by Peter Telep
"Blair, you can't do this," Karista said.
It hurt to face her. "I'm sorry."
Two more of the sixteen Pilgrims defected to his side.
"Hey, Karista? Maybe we should start our own team," Maniac said. "Looks like you, me, and the captain are the only ones loyal to our beliefs"-he turned a malicious gaze on Blair- "which are worth dying for."
Blair mirrored the look but clung to his silence.
Aristee brightened and turned to the group assembling behind Blair. "I'll have you escorted to the aft observation bubble. And if you want to believe in something right now, believe in your right to live."
"I'm going with them," Blair told Maniac. "My fighter's almost ready. Take it."
"No, I think Mr. Marshall will be heading to the brig," Aris-tee corrected.
"You think wrong." Maniac adjusted his grip on the rifle. "You need pilots."
She nodded. "Pilots who don't point weapons at their superiors. Pilots without plans for sabotage."
"Tried that. Failed. But I'll eventually bring you down. In the meantime, I need to be out there. I can't stay in that cell and wait to die. Can't do it. Won't." Maniac could not wait for her reply, either. He threw the rifle back to the Marine, then pounded off toward the runway.
The Marines trained their weapons on him and waited for Aristee's signal.
She stared at Maniac for a few seconds, wearing the inkling of a smile. "Let him go."
Blair crossed to Karista and grabbed her wrist. "Come with us," he whispered. "You don't have to help. Just come."
"I can't."
"Forget about her. Do this for me."
"I just…" She lowered her chin.
"Please."
As Blair stepped into the aft observation bubble, he felt a strong sense of deja vu. He knew he had never been to this part of the ship, and he slowly realized that the brilliant night sky seen through the Plexi reminded him of the sky over his uncle's farm on Nephele. The farm stood four hundred kilometers away from the nearest metroplex, thus the light pollution that too often robbed the stars of their luster had never been a problem there. He could easily pick our stars like Mylon, Tyr, Kurasawa, Gimle, and even K'n'Rek, part of the Kilrathi empire. Though the stars were somewhat different here, their clarity and brilliance suggested something innocent and untainted by humans. Sadly, they had come to shed blood across the heavens, and Karista's face registered that grim fact.
She had lied to the captain, had saved her life, but she wouldn't help. Of course Aristee could never be certain whether or not Karista actually engaged in the killing unless one of the others revealed that fact. Blair figured that if they survived the Kilrathi attack, Aristee would have Karista killed anyway. Every other Pilgrim in the group had agreed to help, and if they, too, decided to back out at the last minute, then the Kilrathi would surely take the ship. Blair considered reminding them of the consequences, but they knew the facts and had watched the old man die. He had to believe that they wouldn't change their minds.
They joined hands to form a circle that wasn't necessary or traditional but seemed to ease everyone's nerves. Karista's hand felt cold and clammy. He glanced at her a second, then at the middle-aged woman to his right who squeezed his hand tightly as their eyes met. "Thank you," she said softly. "I feel terrible about this, but you're right. We deserve to live."
He smiled tightly, then stared beyond the faces of those in front of him to the commencing battle. Laser bolts from the far-off destroyer and cruiser collected into twin conduits that riddled the supercruiser's aft shields. Like low-lying nimbus clouds auguring a storm, the Kilrathi fighters sprang ahead of the cap ships, following the bolts' fiery lanes. The eight squadrons of Rapiers that vectored toward them looked like a diminutive force of foolhardy or suicidal pilots. And only now did the first squadron of Broadsword bombers launch from the aft flight deck, their torpedoes hastily loaded, their damage inspections even more hastily completed. Blair tried to comfort himself with the reminder that although the Pilgrims were outnumbered, they were superior navigators. During the battle over McDaniel, Blair had witnessed some of the sharpest, most reactionary piloting he had ever seen. Maybe sheer numbers would actually work against the cats. Maybe.
Blair looked again to Karista. She stood there, biting her lower lip, eyes brimming with tears. He urged her on with his gaze, figuring she would at least tell the others what to do. She opened her mouth, and the words finally came out with sober resignation.
