Knight Errant

by Paul Barrett

  She turned to Hawk. “You ready to lie down?”

  “Let’s get Trey strapped in first,” Hawk walked to the head’s door and tapped. “Almost ready, Trey?”

  Trey’s tenor voice came out muffled through the door. “Go ahead and jump. I’m going to stay in here.”

  “You know we can’t do that,” Hawk said. “Everyone has to be under.”

  “I’m not coming out.”

  Hawk turned to Laura and saw his puzzlement reflected in her face. Trey had never shown any disobedience. He knew the importance of this procedure as well as any spacefarer and had done it numerous times without complaint. Hawk tried to open the door and found it locked. “Ship, unlock the door.”

  The lock disengaged with a soft click.

  Laura stepped up. “Let me.”

  Hawk stood aside as Laura slid the door open. This was one of the smaller heads aboard Ship, a cube barely a meter square with a toilet and sink. Trey, dressed in a loose red shirt and blue pants, had squeezed into the far corner and wedged himself behind the toilet. His bloodshot eyes were wide with terror.

  “Stay away!” Trey blurted before Laura moved. “I don’t want to sleep.”

  “You know you have to be asleep when we rip.” Laura used the tone of voice Hawk had heard her use to great effect on others in distress. “If you’re not asleep, you could die.” She took a step forward. Trey tried to push himself even flatter against the wall.

  “I’d rather die.”

  Laura stopped, her face ashen. “Don’t say that.”

  “I’m sorry.” Trey squirmed in the corner. His face turned red and eyes puffed as he drew close to tears. “I’ve tried to be strong. Tried to fight it. But I can’t take the dreams anymore.”

  “Dreams? You don’t dream in rip sleep.”

  “Yes, you do,” Trey said, his voice high and eyes haunted. Instead of a child on the verge of his teens, he resembled a terrified six-year-old. “Terrible dreams of monsters that want to kill you and eat you.”

  “That’s not possible,” Laura muttered to Hawk. “The trazine doesn’t induce normal sleep. Brain activity is minimal. Dreaming isn’t possible.”

  “Unless it is,” Gerard said. Hawk turned in surprise to find his pale friend standing behind them, a thoughtful expression on his pale face. “Trey, in these dreams, do you see large creatures swimming, circling you in a void?”

  Trey’s eyes widened. He nodded. “Yes. They’re terrible. They want to kill me.”

  “If I can tell you how to avoid them, will you come out?”

  Trey hesitated, hands clenching and tugging at his shirt. He started to slip from behind the toilet, then stopped. “I can’t. What if it doesn’t work?” Tears poured from his eyes.

  “We don’t have time for this,” Hawk said. He stepped into the bathroom.

  Trey stood up and appeared ready to dig his way through the wall. As Hawk approached, the boy wailed, strangled cries punctuated with shouts of “no.” He swung his fisted hands wildly. Hawk grabbed at Trey’s thin arms, caught them, and pinioned them against the wall. Trey screamed and thrashed, his efforts to kick Hawk thwarted by the toilet.

  “How can he stop the dreams?” Hawk asked over his shoulder.

  “Do multiplication tables,” Gerard told the boy.

  Trey stopped his struggle and gave Gerard a perplexed stare. “What?”

  “Multiplication tables. They’ll occupy your mind and keep the dreams away.”

  “That’s it?” Hawk asked, giving Gerard a sideways glance, his skepticism matching Trey’s.

  “That’s the short version, but—”

  “—The short version will have to do. Sedate him.”

  “I don’t think…” Laura began.

  “That’s an order!” Hawk said. He kept his face stern even as he winced inside at the anger in Laura’s eyes. He hated treating Trey like this, but the lives of four other people depended on the Knights, and time was crucial. He didn’t have the luxury of coddling. They needed every minute they could get. Trey understandably had many issues; this was new. Hopefully Gerard and Laura could help the boy after they came out of rip; for now, they needed to move.

  With stiff steps, Laura walked into the room. Her face and movements as emotionless as a robot, she pulled a syringe tube from the small medkit on her belt. She dialed in the dosage as Trey flailed.

