Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls

by Phyllis Irene Radford

  Both of us were dressed in what seemed to be the formal attire of some sort of warriors, but of no soldiers we’d ever known. We looked like something out of forgotten ancient history, in tight-fitting black pants, blousy white shirts. Each of us carried a metal sword, and the blades gleamed brightly, reflecting light from every possible source.

  We took positions opposite each other, just far enough out of range that each of us would have to take a step to strike the other. And then we bowed, moved into a formal stance, and began to fight.

  I could not follow the moves. The fighters flowed like they were dancing, thrust and parry, parry and thrust. The blades struck each other with a musical ring. One of us — I could not tell us apart — cut the other, and blood flowed across the white shirt. Indeed the swords were lethal.

  Thrust and parry, parry and thrust. And then we came out of jump, fell to the work routine, grabbed the revitalizers. “I wonder what that sword fight was about,“ I said.

  Jace shrugged. “I’ve heard some people practice that kind of stuff as a religion. Maybe we’re going to take it up.“ He laughed. I didn’t. “Anyway, it sure was beautiful, graceful. We moved together like we do on the bridge.“ He reached out a hand, touched me gently. “Like we do in bed.“

  “Yeah,“ I said. “But we were trying to kill each other.“

  But the touch electrified me, as Jace’s touch always did. I wanted him, perhaps more than I ever had. It turned out much like the first time we’d made love. We contorted ourselves in the gap between bridge and galley, trying to make two bodies fit in a space not large enough for one.

  I sobbed as I came, big gasping sobs as if my heart had broken. He tried to comfort me, stroked my hair, my face, and told me he loved me. I pulled him close, wanted never to let him go, never to know what happened next in our lives.

  But next had to happen. The warning signal beeped on the bridge. Time for a live pilot. We took our positions, set things in motion. Jace closed his eyes briefly, and said, “Punch in coordinates for Atropos.“

  I looked at him, said nothing, just looked.

  “I need those coordinates, Ane.“

  Again I said nothing, scared of anything I could possibly say.

  “Damn it, Ane, that’s an order.“

  That broke the spell. “Who are we carrying back there, Jace?“

  “What are you talking about?“

  “The cargo. It’s a person. Or persons. Isn’t it?“

  His turn not to respond.

  “Who am I betraying, damn you?“ I stood up.

  He grabbed my wrist. “Ane, please. We don’t have any fucking choices left. Let it be. Just let it be.“

  I pulled my hand free, moved toward the hatch for the cargo hold. This time Jace grabbed for me, but I was moving already. I slammed an elbow into his throat. He stopped, gasping, and I back kicked him square in the solar plexus. It knocked him to the ground. I heard him wheezing.

  I ran to the hold. My hand trembled as I fumbled with the keypad. I could hear Jace behind me as I got the door open, hit the lights.

  A man sat there, shackled to the wall, blinking in the unexpected brightness. It had been more than eight years, but I recognized him. Maratin n’Veron.

  He wasn’t anybody special to me. Not a former lover, not somebody in my squad. Not a commander I’d looked up to, or a subordinate I’d been responsible for.

  No, just another Atroposian like me, someone who’d fought in the war, given up his whole damn life for a losing cause. Nobody special. Just someone like me.

  Maratin gave me a puzzled look, like he thought he recognized me, but couldn’t believe it. I heard Jace behind me. Turning around, I backed deeper into the hold.

  Jace stood in the doorway, some kind of weapon hanging loosely in his hand. He looked so sad.

  “Bounty hunter.“ I couldn’t keep myself from snarling those ugly words at him.

  “Not by choice, Ane. You know that. By necessity.“

  “Necessity! You’d justify selling a man to the Confederation, so they can kill him, or lock him away forever, on necessity. Nothing’s that necessary.“

  “Survival, Ane. Survival’s that necessary.“

  “Some things are worse than dying.“

  “Is he somebody important to you, Ane? A lover, a friend?“

  “No, damn you. Just another person like me, another person who threw away his whole fucking life to do the right thing. Like me. You going to throw me to the Confederation next time, Jace?“

  That shocked him. “I love you, Ane.“

  “Yeah, I know.“ I did know. “But you love this fucking ship, too. Loved her longer. What happens the next time, Jace? What happens when there’s no outsider to sell?“

  “I love you, Ane.“ He wasn’t going to answer the question. Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe he couldn’t face the answer.

  “Jace, we can’t do this, can’t turn this man over to the Confederation. Especially not on Atropos. Those bastards running the place now, they’ll crucify him. They want to prove to the Confederation that they’re really loyal. Hell, they torture folks whose resistance work consisted of turning a blind eye now and then. He fought, Jace. Just like me, damn it. Just like me.“

  He closed his eyes briefly, and sighed. “People like you and me, Ane. Nobody’s going to give us a fucking thing. We got to do terrible things to survive. Terrible things.“

  I knew then that this wasn’t the first time he’d sold people. And it wouldn’t be the last. Wouldn’t be my last time, either, if I went along. I knew something else, something very ugly.

