by A. C. Ellis
That thought sent a shiver of both fear and excitement coursing up her spine. She had consciously suppressed all thought of shipboard command since Aldebaran. And yet, before each assignment her hope was renewed. Might this be it? This time, would Renford offer her a ship and a crew? And could she actually take such an assignment?
She couldn’t think about that; she couldn’t permit herself to think about it. Pushing the line of thought from her mind, she allowed the events of the past few hours to rush in to fill the void. Those events still seemed all too improbable. Why had the dark man attacked her? Who was he and how had he disappeared?
So many questions, yet not one answer. Nothing substantial to which she might cling.
The Base Security investigation team had arrived at Susan’s quarters shortly after she got off the phone with Staff Sergeant Evans. The petty officer in charge had been a tall, thin girl who hadn’t looked old enough to be in Fleet, let alone in a position of responsibility. The girl called Evans, and he talked to Susan again, telling her she could leave. He said his people would let themselves out when they were finished.
Evans hadn’t really been all that much help. He had wanted to help, but he simply did not have the answers to her questions. He couldn’t even say for certain that the man who had attacked her was not a member of Base Security. But he had promised to keep her advised of anything he might uncover during his investigation, saying he would call if he discovered something significant.
Susan knew Evans was simply humoring her. Without actually saying so, he had given her the impression he didn’t believe her story.
But then, how could she expect him to? She was having trouble believing it herself.
A bright red holographic sign shimmered before her as she approached the door at the end of the corridor, driving all thought of the morning’s happenings from her mind: JAMES RENFORD, ADMIRAL—COMMANDING OFFICER, FEDERATION FLEET. The sign vanished and the door irised open, then hissed closed behind her as she stepped through. She sank an inch into the waiting room’s plush Fleet-red carpet.
Lieutenant Philip Krueger sat behind a large wooden desk, paging through a six inch thick stack of computer printouts. He was broad of shoulder, large boned, blond, with clear blue eyes—an extremely good looking man of approximately twenty-five, dressed in Fleet red.
Susan had had considerable contact with Lieutenant Krueger during the past few years. Not only was he Renford’s administrative assistant, but he also served as liaison with the Admiral’s Earth-side staff. He had taken Susan to dinner a few times when he was Earth-side, but he was definitely not her type; although he was always a good dinner companion, he was a bit too impressed with himself for Susan’s taste.
“Good morning, Lieutenant,” she said as she approached his desk.
The young lieutenant looked up and frowned. “The Admiral’s waiting, and he’s not happy. You’d better hustle your butt on in.”
Fighting down her anger, Susan stepped to the door beside Krueger’s desk. He had been too near power for far too long, she decided. So long, in fact, that he was beginning to believe he held the reigns of that power.
And perhaps, in a sense, he did. One thing was certain: Krueger was not a man to cross; Susan had seen many a higher ranking officer dash a promising career on his hard personality.
The door irised open and she stepped through, into the huge office beyond.
Nearly a dozen Rembrandts, El Grecos, Monets, and Renoirs hung on the walls, along with the works of a few artists Susan had never seen before. She knew all the paintings were authentic, and she also knew that the Admiral had twice again as many hidden away somewhere; paintings were rotated to the available wall space on a semi-regular basis.
The two men standing behind a large, ornately carved hardwood desk looked up from the computer monitor set in its top as Susan entered and snapped to attention. They seemed approximately the same age—about sixty—and both had salt-and-pepper hair and slightly slumped shoulders. From carrying for too many years the burdens of military bureaucracy, she thought.
One man was tall, only an inch shorter than Susan herself. He sported a well- trimmed mustache and wore the red jumpsuit uniform of the Federation Fleet. On his sleeves were sewn the gold stripes of an admiral. He was James Renford, Susan’s commanding officer.
