“It wasn't enough for what they took from me! I wanted...”
“This?” She held up the tricorn Commander's hat. “Is this what you want?”
He stared, mesmerized by the gaudy object. So pretentious and pompous. But to him it represented everything he'd been denied.
She shook it. “It'll be a lie, don't you see that?” she said. “You'll hate yourself for it the rest of your life. The hat will become a symbol of what you betrayed.”
He braced himself as the ship's position suddenly shifted. “No, it won't.”
“No? Then take it.”
And she tossed the hat to his left.
Sloan turned, and then caught himself. Stella was already diving through the air at his chest. She saw the barrel swing back and, even as she struck, knew that he had time to fire despite her great speed.
She drove him to the floor, where she easily removed the laser from his hand. Then she lay with her arms around him as he trembled.
“Sloan,” she said, “we don't have time.”
He nodded. “I know. You'll have to arrest me, Stella.”
“Is that what you want for you and your family?” she said. “Disgrace? Contempt? Believe me, it'll be a thousand times worse than merely being poor, Sloan.”
“What else can you do?” he said. “Be honest. You couldn't trust me again after this. Every time you turned your back, gave an order ... And you know what a problem loyalty's become. The Emperor himself decreed the death penalty for offenses far less than mine. Even a well-meaning soldier who fails an assignment is stigmatized.”
“I know.” As usual, Sloan was right. And yet she needed him. Sloan had personally inspected the only controls they'd found on the alien ship's bridge. He knew best which choices were most likely to unanchor the craft and propel it into the singularity. Though it was refined guesswork, she must have him do it.
“Lee can do it just as well,” Sloan said, reading her thoughts. “Remember? He toured the Slug ship with me.”
Lee Song? “But he's so young. A good battle tech with fair nav skills, but he needs seasoning. We need someone like Merritt or O'Bannion.”
Sloan shook his head. “No, Lee. Trust me on this, Stella. I trained him myself. He's brilliant.” He swallowed. “And he's a poor boy like myself. Comes from servant stock.”
She looked down at him, wondering if she were about to make another mistake. Trust Lee?
“Because you didn't fire,” she finally said, “I'll consider it.” She hesitated. “I'll also make it right for you. You slipped, Sloan, when the ship lurched. Hit your head.”
“My wife ... family.”
“Yes. A hero's pension.”
He sighed, briefly closed his eyes. “Better than I deserve. Sorry. I've served and loved the Emperor all my life. Stella...”
“Yes, Sloan.”
He smiled faintly. “I like you too.”
She closed her eyes. “Goodbye,” she whispered.
And broke his neck.
She lay there, still feeling the sharp, short snap of his neck in her arms, and started to cry. Tears, synthetic ones that always felt a bit oily, fell on Sloan's face and hands. Oh, damn you! She trembled, thinking of her secret shame, and how it paled beside his. Would she ever be able to trust anyone again?
“Commander McMasters, we're waiting for you on the bridge. Is everything all right?”
She wiped her eyes and quickly rose to press a switch on her comconsole. “There's been an accident. Send Dr. Darron to my cabin at once.”
* * * *
In two minutes, she heard a knock and opened the door. George entered with a medbag, followed unexpectedly by Thunderheart, who closed the door behind him.
George knelt quickly beside Sloan and deftly examined his neck, eyes, pulse before speaking into his comlink. “Cancel backup. It's too late.”
“He slipped when the ship moved,” Stella said, “hit his head on the wall. When I reached him, he was dead.”
She saw George find something on Sloan's cheek and delicately rub it between his fingers.
Her tears.
George sniffed the substance, and then raised his eyes to hers. “He slipped?”
“Yes, when the ship moved a while ago.”
“I see. He lost his balance and broke his neck?”
Why is he doing this? She motioned at Sloan's body. “I liked Sloan, George. He was my first officer.”
Why was George looking at her that way? She knew her face couldn't give her away. Unless she controlled it, it remained impassive.
Still, something, perhaps the tone of her voice or the unlikely manner in which she said Sloan had died, betrayed her to Thunderheart. He moved forward, his eyes darting between Sloan and her. Though not wearing battle armor, he looked every bit as formidable as before, moving like a coiled, muscular spring.
“He tried to hurt you!”
“No, Thunderheart,” she said. “He slipped on the floor.”
Thunderheart's jaw hardened. Unwilling to contradict her, he turned to George. “I should have been here.”
“That's enough, Thunderheart,” George said, rising. He ushered him to the door and opened it. “Please wait outside.”
George closed the door behind him. Turned.
“Mind telling me what happened?”
“Perhaps when you tell me what made you quit being a warrior. As for now, I want Sloan put with the other casualties.” She headed for the door.
He pressed her arm, stopping her. “All right, we'll talk later.” He inhaled deeply. “So much is happening, and we don't have time. Look, Stella, there's another problem: Thunderheart. He shouldn't even be here. When you talked to the bridge, they relayed it to sickbay and he joined me in the corridor en route. I told him not to come.”
“I don't have time right now,” she said.