  “I know, Jace.“ My voice cracked. “And I’ll do them, most of them. I’d already guessed we were hauling human cargo, and I did nothing. Do you understand? I’m no better than you. But I can’t do this, Jace. If I betray this man, I’m betraying everything I fought for back then.“

  “Don’t you think I’d have tried something else, if there’d been a choice, Ane? I knew you would hate this. I did my best to keep you out of it. But now we got no choice.“

  “We can head for Paneris. We could...“ I couldn’t say it. Even then, I couldn’t say it.

  Jace finished the sentence. “Sell the ship. I won’t, Ane. You know that. We got no choice.“

  “Maybe you don’t, Jace. I do. I won’t let you do this.“

  He raised the gun toward me. A cheap thing, the kind you see in bar fights and back alleys.

  “You really willing to shoot me, Jace? Better make sure you kill me, then.“

  He threw the gun away, threw it so hard it bounced off the wall. For a moment, a brief moment, I thought he’d given in. Then he said, casually, “We never have figured out who could outfight who.“

  Hand to hand, then. Like the ancients. Before anybody invented guns. It seemed appropriate.

  I moved deeper into the hold, where there was room, trying to draw him to move. Jace had size on me. Better to let him commit. He feinted once, out of range. I didn’t move. He tried it again, then followed with a kick. I moved in time for it to go past me, got right behind him so he couldn’t kick with the other foot, and grabbed his shoulder as he shifted his balance, pulling him backwards.

  He half fell, twisted around, and I brought a hand down on the back of his neck. He leaped into a forward roll before I could hit him. I moved with him, tried to kick him in the head as he came up, but he moved too fast for me.

  Jace did the feints again, came with the kick, and I repeated my earlier move. But this time he’d held something back on the kick. He backfisted me as I entered. I turned aside enough to catch it on the side of my head, instead of dead in the nose, but my head rang.

  As he came around with the other backfist, I grabbed his arm and the side of his head from behind and pivoted fast. He moved with it, equally fast, and then dropped almost to his knees, scrambled around, and came up behind me in the same move.

  Now he spun me around, one hand tight on my neck, holding my head firmly against his body, the other loosely restin
g on my arm. I grabbed hold of the loose arm with both hands, and went with the backwards fall when he half picked me up with his hip and threw me.

  And, just as in our first fight, I jerked his arm as I went, and he flew through the air. But there wasn’t a pile of people to fall on, or even some open space. I was half a meter from the steel wall of the hold when I threw him. He tucked and tried to roll, and his neck hit the wall first.

  I heard it crack. The noise echoed throughout the hold. He slid down the wall, landed in a sideways heap, and didn’t move.

  “Jace,“ I screamed. “Jace. Are you all right? Answer me, damn you.“

  “He’s dead, Ane.“ Maratin spoke for the first time. “Or very close to it. You broke his neck.“ He sounded satisfied, grateful.

  “No!“ I felt the tears start to take over. “No. Don’t be dead, Jace. Oh, please, don’t be dead.“ I crawled over to him, tried to straighten his body out. His head flopped at an angle. There was nothing in his eyes.

  “He’s dead, Ane,“ Maratin said again. “The bastard is dead.“

  “Shut up,“ I screamed. “Shut up, or I’ll break your neck, too.“ I lay beside Jace’s body, stroking it, and felt my pain come out my throat in a mournful sound.

  “Ane,“ Maratin said again. “He was a bounty hunter, like you said.“

  “Shut up. I don’t care what he was. I loved him. Don’t you get it? I just saved your fucking miserable life, and I loved him and I don’t give a damn about you. So please shut up.“

  I don’t know if he heard my words, my rage, or my fear, but he didn’t say anything else. I lay by Jace’s body. I cried all my pain out, poured it over his body, until there was nothing left inside me, nothing at all. And then I pulled myself shakily to my feet, and did the things that had to be done.

  I found the keys, released Maratin. Moving to the bridge, I set the coordinates for a different destination: Paneris, where everything can be bought and sold. It would take two jumps to get there, but they have a small Atroposian exile community. They’d take Maratin in, at least for awhile.

  I wrapped Jace’s body in some sheets from the bunks, and spaced it before we left the Melpomenean region. Gave him a spacer’s funeral, near his home. The best I could do. I’d have said a few words, but I didn’t have any except “I loved you.“

  Maratin kept his mouth shut, ran comps for me. He’d been badly treated. I didn’t care.

  The first jump felt horrible. Everything turned black, and stayed that way the entire time. Nothingness. Jump can seem long or short; this one had the feeling of eternity.

  When we finally came out of it, my heart was racing. All spacers fear that black nothing, fear being stuck in nowhere for eternity. I’d rather be disemboweled. Slowly.

  It made the idea of jumping again terrifying. Maybe I’d never see anything else in jump, but the blackness where Jace was now. But I forced myself to jump again, to finish the job in front of me.

  Everything turned black again as we jumped, and I began crying. Slowly, excruciatingly slowly, a white light showed at the corners, and gradually it took over, blinding me for a time. As my eyes became accustomed to it, I could see Jace and myself, standing there. He smiled his little grin, and handed me something. I looked at it; it was a little figure of a flightless bird, the rhea of the ancients.

