Haskell spun, snapped to frustrated rage. Before he could smash the confounding failure, a flutter of silk intervened. The strange woman whose presence had been forgotten snatched the offending glass out of his grasp.
“My good man!” she exclaimed. “Would you destroy what may be the most unusual mirror ever created?”
Haskell blinked. He balled his quivering hands into fists at his sides. “That’s no mirror!” he shouted, near to hysterics. “It reflects no image. None at all.”
“Bless you!” The woman’s exotic glance flashed with reassurance. An unearthly vision amid the lab’s sterile setting, she flourished her treasure with the poise of a Chinese porcelain. “Your work casts no reflection in this dimension. Which is well, since I’ve no use for a linear mirror at all.”
“Jargon!” snapped Haskell. “Or else head-tripping nonsense.”
Moriah Tanya tipped him her provocative smile. “See for yourself.” She tilted the glass. In her grasp, the unsettling thing flared to life, unreeling a sequence of buildings and landscapes, with people in stunning, cinematic detail.
Haskell swallowed. His unease increased. Never had he seen anything like the bizarre scenes displayed by the mirror before him. Worse, his head pounded. After all this, he had missed his light lunch. His thoughtless guest had also encroached on the hour he preferred for his nap.
“You are viewing from an altered perspective, downward into a lateral reflection of time,” the woman ran on in cool explanation. “The same way that one dimension can be run through two, by the twist in a Moebius loop, I warped the time track of your perceived reality during the moment you silvered the mirror.”
“Whoever you are, whatever your game, I don’t care to be gulled by new-age gimmicks or parlor tricks!” Rattled to fury, Haskell snapped off his gloves. He blotted his drenched palms on his trousers. He needed a chair, in fact, he ached to sit down. Too shaken and flustered to tidy the lab, he left the door unlocked and gaping, and beat an unsteady retreat.
“ … deserve compensation,” Moriah Tanya was saying as she dogged his gimping flight up the stairway. “You’ve fashioned me a superior tool, one I intend to use often.”
“No bother!” grumped Haskell, wishing her gone. “Excuse my dull manners and let yourself out.” He reeled across his untidy living room, managed to reach the worn haven of his armchair before his quaking knees failed him.
“What trip would you wish to serve as your reward?” his annoying, crank visitor persisted. She draped herself next to him, clouding his mind with the dizzying scent of perfume. “I can promise that the thrill of your favorite pastime could become an experience unforgettably different.”
Before Haskell could rally his wits, her narrow fingers clamped over his nape with an alarming, tensile strength.
The old man was forced to stare into the mirror. When she tilted the sheet of obsidian glass, he was raked dizzy by vertigo. His whirling sight became barraged by a sequence of surreal images. Racetracks, he realized, despite himself wistful for one last chance to place a long-odds bet on the ponies …
As though his musing thought triggered change, his awareness spun and upended. Living room, armchair, and wallpapered surrounds were replaced by that eerie, no-color state that Moriah Tanya had claimed was some sort of altered perspective.
“Not again!” Haskell whispered.
He squeezed his eyes shut, gripped his hands onto nothing—then cried out as his ears were assaulted with noise. Aware of a seat supporting his body, he found himself buffeted amid the cheering tumult of a crowd.
He sat in a grandstand, packed to bursting capacity. The spectators about him were curiously strange, clad in jarring colors and outlandish styles of dress.
“No!” shouted Haskell.
Heads next to him turned. Fixed him with stares of astonished interest, or greeted him, smiling, with features not even remotely human. On a fenced track below, other six-legged creatures with scales were scuttling to the crowd’s roar of delight. They had crab-like jockeys riding their backs in a nightmarish parody of a race course.
“My God, no!” Haskell cried. He clapped his hands over his eyes, feeling nauseated. He had gone crazy! Some poking doctor would declare him unfit and pack him off to an asylum. Any moment …
Tightness clamped Haskell’s chest. He could not breathe. Then his mind blanked, and he fainted … .
Haskell awoke to the guttural roll of a thunderclap. Startled, he sat up in his own chair in the confines of his empty living room. The tabby that had just fled his lap stalked away, twitching her tail in offense.
