by J. L. Doty
He waited. She stepped past him, stepped into the small cabin and clamped her hands together to keep them from trembling visibly as the door closed behind her.
The cabin was empty. The guard had lied to her. He’d taken her money and lied—
“And what can I do for Yer Ladyship?”
She gasped, jumped back and came up against the closed door. She looked up, saw Palevi lying in his grav bunk like a fly sleeping on the wall. The bunk was several feet off the floor, and he was laying there casually with both hands behind his head as if he had not a care in the universe. He looked down at her, suddenly spun his legs downward, slapped at a switch with his hand and, with practiced ease, landed on his feet on the deck. “Well?” he asked.
“I want you to look at something,” she said, reaching into a pocket, retrieving a small card and holding it out to him.
He didn’t move, stood there looking at her. Not so much as a muscle twitched. Finally, he said, “I ought to just kill you right here. I’ve got a whole hour to do it, right?”
Her hand, holding the card out to him, trembled. “Yes. You ought to. But as you say, you do have a whole hour. So first you should look at this. You’ll still have plenty of time to kill me afterward.”
Again he regarded her, his face lifeless and unmoving. Then he reached out, opened a hand palm up, made her cross the small room and hand him the card. He closed his fingers over it, but didn’t lower his hand and continued to stare at her. Then he turned the card over in his hand and examined it as if he’d never seen one before. Finally, he turned, crossed the room in one step, pulled a seat and a small shelf-of-a-desk out of the wall and sat down behind the desk. He reached out, swung a reader into place, inserted the card into it and pulled on the earphones. He positioned the reader between them so he could look at it and watch her at the same time, then he touched a switch.
He watched in silence, no sound from the reader escaping the confines of the earphones. While he watched and listened she stepped backward slowly until her back pressed against the plast of the bulkhead behind her. She relished its coolness, closed her eyes, tried to forget so many things, tried to forget everything.
After what seemed like far too long she opened her eyes again, realized he’d already finished playing the card, had been sitting there in silence staring at her. “So it’s another double-cross,” he said. “So they’re going to kill us all, make it neat and convenient.” He shrugged. “The whole thing’s been a double-cross from the beginning, and you were the biggest double-crosser of the bunch. So?” He let that question hang in the air.
She said, “We can save him. I can help you, so you can save him. There are rumors all over Luna about a coup, about a revolt in the Fleets; some of the rumors are absolutely ridiculous, some, perhaps, factual. There’s enough confusion that we could succeed.”
“And do what with him?”
“Free him. Get him away from here. Thwart them in that if nothing else.”
“Why?” he said, though she could swear his lips didn’t move; nothing moved.
“So at least he doesn’t have to die. So someone doesn’t have to die.”
For the first time since he’d started reading the card he moved, shook his head. “I meant, why would you help us? Why double-cross your friends?”
She chose her words carefully. “Let’s just say they’re not my friends, never have been. Let’s just say I was myself double-crossed.”
That morning York didn’t recognize the servant who brought his breakfast tray, but the man’s face did seem vaguely familiar. There were three or four different servants who regularly brought his meals. And every few days, about the time he would get to the point where he could recognize them, the powers-that-be rotated them out and brought in a new group. Today was one of those days.
As usual the tray contained his meal, utensils, condiments and other items, and a news card. And as usual York only lightly touched the meal and ignored the news card completely. He no longer cared what they had to say about him.
The servant that brought his lunch was a woman, though like all the rest she was clearly military. She put the tray down on the table, arranged the setting carefully, but before leaving held up the news card and asked, “Beggin’ your pardon, sir. But would the cap’em like me to put this in the reader?”
Odd question, York thought. But he just shook his head and she left.
He didn’t touch lunch, spent the time just staring out that window. He spent most of his time now just staring out that window, replaying bits and pieces of his life, trying to avoid too much analysis of the meaningless events contained therein.
She had said cap’em, he realized. The AI guard had called him cap’em. AI didn’t use that term. No AI guard would ever have called him that, not even as an insult. Only a marine would have done so. He tried to remember what she had said as he turned slowly back to the untouched meal. He stared at the plates and utensils and food for a long moment, then reached out and picked up the news card. He walked over to the reader, sat down and switched it on, pulled on the earphones and inserted the card.
