They ended up at the same treatment facility in the very center of the sector, and there they realized they had the same philosophy about the wars.
First, they believed that the Colonnade Wars were not wars at all, but a single war—a large, scattered battlefield that spread across several systems. These men and women, brilliant all, realized that fighting each front as if it were a separate war was what was destroying the army. A military could have no coherent strategy when it believed it was fighting a dozen wars at once.
So these people, as they healed, began studying the history of warfare—not just in this sector, but throughout human history, as far back as they could go. They discussed superweapons and supertroops. They discussed a unified front and a robotized military. They explored remote fighting versus hands-on.
And they realized that nothing—no discovery, no miracle weapon, no well-equipped soldier—had ever taken the place of living commanders with a broad and unified vision.
And sometimes that vision was as simple as this: Annihilate the enemy wherever you find him, whoever he might be.
According to the histories, the man who first articulated that simple vision in the Colonnade Wars was Commander Ewing Trekov. Whether or not that's true is another matter.
What is true—and verifiable—is that Commander Trekov was the most effective leader of the war. He destroyed more enemy strongholds, captured more ships, and killed more soldiers—from all sides—than any other commander in the war.
He was supposed to be at the victory celebration. More importantly, he was supposed to be at the treaty signing ceremony. There wasn't just one treaty to be signed, but dozens—all with various governments (or, as one observer more accurately called them, various survivors). Trekov's presence wasn't just symbolic. He had negotiated several of the treaties himself.
Slowly I realize that I could spend the rest of my life reading about the Colonnade Wars and not get to all the details.
But those details didn't concern me. All that concerned me was Commander Trekov.
And he was there but not there. Mentioned but not quoted. Observed but not really seen.
So I look up Trekov himself—when he was born, where he went to school, where he got his training. I look for family information—both on his family of origin and on the family he left behind.
I find Riya Trekov. She's significantly younger than I thought—born to Trekov's childless fifth wife nearly six decades after his disappearance. The other children want nothing to do with Riya —they believe her to be illegitimate, even though her DNA, her provenance (so to speak), is probably surer than theirs.
She has an easily accessible history—with degrees in accounting and business, a long career in high finance, and a personal wealth that's almost legendary. She accumulated those funds on her own, and is known around the sector as one of the most intuitive investors around.
Now she's invested in me—the first whim I could find in her entire history—and I wonder if this investment will pay off.
It's certainly turning into a research nightmare on my end.
Because the back-story on Ewing Trekov is confusing. His origins seem lost in time. His education is classified, as is most of his military experience. His battles are well documented, but that's about all of his life that's well documented
In the official histories, Trekov's personal history is deliberately vague. Which makes me wonder what's hidden there, and why no one is supposed to know.
For a while, I pace around the main level, trying to figure out how to discover the man and not the myth. And then I realize I'm researching him wrong.
I need to approach him as if he were a ship, a wreck I'm trying to discover.
I need to go backward—from the last known sighting—and then I need to dig in the unofficial records, the half-hidden reports, and the highlights of his personal past.
Within forty-eight hours, my ship is stocked, my meager belongings on board, and I am heading to a little-known military outpost at what once was the edge of the sector.
The last recorded place anyone saw Ewing Trekov alive.
* * * *
By all rights, this little outpost should be famous. It is not only the last place Ewing Trekov was seen alive, but it is also the place that he and the other commanders planned their strategy.
Military outposts are security minded. They make places like Longbow Station seem lawless. So I've come with letters of introduction from a general whom I supervised on tourist dives, a colonel who has known me since I began my career, and a government official who testifies to the fact that my research is never for public purposes, only to find important “historical information.”
I also have a letter of explanation from Riya Trekov, giving me permission to look into her family's confidential files. I have no idea if such a letter will open doors for me—I have never researched a human subject before—but I figure such a letter can't hurt.
This outpost is top of the line. The materials in the public areas are new and smell faintly of recently assembled metal. The lighting is set higher than any I've seen in a commercial outpost and the environmental systems are running at maximum comfort.
My tax dollars keep these soldiers in relative luxury, at least for space-farers. Most off-duty personnel walk around in shirt-sleeves and thin pants. Anyone on Longbow wearing such flimsy clothing would freeze.
I am given a bracelet that opens doors to the sections of the outpost I'm allowed in. I've been given a guest suite—they don't call civilian quarters berths here—and with the suite comes the suggestion that I use it instead of staying shipside.
The suite is larger than the captain's cabins on most luxury yachts. It doesn't take me long to find out that I'm in one of the VIP rooms, courtesy, it seems, of my ties with the general. His letter, which I scan after I look at my quarters, asks that the military treat me like one of their own.
Apparently they take that to mean they should treat me as they would treat him.
My rooms—and I have five of them—all have a view of the concentric rings, as well as a private kitchen (along with a personal chef should I not want cafeteria food), a valet should I require it, and a daily cleaning service. I don't require a valet or room cleaning service (although I know they won't waive that entirely), and I stress, at every opportunity, how much I value my privacy.
