by J. L. Doty
She smiled. “Thank you, Lieutenant. Twenty minutes then.”
York took a quick, cold shower, shaved, put on a clean uniform, though, out of a recently acquired habit, the last thing he did before leaving his cabin was slip a small gun into his belt hidden beneath his tunic. By the time he reached the empress’ suite he was starting to get hungry, and he realized he hadn’t eaten real food in days.
He tapped on the door politely and Daka Temerek opened it, stepped aside to let York enter. The room inside was crowded. Besides Temerek there was Olin Rame, Alsa Yan, Armbruster, Straegga, and Maggie. York was glad to see Maggie there. Temerek and Armbruster looked guilty, Rame looked determined, Alsa looked confused, and Maggie looked like she wanted to warn York about something. Straegga marched right up to York, took his hand and shook it. “Lieutenant, this is the first chance I’ve had to thank you for saving my life, though I wish you’d told me before hand you were going to booby-trap your reactor pack that way.” She grinned. “Andleman wasn’t at all pleased, was he?”
Straegga held a cup of caff in one hand and the smell of it made York’s mouth water. “Do you think I could get a cup of that?”
Armbruster jumped. “Let me do the honors, Lieutenant.” He crossed the room to some sort of bar, and York wondered if they had any trate, though he didn’t voice that thought.
The room seemed overly large. He knew Invaradin from stem to stern, and there were no cabins on her of this size. Cinesstar wasn’t much larger than Invaradin, both warships, and a luxury the size of this cabin didn’t belong on her. It took him a moment to understand they’d cut away a bulkhead between two cabins to make a large sitting room for the empress. It was connected to another cabin beyond that, where he wouldn’t be surprised to find they’d cut away another bulkhead to make a large bedroom. He wondered if they’d gotten the starboard chamber repaired first.
Armbruster shoved a cup of steaming hot caff into his hands. York stepped back out of the center of the room, put his back to a bulkhead and took a sip. Alsa cornered him there, reached up without ceremony, peeled back the eyelid on his real eye and peered into it carefully.
“Alsa?” he whispered. “What’s going on here?”
She whispered, “I don’t know any more than you. They called me up here about an hour ago, asked about your condition, and wouldn’t let me leave after that. Against my recommendation they woke you up early, said it was important. I think Maggie knows what’s going on, but they won’t let me near her. Be careful, York. You’re still short about twenty to forty hours of sleep before you’re done with the side effects of the healing. You’re going to be tired and on edge, so don’t bite anyone’s head off.”
She produced an injector, pressed it against his thigh and pulled the trigger. He heard a faint puff and it stung a bit. “That’ll give you a little energy. No drugs, just synth-nutrition concentrates.”
“It was bad, eh?” he asked her.
She looked him in the eyes. “You almost bought it again. That’s twice now in as many months. Be more careful, eh?”
“Yes, Lieutenant, you should be more careful.”
Alsa spun about quickly and stepped aside. The empress approached, saying, “We need you, Lieutenant. Please take care of yourself. We’d hate to lose you, though that was a brave thing you did, willingly suffering a breach wound and exposing yourself to lethal radiation to save your people.”
York knew protocol required him to bow, or drop to one knee, or something. Probably drop to one knee, but he didn’t have the strength to get up again if he did that so he opted for a deep bow. “Your Majesty.” York thanked all the gods of space she didn’t hold out her hand.
Behind the empress stood Sylissa d’Hart, Martin Andow, Sarra Fithwallen, the old queen mother with her usual sour expression, and of course Major Dewar. “Doctor Yan tells me you’re still a bit tired after your ordeal, so why don’t we dispense with the formalities. Let’s find a comfortable place to sit and chat.”
She lead York to a small couch on the other side of the room, and when she sat down everyone else followed suit as if it had been rehearsed, leaving him and Alsa standing, both a little confused. The empress nodded toward an empty seat facing her. “Please, Lieutenant.”
