by Wren, M. K.
The countdown clock read zero +06:19: 16:19 TST.
Ussher’s eyes were turned up to the progress screen.
PNX ss dam/des/cap/unactd:
ss dam ss des ss cap ss unactd
F 32 C 13 F 28 C 18 F 12 C 5 F 6 C 4
Total +06:20:
F 92 C 37 F 71 C 42 F 27 C 11 F 22 C 14
The figures vanished off the top of the screen, and he couldn’t have recalled any of them. The newscaster’s voice impinged just as lightly on the surface of his thoughts.
“. . . with the arrival in the Centauri System of a full Confleet wing led by Commander Delin Borudo, enemy resistance has virtually evaporated. Concord officials have not yet determined the motive behind this unprovoked attack, but the Phoenix has long been recognized as a revolutionary. . .”
Ussher stared at the smoothly handsome face on the screen, heard the glib phrases, and nothing in his mind balked or reflected surprise that the face was becoming increasingly familiar as he watched it. The dark hair and arching brows, the frigid blue eyes, the hawklike cast of the bones. The face looked out at him with smug contempt and said in clipped, precise accents, “I am the Lord Alexand, first born of the Lord Phillip DeKoven Woolf, grandson of the Lord Mathis Daro Galinin. . . .”
But Alex Ransom was dead.
Of course he was. There—Garris had just said it. He was dead.
Someone near him whispered, “Oh, Holy God . . . oh, no—”
Isaks, staring dazedly past Ussher. Around the comcenter people were turning, all looking in one direction, all looking toward the GroundComm console. Toward Emeric Garris.
Ussher came slowly to his feet, turning by small degrees until finally he found Garris looking directly at him.
As if Ussher had asked a question, Garris said, “I just had a report from Leftant Commander Gavin. Demond took a direct barrage and exploded. First Commander Barret is dead.”
“No . . . no . . . no . . . no . . . no . . . NO!”
Ussher pressed his fists to his head, his brain was exploding, shockwaves of agony rocked the room. He saw the door, stumbled toward it. He ran, staggering, panting. No air. They were choking him. He ran, fell against the door as it opened, reached out for the railing. The smoke blinded him, seared his lungs. And he ran.
5.
16:45 TST. Emeric Garris sloshed through the oil-skimmed water to the steps of the comcenter deck, content to leave the final berthing operations to Commander Gavin and the able-bodied survivors.
1,609 were no longer able-bodied or survivors: 901 dead, 214 wounded, 254 captured, 250 unaccounted for. Altogether, nearly half FO’s staff.
And out of 2,270, SI had sustained 528 casualties. But ninety-six were only wounded; most of them would recover.
Garris leaned heavily on the railing as he climbed the steps. Lord Predis had shown his colors, and there was no one in Fina who wasn’t bitterly, painfully, aware of it. Their leader had no lofty speeches for them now, no golden promises, no stirring predictions of victory. Their leader had turned tail and run.
He was hiding in his office now. Garris had that from Isaks; Ussher had ’commed him. To the young man’s credit, he elected to stay in the comcenter and relieve the ADCon staff rather than obey Ussher’s summons or answer his questions.
Garris paused outside the comcenter door and surveyed the hangar, feeling the pain in his gut he called old age, although he knew better. At least he’d lived long enough to see FO through this, but perhaps that was because he knew about Alex Ransom and Andreas, knew this wasn’t all in vain.
The men and women out there among the wrecks, driving themselves doggedly past the limits of endurance, didn’t yet know. He wondered what kept them going. The demands of the moment; nothing more. He’d seen a doctor break down in tears when one of the wounded died in his arms.
The sound of footsteps roused him. Ben Venturi. Garris wondered vaguely at his expression of anxious concern.
“Emeric, are you all right?”
“What? Oh—of course. You find Marien and M’Kim?”
“They’re both helping out in the infirmary, but they’ll be here in a few minutes. I paged Hendrick and got no answer. He’s with Predis.” Ben looked at his watch. “We’d better get into the comcenter.”