“Listen.” George took her shoulders in his massive hands. “Thunderheart's an orphan, the last piece of a broken puzzle. His nine brothers and sisters are dead. He's the only member of the Emperor's Arm left on ship.”
“Make it fast,” she said. “What's your point?”
“I wish I had time to do a psyche-scan on him,” George said. “Right now I don't, but it doesn't take much insight to see the man's becoming fixated on you as the core of his new world. You saw what the Slug revealed about him: he fears he's nine-tenths dead. You can't afford that type of unstable dependency around you. You've replaced the Emperor in his allegiances, and he obviously wants to be your bodyguard.”
She removed George's hands from her shoulders. “A while ago, I could have used one.” She glanced down at Sloan, and then looked away. “Couldn't you be overreacting? You know as well as I the Emperor's Arm swears allegiance not only to the Emperor but to their superiors.”
“Damn it, Stella, he's a lit powder keg! There's no telling what the man might do. He could become paranoid and refuse to let others see you for fear you might be hurt, as evidently happened here. Or he could do worse. The point is, there's no telling. Please, for your own safety, let me isolate him for a complete workup.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I'll take it under advisement. As for now, George, let's go.”
* * * *
After they left her cabin, Thunderheart accompanied them. A few minutes later, when she reached the bridge, she found her officers and tech personnel waiting.
“Comrades,” she said, “there's been a tragic accident. When the ship lurched, Sloan Williams slipped in my cabin and lost his life. I've directed Dr. Darron to have his remains taken to the ship morgue, where they will be kept with those of his comrades, who, like him, courageously gave their lives in the Emperor's service.”
She squared her shoulders, and then continued.
“If this were peacetime, we'd have the luxury of pausing to honor our comrades and show them the respect they deserve. Unfortunately, a most pressing and unprecedented challenge awaits us, one which may prove historic because it could turn the tide against the enemy. The
refore, we have to defer our mourning to a more suitable time.”
She paused, aware that some on the bridge had disagreed with her decision to proceed to Loran Base even before Sloan's death. Take time to regroup and mourn the dead, Carol had advised her. Return to New Mars and let the experts handle it. But Stella knew her delay could cost them months. Even the Empire's famous scientists might press the wrong thing on the alien ship and blow them all to hell.
She raised her chin. “That does it, people, except for one thing. I want to make an announcement. As of now, Lee Song is promoted to the rank of chief Navigation and Communications officer. As such, he will be answerable to me alone.”
First officer. As several crewmen gasped, Lee Song's features froze in disbelief at the battle monitors. A few techs looked disappointed, especially the strawberry-haired O'Bannion.
“That's all, comrades,” Stella said. “Return to your duties.” Moving forward, she pinned George with her eyes. “I want Thunderheart to sit in the chair next to you,” she ordered, turning away before he could object.
As her crew busied themselves at their stations, Stella marched toward Lee, who stiffened at the monitors and started to salute. Catching himself, he grinned sickly.
“Relax, Lee.” She watched his expression. Only twenty-one, and catapulted to the number-two position without warning. Yet Sloan had said he was the one to handle the assignment.
“Commander,” Lee said, “are you sure?” He wobbled on his feet and touched the monitors to steady himself. “I come from a long line of livery bondsfolk, servant class. Besides, I've barely had three years experience and...”
“Go ahead.”
His eyes met hers. “Commander, I failed you on the Slug ship. When you saw that thing...”
“The imager.”
Lee's head bobbed. “Yes, the imager. It caught me, ser. I was totally wiped by it.”
Stella watched his head dip in embarrassment and took a half-step forward. Choices. Decisions. That was all life was. You trusted a traitor like Sloan and didn't listen to a friend like George who gave you professional advice designed to protect you.
“Listen to me, Lee,” she said, her face just centimeters from his. “That thing wiped me too, and I'm in charge of this ship. How do you think I felt?” She lowered her voice. “You can't go back and change things. You never can. All you can do is go forward and learn from your mistakes.”
She watched Lee's boyish face absorb her words, and then continued. “If you can't do it, say so. I won't be disappointed. But I saw you at the monitors when our crew boarded the Slug ship. You were brilliant, Lee. I don't care if you come from sixty generations of latrine scrubbers or have only three months experience, I saw you save several lives no one else could.”
Lee's chin rose. She fired her last volley.
“Before the accident, Sloan praised you. He even said you'd be a good replacement for him.”
Lee blinked. “He said that? Sloan did?”
“Yes. He had great admiration for you, Lee. Just as I do.”
Now. Now was the moment when he would either meet the challenge or succumb to it. If he declined this charge, he would have a long time to regret it.
She saw him pull back his shoulders. A smile slowly split his face from ear to ear.
“I won't let you down, ser!”
She smiled back. “Then get your ass in gear and help me get both these boats to Loran Base.”
* * * *
She sat down in her command chair and strapped herself in.
“Stella?”
She adjusted her headset. “Yes, Jason.”
“Prepared to interface with enemy bridge.”
“Proceed.”
On monitors directly ahead appeared different views of the alien's bridge a hundred kilometers away, the distance she had ordered established between the two craft. The alien himself was conspicuously absent, his remains the responsibility of George's pathology unit. In his place stood five chairs welded to the floor and reinforced by duroplast braces. They were occupied by nav and com personnel, a tiny skeleton crew that would ride the alien ship through the singularity.