  “Please don’t,” Trey whimpered as Laura brought the tube to his arm. Hawk saw the briefest slip of her resolve before her detached face reappeared. He detested himself for forcing this upon her.

  She hit the inject button. Trey stopped his struggle and stared at Laura with a heart-wrenching mixture of confusion and betrayal.

  “I hate you,” he said, his words slurred as the sedative took hold and his head slumped forward. Head down, Laura left the room. Hawk picked up Trey’s small form and carried him to his bunk, where Laura stood holding the black cuffs.

  “You understand, don’t you?” Hawk said as he gently laid Trey into the bunk.

  “Yes,” Laura answered as she attached the cuffs, her voice flat. I understand, even if I don’t accept, the tone said.

  Hawk looked at Gerard. “You can talk to him when we’re in transit.”

  “If he’ll talk to any of us,” Gerard said. He left for the bridge.

  Hawk knew defending himself would waste the time he was trying to save by his reprehensible action, so he let it go. They were mad at him. They understood his reason, even if they didn’t approve of his methods. It was Trey he would have to reconcile with. Time to sleep now and beg for forgiveness later.

  He slipped into his bunk. Laura, without a word, placed the cuffs on his arm and dialed in the dosage for the tranquilizer and restorative.

  When she finished, she walked to her bunk, attached the tubes to the cuffs already around her arm, and entered her dosage. She plopped into the bed. Her brown eyes still hard and face glum, she gave Hawk the thumbs-up.

  “It’s all yours, Gerard.”

  “Engage rip drive, Ship,” Gerard said.

  “Rip drive auto-sequence engaging,” Ship said over the loudspeakers. “Rip transit in fifteen…fourteen… thirteen…”

  Ship continued the countdown. At eight, Hawk heard a series of clicks and whooshes as everyone’s tranquilizer cuff activated. A slight pressure on his arm told him the compressed air had fired trazine into his body.

  “All cuffs activated,” Ship said. “Rip is go in five…four…three…”

  Hawk succumbed to the drug’s effects. The world went black.

  Hawk blinked his eyes, slowly waking from rip sleep. It seemed as if no time had passed. A glance at the clock embedded in the top of his bunk told him he had been out almost two and a half hours. He sat up in the bunk, trying to shake off the wooziness of the jump as he removed the cuffs. Hawk weathered the slip into transdimensional space with relative ease. Coming out was rougher. He already dreaded the headache he would have when they ripped back into “normal” space.

  A smell of fresh-cut grass came to him, right on cue. Everyone had a scent associated with the void of rip space. Gerard’s people had never figured out why and it was different for each person. Hawk’s smell was and always would be fresh-cut grass.

  “Rip transit successful,” Ship said. “We’re in the void between.”

  “Obviously,” Hawk muttered. If things had gone wrong, no one would be alive to hear Ship say it was a failure.

  The others began waking. Laura had stuck to protocol and allowed Hawk to wake first.

  Ashron yanked off his cuffs and bounded from the bunk. “What now?” he said. The jumps never bothered him, coming or going, and Hawk envied his alien physiology.

  “Meeting in twenty minutes, in the con—”

  A retching sound followed by a distinctive splat against the duraluminum deck stopped Hawk. Across the bunkroom, a pale Thomas had his head out of his bunk, mouth pointed down. Hawk caught the acrid stench of bile, and his throat gave a reflexive spasm.


  “First rip?” he asked Thomas.

  Thomas stared up at him with watery eyes and a ragged frown. “Sixth.”

  Hawk shrugged. Some people just couldn’t handle the travel. “Ship, send a cleaning ‘bot.”

  “Aye, Captain, it’s on the way.”

  Trey slogged out of his bunk and tramped across the room, avoiding eye contact with anyone.

  “Trey,” Hawk said as the boy passed near. He stopped and stared straight ahead. “Sometimes a captain has to insist on things that seem unfair. I had our mission to consider. Do you understand?”

  Trey said nothing and continued facing forward.

  “Conference room, twenty minutes,” Hawk told the others.