"People. This may hurt some of you as much as it hurts them. All I can say is try to remember that you're not alone. And you won't die. We'll come together as one and move swiftly, a thief in the night robbing of them their lives. It'll hurt a little more with each one. You'll feel the need to let go and wander off. Don't. Stay with your broturs and sosturs. Try to keep them warm. You'll know when it's over. Trust me. You'll know. Close your eyes."
Night turned into the familiar, mottled darkness within himself. The woman beside Blair released an involuntary whimper that sent a shudder through him. Others gasped or murmured their trepidation.
Yes, they were afraid-despite their experience with delving into the quantum level, with manipulating the fields, with thrusting themselves into the continuum, the universe. Blair's experience had been limited. Any more consideration of that would buckle his knees. No, he wasn't completely green. The others had never killed like this, either.
He imagined himself standing with the group, holding hands, then soaring up and leading them through the Plexi bubble and out into space. They glided with ease and grace, a flock of angels casting not a single shadow over the Rapiers and Broadswords below them. Their scripts were now joined in a quilt of thought through which any one of them could converse, learn, enlighten, even love. He felt everything they felt, thought everything they did, and doubted that he was capable of so much sensation. He found himself suddenly preoccupied with the link itself. He wound his way through the dark, braided corridors of the quilt, asking others if they had seen Karista Mullens.
The boy Maniac had saved rounded a black column that Blair sensed had been woven of pure fear. The boy picked his nose a second, gazed sheepishly as he spotted Blair, then touched the material as though it were hot. "They said you're looking for Karista. She won't come here."
"How can we convince her?"
"She loves you. She's your pair. That's your job." He winked and got stitched back into the fabric.
"My job?"
Suddenly, a terrific wind knocked over the black column and pierced Blair with a trillion icy blades. He spun away from the wind to lock gazes with a Kilrathi pilot who banged his melon-like head repeatedly on his cockpit seat. The cat's eyes bulged a moment before he reached up, extended his claws, and tore out those eyes amid torrents of blood.
Blair turned his head a fraction to the left, where the captain of the Kilrathi cruiser sat in a command chair. Five bridge officers behind him lay on the deck, writhing spasmodically in pools of blood ornamented by massive eyeballs. Blair felt himself linked to the others as they coiled through the gravitic fields surrounding the captain's arms and drove them against the man's flesh. Unable to resist, the captain brought thick paws to his face, and the serrated claws went to work.
Though Blair had focused on those two particular deaths, he knew that he and the others had already caused many more, but something prevented him from experiencing all of them simultaneously. He could select each moment, one at time, sift through them as though they resided in memory files, but he felt denied of the true experience. He needed to know just how cold it would get.
He turned again, saw the captain of the destroyer bring himself up to a full three meters, raise his long arms toward the overhead, then shriek as blood gushed through the seams in his armor. Blair and the others had shifted the gravitic field within his body and were squeezing his internal organs as though they were citrus. Blair craned his head a few inches more and now watched from about a half kilometer out as the destroyer tacked
to starboard, putting it on an intercept course with the cruiser.
/ can see this. But let me see it all. Feel it all. I want to know who I am …
Breaking into a sprint, he threaded his way farther through the quilt, stumbling over Kilrathi corpses and ducking as rubble fell like flaming hail. A tingling sensation rose up through his legs as he neared what he thought was the center of the quilt. Maybe there he could experience all of it at once and shake off this force on his back.
Out of breath, he staggered into a zone that resembled billions of illuminated fibers, a bizarre kind of interchange that spun into and formed a glistening white cone stretching up to touch the stars. He crossed to the base of the cone, which now throbbed and seemed to enlarge by the second.
An old man whispered in his ear, "You'll get your answer at the top."
