by Steve Gannon
“What’s your point?”
Zorial lifted his antennae in a gesture of puzzlement. “Just this. A Treaty violation after all this time doesn’t make sense.”
“I disagree. You know the Santori.”
“Granted, they’re aggressive, but why would they risk war for the sake of a single Sigma test, or whatever it is we’re seeing out there? They must have known we would detect it. If they wanted a fight, why didn’t they just hit us with everything they’ve got?”
“I don’t know,” Lexxa said slowly. “But the unauthorized detonation out there is real. Our policy leaves no alternative but retaliation, and if that means war, so be it.”
Zorial realized that Lexxa was right. The unthinkable was about to happen, with the weapons of destruction each race had held in readiness for generations finally used in an ultimate act of mutual genocide.
“Great Maker, not again!” Lexxa exclaimed, staring once more into the cube.
Zorial joined her. Together they watched as yet another Sigma explosion blossomed in the display, merging with the first.
“We should never have trusted them,” Lexxa growled, brushing past Zorial and seating herself at the transmitter. “I’ll notify headquarters of the second violation. I’m also recommending that we retaliate without delay.”
“No!” Zorial choked, horrified by Lexxa’s words. Although the Polem carried no armament, she could relay a Sigma retrocharge from one of the armed ships in the fleet. Once redirected, the retro would follow the violations’ paths back through nullspace, detonating at their source. It was feasible . . . but it meant war, with no possibility of turning back.
“No?” hissed Lexxa, her eye blazing with fury. “Are you afraid to fight?”
“That’s not it. I . . . I just think firing a retro weapon doesn’t leave any room to negotiate. There may be—”
“Negotiate? I think not. Besides, the decision isn’t ours. It will come from headquarters. And whatever their decision, Lieutenant Zorial, you will do your duty. Is that understood?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Zorial replied. “Understood.”
Zorial stood beside Lexxa as she completed her transmission. Afterward they waited in silence for a reply, knowing it would come soon. They were running out of time. The nullspace trails left by the violations would quickly disperse, and if they were to retaliate, it would have to be within the next few minutes. Zorial knew as well that if a retrocharge were sent, his cooperation would be essential. A Sigma relay was far too complex a task for one person to complete alone.
Can I do it? Zorial wondered numbly. Can I play a part in an action that will result in the death of billions?
Suddenly the radio crackled to life. Seconds later a decoded message flashed up on the screen.
TO: RECONSHIP POLEM FS1142 SECTOR A23L
FROM: FEDCENTCOM
PRIORITY TEXT: TWO SIGMA-CLASS VIOLATIONS CONFIRMED.
CONCLUDE SANTORI TESTING NEW WEAPON, POSSIBLE
FIRST-STRIKE POTENTIAL. POLEM TO RELAY SIGMA RETRO
FROM BATTLESHIP TICOR. CHARGE ARRIVAL IN EIGHT
MINUTES.
END TRANSMISSION.
“Now that’s more like it,” Lexxa said coldly, keying the receipt code. “Open a wormhole to the Ticor. I’ll get the relay system operational.”
“Wait, Lexxa. What if—”
“Do it. There’s no time for questions. If we’re not prepared when the retrocharge comes through, we’re dead.”
Zorial knew that if they didn’t relay the Sigma retrocharge when it exited the wormhole, it would detonate at its last point of entry, obliterating everything in their sector of space—including them. He hesitated. After a long pause, he came to a decision. Squaring his carapace, he stepped to the communications console and keyed the transmitter. “Ticor, this is Lieutenant Zorial, second officer of the Polem,” he said, not bothering to scramble the message. “I refuse to assist in relaying the retrocharge.”
“You coward!” Lexxa shouted, grabbing a tentacle and spinning him around.
Zorial found himself staring into the snout of Lexxa’s service sidearm. His stomach twisted as he noticed that the weapon’s power setting was locked on kill.
“Prepare for the Sigma relay,” Lexxa warned. “Do it, Zor, or I swear I’ll fry you right where you stand.”