It was just the usual stuff. He sat there for a while not really listening to the recorded news broadcast. His eyes were drooping, and he was close to falling asleep, his face buried in his hands, when a familiar voice brought him up short: “. . . Thought you might want to see this, Cap’em.”
He looked at the screen of the reader; it showed a large room with a conference table in its center and a number of individuals seated around it. There were nine of them, all wearing admiral’s stripes.
York hit the backtrack key on the reader for a few seconds. Now the scene showed an ordinary news caster describing the events of the day, until suddenly his voice shifted and his lips no longer matched the words in York’s ears, “. . . Thought you might want to see this, Cap’em.”
Palevi!
A few seconds later the picture fluttered, and again he was looking into the conference room with the nine admirals—six men, three women. York recognized Soladin, Abraxa, Andralla Schessa and Sergai Leonavich, guessed who the other five had to be. Soladin was standing, speaking to the others and referring to a piece of paper held in his hands. “. . . Ballin was apparently resistant to mild dosages of the normal interrogation drugs. And because he had recently been seriously injured and gone through extensive speed healing treatments—apparently more than once—analysis of his blood chemistry indicated heavier dosages would probably kill him, something we need to avoid, at least until after his trial. So we resorted to more traditional techniques. But he still refused to answer any questions.”
Abraxa asked, “How intensive was the interrogation?”
Soladin shrugged. “See for yourselves.” He reached down to the console built into the conference table in front of him, touched a switch, and a small square near the top of York’s screen showed a separate image of an earlier recording, evidently a copy of what was replayed on the screens in front of each admiral.
The recording showed York lying unconscious on the deck of his cell, though so much dried and caked blood covered him he was hardly recognizable. The camera panned around him as Soladin spoke. “Most of the bones in his hands and feet and arms and legs have been broken, one by one. He has several broken ribs and torn ligaments—the list goes on and on. This was all administered slowly, over a period of several days.”
An admiral York didn’t recognize leaned forward. “And yet he refused to tell us anything.”
Soladin shook his head. “The interrogator has provided us with a recording of one of the sessions that nicely illustrates the man’s defiance.”
Soladin touched another switch, and the small split screen showed Sierka going carefully through one of his interrogation sessions. Sierka evidently knew this one was being recorded, remained calm and impersonal through the whole thing, though no less brutal.
York couldn’t actually remember that specific session, but from the vivid scar on Sierka’s neck and the w
ay his voice croaked when he spoke, it was sometime after York had tried to kill him, which meant it was long past the time York had broken psychologically. Sierka and his AI thugs worked him over and pretended to ask questions. York just lay there and ignored them, and he could see why anyone watching might take it as a sign of defiance, when in fact he had just plain given up.
“Amazing!” one of the admirals commented.
“In fact,” Soladin emphasized, “some of you may have noticed the scars on the interrogator’s neck; they’re from an attempt Ballin made on the interrogator’s life during an earlier session. An attempt, I might add, that almost succeeded.”
“This man is a maniac,” one of the men said. “He’s a renegade, a traitor, a mutineer—”
“Oh shut up, Karltine,” Leonavich shouted, identifying the man as Karltine Degaas, Duke de Mercus. Leonavich stood, leaned forward angrily and glared across the table at Degaas. “That bullshit is for the masses. Don’t start believing your own god damned propaganda. Ballin was just obeying the orders we gave him.”
“Nonsense,” Degaas shouted back. “He’s a danger to us all, and can’t be allowed to live.”
“Gentlemen,” Andralla Schessa said calmly. “Please!”
Both of them looked at her, bit back whatever they’d been about to say. Leonavich sat down and Schessa continued. “I agree with you Karltine. Ballin is a danger to us all and can’t be allowed to live. But Sergai is also correct when he reminds us we mustn’t start believing our own propaganda—Lieutenant Ballin is not the cause of the mess we’re in. In fact, if the circumstances were a bit different, we’d probably give him a promotion and a medal. I almost wish he were working for us.”
