Strontium-90

by Vaughn Heppner

  Chairman Feng was known throughout the Solar System as The Fox, That Sly Bastard or Mr. Devious. True to his names, he had worked out his plan well before that. Two years ago, he’d sent out a secret supership, the Deng Lo. The gigantic ship was sheathed in ultramodern, anti-radar coating. Behind Mars and shielded from Neptune, the Deng Lo had gained terrific velocity before turning off its engines. It had circled Mars, whipping around it like a slingshot, propelled out of the normal plane or ecliptic that the other planets circled the Sun at. Hidden in the vastness of space, with its trajectory long ago planned, the Deng Lo was the Chairman’s ace card.

  “The lasers are primed,” the political officer said. “The enemy is visible to our teleoptic scopes. Do we fire, CS1 Blake, or do we continue to wait for a better opportunity?”

  Ship alarms rang before Blake could speak. The holoimage changed. From out of the void of space hundreds of green laser lines burned into the Neptunian Fleet’s P-Field. Prismatic crystals deflected most of the lasers’ heat, but not all. A burn through had begun.

  “Decide!”

  Blake’s fingers flew over the buttons on his armrest. Numbers flashed before him. 300 million kilometers separated the Earth and Neptunian Battlefleets. At the speed of light, it took a laser approximately fifteen minutes to travel that distance. Blake needed more data. The Earth Fleet moved near 0.1 percent light speed, or about 300 kilometers per second, or 24 million kilometers per day. The Neptunian Battlefleet moved at a fraction of that speed. Contact between them would be in nine days.

  “CS1 Blake!”

  Blake looked at the political officer.

  “Select targets,” the officer said grimly “or you must order a stand down.”

  Blake studied the Neptunian targets. There were four asteroid ships, twenty-four maulers of the Beijing class, forty-six cruisers, fifty light cruisers and hordes of supply ships and tugs.

  “You know,” the doctor told the political officer, “it’s been a fine job.” He almost managed a smile. “It has been a pleasure knowing you.” Then, with what amounted to a tiny up-curve of his lips, the doctor lay back and stared straight ahead, crossing his hands over his thin chest.

  Blake glanced at the doctor in surprise.

  “Ignore him, CS1 Blake. He’s just glad it’s over.”

  “What’s over?” asked Blake.

  “His life.”

  The headache exploded back into throbbing pain. Then Blake understood. Once he fired, the enemy would spot the Deng Lo. Twenty minutes after his lasers hit them in the flank, enemy radar would pinpoint the Deng Lo. Then their lasers would strike and destroy him. The truism of space war was that unless a ship hid behind a P-Field, to be touched by a laser was to be destroyed.

  His newfound knowledge caused Blake to tremble.

  “None of that now,” the political officer said. “This is our task, our job.” He smiled. “Perhaps that’s what they scrubbed out of you.”

  Blake’s tremors grew. His headache blossomed, and a thought struck him. His sister... he’d never see her again. He reached for her picture that he recalled now that he kept in his back pocket.

  Ever alert, the political officer snapped, “What’s that? What are you doing?”

  Blake pulled out his sister’s picture. He frowned at it, trying to remember something important.

  “CS1 Blake, what do you hold?”

  “This? It’s my sister’s picture.”

  “Sister?” The political officer frowned in thought. “You don’t have a sister.”

  The headache blasted Blake, and then it left—leaving him clearheaded at last. Both of them turned and stared into each other’s eyes. They both knew at the same instant. Blake fumbled madly with his shoulder harness as the political officer yanked at his. Blake proved faster. He floated at the political officer even as the officer yanked back his harness. Blake wrapped his legs around the prone torso, grabbed the ugly head in both hands—the political officer roared vile threats—and Blake twisted savagely. The neck snapped. The political officer went limp.

  Breathing hard, Blake let go of the head and turned to the doctor, who still stared up placidly at the ceiling.

  “You were mind-scrubbed after all,” the doctor said without looking up.

  Blake blinked several times.