The other was Fredrik Hyatt, director of the civilian Survey Service. Although Susan had never before met Hyatt, she knew him from his many appearances on holo-vid, as well as his considerable reputation. His eyes were dark and piercing, his cheek bones high and pronounced, and he wore his hair cropped close to his skull. He was the shortest man Susan had ever seen—shorter by almost half a foot than the man who had attacked her in her quarters—and his build appeared unbelievably frail in the powder blue Survey Service uniform.
She had no way of knowing whether or not the stories she had heard about Hyatt were true; the majority might simply be that vicious variety of publicity that invariably collects around those in the public eye. What she did know was that every year, for as far back as she could remember, Hyatt had received more General Fund money for his Survey Service, while all other budgets, including that for Fleet, had been cut. Even during time of war the Service was funded far more liberally than its military counterpart.
She saluted crisply. “Captain Susan Tanner, reporting as ordered, sir.”
“At ease, Captain,” Renford said, returning her salute.
“Sorry I’m late, Admiral, but it was unavoidable. I was attacked this morning in my quarters.”
The Admiral nodded. “I just got off the phone with Staff Sergeant Evans.” He motioned Susan to a chair before his desk. “Tell me what happened.”
As she sat, she looked to Hyatt, then back to Renford. “Is it all right to talk in front of him, sir?”
“He should hear anything you have to say.” Renford turned to the civilian. “Fred, this is Captain Susan Tanner.”
“Mr. Hyatt,” Susan acknowledged, extending her hand. Hyatt made no move to take it, but gave her a close once-over, not unlike the look the dark man had given her before launching his attack.
“You’re sure I should talk with a civilian present?” she asked, withdrawing her hand.
“I’m sure,” Renford said. “Let’s have it, Captain.”
Hyatt’s sharp and calculating gaze never left her as she told her story.
“…So I told Staff Sergeant Evans what I’ve just told you, then came straight here.”
That wasn’t entirely true. This time around, she had left out the part about her attacker vanishing into thin air. She told Renford simply that he had escaped; she had learned from Evans’s reaction.
But had Evans said anything about it to the Admiral?
If so, Renford gave no indication. He scratched along his jaw line and opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again. Finally, he simply shook his head.
“This is the ship’s pilot you told me about?” Hyatt asked, speaking for the first time since Susan had entered the room. His voice was extremely high pitched— much higher than it had seemed during his holo-vid broadcasts. It must be electronically altered during those broadcasts, she thought.
“Uh, yes,” Renford said, abandoning his own thoughts with obvious reluctance.
“She’s Art Tanner’s daughter, then?”
The Admiral nodded.
Instantly, Susan thought about her father. Like Renford, he too had been an admiral with Fleet, highly decorated during the Oromine rebellion. Both her father and her mother had died when she was two, in the New Year’s Eve riot of ‘47.
“And she was in command during the Aldebaran affair?”
“That’s right.”
“I understand there was considerable physical damage,” Hyatt said, and Susan looked down at her hands resting in her lap. For the first time in years they felt unnatural, alien.
“Her arms and hands,” Renford said, looking at Susan, “and a metal plate in her head. But she’s perfec
tly fine now. Her prosthetics are much stronger than flesh and bone could ever be.” Without thought, Susan flexed her hands. “She can do things with them you wouldn’t believe.”
“And she hasn’t piloted a ship since?”
The Admiral shook his head, his shaggy brows coming together in a frown.
Hyatt fell silent for a few seconds. Finally he said, “I don’t think she’s right for this—there’s still too much publicity surrounding Aldebaran. And now, someone’s trying to kill her.”
“What you mean is you don’t want any leaks,” Renford said. “It might cause political embarrassment.”
“Hang the political embarrassment,” the small man squeaked. “I’ve dealt with it before, and survived. But you’re right, I don’t want any security leaks; I won’t lose General Fund money over this.”
“So, that’s what this is all about.”
“What else is there?”
The Admiral took a moment to calm himself, then said, “She can still handle your assignment, whatever it is. She possesess some rather unique capabilities.”