  They filed out, Laura last, as a trapezoidal robot wheeled in and began cleaning the puddle from the deck. Laura hesitated at the door and caught Hawk’s eye. He shook his head, indicating he would handle the situation. With a frown, she turned and walked out.

  “Do you understand?” he asked Trey again.

  Trey’s lower lip trembled. He gave a defiant shake of his head and started to walk away.

  “Talk to me,” Hawk said in the gentlest voice he could muster.

  Trey stopped. “Is that an order?” he asked as he turned his red-rimmed eyes to look at Hawk.

  Hawk didn’t appreciate the sarcasm, but the sight of the boy’s troubled face and pinched lips told Hawk the dream—or whatever it was—had haunted Trey again despite Gerard’s suggestion, so he let the caustic remark pass. “No, it’s a request. I know you’re mad at me, but I want you to try and understand why I did what I did.”

  “I’ll never understand why adults do what they do,” Trey said in a soft voice. “Can I go?”

  It was a lost cause for now. “Yes,” Hawk said. “I need you to do two things. And these are orders.”

  Trey’s face turned hard. Hawk ignored it. “First, I want you to apologize to Laura. Out of the entire crew, she loves you more than any of us, and what you said to her was unfair and hurt her deeply, even though she would never tell you. I want you to do that first thing, before the meeting.” Laura would be able to explain better what had happened, her good sense overruling any emotions now that the crisis had passed.

  “What else?”

  “Sometime before we rip back to normal space, talk to Gerard. He seems to know why this is happening. Now that we have time to spare, he should be able to help you. You do understand we can’t have a scene like that every time we rip, don’t you?”

  Trey’s face softened. He gave a reluctant nod. “Yes, sir.”

  Hawk hazarded a smile. “Good man. Carry on.”

  Trey turned and walked away, his body a little straighter.

  “Do you think I handled that okay, Ship?” Hawk asked when Trey had gone.

  “I can’t say, Captain. Though something is clearly going on while we are in transition. I think you are right to leave it up to Laura and Gerard.”

  Hawk sighed through pressed lips. “Well, let’s get to business. I’ll need seven copies of everything I asked for yesterday.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  Hawk made the twenty-meter walk to the conference room and took his seat at the head of the elongated oval table dominating the room’s center. Ship had pulled the fortress plans, and the holographic projector hummed as it cast the three-dimensional rotating image a few centimeters above the glass table. Thirty-centimeter-long slots opened on the table in front of each chair. Hawk watched as each slot spit out a sheet of twenty-five-centimeter wide electronic paper, its gleaming front covered with text. Hawk pulled the thin metallic sheet from the slot and laid it on the table. The first two pages appeared to be information on the Tekranese Destruction Force. He tapped the lower right corner of the paper and the text changed to pictures of the Candash fortress from different angles. Another tap brought up more photos and blueprints.

  Ten minutes later Trey walked into the room, his hair pulled back and combed and blue eyes much clearer. A small service bot followed him, carrying several breakfast platters. He stopped beside Hawk, and the bot rolled to a halt a half-meter behind him.

  “Laura explained everything to me,” he said in a contrite voice. “I’m sorry I acted so selfish.”

  “It’s okay,” Hawk assured him. “You were scared, and if time hadn’t been so pressing, I would have handled it differently. I would never deliberately hurt you, but sometimes there are other considerations besides the crew’s feelings.” Hawk breathed a mental sigh of relief that Laura had forgiven him too.

  Trey beamed his charming smile, and everything was suddenly okay again. “Breakfast, Sir?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Did someone say breakfast?” Ashron bounded into the room.

  “Being served now,” Hawk said. “Do you think you could eat your eggs without mustard on them today?”

  Ashron stopped in mid-stride and stared at Hawk as if the human had suggested he jump out the airlock. “Never speak such blasphemy again.”

  Hawk sighed. “Fine. The data sheet’s at your chair. Look over it and start coming up with brilliant ideas.”

  Ashron sat down and pulled his paper from the slot. Trey put the breakfast plates in their appropriate places. One by one, the others sauntered in, pouring glasses of coffee and juice. Thomas, wearing a different shirt that was as drab as the one he had puked on, appeared unsure what to do with himself until Trey pointed out a chair and handed him a plate of food. Once the others were seated and had their meals, Trey grabbed his platter and sat down.