He gripped the first fibrous tube, no wider than a meter, and began his ascent. The air grew colder as he climbed, and the images of Kilrathi steering their fighters into each other or exploding or imploding at their stations aboard the cap ships grew more frequent, more vivid, the stench of them voiding themselves now even tighter in his nostrils. The higher he got, the more exaggerated his progress became. He would reach up to the next tube, and suddenly find himself a thousand meters higher, find himself staring into the pale, wrinkled, bewhiskered face of another dying abomination. He shivered uncontrollably and held his jaw tight to prevent his teeth from chattering. He forged on, driven by much more than curiosity. The answer to who he really was lay just ahead. One hundred meters. Fifty. Twenty. His hand struck a smooth, frigid surface. He pulled himself a little higher and tried to remove the hand. His flesh remained locked. He yanked again, and the pain snaked up his arm. He swore aloud, having come so far only to be stopped by something so ridiculous as-
"Don't go any farther, Blair." Karista stood beside him, shifting in and out of the illuminated mountain as though it were her dress, a dress made of rushing water. She held his hand in her own, their fingers interlaced.
"You've decided to help us," he said excitedly.
"No. I've been here. Hiding. Waiting. Knowing you would do something like this. You can't experience it all."
"lean! It's my choice!"
"Then you'll fall. Like the others."
He ripped his hand away. "Sorry. I have to know." She cried out for him to stop, but he thought her away. She darkened into dust quickly dispersed by the gale. He hauled himself to the top and stood on a plain of black that reflected the stars. Images of the battle struck successive blows, knocking him back like a boxer whose glory days had slipped by. Kilrathi wailed. Kilrathi died. The destroyer's bow caught the cruiser amidships in a glittering string of detonations that abruptly congealed into a single, debris-strewn globe. The explosion struck Blair's ankles, surged up his legs, then swallowed him in light for a blink before vanishing. Transparent thunderheads grumbled above, and he lifted his gaze to the traceries of lightning that joined the stars and discharged around him. He lifted his arms and surrendered to the knowledge-the history-delivered on bolts from the vacuum.
He saw Pilgrims living aboard ring stations, felt their fear and anxiety, lived their lives with and for them: he saw embryos with horrible mutations and sensed the warmth of their mothers' wombs; he saw Ivar Chu speaking in thunderous words to a crowd of millions, then spoke the words for Chu himself and heard cries of ecstatic joy in return; he gasped for acrid-smelling air as he died with hundreds of thousands aboard sloships attacked by Confederation destroyers. He saw it all at once, and it kept coming, faster and colder-
"I can change your path!" a woman cried. "I can." His body shook, and the collar of his flight suit dug into his neck. A single countenance seeped through the trillions of images and sensations: the face of his mother, her cheeks red and tear-stained, her eyes brightening into twin novae. She took form, gripped his flight suit, tried to shake him to attention.
He looked at her uncomprehendingly for a second, then uttered, "Don't."
"Christopher. I can't let you do this." His hands found her wrists, pulled them off- And the effort forced him back. He lost his footing, felt the summit's edge drag across his boots.
Then he fell, the wind fluttering through his flight suit, the mountain of radiant thought wiping by below, the tangled surface of the quilt hurtling mercilessly toward him. He remembered his mother's warning when he had first encountered her in the continuum. He thought of how Karista had spoken the same words: Then you'll fall. Like the others. He thrust out his palms and tried to scream, but nothing would come. Now a feeling from the core of his being told him he could not save himself. He had tapped too deeply into the continuum, into the scripts, into a quantum level that was the blood of the universe.
He struck the quilt, felt his body spread across its surface and slough off a cloak of darkness. Then he froze into a solid, flat mass cupped by something warm. The quilt felt different, harder, smoother, with the trace of a vibration moving steadily over its surface. Seconds ticked by, with only a dark drape of nothingness before him. Then a light appeared, enlarged, focused into a glassy sheen of stars half-eclipsed by a familiar face. "Blair?"
His lips and tongue felt numb. But his eyes, yes, his eyes took Karista in with gratitude, with a softness that said he was sorry, but one she did not recognize.
"I'm getting you to sick bay. But don't worry. It's over. It's over now."
21
VEGA SECTOR.DAY QUADRANT.MCDANIEL'S WORLD.CS CONCORDIA.
2654.128.0900 HOURS CONFEDERATION STANDARD TIME
'Message forwarded from the Barnicket Light, sir. The destroyer Windmar intercepted a distress signal from Aloysius Prime during standard patrol. They now have thirteen Pilgrim pilots in custody, along with twenty-one mercenaries and five troopships registered to the CS Olympus. They've interrogated the prisoners and forward the recordings."