York felt every eye in the room tracking him as he carefully sat down.
The empress smiled. “Tell me about your condition, Lieutenant. Are you feeling better?”
York shrugged. She had something she wanted to say, but she was going to take her own time saying it. “I’m just tired, and a bit confused.”
“Confused?” she asked. “About what?”
He lied. “It’s always confusing when you wake up after healing.”
“Ah!” she said. “Yes, that must be unpleasant, though there hasn’t been much on this voyage that has been pleasant.”
If that was an opening he wasn’t going to take it. “This is a warship. And warships aren’t meant to be pleasant.”
He decided to throw a joker into the deck, see if he could get any reaction. He looked around the room, said, “Nice place you have here.”
The empress smiled. “Yes. Commander Sierka has been most accommodating, though I’d really be quite content with something more Spartan, under the circumstances.”
York shrugged. “If I were you I’d check to see if anyone ran any simulations on the structural integrity of this section of the ship before they cut out those bulkheads. If you find they didn’t, then I’d recommend you shore up the deck above your heads before it collapses. When it collapses, and it will, it could start a chain reaction and take the entire ship with it.”
Doubt registered on her face and she glanced worriedly about for an instant. But she recovered quickly, said, “I’m sure it’s been taken care of. But tell me. You have quite a bit of experience to draw upon. If it were up to you, how would you get us back to the empire?”
York shook his head. “But it’s not up to me, Your Majesty, and I wouldn’t attempt to second guess my captain.”
Her eyes narrowed, and she gave him a knowing little smile. “No, you wouldn’t, at least not publicly. But you almost committed mutiny. Or rather, you were almost driven to mutiny, and your people were ready to follow you, to push you into it, from what I’ve heard. And while you didn’t allow yourself to be drawn into open rebellion, I have to assume you have some thoughts on how this ship might be better run. Please. This is a private conversation. Anything you say here will be held in the strictest confidence.”
York looked around slowly. Other than him, there were eleven people in the room. So much for private conversations. He shrugged again. “I suppose I might try to get us back to the Sector Headquarters at Aagerbanne. But we have no idea where the lines are in this sector so we’d have to move cautiously.”
Andow laughed. “Lieutenant, you’re a master of understatement. Let me ask you a question. What do you think our chances are of getting back to the empire under the present command?”
There it was, York thought as blanked the expression on his face. They finally wanted to replace Sierka, and with his marines close to mutiny, they wanted to know if he’d support Sierka’s successor. He hoped they were smart enough to pick Rame, or even Straegga. “It would not be appropriate for me to guess at such chances.” He looked at Andow and couldn’t resist a little gibe. “Especially since the present command was specifically put in place by royal edict.”
Andow nodded and grinned. “Touché, Lieutenant. But let’s be frank with one another. We all know Sierka is incompetent, and we’re also well aware of your feelings on the matter.”
York tried not to feel anything at the moment. “My feelings are irrelevant. You will do what you will do.” He looked at the empress. “And if you replace Sierka, I and my subordinates will serve his successor with the same loyalty we’ve always shown the rightfully appointed commanding officer of this ship. I hope there is no question of that.”
“Oh, Lieutenant!” the empress said. “No one here que
stions your loyalty. We only question Commander Sierka’s competence. But we need someone with the strength and resolve to take action. And we want you to know we’ll support you in whatever you choose to do, regardless of the ramifications.”
Now that was an odd thing to say. He had to roll that around in his head for a few times. It sounded as if they weren’t going to replace Sierka, probably didn’t want to admit officially he was an incompetent fool. And while he was in command their chances of getting back to the empire were diminishing with every second.
York glanced around at the faces in the room. They were all looking at him, waiting for him to say something, though Maggie seemed to be biting her tongue, and Alsa had a look of incredulity on her face. She understood what they were talking about, and her disbelief was conspicuous. And then suddenly York also understood.
He looked at the empress, realized his own face must mirror Alsa’s. “You can’t mean—” he started to say, but the empress lifted a hand and cut him off.