Nervously, Zorial eyed the blaster. “Captain, we can’t go through with this,” he said quietly. The consequences are unthinkable. Even if you shoot me, you still won’t be able to complete the relay. There has to be another way.”
Before Lexxa could reply, a voice crackled from the transmitter. “Polem, this is Ticor. We’re firing shortly. Be ready.”
Without lowering her weapon, Lexxa grabbed the microphone. “Ticor, we have a problem. My second officer refuses to assist with the relay. Please advise.”
Zorial stood motionless. Lexxa still had her weapon trained on him, and he knew one wrong move meant death.
I’m dead anyway, Zorial thought morosely. If the Ticor didn’t fire the retrocharge because of him, he would be court-martialed and executed. And if the retro was sent . . . they were all dead.
All at once the proximity alarm went off, its clanging signaling the approach of another vessel. Zorial and Lexxa turned to the viewscreen, staring in disbelief as a Santorian warbird flickered out of nullspace beside them, its mushroom-shaped hull dwarfing the Polem.
Lexxa adjusted the transmitter and spoke into the mike. “Santorian vessel, identify yourself.”
“Federation ship, this is Captain Xi of the Santorian Alliance,” came the reply, the voice from the translator circuits sounding flat and metallic. Zorial made an adjustment to the communications equipment, noting Lexxa’s nod of approval as he patched her conversation with the alien intruder through to the Ticor.
“You are ordered to surrender your vessel,” the Santorian continued. “You have one minute to comply.”
“This is outrageous!” Lexxa spat back. “You break the Treaty, then threaten an unarmed Federation ship. Surrender? Never!”
“There is an alternative,” the Santorian noted dryly. “If you fail to comply, I have been authorized to destroy you.”
On impulse, Zorial spoke up. “Captain Xi, I assume from your presence that you intercepted our recent transmissions to the Ticor.”
“Ah, Lieutenant Zorial. Yes, we’ve been listening to your communications with great interest. How convenient that you failed to transmit your last message in code. A bit too convenient, eh? If you think we can be so easily misled, you’re mistaken. Of course you refused to relay the retrocharge. You would be sending it to destroy your own base. We know who’s responsible for the Treaty violations: the Federation!”
“The Federation? But why? What would we have to gain?” asked Zorial, suddenly seeing a glimmer of hope.
The Santorian remained silent.
“I don’t know what happened,” Zorial pushed on rapidly, “but I do know that any further aggression by either of us will touch off a conflict that neither of our races will survive. Since your arrival, we’ve maintained a communication link with the Ticor. They’re listening now. A hostile move by you will force them to retaliate. We may die first, but you’ll be close behind—followed by billions on both our worlds. Don’t let that happen, Captain.”
A brief silence. Then, “ I must confer with my superiors. If you attempt to leave, you will be destroyed.”
The transmission abruptly ended. Zorial glanced at Lexxa. She was working at the communications console, her long, flexible digits snaking over the controls. She stopped and glared at Zorial. “They’ve cut our link with the Ticor,” she snarled, her rage barely contained. Then, still glaring, “You’re wasting your time with them. The Santori will never back down.”
“It can’t end like this,” Zorial said softly. “If there’s hope, we have to try.”
Minutes later Captain Xi reestablished contact. “We seem to be at an impasse,” he said. “Both our races deny responsibi
lity for the Sigma violations. But there they are before us.”
“At least we concur on something,” Lexxa muttered. “What now?”
“What do you propose?”
Again Zorial spoke up. “Although unlikely, perhaps the explosions are the work of someone other than ourselves. If that is the case, why don’t we determine who is responsible and then proceed from there?”
“Agreed. And I assure you that whoever it is, Federation or otherwise, they shall pay dearly for their recklessness,” replied the Santorian. “How do we find them?”
“The Polem has the necessary sensors to trace the violations back to their source,” Lexxa answered. “It is possible for you to join us,” she added reluctantly, “but we’ll have to leave without delay.”
“Contact your superiors, Captain. I’ll reconfer with mine.”
Moments later, both sides having acceded to a temporary truce, the two vessels flickered in the darkness . . . and were gone.