Senile! thought Haskell. Hallucinations! Never had he believed he would experience the downward slide toward dementia. To die would be better, he had firmly insisted, than to suffer the demeaning indignity.
Thunder rumbled again. Rising wind battered a barrage of raindrops against the picture window. The kitchen casement was still open, Haskell realized. Failing or not he would have to get up, or Ellen’s domain would be doused by the storm. Haskell pushed himself onto his feet, determined to handle the problem.
As he leaned past the sink to lower the sash, he stopped cold. An unfamiliar pot stood inside his fenced yard. The glazed vessel contained a rose bush like none he had ever encountered, not in any botanical flower show, or any of his leisurely excursions through the exotic seed catalogs.
Haskell forgot the unsecured window. He barged through the side door, overwhelmed by excitement and the need to protect the curious plant from the downpour.
And the find was a beauty! Sheltered in the garage, while the thunderstorm hammered his flowerbeds, Haskell fingered leaves that were vibrantly striped and bearing barbs that were something like holly. The luminous blooms made their vicious defenses worthwhile, a velvety rose with petals of deep, royal purple. The yellow centers gave off a heady perfume that livened his nerves like a tonic. Haskell caressed a bud, despite himself entranced.
Then he noticed the white paper that circled the stem: a fragment pasted into a moebius strip, inscribed in a woman’s hand.
To Mark Haskell, from Moriah Tanya, made in payment for a most remarkable first surface mirror
Haskell laughed out loud. If pending senility brought such rewards, he might learn to enjoy the affliction. This “imported exotic” would look well in his garden. He’d just have to take care not to mention the outlandish experience that had brought him this alien plant.
That moment, behind him, the side door clicked open. Ellen’s voice emerged from the kitchen, chiding over the drum of the downpour. “Mark Haskell! Will you ever be blessed with the plain common sense to leave your gardening and shut the window?”
The Run to Hardscrabble Station
BY WILLIAM C. DIETZ
William C. Dietz is the bestselling author of more than twenty-five science fiction novels, the most recent of which is Runner (Ace, 2005). He grew up in the Seattle area, spent time with the Navy and Marine Corps as a medic, graduated from the University of Washington, lived in Africa for half a year, and has traveled to six continents. Dietz has been variously employed as a surgical technician, college instructor, news writer, television producer, and director of public relations and marketing for an international telephone company. For more information about William C. Dietz and his work visit www.williamcdietz.com.
“The Run to Hardscrabble Station” is set in Dietz’s Legion of the Damned universe, which began with the full-length novel Legion of the Damned, and continued with The Final Battle, By Blood Alone, By Force of Arms, For More Than Glory, and most recently, For Those Who Fell. “The story was inspired by my youngest daughter,” said Dietz, “who was working her way through the Naval Officer Candidate School in Pensacola, Florida. And yes, she wanted Intelligence, and wound up with Supply. I sent her the story in installments. The DIs sometimes make the candidates do push-ups as punishment for receiving mail—so who knows what it cost her.” Ensign Dietz graduated from Naval Officer Candidate School in June 2005.
Willia
m C. Dietz lives in Washington State.
“One cart load of the enemy’s provisions is equivalent to
twenty of one’s own …”
—The Art of War, by Sun Tzu, 500 B.C.
RIM PLANET CR-7201, HARDSCRABBLE STATION
The syndicate LST [landing ship transport] shuddered as a particularly strong gust of wind slammed into the port side. But the pilot had dealt with worse, much worse, and fired a steering jet as the boxy vessel continued its descent through Hardscrabble’s stormy atmosphere.
Meanwhile, back in the vessel’s otherwise empty cargo compartment, twenty heavily armed men and women waited nervously as the seconds ticked by. Some had been part of the attempt to usurp Earth’s government many years before, while others had been recruited since. But the rebellion had been put down, forcing the mutineers to live out on the rim. Now, as the ship bucked, wobbled, and shook, all of the raiders were conscious of the fact that rather than attack an isolated colony, they were about to tackle the Confederacy of Sentient Beings. An interstellar government that included more than a dozen intelligent species. And while there weren’t very many troops on the surface the assault team knew that Hardscrabble Station was protected by a ring of weapons emplacements that could blow their transport out of the air.