  “And given post-hypnotic memory implants, I presume.”

  Blake pushed off the couch, floating toward the doctor.

  The doctor closed his eyes, sighed. “...Whenever you’re ready.”

  When Blake was done, he strapped himself back into his couch. He sighted the Earth Battlefleet. Then he sent a coded message to the Neptunian’s about the Deception Fleet’s deception. Afterward, he pressed the firing button.

  The vast engines vibrated into life. Generation took a mere three minutes. A radioactive isotope Strontium-90 fueled the breakthrough laser-coils. Then forty massively powerful Strontium-90 lasers shot at the Earth Fleet. In eleven point six minutes, those lasers would hit their targets. The forty lasers would travel 200 million kilometers. They would hit and destroy forty priceless warships and thereby swing the battle in favor of the Neptunians.

  Of course, the enemy would sight and destroy the Deng Lo in return.

  That, too, the Neptunian Secret Service had foreseen. Blake had known and agreed with them. The memory implants went to work in Blake and did their scrubbing. Soon Blake peered at the dead political officer and at the dead doctor. He felt the ship’s vibration. That was new. He rather liked it.

  Blake frowned at the corpses, wondering how they’d died. He’d better find someone and report this. He touched his head, his headache finally going away. He wasn’t sure why, but he felt, or maybe it was just intuition, that he wasn’t going to have any more headaches after this.

  That was good, because he was tired of them.

  He turned, and his feet made tearing-cloth sounds as he Velcroed his way across the carpet.

  The Scarlet Woman

  Jublain heaved against the stone door, moving it another inch. He slithered through the opening into light and drew his sword. He faced the opening, determined to hack off any beastly snout that poked through after him.

  Jublain was young, with a sweaty forehead and feverish eyes. He wore mail and a muddied cape. Perhaps if the damnable fever had let him concentrate, he would have pondered how light shined in an ancient room at the bottom of a barrow.

  The seconds lengthened and Jublain blinked sweat out of eyes. The beasts outside had grown silent. They must be listening.

  “They won’t enter.”

  The voice froze Jublain. It came from behind.

  “They’ve left… well, backed off, at least.” The voice was feminine, sultry… seductive. “I think they’re curious what will happen next.” The chuckle was evil. “Curious is the wrong word. Dread, unblinking watchfulness—at least the leader is watching. I can’t tell with the creatures.”

  Jublain glanced at the reflection in his mirror-bright blade. There was nothing but blackness behind him.

  She laughed softly. “That won’t work, not here. You’ll have to face me sooner or later, my brave warrior.”

  Jublain understood that the ‘brave warrior’ remark was a jibe, not a stinging rebuke. No, the voice was too cultured, too smooth for that.

  “Why can’t I see anything?” he asked in a haggard voice.

  “Why don’t you turn around and find out.”

  “Was that you before?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Someone called me.…” He frowned. “Someone helped me through the corridors.” His frown deepened. “The corridors were pitch-black.”

  “Surely you jest.” Subtle mockery filled her every word.

  Maybe his fever let him be so calm. He felt this calm however to be balanced on a knife’s-edge.

  “How could you call through this stone door,” he asked, “and so far down the corridor?”

  “I didn’t call anyone.”

  He glan
ced at his blade. If it was dark behind him, what gave him the light by which he saw?

  “What style do you call this?” she asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “This ass backwards method of facing danger,” she said. “I admit that it’s novel. I’ve known many warriors in my time, seen them practice and listened as they named and explained their moves. Will you lash out with your foot perhaps or pivot and slash with that interesting sword of yours? Naturally, my query is hypothetical. You can ignore the dagger on my nightstand.”

  Jublain turned with a start.

  She laughed. It was a thing of art and beauty. So was she. She wore a scarlet dress, a long, flowing gown that swept to the floor. Her shoulders were bare, and the gown came down to expose the top half of her milky breasts. She had long, straight hair the color of a raven’s beak and inky eyes of compelling force. Two stuffed chairs stood beside a stone fireplace, with a wooden stand on the other side of the hearth. Upon the stand was an open book with a purple ribbon laying down the center and a wavy-bladed dagger across the pages.