Garris nodded and led the way. The officers and techs looked around, eyes lifeless with numb weariness. No one spoke. Alan Isaks, he noted, was back by Ussher’s empty chair, staring bleakly at the PubliCom screen.
Garris made a round of the scanners and screens, asking a few questions, getting unelaborated answers. Pollux’s skies were swarming with Confleet recon flights, but there was no hint that the quadrant of the Selamin Sea around Fina was attracting any undue attention.
A few minutes later, Marien Dyce and John M’Kim arrived. With Venturi and Garris they made up the Council at the moment. Garris had called them here as councilors and let them assume he was taking FO’s vacant seat.
Vacant. The very word made an anguished void. And yet you’d think an old soldier would finally become immune to grief.
Marien Dyce came over to Garris, asking, “Where’s Erica?”
He knew, but couldn’t tell her. Not yet. “Uh . . . she must be in the infirmary.”
“Oh. I didn’t see her there. Surgery, probably.”
It was revealing that Marien didn’t ask about Ussher or Hendrick. Neither did M’Kim. He stood near the door, looking out into the hangar, and for the first time Garris saw past the ever pragmatic accountant’s facade.
“Sir, I’m picking up something here.”
A woman looked up from a prox scanner, and that quiet announcement was electrifying and drew every eye to her. Their fear didn’t need words; fear that Fina was discovered.
Garris looked over the tech’s shoulder, studying the star of light on the edge of the screen.
“What does the comp ident say, Jen?”
“Single ship; mass indicates a Falcon, on direct approach vector. Altitude . . .” She faltered a little then. “It’s submerged. Minus fifty meters. Speed, three kps.”
He nodded. “Carl, are the approach shock screens on?”
“Yes, sir.”
Garris watched the moving star, frowning to mask his relief. In the tense quiet, the voice that came from the ADCon speakers might as well have been on ampspeakers.
“Calling PNX ADCon . . . come in, ADCon.”
At the ADCon console, a startled comtech fumbled at the controls, then stopped, looking around at Garris.
“Sir, all the fleet ships are in.”
“I know, Sim. Try to find out who it is—and put this on tape.”
He nodded and set the controls.
“PNX ADCon on line. Requesting vessel identification.”
The response was immediate, flat, and matter of fact.
“Sargent Simmons, this is Commander Ransom aboard Exile Fleet Falcon Phoenix One, requesting lock entry. We are . . . eleven minutes and thirty seconds from the lock tunnel.”
In the stunned silence, only the hummings of machines were audible. Simmons finally found his voice, but not to reply to that request. Again, he looked to Garris.
“Sir? What . . . what are your orders?”
Garris turned to another tech. “Max, get me a VP ident on that voice. Hurry. Sim, just tell him to hold.”
While they waited, the tension nearly tangible, Garris looked at Dyce and M’Kim, and what he saw in their faces called up a sigh of relief. Hope. Aching hope that pleaded to be fulfilled. And these had been Ussher’s strongest converts on the Council.
“Sir, here it is!” Max, gesturing wildly at a screen. “The VP ident. It’s him. It’s Comm
ander Ransom!”
Garris’s orders were almost lost in the resulting confusion, but he didn’t try to quiet it.
“Sim—entry request granted. Carl, deactivate the approach shock screens and alert the lock crew. Janie—where are you? Call a general assembly in the hangar. All members. And for those who can’t get loose, switch in the intercom screens.”
He could smile now, and he took particular satisfaction in the last order. Ussher had vidicams installed in the hangar so his speeches, those damned rallies, could be heard even by those members whose duties precluded their attendance. Now Ussher could watch this one from his hiding place, watch Fina’s last rally.
Isaks was making a ’com call. The screens were dark, but Garris had no doubt Ussher was on the other end of that dialogue. He frowned, then with a shrug dismissed it. What he read on Isaks’s face assured him it wasn’t a friendly gesture. A challenge. He wondered if Ussher would meet it.
