Duty, Honor, Planet

creations you use as warriors? How is it that Antonov is still alive, and still young? Or is that just some kind of trick to frighten us? Some kind of computer simulation?”

“I must not tell you these things,” Podbyrin insisted. “I cannot betray my people.”

“You don’t have much of a choice, Podbyrin.” Jason leaned into his face with sudden intensity. “Whatever happens on Earth, your life as you know it is over. If your buddies win, you’ll die along with the rest of us, because none of us will be surrendering to the man who nearly destroyed the Earth. We’ll fight to the last ship and you’ll die with us. If we win, and you survive, and if you haven’t cooperated with us, you’ll be tried as a war criminal and probably executed. Your only chance is to do the best you can to help us and hope to God we win, because that’s your only chance of coming out of this alive.”

The Russian blanched, sweat pouring from his shiny forehead as he sank back into his chair.

“No, I will not,” he said.

“McKay,” Captain Patel’s voice came over the room’s intercom, “that’s enough. I’m sending in the medics.”

“Aye, sir,” Jason sighed, settling back in disappointment.

“What?” Podbyrin stood in sudden panic. “What is this thing you will do to me?”

Before Jason could answer, the door slid open and a pair of beefy Security personnel stepped quickly inside, each taking one of Podbyrin’s arms and forcing him back into the chair, holding his wrists down to the armrests. Behind them, the ship’s medic entered, one hand filled with a hypogun, the other with a medical sensor.

“No, you said I would be well-treated!” The Russian struggled vainly against the guards as the white-coated technician brought the injection device to his shoulder.

“Take it easy,” the medic assured him with a much-practiced smile. “Nothing fatal.” He touched the trigger and the hypogun shot a jet of chemicals from the loaded capsule into the Colonel’s arm. “Just a little something to loosen you up.”

Podbyrin had clenched up as the shot went into his arm, but immediately relaxed as the drug took effect, slumping back against the seat, his eyes slightly out of focus.

“I can… not tell any…” Podbyrin mumbled, his English breaking as his thoughts became more and more disjointed.

“What’s your name?” the medic asked quietly.

“Dmitry Grigor’yevich Podbyrin,” the Russian answered, his words beginning to slur.

“He’s ready.” The man nodded to Jason, stepping back.

McKay leaned forward, then hesitated and looked up to where he thought the video pickup was.

“Do I have access to a translator program,” he asked Patel, “in case he gets so messed up he can’t understand me?”

“It’s being taken care of,” the Captain’s voice told him.

“Dmitry Grigor’yevich,” Jason spoke to the Russian and the man looked at him as if he’d just materialized before his eyes.

“Da… yes?” Podbyrin replied uncertainly.

“Antonov—where did he go when he went through the gateway in the asteroid belt? Where did the gateway lead?”

“We do not know the system,” he said, shaking his head. “It is somewhere behind a gas cloud—maybe the Coal Sack, our astronomers say.”

“What was the system like?” Jason asked. “Did it have planets? Habitable planets?”

“Da. One habitable world.” The Russian’s eyes crossed and he seemed to be seeing something else. “Barely habitable. There had been a war there, a thousand years ago… maybe ten thousand. We did not know. Much of the world was desert, much wasted, radioactive cities. I remember how ugly it seemed when I first saw it, like Siberia in midwinter.”

The hackles stood on the back of Jason’s neck as the man spoke.

“Colonel Podbyrin,” he asked, “how old are you?”

“It is so hard to tell—the years are different on Novaya Rodina.” His eyes seemed to clear for a moment as he calculated, swaying in his seat. “One hundred and seventy-nine Earth years.”

“Jesus,” the medic muttered.

McKay knew what the man was thinking. The human lifespan had been expanded over the last fifty years through the advancement of nanotechnology, genetic surgery and antiagathic prenatal treatments until the average life expectancy—for Earth natives, at least—was conservatively projected at well over two hundred years. But there was no way Podbyrin could have had access to those treatments, and yet the man didn’t look very much past his mid-forties.

“How have you lived this long, Colonel?” Jason asked. “Why do you seem so young?”

“On the planet,” the Russian told him mechanically, “we found one thing almost intact. A laboratory perhaps, or a hospital. Inside was a device. Not only a computer, not just a machine. Something more. It… makes things. Anything. We cannot communicate with it much. The languages are too different—different frames of reference, I am told. But if we show it something, it can make more.”

“Things like rifles?” Jason asked.

“Da.”

“And what else?”

“Organs—human organs.” A look of distaste spread across his face. “The General used three of our men—had them dissected, their organs put one at a time into the vats. The thing made more, as many as we wanted. Our scientists were able to get the machine to make the tools they needed to assemble the parts with other things and make the troopers. But first, the General had them transplant things into him and the most important of us—the ones who had to last to take back the Rodina… the Motherland.” Jason’s mouth went dry as he listened, as everything started to make sense.

“But it could only duplicate things you already had,” Jason assumed. “So you were stuck with the technology you brought with you.”

“Da,” Podbyrin agreed. “And some things we could steal from your ships, plus a few, like the walking tanks, that we put together ourselves. I argued with the General… I and others. If we could understand the device better, we could have much deadlier weapons. No one could stop us. No one would even try. But he could not wait. He came up with the plan to use what we had to take back our world, and that was that. He let me stay to wait on an experiment, to use the machine to manufacture a virus.” Jason’s blood froze, but the man slowly shook his head. “It didn’t work. Too long-lasting. I was coming to tell him, give him update on a ship we are attempting to repair, when you captured me.”

“Ask him about the gate,” Patel’s instructed, his voice sounding as grim as Jason had ever heard it.

“Colonel Podbyrin,” Jason said, clearing his throat, “the gate—the gate in the belt. How do you use it? What is it, exactly? And where is it?”

“I do not know where it is.” Podbryin shook his head. “None of us can know; only a handful, and the General.” He shuddered, remembering something. “There was a map, on Novaya Rodina, carved into the wall of the laboratory—the scientists said it held the locations of dozens of gates to this system and many others, some close, some hundreds of light-years away. The General had one of our scientists copy it, then destroyed the original. He had his men kill all but one who had seen it and fed them to the Machine.” His eyes, suddenly filled with clarity, locked on Jason’s. “No one can know! No one!” He sighed, sank back into his half- stupor.

“My ship was programmed before I left, and the program was designed to self-destruct after I passed through. The way we pass through—I do not know exactly. It involves a thermonuclear explosion—we must bring a device with us. I know it was discovered by the expedition to the asteroids when they were attempting to use fusion bombs to bring a planetoid to Earth orbit to be mined. Somehow, the explosion opens the gate—the scientists called it a wormhole, I think, but they say it is…” He hesitated. “…nonclassical, I think, but I do not know what they mean.”

“I do,” Patel’s voice announced. “That’s enough for now. Security, get him to a cell. McKay, I’ll meet you in the shuttle bay in two hours.”

Jason nodded, but didn’t get up immediately. His brain churned with speculation. If what Podbyrin was saying was true, then at least they didn’t have to worry about some mysterious alien force behind the Russians. But it also