“Has she been tested?”
Renford nodded. “She checks positive.”
Tested? For what? Before Susan could ask, Hyatt spoke again.
“I’m afraid I am at a disadvantage here. You know your people, and I don’t.”
Both men were silent for several seconds. Renford rocked on his heels, his hands clasped behind his back, while the civilian chewed on his lower lip.
Finally, Hyatt said, “I suppose I must trust your judgement. Have her orders cut.” He glanced at Susan, again fixing her with his gaze, then looked at his wrist chronometer. Without uttering another word, he strode from the room
Susan looked up at Renford. The Admiral glared at the door as it irised closed behind Hyatt. For the first time since joining his staff, she saw disgust in his gaze. Perhaps even hate.
“He’s a strange one,” she said, more to break the silence than for any other reason.
Renford nodded. “But he’s one of the shrewdest, most intelligent individuals I’ve ever met.”
Susan nodded noncommittally. “Why is he like that? Why such concern over General Fund money?”
The Admiral was quiet for a few seconds. Finally he shrugged and said, “You know the story of the Survey Service’s formation?”
“Of course,” Susan said. Everyone knew the Service’s history. It was started nearly fifty years before, by a group of Federation Fleet officers who found they could no longer condone a military presence in space. Humanity should be peacefully exploring the infinite frontier, they proclaimed, searching for signs of intelligent life other than humankind, rather than suppressing its own struggling colonies. They felt the human race could better use its time and talents seeking an intelligence that had not yet been discovered and had not even left a clue to its existence, but which they none-the-less believed did exist. Their convictions were so strong they resigned their commissions in Fleet to form the Survey Service.
“Hyatt was one of the Service’s founders.” the Admiral said. “He was one of its first pilots, when General Fund money was tighter than it is now.”
Again Susan nodded. “What was it you told him I’m right for?”
“A special assignment. He wants you to report to the Survey Service duty desk in Luna City by twelve hundred hours tomorrow.”
“An assignment for which there are to be absolutely no security leaks.”
“That’s right.” Disgust was again evident in Renford’s voice.
“And just what is this assignment?”
The Admiral shrugged. “All Hyatt would say was that he needed someone with a background similar to your own—someone with extensive hand-to-hand training and experience in security. And he wanted a qualified ship’s pilot.”
Once more Susan thought of Aldebaran, and flashes of the nightmare entered her mind. “I’m no longer a ship’s pilot.”
“You’re wrong,” Renford said. “You were never stricken from the active roster. The only thing holding you back is your own lack of confidence. That’s all that has ever held you back.”
No, Susan thought, he is wrong. Although she had been vindicated ten years ago at her court-martial—it had been said more than once that she had done more for her crew than humanly possible, seeming to be in more than one place at a time—she knew it had been a mere formality, a way for Fleet to save face in a bad situation. If they publicly stated that she had done nothing wrong in Aldebaran system, then she would not have, and Fleet’s record would remain unblemished.
But she knew better. She alone knew the true extent of her guilt. She had come away from that court-martial a hero, receiving a decoration and several letters of commendation, but she had lived with her guilt ever since. She was responsible for those deaths—it had been her decision to run the blockade. And, although she’d had the opportunity to save at least a portion of her crew, she could not remember making the attempt. Traumatic amnesia, the doctors had called it.
“I want you to keep your eyes open while you’re in Luna City,” the Admiral said, breaking into her thoughts.
She pushed the fear and doubt down into her subconscious. This was something she could handle—something she had experience with. “For anything in particular?” she asked.
“There’s rumor that Hyatt is making another bid for independence. I want to know how close he is to achieving it.”
Susan nodded. Every few years the Survey Service director went through a short period of giving rousing speeches on the holo-vid, and pumping great sums of personal money into the small but always existent Luna City independence movement. It would last a few months, generating considerable excitement in the press concerning the possibility of an independent Luna, then die down until the next time.