My in-room computer system can access the public library of the base, and I start there, sitting on one of the most comfortable chairs I've ever used in my life, and scrolling through list upon list of recorded information pertaining to Commander Trekov himself.
It takes me nearly three days, but I finally find visual and audio files of his arrival on the base. No holographic files, at least not yet. But the visual and audio ones are the first I've found of the Commander at all.
He's imposing, nearly six-seven, which is tall for someone who spent his life in ships. His walk marks him as planet-raised as well, as do his thick bones and well-defined muscles.
He's not a handsome man, although he might have been once. His face is care-lined and his eyes are sad. His hair is cut short—regulation then as now—and he has a fastidiousness that seems extreme even in this military environment.
I freeze one of the images of his face and frame it. Then I set it, as a holopicture, on the tabletop near my work station. I used to do this with ships that I was searching for. Ships that had disappeared or whose wrecks existed somewhere in a grid that no one had bothered searching for decades.
The images are always of the ships when they were new. I used to compare that image with the wreck when I found it, not to find my way around it but so that I could get a sense of what hopes were lost in the ship's ultimate destruction.
But the image I keep of Ewing Trekov isn't of his youth, but of what he looked like toward the end. It's an acknowledgement that I'm searching for the part of him that's left over, the skeleton, the frame, the bits and pieces that survived.
I am no closer
to getting him out of that Room by staring at his image than I got close to a wreck by staring at the original image of a ship. But I feel closer. I feel like this image holds something important, something I'm missing.
Or maybe, something I'm not yet allowed to see.
* * * *
There are actually people on the outpost who remember Ewing Trekov. They're old now, but most of them still work in their respective departments.
All of them are willing to talk with me and after days of interviews, only one medical officer seems to have a story that I can't find in the records.
Her name is Nola Batinet. She wants to meet in the officers’ mess.
The mess isn't a dining hall, like the mess for regular soldiers. The officers’ mess is divided into six different restaurants, each with its own entrance off the central bar. People in uniform fill that bar. They all have an air of authority.
A tiny woman stands near a real potted plant. The plant is taller than I am, probably taller than Trekov was. It's bright green, has broad leaves, and smells strongly of mint.
The woman is so small she could hide among the leaves.
As I approach, she holds out a small hand, which I take gently in greeting. The bones are as fragile as I feared. I'm careful not to squeeze at all, afraid I'll break her.
“We have a reservation in Number Four,” she says.
Apparently the six restaurants here have no names. They go by number.
Number Four is dark and smells of garlic. There are no free-standing tables, just built-in booths with backs so high you can't see the other diners.
A serving unit—a simple holographic menu with audio capabilities—whisks us to the nearest booth. At first, I figure that the unit does so with each customer. Then I realize it's addressing Nola Batinet by name and has reassured her that they never let her favorite booth go when there's the possibility that she will come into the mess.
She thanks it as if it were human, nods when it asks if she wants the usual, and then she turns to me. I haven't even looked over the menu yet, but I'm not really here for the food. I take whatever it is she's having, order some coffee and some water, and wait until the server unit floats away.
“So,” she says, “Ewing Trekov. I knew him well.”
A faint smile crosses her face as she thinks of him. Her memories—at least the one she's lost in—are clearly pleasant.
A tray floats over with our beverages and with a large plate of cheeses and meats. I've never seen so many different kinds. The meats are clearly manufactured and are composed of so many different colors that I'm hesitant at first.
But Nola has been eating here for decades and seems no worse for it. After she eats a few pieces, I try one. The meat is peppery and filled with the garlic I've been smelling. It's remarkably good.
“You're working for his daughter, right?” Nola asks. “The created one.”
“She wants me to recover her father,” I say, even though I've told Nola this when I first contacted her through the outpost networks. “She thinks he's in the Room of Lost Souls.”
Nola nods just enough to confuse me. That tiny movement could mean she knows he's in the Room or that she has heard of this daughter's whim before. Or it could simply be an acknowledgement of what I have to say.
“Why does she want him?” Nola asks. “She never knew him.”
And I had neglected to ask that question. Or maybe it wasn't neglect at all. If I knew, I wouldn't have taken the job, and the job had—in the end—intrigued me.
“It's not my concern,” I say. “I'm just supposed to find him.”
“You won't find him,” Nola says. “He's long gone.”
“How did you know him?” I ask, trying to get the conversation away from my job and back to her.
That small smile has returned. “The way most women knew him.”
“You were lovers.”
She nods. For a moment, her gaze rests somewhere to the left of me, and I know she's not seeing me or the booth or any part of Number Four. She's lost in the past with Ewing Trekov.
“You make it sound like he had a lot of lovers,” I say.
