a few moments later. “Did you wear yourself out, touring the ship today?”
“Yes,” Tristan said.
“Well, maybe that’ll help you sleep better tonight.” Brandt put the sensor plate away. “I’ll send someone with your dinner in a few minutes.”
Tristan ate everything on the tray again. He felt hungrier tonight and it wasn’t so much of an effort, although it didn’t taste any better.
He got up after Schey came to take the tray, and put on his battle uniform again. Then he lay back down to wait.
He’d never slept before the klaxon sounded.
Twenty-Five
Tristan jumped at its sudden scream and sat up, staring around the cubicle. His heart slammed hard and fast against his ribs, making him gulp for breath. Shoving himself out of the berth, he almost stepped on the discarded boots. He hesitated, then left them where they lay.
Dim lighting shone in the corridor beyond the cubicle. Quiet on bare feet, Tristan made his way down it. The klaxon’s repeated blasts covered the sound of the automatic door opening to let him through and then closing behind him.
The horns blasted louder outside sickbay, but they didn’t drown the sudden noise of bootfalls from the deck above. Tristan jogged across the shuttle recovery bay, pressing a hand to his right side when the motion sent little jabs through it.
The bulkhead that separated the recovery bay from the launch bay was designed to retract, to allow movement of craft from one to the other on rails and tracks. It could be opened only by a controller in a booth tucked up next to the overhead. But Tristan spotted utility doors marked MAINTENANCE PERSONNEL ONLY in the forward corners, secured with manual bolts. Tristan tugged at the lever of the nearest one.
It grated part way open and stuck fast.
Beyond the bulkhead, the clatter of bootfalls crescendoed. Tristan heard voices, too, shouting orders, but he couldn’t make out the words.
“Open up!” he gasped. “Come on, open up!” He shifted his grip on the lever and threw his whole weight against it.
The effort shot lightning through his right side, despite the nerve clips blocking his healing ribs. His vision tunneled; he sagged against the door. But the lever fell. The door swung inward.
Panting, he slipped through and shoved the utility door closed behind him.
The clatter of boots swelled to thunder. He looked up. Troops came down catwalks on either side of the launch bay in close file, double time, to board the landing shuttles. They wore helmets and half-armor over their battle uniforms, and carried energy rifles on their shoulders.
Tristan fell in at the rear of one column and followed it up the boarding ramp into the closest shuttle.
In its dimness, the troops strapped themselves into web seats that ran the length of the shuttle’s hold. Tristan glanced around at them as he fastened his own straps. He saw tight jaws, and eyes narrowed behind camouflage paint. He didn�
��t recognize any of them, but he lowered his head to avoid being noticed.
When the ramp folded up at the rear of the craft, clanked into place and sealed, and the roar of engines shook the hull, he braced himself for the crush of acceleration.
* *
K’Agaba Id Qum transmitted his message in masuk. B’Anar Id Pa’an knew, by the time he received it, that Qum and his crew, both masuk and human, existed no more. He felt no grief, no loss. Qum had failed, and failure had exacted its price.
Pa’an had put the base on Warning Yellow status and hadn’t left the Command Post since. Almost forty-eight hours had passed. When the Unified forces struck Saede, he would not fail.
He straightened in the commander’s chair when a light began to blink on the console before him. He looked at one of the human officers, who pushed its button and said, “Command Post, Colonel Pryce.”
“We’ve got contacts, sir.” Another human spoke, at the scan station. “Multiple tracks, range one-two-two-zero miles, speed one-zero-five miles per minute, bearing three-five-four. They just appeared out of nowhere, sir, inside the orbital detection platforms.”
Pa’an saw shock on the faces of the humans. “Inside the detection systems?” said one. “Have you got an identification, Lieutenant?”
“Not yet, sir,” came the reply.
They exchanged glances, and the human with the greatest rank said, “Recommend we go to Warning Red, sire, with air defense weapons in passive tracking mode for the moment.”
Pa’an considered, inclined his head slightly. “So be it,” he said.
* *
“Listen up, troops!”
Chesney’s voice. Tristan started, wrenching around to look.
She wasn’t there in the shuttle’s hold. Her voice came through speakers in the overhead. “The attack’s underway,” she said. “The fighters are going in after the air defense systems and we’ll come in right behind them. ETA is fifty-two minutes.”
Tristan released his breath in a rush.
He knew when the craft entered the atmosphere. Weightlessness gave way to the pressure of descent, and turbulence took the craft in its fist and shook it and roared at it. Tristan put his head back against the webbing, closed his eyes, drew in each breath through his mouth. It quelled the discomfort in his stomach but his hands still felt clammy. He rubbed them on his trouser legs.