However, thanks to the security codes provided by a navy turncoat, they intended to land unopposed. That’s what ex-lieutenant commander Beth Halby was thinking as the LST shook like a thing possessed, the trooper across from her mouthed a prayer, and the person next to him threw up. Halby wrinkled her nose in disgust, a veteran laughed, and gravity tugged the globules of vomit down toward the deck.
Such was Lieutenant Rik Kavar’s eagerness to greet not only the incoming LST, but the replacement officer who was presumably aboard it, that the marine had ridden the all-purpose lift up to ground level where the huge Class III shelter clung limpetlike to Hardscrabble’s stormy surface. Now, having stepped out onto the loading dock, the officer felt tiny bits of wind-driven silicone sand blast his hard suit as the massive storm doors hit their stops and an LST materialized between them. Lights strobed, and dust blew in every direction as the supply vessel rode her repellers into the sand-strewn shelter and settled onto massive skids. Kavar couldn’t hear anything else because of his helmet, but Corporal Wamby’s voice was crystal clear. “The security codes match … Engine shut down confirmed. Shall I close the doors, sir?”
“That’s affirmative,” Kavar replied, and watched the dim outside light start to narrow as air jets blew sand out of the durasteel tracks and amber beacons continued to flash. Soon, within a matter of twelve hours or so, the marine planned to board the ship in front of him and leave Hardscrabble for the last time. Then, having served a full year on the godforsaken turd ball, Kavar would go home on leave. His wife had been six months pregnant the last time he’d seen her, which meant his daughter was about nine months old, and a real handful according to a batch of letters received two months earlier. Kavar couldn’t wait to hug them, eat some real food, and go swimming in the Pacific Ocean.
The marine’s thoughts were interrupted as the doors met, the previously swirling sand settled to the floor, and the short-timer was free to remove his helmet as he made his way down off the loading dock onto the surface below. The ship’s metal hull made loud pinging noises as it began to cool. Though no expert on navy ships, something about the LST bothered Kavar. It looked wrong somehow—like the transports in old war vids. Of course that could be explained by the fact that the war had forced the Confederacy to bring a lot of old equipment out of mothballs.
Less understandable, however, was the fact that both he and the rest of his tiny command had been told to expect LST-041, and while the ship in front of him had hull numbers, they were too faded to be legible. Added to that was the fact that the transport was five standard days early, an unheard-of occurrence given wartime conditions, and therefore strange … Still, the incoming ship had the correct codes, so why worry?
There was a steady beep, beep, beep as the stern ramp began to deploy. Cautious now, Kavar triggered his belt com. “Hey, Wamby … It’s probably okay—but this ship looks a little strange to me. Hit the alarm. Tell the gunny that I want her and the rest of the platoon topside ASAP. Full combat load.”
Wamby, who could see most of the shelter’s artificially lit interior via the screen in front of him, said, “Yes, sir,” but wondered if the loot was a bit rock-happy. Hell, the swabbies had the correct codes, didn’t they? So why scramble the troops? But an order is an order, so the Marine slapped the big red button and heard the nearest klaxon start to bleat. The noncom glanced at the weapons tech seated to his right and offered a characteristic grin. “Are we having fun yet?”
“The gunny’s going to be pissed!” the other soldier predicted cheerfully.
But Beth Halby and the lead elements of her strike team were already halfway down the LST’s stern ramp by that time. Kavar saw them, and was about to draw his sidearm when the renegade shot him in the face.
Wamby saw the lieutenant’s head jerk backwards, swore as he came to his feet, and spun toward the weapons rack behind him. “Look for incoming targets!” the noncom shouted as he grabbed an assault rifle. “Kill anything you see!” The weapons tech did as she was told, but the screens were clear.
Wamby ducked into the main corridor and was running for the lift when he heard a muffled explosion and felt the resulting vibration through the soles of his combat boots. The corporal was no genius, but it didn’t take one to know that the main lock had been blown, and that the same people who had murdered Lieutenant Kavar were inside Hardscrabble Station.