Commodore Richard Bellegarde shook a fist. "Yes! We have a trail."
Comm Officer Wilks went on, picking up on Bellegarde's excitement and pouring some into his own youthful voice. "The Windmar tracked ion emissions and found the remains of three Fralthi-class cruisers and a Ralari-class destroyer. The emissions continue on past the battle's coordinates, and the Windmar's skipper believes that at least two Kilrathi capital ships are in pursuit of the Olympus."
"Contact Admiral Tolwyn," Bellegarde said, then hurried across the bridge toward the lift. "Tell him to meet me in the map room."
"Should I alert Space Marshal Gregarov as well?"
"Not yet."
"But sir, she instructed that-"
"I'm aware of her instructions. And I wouldn't want you to disobey orders. Just give me and the admiral about ten minutes." Wilks grinned his understanding. "Aye-aye, sir."
Bellegarde had already pulled up the holographic map of Robert's Quadrant by the time Tolwyn arrived. The systems of Baird's Star, Tartarus, Dakota, K'rissth, and Freya glinted in three dimensions within a rectangular box comprised of hundreds of green cubes. The portal system of Port Hedland stood just outside the box, and a solid red line marking Aristee's last known trajectory curved from a point between Tartarus and Freya and headed on toward Port Hedland, where the line became dotted to indicate Bellegarde's projection.
"What do we have, Richard?"
He spoke rapidly, realizing that he should calm down-but the news represented their first real break in fifteen days. After he finished relaying the data to Tolwyn, he turned to a communications monitor and activated an audio-video recording. A muscular black man appeared, his face sweaty, his eyes like heavy gray sacks. Bellegarde thumbed down the volume and said, "I just glanced at a few of these interrogations before you arrived, and this one seemed particularly interesting. Man's name is Doug Henrick. Says he was taken by force and ordered to fly. Says the others were as well-that's why they sent off a distress signal instead of trying to hide from the Windmar."
"Or they were just disabled, knew they couldn't make it back to the ship, and figured they'd
lie so we wouldn't execute them for treason," Tolwyn said. "No, they willingly joined Aristee's force. They were either left behind or had second thoughts and went AWOL."
"I agree. Anyway, this guy thinks Aristee intercepted one of our comm drones near Aloysius. He also says that she plans on modifying her hopper drive so that it'll create a much larger gravity well. He says that by one-four-eight, maybe sooner, she'll have it ready. Her next stop? Earth."
"Convenient timing. Ten days shy of our deadline. But what if Mr. Henrick allowed himself to be captured to feed us misinformation? I'm sure he hasn't submitted to a cerebral scan-and even those can be fooled with the right training. I'm dubious because he knows too much for a pilot."
"I thought the same, until I learned that he's had contact with Christopher Blair. They went to Blair for help in getting close to Paladin. He says the situation got too complicated and he and a few others decided to make a run when the cats attacked. They left behind William Santyana. Name ring a bell?"
"Brilliant test pilot. Retired too young. I see Aristee's conscripted only the best."
"Santyana wants out as well-but Aristee has his family on board. He's working with Blair and Paladin." Bellegarde paused to consider the tone he would use to deliver his next bit of news. He simply had to say it. "Sir, Henrick also says that there's some doubt as to Paladin's loyalty."
"I'm not surprised."
"I guess you were worried about him. Why?"
"We'll leave it there. For now, we'll have to trust him. Paladin has rarely let me down."
Bellegarde shut off the recording, then eyed the holograph. "Sir, I know that last week we sent the Tiger Claw and Fosubius battle group to Earth, but I respectfully suggest that we join them to strengthen our presence, whether Henrick is lying or not. We can't afford to ignore this. Aristee can jump to Vega and follow the Ulysses corridor right back to Sol."
"That would be the long route, Richard. With her hopper drive, she might be able to jump directly from Port Hedland. In fact, she doesn't even need to reach that jump point. If our information is true, then right now she's remaining within interstellar space and buying herself time until her drive is ready. Trouble is, she's got the Kilrathi on her tail."