She said, “I meant only what I said.”
York shook his head. The idiots were playing games like children. “No, you didn’t,” he said, unable to contain his anger. “You meant a lot more than that.”
He stood up, looked around at them all, finished by looking last at the empress. “You meant you don’t want to dirty your hands fixing the mess you created.”
Temerek jumped up. “See here, Ballin. You can’t speak that way to—”
York turned on him. “Shut up, Temerek, and sit down.” He turned back to the empress. “You meant that you’d like me to clean it up for you. You’d like a nice little mutiny, one you could disclaim all knowledge of. Have Ballin clean up your mess, then when it’s all done you can hang him and make noises about what kind of a monster he was.”
Maggie jumped up. “I told them you wouldn’t buy it, York.”
York threw his hands up. “Well thank god there’s someone here with an ounce of sanity.”
The empress stood. “Mister Ballin, we need your help.”
“You need my help?” York asked. He thought of his dream. “You don’t want my help, you want my blood.” The deck beneath his feet seemed unsteady. He pleaded with the empress. “I’ve been fighting this war for more than twenty years, and every year they shoot up a little bit more of me. And I’m afraid that when the day comes, there won’t be anything left of me to put into the god damn body bag.”
“I told you he’s psychotic,” Temerek shouted.
York wheeled toward the hatch and growled, “I’ve had enough of this.”
He almost made it, but Temerek stepped in his way just as he reached the exit. “You haven’t been dismissed, Ballin.”
York and Temerek were about the same size, but they both knew York was too weak to resist Temerek. What Temerek didn’t know, what none of them knew, was that York had stopped with his hand just beneath the hem of his tunic resting on the gun in his belt. “Get out of my way,” he said with a calm, deadly edge to his voice.
Temerek shook his head arrogantly, grabbed a hand full of York’s tunic and pulled him forward so their faces were almost touching. “You’re not leaving until you’re dismissed.”
York jammed the muzzle of the gun up into Temerek’s gut, thumbed the safety off, and the gun’s power pack hummed ominously for a moment as it came to life. They all heard it, and Temerek turned white. York shoved the muzzle of the gun up harder into Temerek’s gut until he knew he was hurting him. “Get out of my way,” he growled brutally, “or I’ll blow you out of my way.” He heard some motion behind him and he called over his shoulder, “Dewar, stay where you are, unless you want a junior officer with his guts blown up into his brains.”
No one moved. Temerek stood there for a moment and started to tremble. He really wasn’t a bad sort, but for some reason York wanted to kill him, wanted to kill someone. And he might have killed Temerek then and there, but Maggie stopped him. “York, don’t.”
Temerek glanced to one side, trying to think of how to stay alive, how to get out of York’s way. He started to edge in that direction so York gave him a hand, actually an elbow. Temerek landed across the back of a chair, York palmed the latch on the hatch and shoved it open. He stepped into the corridor, closed the door softly behind him.
When he got back to his cabin he pulled out a bottle of trate and decided to get drunk. He poured a glass, barely diluted it, looked at it for a moment and realized he really just wanted to go to sleep. He put the trate down untouched, pressed the intercom switch on his terminal.
“Corporal Tathit here. What can I do for you, Cap’em?”
“No calls,” York said. “No visitors, no nothing. I don’t care who it is. I don’t care if it’s the fucking emperor himself. I’m going to get some sleep.”
As the hatch to the empress’ suite closed following York’s exit, Maggie could no longer contain herself. “I knew it wouldn’t work. I told you—”
“Be silent, young woman,” the old queen mother commanded. “You will not speak—”
Suddenly everyone started shouting. “Please,” the empress said. “Please,” she repeated several times. She spoke calmly, didn’t shout commands or issue orders. “Let’s have some sanity here. Everyone please be silent for a moment.”
The room became still, filled slowly with a terrifying calm. The empress turned to Maggie, met her eyes squarely and said, “Miss Votak. I believe you were trying to say something. Please continue.”