That is, if they managed to decipher the strange control panel located before the chairs.
For the second time in three hours, Stella studied it in puzzlement. Concealed before by the alien's bulk, the panel's display offered no clues to its operation. Two meters square, it consisted of ninety-eight multihued polyhedrons and two crystal, disk-shaped levers located in the center. No writing or markings appeared anywhere.
She tapped her chair in frustration. At a meeting two hours before, George had pointed out that ninety-eight polyhedrons + two levers = one hundred, a perfect number in certain ancient Terran cultures. This fact suggested a similarity between the alien's thinking and their own.
Stella had objected that such thought was anthropocentric and led to mystical-religious babble. In fact, they knew nothing about the alien's belief system and how it might affect the control panel.
Sloan, Myles, Lee, and those in nav and com had also rejected George's musings. Sloan (plotting treachery) had cautioned that they could speculate endlessly about the Slugs’ inner nature, but it made more sense to focus on the efficient ordering of the ship's instruments. Whatever the species, a practical arrangement must follow certain principles.
“But,” Stella said, “doesn't it all depend on the alien's physiology? Since he possessed only vestigial organs,” (she said nothing about the mysterious All-Mother) “he apparently manipulated the panel by thought waves alone. In that case, wouldn't all parts of the panel be equally accessible?”
Her question had opened an even murkier realm. How, indeed, could anyone determine the mechanical preferences of an alien race that lacked even a means of locomotion? Sloan conceded they couldn't, but since humans had never encountered another intelligent species, they could only resort to what they knew, which was the way humans thought. “On that basis,” he'd said, “the right-hand preference of most humans is the best guide. If pressed, the right lever should nullify the force that keeps the Slug ship in place and direct it through the singularity.”
“Assuming it isn't something else that needs to be pressed,” Stella had said, “what does the left lever do?”
“We, uh, think it holds the ship in place despite the gravity well. If it doesn't, we'll just have to try the other.” Sloan had shrugged. “What else can we do, Stella? As well as we can determine, there are no other navigational devices aboard the ship.”
Lee's voice interrupted her memories of that meeting. “Commander, shall we proceed?”
This is madness. Maybe Carol and others were right and she should return to let the Imperial High Command handle the Slug ship. Let them muck up and take the blame, not her.
“Commander?”
“Proceed, Lee,” she ordered, her mouth brassy with fear.
Lee relayed the order to O'Bannion, one of the crew seated on the alien bridge. He acknowledged it and, leaning forward, carefully pushed the right lever.
Stella watched it sink inward, and then return to its original position.
Nothing.
The alien ship remained in place, some seven hundred fifteen kilometers away from the whirling black funnel of the singularity.
“Permission to press the left lever, Commander,” Lee said.
Desperately, Stella sorted through what she knew. She had met the alien, fought him, and even shared his mind. There was no one who should know one-tenth as much as she about the enemy. Yet she had no idea what to do, no idea what the panel did or how the alien steered his ship.
“Commander...”
She cleared her throat. “Permission granted,” she rasped.
On the enemy bridge, O'Bannion leaned forward again. She watched the left lever sink beneath his fingers. This one didn't return to its original position. Nor, she realized, had she expected it to. Why did this all seem so familiar?
She stiffened, sudden knowledge
screaming through her body.
On the monitors, the bridge began to vibrate. The five-member crew shimmered and grew dim.
“Commander,” Lee said, “something's happening!”
Of course it is, dammit. The ship's going to explode!
Somehow, she knew that. And she knew too that the hundred kilometers distance she had ordered was less than half of what was needed. It wouldn't save or protect them at all.
In just seconds, unless she did something, the Slug craft would blow up and take them all with it.
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Stella spoke quickly. “Press the left one again!”
Tense with horror, she waited as Lee relayed the order. The process seemed to pass in agonizing slow motion. Surely she was too late. Surely there was time for the ship to have been destroyed a dozen times over. She continued to stare as O'Bannion's hand crept toward the left lever and finally pressed it.
The lever returned to its original position. The alien bridge stilled; the vibrations passed.
If Stella had had lungs, she would have expelled her breath. She found herself wishing she still possessed this form of release as relief washed over her. Instead, she relaxed her grip on the chair.
“Commander,” Lee gasped, “the situation appears to have stabilized.”
“Lee,” she said, “I'm taking charge on this. My orders go direct to O'Bannion.”
“Uh, yes, ser.”
Aware of Lee's disappointment, she made a mental note to assure him that he hadn't failed her. In fact, no one, including Sloan, had failed her in this operation. There was only one person, she knew, who could possibly help her fathom the alien ship.
Herself.
You have sensed and understood me from the beginning, the alien had said. From the first time you saw me there has been a bond between us.
Yes, the alien had said that to her. But he had lied. Perhaps some perverted, partial bond had indeed been established after he had forced her to experience his mind, but to say that a bond had been forged the very first moment she had seen him? It was impossible.
Beyond Those Distant Stars Page 11