Personally, Susan liked the idea of an independent Luna; she thouoht it inevitable. But she worked for Fleet, and officially Fleet did not like the idea.
“How long will I be on loan to the Service?” she asked.
“It’s an open-ended assignment.”
She was silent for a few seconds. Finally she asked, “And what’s this test you told Hyatt I passed? I haven’t been tested.”
“You wouldn’t have noticed. If you had, it would have altered the results. It was simply a number of small, insignificant obstacles placed in your way over the past few weeks, to see how you would react.”
She tried to think what those obstacles might have been. “I can’t recall anything.”
“They were everyday-seeming occurrences. But I assure you, they were all carefully engineered.”
“What were you testing for?”
“I don’t know. I simply set up the circumstances according to Hyatt’s instructions, then reported the results to him. All highly mechanical.”
She sat numb, not speaking, wondering how anyone could perform a satisfactory test when he did not know what he was testing for. And, still more incredible, how Renford could possibly recommend her for an assignment he knew absolutely nothing about.
Chapter Three
Susan arrived back in her quarters shortly after ten hundred hours and called out as she entered. The Base Security investigation team might still be about, and she wasn’t entirely sure she could trust them.
They weren’t in the bedroom. She checked the bathroom. The only evidence of the morning’s violence was several shattered tiles at eye level.
Returning to the bedroom, she stood for a few seconds before the holo- phone’s clustered lens array, just outside the sensor field. She wanted to step into the field, activating the device, and call Evans.
She almost did just that, but at the last instant changed her mind. Evans wouldn’t have anything yet; he’d barely had enough time to begin his investigation. Besides, he had promised he would call if he uncovered anything.
If he investigated her story at all.
Meanwhile, shouldn’t she begin packing?
No. The floater to Luna City would
n’t leave Fleet Base until zero-six-hundred hours tomorrow morning. She would get up early, perhaps four or four-thirty, and pack then. That should give her plenty of time.
Then what should she be doing? She knew she’d have to remain in her quarters if she wanted to receive Evans’ call.
Stepping to the desk, she sat and opened its drawer. She pulled out her chip carrying case—six inches by three inches by one half inch thick—and placed it on the desk top. Thumbing the case open, she scanned the neat array of a dozen garnet chips filed inside. Each chip measured less than half an inch on the side and a thirty-second inch thick, and each represented an entire book. Printed across their surfaces in nearly microscopic script were the names of the books they contained.
Most held history texts, a passion Susan had inherited from her father. Some contained biographies, while others were Fleet technical manuals. Only two chips were programmed with fiction.
She took her LIN/C from the pouch at her waist and positioned it in the center of the desk beside the carrying case, then removed a chip from the case. It was a fiction she had started on the shuttle up from Earth. She placed it atop the appropriate contact spot on the LIN/C and felt it adhere.
Instantly images formed in her mind, sharp and clear, picking up precisely where they had left off on the shuttle. Again she sat in a one-man fighter, bucking turbulence as she dove into a planet’s atmosphere. Behind her, a fighter of alien construction pursued.
With those images came other elements: she smelled the acrid scent of scorched air in her cockpit, heard the metal of her ship creak and moan, felt a trickle of sweat crawl itching down her back within her life-support suit. She could actually taste her own fear.
And finally, another’s thoughts blossomed in her mind. Suddenly, she was the protagonist of the story, living manufactured experiences, feeling artificial emotions, thinking synthetic thoughts.
This was a piece of fiction that should have grabbed her totally, holding her interest to the very end. It was a LIN/C adaptation of the twelfth book in a series written by a long-dead twentieth century author, a series that was quickly becoming her all-time favorite. There was plenty of action and adventure, and the main character was certainly someone with whom she could identify: a female captain in a Federation Fleet not unlike the one in which Susan herself served. The only difference was that intelligent races other than humankind were members of the fictitious Federation, while in reality humanity had not yet encountered another intelligence.