That brought a few laughs and eased the tension a bit. “That’s interesting you should say that, Andralla,” Soladin said. “In looking into Ballin’s past I discovered he was apparently working for one of us, though he didn’t know it.”
The admirals seated around the table reacted with dead silence for several seconds, until Schessa asked, “Are you telling us this Ballin was in the employ of one of us? That one of us has betrayed the others?”
Soladin lifted a single eyebrow. “In a manner of speaking. But why don’t you judge for yourselves.” He looked at his papers for a moment, then began reciting facts. “Ballin is thirty-four years old. We know he was brought to the planet Dumark when only an infant, and arrangements were made for him to be raised by foster parents. However, payments to the foster parents stopped when Ballin was six years old. And while his foster parents continued to raise him, they put little effort into it. Ballin was arrested at the age of twelve after mugging an old woman. And it appears someone powerful intervened with the courts on Dumark to get him turned over to the press gangs, rather than serving a prison sentence he might not survive.”
Schessa interrupted him. “That’s rather slim evidence, Johan.”
Soladin smiled knowingly. “There’s more. At the age of fifteen Ballin was sent to the Royal Military Academy at Mare Crisia on Luna, auspiciously because he was the youngest survivor of the Andor Vincent. Now tell me, in the history of the Empire, how many juvenile-delinquent, lower-deck pod gunners have been admitted to the Royal Military Academy?”
A heavy silence answered Soladin. He continued. “It’s also of interest that Ballin is a lifer. Now lifers are an interesting phenomena. For some reason no one quite understands, every assignment the Fleet computers give them is combat duty. They never get a rotation back to a non-combat assignment. They never get a few years off like everyone else, just perpetual combat. In fact, with the exception of his few years at the Academy, Lieutenant Ballin has been in combat almost continuously for twenty-two years. Furthermore, he’s fought in most of the great battles of our time: Trefallin, Sirius Night Star, Arman’Tigh, Shamrock Alley, Turnham’s Cluster, Tsairmegan—the list goes on and on, names that are legend.”
Soladin nodded his head quietly, apparently lost for a moment in thought. “There’s another interesting thing about lifers: they’re extremely rare. I’ve done a little research, and while we’ve all heard of the phenomena, it turns out that with the exception of Mister Ballin, none of us have ever actually met one. In fact, they’re so rare, there has actually only ever been one: our Mister Ballin.”
A chorus of hushed whispers answered that. Soladin continued. “Someone carefully inserted that legend about lifers into the common military myth. And that same someone intervened every time Ballin was about to be reassigned, intervened to insure he would always be held at a safe distance, always far out on the front lines; intervened sometimes to keep him alive, undoubtedly, but always to insure he was never too close.”
“Too close to what?” someone demanded.
Soladin shook his head. “Not too close to what,” he said. “Too close to whom. In fact, too close to us.”
Schessa said, “I’m assuming you can verify all this with hard data. But you haven’t yet told us why? Why go to all this trouble for, as you put it, a juvenile-delinquent, lower-deck pod gunner? Why?”
Soladin looked at each of them carefully, and the answer he gave seemed completely odd and out of context to York. “The man who brought the infant child York Ballin to Dumark, the man who arranged for the foster care, the man who arranged for regular payments to the foster parents, the man who visited yearly until the boy was six years old—that man was Collier Maczek.”
Again silence answered Soladin, and for several seconds everyone sat in complete stillness. Schessa was the first to move: she punched something up on the screen in front of her. Several of the others followed her lead, one or two scratching hurriedly on pieces of paper. It was the strangest sort of reaction, beginning with that long moment of silence and no reaction, moving to a stage of almost frantic activity, then dawning comprehension on several of their faces, and then sudden pandemonium. They all stood, shouting, demanding to know who had betrayed the rest, trying to shout above the others. Soladin let it go on for a few seconds, then held up the paper he was holding and waved it at them carefully. “Yes,” he said as they quieted down. “We all knew Ballinov had a brat hidden away somewhere. And with a little arithmetic anyone can see the payments to the foster parents ended when the whore and her servant were killed in the palace revolt. And with a little more arithmetic we know who she was bedding at the time Ballin was born. And we know the old man was quite smitten with her.”