The pumps had finally succeeded in clearing away the water, but at the moment that was hard to ascertain. Those parts of the floor that weren’t occupied with ships and machines were filled with people, including the ambulatory wounded.
Emeric Garris stood at the deck railing, listening to the ADCon frequency on his headset. Dyce and M’Kim were waiting near him. Venturi had been here, too, but a minute ago departed suddenly with a monosyllabic explanation.
“SI. Willie says Pri-One.”
Garris only nodded absently. He was thinking about Andreas. To see Andreas again, alive, here where he belonged—
An echoing clank, a rush of air and water. Phoenix One was coming in. A towcrew hurried toward the tunnel, shouting warnings to the crowd to make room. That blue-uniformed crowd. Garris felt the weight of his own uniform, and he wanted to strip it off on the spot.
The ship emerged into the hangar, and the only sounds in the great vault were mechanical; cables shooting out, thudding home, towcars whining, lock gates closing, pumps thumping, the ship’s generators rumbling. She came to a stop a short distance beyond the tunnel, turned with her side and lock toward the comcenter.
The crowd shifted, everyone vying for position to see the lock. Yet they were so quiet. Garris studied the faces he could see, trying to understand that silence. Shock was part of it, but beyond that he read the aching hope he’d first seen on M’Kim’s and Dyce’s faces.
The tongue of the boarding ramp slid out as the lock opened. A whispering swept through the waiting crowd. Three men were standing in the lock.
One of them Garris didn’t recognize at first. It had been nearly five years since he met Jael the Outsider as a new recruit here in Fina. But he spared Jael little attention now, and he stayed a pace behind the others as they descended the ramp.
Andreas—there was Andreas. . . .
Garris held on to the railing, putting down the urge to weep or laugh or shout aloud. Yet he found his attention drawn to Alex Ransom. He watched him, forgetting to breathe.
He was wearing an ordinary slacsuit; Garris noted that because it came as a surprise. His first impression was of a cloak and dress boots, and he was reminded of the night Alex Ransom first came to Fina. It had struck him then, too, that aristocratic bearing that fell short of arrogance only because of the years and generations of stringent discipline behind it.
The blue-clad crowd stirred and shifted, and finally wonder found expression; finally the pendant silence was washed away in a flood of voices, and the vault that had echoed in the last few hours with the clangor of disaster, reverberated with the laughter and accents of hope.
There were no concerted cheers from this crowd, only a formless, continuous clamor, intensely individual articulations of joy and relief, an ultimate, exhaustive resolution. It was a long time before Alex and Andreas could make their way through the crowd to the deck, and they seemed in no hurry. Garris waited, thinking Andreas hadn’t looked so well in years. Jael, he noted, stayed close by Alex’s right side when the crowd began to press in on them.
But now they had finally reached the deck. Andreas saw Garris and left the others behind, then, when he was only a pace away, stopped. They stood silent, memories and hopes shared in the exchange of fleeting smiles.
Andreas said, “Emeric, I’m glad to find you still here.” Then he put out his hand, closing the distance between them.
“Welcome home, Andreas. Welcome home!” Garris took both his hands in his, laughing, shouting words he wasn’t even aware of, but no one heard him in the clamor or cared if he was making sense. Andreas understood, and so did Alex, whose left-handed grip said what words couldn’t.
The comcenter was nearly empty as officers and techs left their posts to join the celebration. And Ben was back. Garris was too swept up in the noisy enthusiasm to wonder why he seemed so grim until he saw him push his way close enough to Alex to say a few words into his ear, and Alex suddenly became equally grim.
It was then that Alex turned to the railing, his raised hand and sober expression finally bringing quiet out of the pandemonium. Garris, with the others on the deck, drew back, waiting expectantly, but Alex’s first words were not at all what he anticipated.
“I’ve been informed,” Alex began in a quiet tone that still projected to the edges of the crowd, “that the Phoenix must now add three more deaths to its casualty lists. Marg Conly, assigned to SI, and councilor Robert Hendrick were found dead in the Communications department offices. They were killed by laser beams at close range.”
