movement. I admired her sentiment but she wasn’t being too accurate, anatomically speaking, so I raised my middle finger and jiggled it back and forth.
It took a slap on the back of the head from Jeru, the commissary, to put a stop to that. “Little morons,” she growled.
“Sorry, sir-”
I got another slap for the apology. Jeru was a tall, stocky woman, dressed in the bland monastic robes said to date from the time of the founding of the Commission for Historical Truth a thousand years ago.
But rumor was she’d seen plenty of combat action of her own before joining the Commission, and such was her physical strength and speed of reflex I could well believe it.
As we neared the cordon the Academician, Pael, started a gloomy countdown. The slow geometry of Ghost cruiser and tinsel-wrapped fortress star swiveled across the crowded sky.
Everybody went quiet.
The darkest time is always just before the action starts. Even if you can see or hear what is going on, all you do is think. What was going to happen to us when we crossed that intangible border? Would a fleet of Ghost ships materialize all around us? Would some mysterious weapon simply blast us out of the sky?
I caught the eye of First Officer Till. He was a veteran of twenty years; his scalp had been burned away in some ancient close-run combat, long before I was born, and he wore a crown of scar tissue with pride.
“Let’s do it, tar,” he growled.
All the fear went away. I was overwhelmed by a feeling of togetherness, of us all being in this crap together. I had no thought of dying. Just: let’s get through this.
“Yes,sir! ”
Pael finished his countdown.
All the lights went out. Detonating stars wheeled.
And the ship exploded.
I was thrown into darkness. Air howled. Emergency bulkheads scythed past me, and I could hear people scream.
I slammed into the curving hull, nose pressed against the stars.
I bounced off and drifted. The inertial suspension was out, then. I thought I could smell blood-probably my own.
I could see the Ghost ship, a tangle of rope and silver baubles, tingling with highlights from the fortress star. We were still closing.
But I could also see shards of shattered lifedome, a sputtering drive unit. The shards were bits of theBrightly. It had gone, all gone, in a fraction of a second.
“Let’s do it,” I murmured.
Maybe I was out of it for a while.
Somebody grabbed my ankle and tugged me down. There was a competent slap on my cheek, enough to make me focus.
“Case. Can you hear me?”
It was First Officer Till. Even in the swimming starlight that burned-off scalp was unmistakable.
I glanced around. There were four of us here: Till, Commissary Jeru, Academician Pael, me. We were huddled up against what looked like the stump of the First Officer’s console. I realized that the gale of venting air had stopped. I was back inside a hull with integrity, then- “Case!”
“I-yes, sir.”
“Report.”
I touched my lip; my hand came away bloody. At a time like that it’s your duty to report your injuries, honestly and fully. Nobody needs a hero who turns out not to be able to function. “I think I’m all right. I may have a concussion.”
“Good enough. Strap down.” Till handed me a length of rope.
I saw that the others had tied themselves to struts. I did the same.
Till, with practiced ease, swam away into the air, I guessed looking for other survivors.
Academician Pael was trying to curl into a ball. He couldn’t even speak. The tears just rolled out of his eyes. I stared at the way big globules welled up and drifted away into the air, glimmering.
The action had been over in seconds. All a bit sudden for an earthworm, I guess.
Nearby, I saw, trapped under one of the emergency bulkheads, there was a pair of legs-just that. The rest of the body must have been chopped away, gone drifting off with the rest of the debris fromBrightly.
But I recognized those legs, from a garish pink stripe on the sole of the right boot. That had been Halle.
She was the only girl I had ever screwed, I thought-and more than likely, given the situation, the only girl I ever would get to screw.
I couldn’t figure out how I felt about that.
Jeru was watching me. “Tar-do you think we should all be frightened for ourselves, like the Academician?” Her accent was strong, unidentifiable.
“No, sir.”
“No.” Jeru studied Pael with contempt. “We are in a yacht, Academician. Something has happened to theBrightly. The ’dome was designed to break up into yachts like this.” She sniffed. “We have air, and it isn’t foul yet.” She winked at me. “Maybe we can do a little damage to the Ghosts before we die, tar.
What do you think?”
I grinned. “Yes, sir.”
Pael lifted his head and stared at me with salt water eyes. “Lethe. You people are monsters.” His accent was gentle, a lilt. “Even such a child as this. You embrace death-”
Jeru grabbed Pael’s jaw in a massive hand, and pinched the joint until he squealed. “Captain Teid grabbed you, Academician; she threw you here, into the yacht, before the bulkhead came down. I saw it.
If she hadn’t taken the time to do that, she would have made it herself. Wasshe a monster? Didshe embrace death?” And she pushed Pael’s face away.
For some reason I hadn’t thought about the rest of the crew until that moment. I guess I have a limited imagination. Now, I felt adrift. The captain-dead?
I said, “Excuse me, Commissary. How many other yachts got out?”
“None,” she said steadily, making sure I had no illusions. “Just this one. They died doing their duty, tar.
Like the captain.”
Of course she was right, and I felt a little better. Whatever his character, Pael was too valuable not to save. As for me, I had survived through sheer blind chance, through being in the right place when the walls came down: if the captain had been close, her duty would have been to pull me out of the way and take my place. It isn’t a question of human values but of economics: alot more is invested in the training and experience of a Captain Teid- or a Pael-than inme.
But Pael seemed more confused than I was.
First Officer Till came bustling back with a heap of equipment. “Put these on.” He handed out pressure suits. They were what we called slime suits in training: lightweight skin suits, running off a backpack of gen-enged algae. “Move it,” said Till. “Impact with the Ghost cruiser in four minutes. We don’t have any power; there’s nothing we can do but ride it out.”
I crammed my legs into my suit.
Jeru complied, stripping off her robe to reveal a hard, scarred body. But she was frowning. “Why not heavier armor?”
For answer, Till picked out a gravity-wave handgun from the gear he had retrieved. Without pausing he held it to Pael’s head and pushed the fire button.
Pael twitched.
Till said, “See? Nothing is working. Nothing but bio systems, it seems.” He threw the gun aside.
Pael closed his eyes, breathing hard.
Till said to me, “Test your comms.”
I closed up my hood and faceplate and began intoning, “One, two, three…” I could hear nothing.
Till began tapping at our backpacks, resetting the systems. His hood started to glow with transient, pale blue