* * *
Now here’s something I’ll never miss, George thought, lifting a bowling ball he had spotted on a shelf near the furnace. He hadn’t bowled in years—not since throwing out his back working in the garden. It was perfect.
“George, dinner’s getting cold,” Martha called down insistently.
Burning with curiosity, George placed the ball into the coils. “Be right there,” he yelled back.
“George, come up now.”
“Gimme a couple more minutes, hon.”
“It’s ready now!”
“Oh, all right.” Grumbling, George turned off the power to his apparatus.
I’ll get up early and begin again first thing tomorrow morning, he promised himself, starting up the stairs. Maybe he would even be able to find out where the stuff was going. If not—well, then after the bowling ball he would try something even bigger.
George stopped on the top landing, taking one last look back at the tangle of wires and circuits and coils on his workbench, bowling ball ready within. His mood lifting at the sight, he flipped off the light, sending the room into darkness.
Tomorrow, he thought cheerfully as he headed into the kitchen. Tomorrow is going to be one hell of a day!
The Sacrifice
With a mix of confusion, and anger, and ineffable, bottomless despair, she realized that her Triad was about to die.
They had completed many missions together, but this time something had gone horribly wrong. She had sensed danger from the very beginning. Little things—an unwarranted tightening of security in Central Command, an inexplicable tension in the encoding technicians, a puzzling secrecy surrounding the message that had been embedded within her . . .
Shortly after departure, two Dark Ones had picked up their trace in a region normally devoid of enemy. When her calls for help had gone unanswered, her Triad had taken evasive action.
They had been unable to shake their pursuers.
In a final act of desperation, the two other members of her Triad—the double progeny from her only budding—had separated and turned back in an effort to delay the inevitable.
Moments later their death screams had echoed in her mind.
Now, terrified and alone, she fled through the hierarchies of space and time. In panic she entered a labyrinth of forbidden realities, twisting, turning . . . yet still they came.
Jake Sheridan felt lousy.
His back ached, his head throbbed, and he hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours. Making things worse, over the past two days his life had unraveled in ways he would never have expected, and no matter what else happened, he was certain his mood couldn’t sink any lower.
He was wrong.
Toying with his drink, Jake sat in a slowly revolving bar atop the ninety-second floor of the Ecstasy Pleasure Palace in West Los Angeles, glumly regarding the lights of the city below. With a sigh, he tossed down the dregs of his whiskey and decided to have another.
Jake hadn’t felt like coming to the pleasure palace. That had been his friend Cameron’s idea. Once there, Jake hadn’t felt like getting drunk, either—although he realized he had already made serious progress in that department. But most of all, despite Cameron’s solicitous counsel, he most certainly didn’t feel like having sex with a cyborg.
“Jake? Over here, buddy. Punch line’s coming up.”
“Huh? Oh, sorry, Cam.” Making an effort to shake his depression, Jake returned his attention to his friend across the table.
Cameron was a big man, nearly as big as Jake. As usual, Cameron was enjoying his own joke to a degree not warranted by the material. “First things first,” Cameron said, noticing Jake’s empty glass and ordering another round of cocktails on the drinkpad—whiskey-flavored synthol for Jake, beer for himself. “Now, where was I? Oh, yeah. So the last couple stands up in front of the congregation. ‘Well,’ says the minister. Have you kept—” Cameron paused, scowling as a hovercraft settled noisily onto the rooftop landing pad outside.
As Cameron waited for the rotor noise to abate, Jake let his eyes wander the Pleasure Palace bar, idly considering his friend’s determined assertion that a tumble with a sex surrogate was just the thing to help him forget his post-breakup blues. Somehow, Jake doubted it. He wasn’t prudish, nor was he prejudiced against cyborgs, as were many of his contemporaries. He simply didn’t feel comfortable around them. There was something about cyborgs that didn’t seem quite . . . right.
“Okay, one more time,” Cameron continued when the air taxi finally departed. “So the final couple gets up. ‘Have you kept your promise?’ the preacher demands. ‘Did you forego sex for a month, proving your love of God and your worthiness to join our congregation?’
