Songs of Love and Death

DALEA WAS WAITING for us. I wasn’t sure if Dalea had a medical license, but whatever her training was, she was very good. There had to be a story about why she’d signed aboard a ship, because she was Hajin, and the herbivores weren’t common in space, but I hadn’t managed to worm it out of her yet.

Her coat was white with streaks of red-brown, and a thick shock of chestnut hair curled across her skull and ran down her long neck and even longer spine to disappear beneath the waistband of her slacks. Somewhere along the evolutionary chain, a creature like a cross between a zebra and a giraffe had stood upright, the front legs had shortened to become arms, and the split hoof that passed for feet developed a third digit that served as a thumb.

I laid Mercedes on the bed, and Dalea began her examination. I was jiggling, shifting my weight from foot to foot, waiting. Finally, I couldn’t contain my anxiety any longer.

“Is she hurt?”

“Bumps, bruises.” Dalea filled a hypodermic. “She took a pretty good dose of radiation, probably when the flagship blew. This will help.”

She gave Mercedes the injection. A few moments later there was a reaction. Mercedes stirred and moaned. I laid a hand on her forehead.

“She’s in pain. What was in that shot?” I asked, suddenly suspicious of my alien shipmate.

“Nanobots that will repair her damaged DNA. That’s not why she’s moaning. She’s coming out of a rapidly induced coma, and she’s got that feeling of pins-and-needles in her extremities.”

Dalea exchanged a glance with Jahan, who shrugged and said, “He’s in love with her. What else can you expect?”

“Would you stop saying that,” I said, exasperated.

“So stay with her,” said Dalea. “I’m assuming that if you love her, you must know her, and she should wake up to a familiar face.”

The two alien females left the sick bay. I broke the magnetic seal on a chair, pulled it over to the bedside, and sat down. I took Mercedes’s limp hand where it hung over the side of the bed, and softly stroked it. It was her left hand, and the elaborate wedding set seemed to cut at my fingers.

She should wake up to a familiar face. What would that have been like? To sleep next to this woman? To have her scent in my nostrils? To have her long hair catch in my lips? Once, twenty-two years ago, I had experienced only the last of those fantasies. We had violated lights out at the Academy and met on the Star Deck. We had kissed, and her hair, floating in free fall, had caressed my face.

I was lost in a daydream, tending toward an actual dream, when Mercedes sighed and her fingers tightened on mine. My eyes jerked open, and I shot up out of the chair. She looked up at me, smiled, and murmured,

“Tracy. I dreamed I heard your voice. But you can’t actually be here.”

“But I am, your highness.”

She frowned, and reached up. I leaned forward so she could touch my face. She looked around the tiny space, and she accepted the truth. “Once more you rescue me,” she murmured.

WALKING ONTO THE bridge, I was met with three conversations all taking place simultaneously.

“Why are we still here? No trade, no money,” from Jax.

“Are you going down?” from Baca.

“I think I know what killed the Imperials,” from Melin.

I answered them in order of complexity. “Because I say so. Yes. What?”

Melin picked the question out of my surly and laconic reply. “Kusatsu-Shirane only has three moons now.”

I sat down at my post. “They blew up two of their moons?”

“Yep. Apparently, the Imperials closed with the planet in their normal arrowhead formation. Given the regularity of the moons’ orbits, the folks on Kusatsu-Shirane picked the two moons closest to the ships to destroy. The resulting debris went through the ships like shotgun pellets through cheese. Boom!” Melin accompanied the word with an expressive gesture.

“That would imply that the other three are booby trapped too.”

“Most likely.”

“Madre de Dios! I landed us on one of the remaining moons.” I wiped away the sweat that had suddenly bloomed on my upper lip.

“I think it took a person with a finger on the trigger to set off the explosions,” Melin offered. It was comfort, but not much.

“New plan. Let’s stay away from the remaining moons,” I said to our navigator.

“Good plan,” she said, and turned back to her console.

Baca spoke up. “Then why the dirge from the planet? They won a mighty victory.”

“But short term,” Jahan said. I jumped. Damn it, she’d done it again. Her fur tickled my left ear.

I nodded. “What Jahan said. The battle group’s course was filed with Central Command on Hissilek. When they neither call home nor come home, the League will come looking for them. Kusatsu-Shirane is going to be discovered.”

“Tracy’s right.”

Mercedes’s voice had always had this little catch in it. Very endearing and very sexy. I stood and turned around. She was on the platform lift, and she looked shaky. I hurried to her side, and assisted her into the chair Baca hastily vacated. He was staring like a pole-axed bull. I couldn’t blame him. How often did an ordinary space tramp meet the heir to an empire?

“Uh… hello, ma’am, Luis Baca, communications. I’ll get a message off to Hissilek.”

“Where are you bound for next?” she asked me.

“Cuandru.”

“A message won’t reach League space faster than this ship. There will be military ships at Cuandru.” She was right about that; Cuandru was the largest shipyard in the League. Mercedes smiled at me, but I noticed that the expression never reached her eyes. They were dark and haunted. “You’re the captain.”

“I am,” I said.

“Congratulations. You finally made it.”

“On a trading vessel.” I hoped that the resentment didn’t show too badly.

“Believe me, it’s better than being an admiral,” Mercedes said softly.

“I’ll have to take your word for it.”

“So why are you still in orbit?” she asked.

“We have no communication from the planet,” Jax trilled. “We are uncertain if there is anyone to trade with.”

“Tracy was on his way to the planet when he picked up your distress signal,” Melin said.

“Did they evacuate?” Mercedes asked.

“It’s possible, but not likely. There were close to a million people on Kusatsu-Shirane,” I said.

Mercedes stood. “Then let us go and find out what has become of them.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“I’m not asking. You’re still my subject.”

The final words came floating back over her shoulder. I followed her onto the lift.

THE WIND WHISPERED down the deserted streets of Edogowa. There were no vehicles parked on the streets. It was all very tidy and orderly. It was near sunset, and to the west magnificent thunderheads formed a vibrant palette of blues, grays, reds, and golds. Two long but very narrow bands of rain extended from the clouds to the chaparral below. The bands looked like sweeping tendrils of gray hair, and where the rain hit the ground, the dust on this high desert plateau boiled into the air like milk froth.

“Where is everybody?” Baca asked. His eyes darted nervously from side to side.

Jahan came scrambling down the wall of a four-story office building. “Nobody’s there. Lights are off. Computers shut down. It’s like everybody’s taken a holiday.”

Mercedes shivered. I started to put my arm around her shoulders, but thought better of it and drew back. “Let’s go to a house,” she said.