Garris stared at him, and neither he nor the other members had recovered from that shock when Alex went on, “I’ve also been informed that twenty minutes ago the man who called himself Predis Ussher ordered himself transed to Leda. He used one of the MT techs on duty as a hostage to force the other to carry out his orders. The hostage, Jeris Sanders, is also dead. We don’t know where Ussher is now, but we know he cleared his personal lock box and took with him a suitcase filled with commutronics equipment.”
The incredulous silence that followed was broken by a stricken cry.
“He’s bolted! Run out on us!”
It came from John M’Kim, which was another shock for Garris; M’Kim was the last person he expected to be first to voice that angry realization.
It was absorbed instantly by the members, and the enraged repetition of the accusation exploded into a torrent of sound that set Garris’s pulse pounding with a kind of fear he’d never in a long soldier’s life experienced. He looked down at the open-mouthed faces contorted in rage and knew that if Ussher were to appear here at this moment, this vengeful crowd, this mob, would literally rip him apart.
Alex raised his hand again, his voice cracking against the massed roar.
“Have you forgotten who you are?”
Garris saw the faces turn, eyes come into focus on Alex, and the storm of anger ebbed enough for them to hear and understand him when he repeated that uncompromising demand.
“Have you forgotten who you are?” And finally, as the roar ebbed into a low murmuring, he answered himself. “You are the Phoenix. You are the hope of the future. You are the last bulwark between civilization and anarchy.”
The murmuring died in a long sigh; a curiously gentle sound, as his tone had become gently understanding.
“You’ve been betrayed, but you haven’t been defeated. Ussher’s misguided ambitions have served a purpose for the Phoenix, although not the one he intended. He led you, drove you, to the brink of disaster, but it may also be the brink of success. Not victory. Success. To a point, we might even be grateful to him. The Phoenix is now within striking distance of Phase I.”
Alex paused to let that sink in, to see hope and curiosity rekindled, but when it began to take the form of shouted questions, he again held up his hand for quiet.
“A great deal has happened in the last few months, and will happen in the next few hours and days. We come bea
ring hope, but I’ll surrender the privilege of explaining that hope to the man who most deserves it.” He turned and looked behind him. “Andreas, the . . . podium is yours.”
And the audience was his. Quiet now, the blind emotional charge spent. Garris was so intent on Andreas as he moved, a little self-consciously, to the railing, that he was startled by Alex’s voice close to his ear.
“Emeric, I need a place for a private conference.”
Garris looked around at him, finding him tensely grim again, sharing none of the pervading spirit of joyful gratitude that filled this great chamber.
“Oh. Well, there’s your—I mean, Jan . . . Jan’s office. It won’t be locked.”
No one seemed to notice his departure with Jael and Ben; everyone was listening to Andreas. Garris tried to concentrate on what Andreas was saying, but he felt the chill breath of fear casting a pall of doubt on this gathering of hope.
Alex switched on the monitors behind the desk, leaving the sound off, then turned and surveyed the mirror-walled room that had once been more his home than the rooms he slept in. A working space, yet oddly impersonal. He found almost nothing to assert its recent occupation by Jan Barret, certainly nothing of Alex Ransom, or even Emeric Garris, who had occupied it for thirty years.
No. There was something testifying to Jan’s presence.
The desk was conscientiously cleared, and in the center was a tape spool. Alex picked it up and read the words under the seal. “For Nina Barret.”
Jan’s handwriting. A parting message for his wife.
Alex put the spool back on the desk, wondering who would have to give it to Nina, recognizing his own cowardice in hoping it wouldn’t be left to him.
On the other side of the desk, Jael stood waiting, only the narrowing of his oblique eyes betraying his anxiety. Ben had all but fallen into a chair where he sat with his elbows on his knees, head in his hands. He was haggard with exhaustion. And more. There were few of the SI casualties he hadn’t known by name, and too many had been friends.