More shouts and angry demands. “Yes,” Soladin shouted above them. “We have the illegitimate son of the late emperor, and the younger half-brother of the present emperor. We have a prince of the royal blood in a cellblock on Luna Prime. And any one of us might have kept him in the wings, out of the way, waiting for some opportunity to use him. For if he were legitimized somehow, we also have a potential pretender to the throne.”
“So Ballin was part of all this?” a woman demanded. “Is this some sort of move to take the throne?”
“No, no, no, no, no,” Soladin shouted above the uproar that followed. “Not at all. Ballin was, and is, an innocent dupe. He knew nothing of this, still knows nothing of his own lineage. In fact, as Andralla pointed out, Ballin was just obeying orders, and his only crime was that he’s too damn good at what he does, and he managed to carry out his orders with a bit too much success. It’s a shame. Beyond a few faults, none of which seem to get in his way, he’s a capable officer.”
“That he is,” Schessa added. “He managed to single-handedly capture and destroy our sub-sector headquarters at Sarasan. And with both the Directorate and the empire trying to destroy both him and his ship, he got her into Andyne-Borregga, got her repaired, and got her out again. And we’re still trying to figure out how he brought a full sized cruiser into Lunan nearspace without detection. And finally, thanks to him, we now have in our possession two members of the Directorate Central Committee.”
A large muscular man, who until that moment had remained silent, leaned forward and asked carefully, “What did you just say, Andralla?�
��
Schessa smiled. “It’s just a little secret, Marko,” she said, identifying him as Marko Simma, Duke de Jupttar. She looked at Abraxa. “Another one of Bargan’s little secrets.”
It was clear now that Schessa and Soladin had carefully orchestrated the meeting. Simma demanded in a hard, angry voice, “What is she talking about, Bargan?”
Abraxa shrugged and recovered quickly. “It’s no secret, at least not beyond these walls. In fact, I had prepared a briefing for all of you. If you’ll all look to your screens . . .” The split screen on York’s reader showed a picture of Add’kas’adanna. She looked better, though that streak of Kinathin pride glared out at them like a new sun in the galaxy. “Let me introduce Fleet Director Add’kas’adanna. Ballin captured her off Sarasan when he destroyed her ship. Of course, we’ve no hope of interrogating her. Like us, her neural core has been carefully programmed, and she’d die quickly should we attempt to extract any information from her by force.
“Next . . .” The picture shifted suddenly to the empress’ servant, though she was attired much more expensively than before. “Let me introduce Director of State Theara. Ballin didn’t exactly capture her. Apparently she was traveling in Her Majesty’s retinue disguised as a personal servant. That was the reason, by the way, for the trip to Trinivan—to meet up with Theara and have her join Sylissa d’Hart’s retinue, and then later that of Cassandra. And of course, we can no more interrogate Theara than we can Add’kas’adanna. But from other sources we know she was involved in a little conspiracy with Edvard and Cassandra, and she brought with her a proposal for a cease-fire, and a possible peace treaty.”
The shouting started again, and it was clear none of the nine admirals wanted to see their personal empires suddenly stricken with peace. There was no real argument, no disagreement, just an obvious and clear understanding among them all that, at any cost, peace could not be allowed to break out. But with his revelations Abraxa had effectively deflected their attention from his own little conspiracies. However, Soladin moved quickly to deflect them back. “At the moment,” he said, “I’m far more concerned about Ballin. He’s more dangerous to us than a few Directors of the Central Committee. Even more dangerous than that Kinathin fleet that’s bearing down on us. But there are some answers to be had. I think the foremost question on all our minds is, Who is responsible for Ballin’s existence? And that question wasn’t terribly difficult to answer. Remember, one of us had to intervene to save the young boy from a prison sentence. And again to get him into the Academy, and again every time he was reassigned, and again for any number of reasons. Now each intervention was carefully and subtly covered up, but each did leave a slight trace. And when you isolate them and put them together, they form a rather complete picture. Though, there is one question I still have.” He looked pointedly at Abraxa. “Tell me, Bargan. Who, or what, is Wildflower?”