  “You’re handsome,” she said.

  He blushed, startled by her beauty.

  “You’ve had a harrowing ordeal,” she said. “Perhaps you would like to sit, take off your boots? I have wine.”

  He was dreadfully thirsty. He brushed his eyes. Was he mad? Why hadn’t he seen the fireplace and its light in the reflection off his blade?

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  She smiled, lifted the pleats of her dress and twirled around, expanding the hem to its considerable circumference. When she stopped to regard him, she spoke in a sultry way.

  “I’ve been called the Scarlet Woman. Do you disapprove?”

  The sight of her fired him. “Uh—”

  “Do you like my dress?”

  “It’s beautiful. It is velvet?”

  She clapped her hands. The fingers were long, the fingernails equally so. She bore no rings or bracelets.

  “At last you act like a courtier,” she said. “It’s taken you long enough. I might as well ask, ‘who are you’? You’re the one who has broken into my place.”

  “I’m Jublain, milady.”

  “Yes?” she said.

  “Jublain of the Fens,” he added.

  “The Fens?” she said. “That’s not very heroic. Don’t you have any other appellations? Are you a knight, a baron, a count, a prince perhaps?”

  “I am of the line of the Auflings,” he said.

  “Oh,” she said.

  The laughter drained from her voice and the smile slipped. Her inky eyes took in the green boots, the adamant chainmail, and her eyes widened minutely as her gaze rested upon his gauntlet. “Oh my,” she said. She produced a fan, flicked it as she retreated and sank into one of the stuffed chairs. She clicked the fan shut, reached down by the floor and picked up a golden goblet. She sipped delicately, fanned herself again, and then put both fan and goblet onto the opposite side of the chair as he. She pressed her hands onto her lap and smiled.

  This all felt wrong to Jublain. It didn’t fit. She didn’t look prim or proper. Her features were bewitching like a seductress. Those dark eyes were pools of mysterious power. The whiteness of her skin wasn’t that of a sheltered girl but the pall of someone who inhabited places like the bottom of a rock vile with slugs.

  His fingers tightened around the hilt of his sword.

  “I might have made a mistake,” she said. Her smile became perfunctory. “Perhaps it’s best if you simply left.”

  He cleared his throat. “The beasts are out there.”

  She waved her hand in dismissal.

  “The leader has his pack with him,” Jublain said.

  “You’re an Aufling. Vanquish them.”

  “I’m only of their line,” he said, “far removed.”

  “Blood is blood,” she said.

  “You say that as if you know what you’re talking about.”

  The smile vanished. Those dark eyes burned. It heightened her beauty and radiated menace—not like a flare of sudden anger that might bid her snatch the dagger and rush him. No, the menace was deeper, deadlier, not merely physical but spiritual, like demon possession.

  It should have made him whimper. It made the hairs raise on his neck and goosebumps to pimple his arms. It tightened his throat and quickened his pulse. A poorly healed cut under his ribs—something gained two weeks ago by a cursed blade and while in the Hall of Kings—gave a twinge. He should have cringed in terror as those dark eyes glittered. But his soul had been hardened in a school of the damned, and his fever helped, gave everything that dreamy quality where anything was possible.

  He nodded, a quick thing, decisive, and his lips thinned. With care, he sheathed his sword and approached the chairs.

  She tracked his steps.

  “You did call me here, didn’t you?” he said.

  Her menace turned into malevolence. “If you’re going to stay why not add to the fire.”

  He looked about for wood. There was a poker, a heath-broom and ash pan— He blanched. Bones burned in the fire. Flames licked upon them: femurs, thighbones and a ribcage. One splintered as if smashed by a mace, shards breaking off. The marrow hissed and the fire burned hotter.

  “I mean you,” she said. “Shed your armor and climb in. Warm this place up. You’ll have to crouch, but I think you can fit. I haven’t smelled cooked flesh, oh, for quite some time.”