Her eyes focus and move toward me. When they rest on me, they hold a bit of contempt. She knows what I'm doing, and she doesn't like it. She wants to control this conversation.
“A lot of lovers,” she says, “a lot of wives, and more children than he could keep track of.”
Maybe that's where the disapproval comes from. Riya Trekov isn't special in Nola's eyes.
“He didn't care about family?” I ask.
Nola shrugs. “The man I knew didn't have time for relationships. Not long ones, anyway. His entire life was about the wars and the entire sector. He saw lives the way we see stars—something far away and yet precious. Individual lives meant something to him only for a few weeks. Then he moved on.”
There's pain in her voice.
“He moved on from you,” I say as I take some yellow cheese. It's slimy against my fingers, but I don't dare put it back.
“Of course he did. Anyone who believed he would do otherwise was a fool.”
But the bitter twist on the word “fool” makes it clear to me who “anyone” was.
“You said that you know things no one else does.” I make myself eat the slimy cheese. It's delicious. Rich and sharp, a taste that goes well with the pepper and garlic of the meat.
“Of course I do,” she says. “And some of it will go with me to my own death.”
It's my turn to nod. I understand that kind of privacy.
She sets the plate near the edge of the table. Something moving so fast that I can barely see it whisks the plate away.
“But the story I'm going to tell you,” she says, “isn't one of those. And it's not something you'll find in the histories either.”
I wait.
“It's about his plans,” she says with that secret smile. “He never planned to go to any of the ceremonies, and he wasn't going to sign any treaties.”
“He told you this?” I ask, mostly because she's surprised me. Everything I've seen says he fully intended to go to the ceremonies. He sent notice as to when his ship would arrive. He had a contingent of honor guards waiting for him on another outpost nearer to the ceremony. He even had a dress uniform ordered specially for the occasion.
“No, he didn't tell me anything,” she says. “At least, not in so many words. He wasn't that kind of man. I figured it out, years later.”
* * * *
She figured it out when she remembered what happened that last day. How he'd been, how sad he'd seemed.
They met in his VIP cabin. It was large and lovely, with a bed the size of her quarters. But he wasn't interested in sex, although they had some.
He ordered food for them—an astonishing meal for a place this remote. Yet he didn't enjoy the meal. He picked at it, letting much of it go to waste. She couldn't—she hadn't had a meal this good since she'd been stationed here.
But he waited until she was finished before he spoke.
“How do you do it?” he asked. “How do you save lives when you know they'll just go to waste?”
She didn't understand what he meant. “Go to waste?”
“Most of your patients here, they'll get sent back out and they'll die out there. Or they'll go home and they won't be the same. Their families will no longer know them. Their lives will be different.”
“But not wasted,” she said.
He kept picking at the food. He wouldn't look at her. “How do you know?”
“How do you?” she asked.
He shrugged.
“Most of these soldiers I see, they're children,” she said. “They'll go home and remake their lives.”
He shrugged again. “What about career military?”
She set her own fork down and pushed her plate away. She realized then she had to pay attention to this conversation, that it seemed to be about one thing and was really about another.
“Are you worried about w
hat'll happen to you after the ceremonies?” she asked.
He shook his head, but he still didn't look up. He was developing a bald spot near his crown, and he hadn't paid for enhancements. The small circle of skin made him seem vulnerable in a way she'd never noticed before.
“This isn't about me,” he said, but she didn't believe him.
“You can stay in the military,” she said. “They need planners. Even in peacetime, they'll need a standing army. Governments always do.”
“Seriously, Nola,” he said with some irritation. “It's not about me.”
“What is it about then?” she asked.
He shook his head again. The movement was small, almost involuntary, as if he were speaking to himself instead of her.
“Your units? The people under your command?”
He kept shaking his head.
“Your injured?”
“The dead,” he said softly.
She was silent for a long time, hoping he would elaborate. But he didn't. So she struggled to understand.
“We can't help them,” she said. “Even now with the technology that we have, the knowledge that we have, we can't help them. We just try to prevent death.”
“And how do you do that?” he asked, raising his head. “How do you know who's worthy?”
She frowned. She was a doctor. She had been one all of her adult life. “I don't choose the worthy ones. That's not my decision.”
“I've seen triage,” he said. “You pick. You always pick.”
Her breath caught.
“I don't choose by worthiness,” she said softly. “I choose by my skill level. I choose by time. Who will survive the intervention? Who will take the least amount of time so that I can get to other injured? Who will be the least amount of work?”
That last made her face flush. She'd never admitted it to someone else before—at least not to someone who wasn't a doctor, someone who wasn't really faced with those decisions.
“That's how you pick who's worthy,” he said.
His words made her flush deepen.
“Doesn't that bother you? Don't you look at the ones you didn't even try to save, the ones you sacrificed for the others, and wonder about them? Don't you sometimes think you made the wrong choice?”
Asimov's SF, April-May 2008 Page 28