“The guy and his wife look at each other. ‘Well, to tell you the truth, Reverend,’ the guy says, ‘we did pretty good for the first two weeks, just like them other couples. But halfway into the third week my wife dropped a can of peas, and when she bent to pick it up, the sight of her got me all worked up. And, well . . . we wound up doin’ it right there on the floor.’”
Cameron grinned, took a long pull on his beer, and belched. “So the preacher points to the door and says, ‘You have proved yourselves unworthy and are no longer welcome in our congregation.’ The guy shakes his head. ‘I’m not surprised,’ he says. ‘They won’t let us back in the supermarket, either.’”
By then their fresh drinks had arrived. Jake grabbed his whiskey, took a sip, and forced a smile, trying to show some appreciation for Cameron’s effort to cheer him up. He and Cameron had been friends as long as he could remember. They had grown up in the same building complex, gone to the same schools, done their UN service together, even occasionally dated the same girls. They had shared everything . . . everything except Megan. Pulling his thoughts back from that dangerous territory, Jake bolted the rest of his drink and punched up another, glancing questioningly at Cameron.
Cameron shook his head, nursing his beer. “Better take it easy on the synthol if you want to get some action in here tonight,” he advised, finally recovering enough from his own joke to speak.
“That was your plan, Cam, not mine.”
“And a good plan it is. Just what the doctor ordered.”
Irritably, Jake looked out the bar’s floor-to-ceiling windows, regarding the city’s highways and buildings and power grids that stretched as far as the eye could see. “Look at it out there,” he said, changing the subject. “Have you ever really looked at it?”
“Our fair city? Sure. What about it?”
“Nothing. Just that from up here you can see it for what it really is—a living, breathing organism that has covered nearly every square inch of our planet, spreading everywhere like a malignant growth.”
“Malignant growth? Jeez, lighten up, pal.” Cameron regarded his friend for a long moment, then sighed. “Don’t take this wrong, Jake, but I never liked Tiffany. Nobody did. You’re better off without her.”
“Drop it.”
“But it’s not just her, is it? It’s having to g
ive up your berth on the colony ship.”
Jake glared. “Yeah, that’s definitely part of it,” he admitted angrily. “Do you blame me? Emigrating to Regula-4 was my chance at a new life. Our chance at a new life. You and Megan, me and . . .”
“. . . the bitch Tiffany?”
Jake nodded. “She had to know I couldn’t find another partner in time, especially not with the colony pregnancy requirement.”
“Of course she knew. She didn’t care. Face it, Jake. She never planned to become an indentured colonist. She used you to get what she wanted, and then dumped you. End of story. I hear she moved into a plush Westside penthouse with some fat rich guy.” Cameron hesitated. “She’s not pregnant anymore, either.”
Jake looked away. “Yeah. I heard that, too.”
Both men fell silent as Jake’s fresh drink arrived. After their waitress departed, Jake raised his glass. “I’m going to miss you, Cam. You and Megan. More than I can say.”
Cameron somberly touched his glass to Jake’s. “Same here, pal.”
Another hovercraft landed outside, disgorged its passengers, and lifted off. “You’ll get another planet,” Cameron continued when the noise had again diminished.
“Maybe. But planets like Regula-4 don’t come along that often—G-type sun, Earth-friendly environment, no dominant intelligent species.”
Cameron finished his beer. “Are you going to see us off in the morning?”
“Yeah.”
“Megan wants your promise that you’ll be there.”
“I’ll be there. I haven’t notified the Company yet that we’re . . . that I’m not going. I’ll let them know first thing tomorrow. Probably make some alternate pair’s day. I just wish . . . ah, the hell with it.”
“Right. At this point, there’s nothing you can do but get on with your life. And take it from me, Jake, a little sugar will go a long way toward getting you over the hump, no pun intended.”
“Cam—”
“C’mon, Jake,” Cameron insisted, punching up the sex-surrogate catalog on the tabletop screen. “At least take a look.”