  “Keep her for me, Ane. Keep the ship.“ And he faded away as we pulled out of jump on the edge of Paneris Station.

  I’m going to do it, going to keep Rhea for him. I know it’s crazy, know any sane person would sell her on Paneris. The people that Jace got Maratin from back on Bellona, they’ll be wondering what happened. Confederation security’s likely to get wind of this one. I don’t sell her, get new docs, tweak my DNA again, they’re sure to find me. No way I can keep the ship, and live.

  I know all that. I don’t care. Maybe Jace will be there in jump again. Maybe we’ll have a few times together there, before they catch me.

  And when they do, if they don’t just blow me up, maybe I’ll get off one last jump, without coordinates, and end up sitting out in space throughout all eternity.

  Maybe Jace will be there with me.

  Or maybe nothing will.

  oOo

  Nancy Jane Moore

  It’s no accident that Nancy Jane Moore’s collection from PS Publishing is called Conscientious Inconsistencies: She refuses to stick to one genre or even one style of writing. Her other book, Changeling, from Aqueduct Press, is a novella, and despite the name, it’s not about fairies. Nancy Jane’s short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies, including Treachery and Treason, Imaginings, and Polyphony 5, as well as in magazines ranging from Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet to Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine to the National Law Journal. Her initial project for Book View Café was a series of flash fictions — very short stories of multiple genres — but her next undertaking will be a serialized novel. Nancy Jane is a member of SFWA and Broad Universe, and holds a fourth-degree black belt in Aikido. After many years in Washington, D.C., she now lives in Austin, Texas.

  Sitting Shiva

  Judith Tarr

  This was supposed to be a different story. The war, the soldier, the boy she left behind her — the usual. In the way stories have, it mutated. The old story is still embedded in the new one, but there turned out to be a whole lot more that needed to be said about Sarge and her war.

  oOo

  Early late darknight on Sheol Four: Kosinski and Mwalunga and Sarge and I close down the bar. There’s just us and the sweepermech and the bartender rolled up in his coffin, with a sound like a snore to tell us he’s on standby till closing time. Kosinski does something to the console that pings us another hour, Mwalunga stands us round number we-all-forget, and Sarge props her chin on her fist and says, “Old stories. Old, old stories. Same old stories.“

  Mwalunga’s a Radical Semioticist, so maybe that would get him spinning off on a litany to Saint Derrida, but he’s busy deconstructing the formula for the perfect tequila fusion reaction. Kosinski is figuring out how to fit the bar through a transdimensional warp without including the bartender. That leaves me, and I don’t argue. The last augment got rid of my vocal apparatus. Temporarily, the techs said. Just till the shunts finish rooting. Then they’ll install a new and improved set. After that I’ll be the finest peacekeeping machine in six systems. Except for Sarge, of course. And Kosinski and Mwalunga. And a classified number of other advanced-model peacekeepers under construction in Peaceforce’s labs on Sheol Four.

  Doesn’t mean I can’t think. Doesn’t mean I can’t listen, either. I’m the best listener in the system. Enhanced hearing and all. Increased processing capacity. Eidetic memory.

  “There are no new stories,“ says Sarge. She’s not drunk, high, or blissed. Her augments take care of that. What she is, is augmented into a roaring blue funk.

  “No new stories,“ she says. “No new ones at all.“

  Sarge is adapting to new dotware. Ethical module, the net says when I ask. We’re peacekeepers. Not soldiers. We don’t make war. We wage peace. We have ethics built in.

  Ethics, if you ask me, are a pain in the ass. But nobody’s asking, and I couldn’t answer if they did. Sarge is rocking on the stool, back and forth, back and forth, glaring at something the augment’s showing her.

  “Remember,“ she says suddenly. It bursts out of her — the augment talking, putting roots in new portions of the wetware. “The day we took Babylon: old whore of cities opens her legs and we ram right in. Nobody screams. Nobody dies. Right, so we rape a few. Pay your coin, tell ’em it’s for the goddess, take ’em right in the street and what can they say? We’ve got the big spears.“

  I shiver, somewhere in back of my thermal-control module. She’s got the big one, the bad one, the one we’re all whispering about. She’s got the module that’s so secret it’s not even classified. Nobody can tell you exactly what it’s supposed to do, except make better peacekeepers. Lots better. Real kick-ass piece-of-the-acti
on boysngirls. Go right in there, smile the place to slag, beat swords into agribusiness, and on to the next little breach of the peace.

  “Blood,“ says Sarge, “is the most beautiful, beautiful color. We poured it out in rivers, there in the Wilderness. Remember how the creek ran red? I drank from it. It tasted cold, like iron. Then that Yankee fell in it and it tasted like shit.“

  She’s remembering, is what she’s doing. Programmed memory. Might as well be past-life regression, which they tried, but either it didn’t work at all or it worked too well, depending on who’s telling it. Subject crawls up his own asshole and goes to sleep with his thumb in his mouth.