  Hawk remembered the boy’s surprise the first time he had been allowed to sit in on a meeting. “You might have a different perspective,” Hawk had told him. “None of us is perfect. If you see something we’re missing, mention it. Anything you say will be given due consideration.” Though Trey had never made any suggestions in these briefings, he had become comfortable with the process.

  “Okay, this is what we’ve got,” Hawk said, holding up his sheet. “Take a few minutes to study it and then we’ll start figuring out how to handle this one.”

  “Excuse me,” Thomas said in a soft voice, “What are we looking for?”

  The rest of the crew stared at him. After a moment, Hawk said, “Trey, what are we looking for?”

  After a brief hesitation, Trey spoke. “The best avenues of approach and possible ambush points for the rest of the team.”

  “Exactly,” Hawk studied Thomas. “Council agent training sure is getting slack these days.”

  Thomas frowned in misery. “My agent training was somewhat accelerated.”

  Hawk glanced at Gerard, who shrugged. Warnings flared in Hawk’s mind, but he couldn’t do anything about it now. “You and I need to talk later,” he told Thomas.

  Thomas offered a weak nod.

  “Okay,” Hawk said, “let’s see what we can come up with.”

  They all studied the plans. The only sounds for about fifteen minutes were the tapping of fingers, the clink of silverware, and the soft slurping of beverages.

  After glancing at the holograph for the twentieth time and making one final note, Gerard said. “I think I’ve figured out a plan. How does this sound?”

  9

  Consultations

  Hawk sat on the bridge waiting for Thomas and stared out the thick, rectangular front viewport at the flat gray nothing that made up the ripspace void. He knew they were moving. Experience told him that in fifty hours they would take the brief ripsleep nap and awake in normal space almost thirty parsecs from where they entered. The lack of motion outside the craft still unnerved him. There always seemed to be something just beyond the nothing, waiting to reach in, seize the craft, and hold it forever within the monochrome emptiness. Hawk wondered how long it would take him to go insane if such a thing ever happened. “Even after all these years, Ship, I still don’t like ripspace travel.”

  “You don’t like it only when you’re sitting up here looking at it.”

  She had a point.
Hawk smiled and took a sip from his glass of Aldorian Scotch, enjoying the liquor’s woodsy scent and dark flavor. It reminded him of the oak trees that grew on Tahorton’s farm, a place of many pleasant memories.

  A soft voice interrupted Hawk’s musings. “Captain Grey, you wanted to see me?”

  Hawk turned and found Thomas standing at the doorway, looking nervous and small as he rubbed a hand over his short black hair. “Yes, take a seat.” Hawk gestured toward the chair across from him.

  He waited as the man shuffled in and sat, his head down, like a child who knows he is about to be scolded. An urge to reach out and shake the timidity from the man gripped Hawk. He settled for a harsh tone. “I’m curious as to why the Council would send an agent who hasn’t even completed his training on an assignment this dangerous.”

  “Dangerous?” Thomas asked as fear flashed over his round face.

  Dear God, what have I gotten into here? “Exactly how much do you know about this mission?”

  “They told me we were rescuing some kidnap victims and I was to portray a courier as a decoy. They said it was a simple mission, that your team was the best, and I would be in no danger.”

  “Someone lied to you,” Hawk told him, “or has an exaggerated opinion of our abilities. Who tapped you for this mission?”

  “Stearns, Section T. The man who brought me here.”

  “How much field training have you had?”

  “I’m still in the classroom.”

  “You’ve had no field training,” he asked, wanting to confirm he had heard correctly.

  “That’s right,” Thomas said. “My final tests are next month.”

  Hawk’s stomach clenched. He took another drink. An unpleasant conclusion formed in his mind. “Did you apply for this assignment?”

  “No. Mister Stearns walked into class yesterday, pointed at me, and told me to follow him.”

  The glass again came to Hawk’s mouth. He swallowed, wishing for a moment he was a teenager again, back before things turned so ugly. “Thank you, Thomas. You can go back to whatever you were doing.”