ABOARD THE EPSILON INDI, OFF RIM WORLD CR-8612
The CS [Combat Supply] vessel Epsilon Indi was more than three miles long, could carry five million tons of cargo, a fleet of 125 armored transports, and the 2,000-plus men, women, and robots that were required to run the ship, defend it if necessary, and crew the boxy LSTs that continually arrived and departed from the Indi’s cavernous launching bay. The corridor that ran down the length of the ship’s spine was crowded with people as the watch changed. Deck officers, weapons officers, engineering officers, flight officers, supply officers, ratings representing dozens of specialties, camo-clad marines, civilian contractors, and a variety of robots all rubbed shoulders with each other while they talked, laughed, complained, argued, bragged, and in one unfortunate case attempted to sing.
Glow panels marked off regular six-foot intervals, the conduit-lined bulkheads were navy gray, and multicolored decals identified where first-aid kits, damage control stations, escape pods, weapons blisters, node points, and access panels could be found. The deck was spotless, thanks to the efforts of the tireless maintenance bots, and a constant stream of routine announcements could be heard as Ensign Tarla Tevo attempted to spot passageway B-12 before the moving walkway carried her past it. Something that was second nature for old hands but still represented a challenge for the ensign, who had been on the ship for less than a week.
Tevo saw the neatly printed sign, took a turn to starboard, and returned a med tech’s salute. Then, heels clicking on the metal deck, she made her way down a smaller passageway toward the ship’s C & C [command and control] Center and the warren of offices that surrounded it. She was looking for the compartment that belonged to Commander Tig Owani, the ship’s XO [executive officer], and the man that could rescue the ensign from supply hell. Assuming that her father had been able to pull all of the necessary strings, Commander Owani would congratulate Tevo on being selected for the intel school on Terra and send her down to personnel. A few days later she would board a high-speed packet ship that would whisk her away to the glamorous universe of plot and counter plot.
Buoyed by that thought, and eager to begin her new career, Tevo came to a halt in front of the XO’s compartment. The hatch was open and the officer was clearly at his desk, so the young woman rapped on the wooden “knock” panel. Owani’s voice was a deep baritone. “Enter.”
Having completed OCS [Officer Candidate School] seven months earlier, Tevo was well aware of the correct protocol. She took three steps forward and came to attention. Her eyes were focused on a point six inches above the XO’s closely cropped head. “Ensign Tevo reporting as ordered, sir!”
The only light was that provided by the flat panel displays ranked in front of Owani and a single swing-arm lamp. The XO’s chair sighed as the officer leaned back and rubbed his eyes. The deep lines that creased Owani’s brown skin and the black stubble on his cheeks suggested that he had been on duty for a long time. The XO blinked his eyes to clear them and looked up. The woman in front of him had brown hair, worn flat top style, and a pretty face. She wore a dark blue jumpsuit that had been tailored to fit her slim body. Gold bars rode her collars. He frowned. “Ensign who?”
Tevo kept her eyes up where they belonged. “Tevo, sir.”
“Oh, yeah,” the XO replied wearily. “Tevo, as in Secretary Tevo’s daughter … Let’s see, I have your request here somewhere …”
The mention of her father, and the use of his title, served to lift the young woman’s spirits.
“So,” Owani said as he scanned the screen in front of him. “Having just graduated from supply school, and having been ranked near the bottom of her class, Ensign Tevo ‘respectfully requests a transfer to the Fleet Intelligence School, where, thanks to her considerable analytical, linguistic, and technical skills, she believes that she will be able to gain all of the knowledge necessary to successfully fill an NIO [Naval Intelligence Officer] slot on board one of the Confederacy’s destroyers.’”
Owani lowered the hard copy and shook his head in mock astonishment. “What? Only a destroyer? Surely Ensign Tevo, daughter of Secretary Tevo, would prefer a battleship?”
Tevo knew she was in trouble by that time and felt a full range of emotions that included fear, anger, and resentment. There was nothing she could say, not unless invited to do so, and that was unlikely. “Yes, sir, I mean no, sir,” Tevo stuttered, and knew that her chin was trembling.
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