  He gave her a nasty grin. It was an unconscious thing, one that his dueling partners had witnessed whenever they gave him a stinging blow.

  “What if I go back out,” he said. “And before the beasts devour me I shut the door and replace that interesting barrier?”

  She sat up. The evil fled her eyes and no longer twisted her pale features. It dimmed her wicked beauty as her throaty sultriness returned.

  “You Auflings never could take a joke,” she said. “You’re too literal-minded. I thought eating a dragon’s heart made one wiser, more discerning. It obviously didn’t take with you.”

  He swayed as his legs threatened to buckle. The accumulation of his hurts and his fever and fatigue finally caught up with him. It threatened to stretch him onto the floor. He stumbled to the other chair, swept aside his scabbard and sank onto the soft cushions. He leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes. That felt so good. As he let his overworked muscles relax, several in his legs trembled.

  “You need rest,” she purred.

  He grunted, and with the understanding that if he slept now he might never wake up, or wake up with someone else possessing his body, he forced his head off the backrest and opened bleary eyes.

  She smiled. “I think it’s time we struck a bargain, you and I. Yes, I think you’re finally ready to discuss realities.”

  “What sort of bargain?” he asked cautiously.

  She smiled. “In lieu of your precarious state we should keep this simple. To begin: I’ll insure your survival.”

  “That part is agreeable.”

  “In return I’d like… hm, you do look exhausted. And those chapped lips… you must be parched.” She lifted her goblet. “I dislike taking advantage of a person. Perhaps you’d like to quaff this. I know you Auflings never sip anything, but gulp like hounds. You must be thirsty.”

  His tongue licked the insides of his dry mouth. He needed a goblet or two of wine, maybe an entire flagon! He reached for the cup and hesitated just before his fingers touched hers.

  She arched her eyebrows.

  His fingers twitched. He wanted that drink. He desperately needed something to quench his raging thirst. With an effort of will, however, he withdrew his hand. Trying not to pant, he said, “May I ask the vintage?”

  “My, you are a gentleman. The vintage is noble and quite ancient, I assure you. But as to its exactness…” she shrugged those delectable shoulders and gave him a lovely smile. “I suppose I can understand your unease, although I must say that it isn’t very attractive. To assure you, however, observe
.” She sipped ever so delicately, and with a silk napkin dabbed the droplet of red that stained her upper lip like blood. “It’s delicious,” she declared, “and refreshing.” She extended the goblet.

  He took it, and his fingers brushed hers during the exchange. His stomach turned. That startled him, as did the heat of her flesh.

  “Quaff deeply, my Aufling,” she purred.

  The insides of his mouth were bone dry. His tongue felt prickly and stuck against the ridged roof of his mouth.

  “Drink and be refreshed,” she whispered.

  He nodded, and he glanced at the golden cup. In the goblet were abominable things, wriggly, filthy things. He cried out and flung the cup from him. It clashed against the floor, and a splash of blood stained the stones. Before the abominable things became distinct enough to name, she knelt and covered the mess with a jeweled cloth.

  “Vampire!” he shouted, standing, drawing his sword.

  She gave him a withering glance. “Don’t be a fool.” She sopped up the spillage with her cloth and stuffed it into the goblet. Whereupon she rose, crossed the room, slid open a cabinet and deposited the cup there. She slid the panel shut with a snick, fluffed her dress and turned back to face him.

  Jublain aimed his sword at her cleavage. “You tried to trick me.”

  “No, I’ve simply grown weary of long hours of arguing. It has become tedious over the— over the years, but… I see that it was a mistake. Will you accept my apology?”

  He gaped in amazement, and finally said, “You’re brazen.”

  She curtsied with a smile. “Milord will turn my head with such delightful compliments.”

  “Who are you really?”

  She shook her head. “I will not discuss this while threatened with physical harm. Please, lower your blade and let us talk.”

  He glanced at the floor. There was no sign of the spill. He eyed her, the narrowly open door and then sheathed his blade and returned to his chair.