Maggie bit her lip, glanced quickly at the old queen mother; saw only anger and disapproval there. She looked at the empress and said, “It was nothing.”
Cassandra took a slow, deep breath and let it out with a sigh. “You said you knew it wouldn’t work. Why wouldn’t it work?”
Maggie wasn’t sure whom she could trust. She hesitated, but realized there was no way to be certain. All she could do was chance it, so she began cautiously. “He doesn’t trust you.”
The room exploded with a dozen people speaking at once. Again the empress silenced them with a calm voice and a patient wave of her hands. Again she turned on Maggie. “Why doesn’t he trust us?”
Maggie shook her head. “He doesn’t trust you.”
The empress raised an eyebrow. “He doesn’t trust . . . me? Why doesn’t he trust me?”
Maggie shrugged. “I thought he explained himself rather clearly. You’d like him to take command of this ship by force. But you don’t understand that even he can’t hold this ship together if he’s just another criminal. He doesn’t trust you, because you don’t trust him.”
The empress’ eyes narrowed sharply. “And do you trust him?”
“With my life,” Maggie said. “And with your life.”
CHAPTER 20: MORE CHOICES
When the knock on the door came York realized he’d been awake for some time, lying in his bunk staring at the bulkhead in his cabin. He slid out of his bunk, though he moved like a tired, old man. He hit the latch on his cabin door angrily and tossed it open. Palevi stood there nervously, rigidly at attention. “Cap’em. I—”
“I told you not to bother me,” York growled.
“But cap’em! It’s the empress. She—”
“So tell her I’ll call her back when I’m damn good and ready.”
“But she didn’t call, sir. She’s here, now, in person. I know you said no visitors, but sir . . .”
“Here? Now?”
“Yes, sir. I put her in your office, sir.”
York shook his head. “Tell her I’ll be right there.”
“Yes, sir.” Palevi saluted, turned, and marched away.
York splashed some water on his face, ran more through his hair. He found the empress seated in a small chair in his office. She didn’t stand as he entered, and he still didn’t know what he was supposed to do. Bow? Drop to one knee? He bowed awkwardly.
She smiled skeptically. “ Let’s forego the formalities. You’re not very good at it anyway. By the way. You were right about my cabin. They’
re installing all sorts of beams to shore up the deck. It’s a mess.”
He shrugged, didn’t know what to do with his hands so he crossed them behind his back. “A lucky guess.”
“No, no guesswork in you, Mr. Ballin. And we do have a mess on our hands, one created by, as you so aptly put it, royal edict.” She grinned.
York shrugged and said nothing.
She laughed, and without warning stood. “Do you have anything to drink around here?”
A bottle of trate in his desk, but nothing around fit for an empress. He shook his head. “Nothing, Your Majesty.”
“Oh come now, Lieutenant. You have this wondrous reputation for boozing. You must have something. What do you call that concentrate you drink . . . trate?”
York raised his eyebrows skeptically, but turned to his desk, palmed the latch on the bottom drawer, lifted out a bottle and a plast cup. He retrieved another cup from the fresher, poured a small amount into each. As he returned to the fresher for some water the empress called after him, “And I’ve heard it’s customary to drink it only partially diluted.”
He diluted it about ten-to-one, roughly the equivalent of straight alcohol, not as strong as it might be, but still stronger than recommended. He returned to his office, handed her a cup.
She looked at him for a moment, then lifted her cup and said, “To the mess I’ve got us into . . . and to the only man who can get us out of it.”
He sipped at the trate, watched her over the lip of his cup as she sipped at hers. She flinched a little at the first sip, then took another. “Tell me,” she said. “Haven’t you ever wondered why Fleet sent you to the academy?”
He took another sip of trate. “What you mean, I believe, is why Fleet sent a half literate, juvenile delinquent, lower deck pod gunner to the academy?”
“Yes. I guess that’s what I mean.”
