The Kassa Gambit

“I had friends here,” she said softly.

“I have friends on Altair,” he answered. Not that it was strictly true. He had comrades, acquaintances, and enemies. But he was loyal to Altair’s millions of citizens in the abstract, in the sense of duty to the innocent, even if he wasn’t personally attached to any of them as individuals. “Imagine Altair like this. Imagine fifty million targets, not fifty thousand.”

“You have a fleet.”

She put a lot more stock in Fleet than he did.

“Altair would be down by one patrol boat if it weren’t for your assistance. Unless you’re volunteering to be admiral, I’m not sure we should rely on Fleet.”

Jorgun laughed. “Admiral Prudence! Does that mean I get to be a captain?”

Kyle wanted to laugh with him. The image of this slight young woman in full regalia shouting at lines of hardened spacers was incongruous. But the facts were more incongruous.

How had Prudence known how to defeat the mines?

She returned his suspicion. “I can’t take the credit. I’m sure you would have figured it out on your own.” Suave, even dismissive. She had saved his life, and he couldn’t even thank her for it, because she thought he was playing a game. That he was pretending to have asked for help, to make a radio record that looked like he hadn’t already known what to expect.

But that was absurd. The League would never broadcast its own incompetence as a cover-up. How could she be so sophisticated but not understand that basic fact? Unless she was playing deep, making cover stories for herself. If she kept accusing him of conspiracy, it meant she wasn’t the conspirator.

He closed his eyes in weariness. Too much double-dealing, too many possibilities and secrets. Over the years it had worn at him, grinding him down, stripping away everything that was not deception or counterdeception. Here, in the presence of aliens and beauty, in the shadow of violence and strength, it was too much.

He envied Jorgun. For the giant, everything was as it seemed. Too stupid to be suspicious, he could trust— and be trusted. No wonder Prudence had picked him. The perfect tool for the perfect operative.

“Are you all right?” She managed to make her voice sound like real concern.

“I’m tired.” In so many ways. “Let’s see if there’s a body.”

The three of them cautiously advanced on the shattered cockpit. Well, the two of them. Jorgun strode up to it eagerly, while Prudence and Kyle followed.

“Don’t touch anything,” he warned the giant again.

Jorgun peered inside, and shook his head. “I don’t think this is a Dog-Man ship.”

Kyle pushed up against Jorgun, trying to gently shove him out of the way. He might as well have pushed on a tree. Instead, he settled for slipping in front, and leaned his helmet forward to stare into the alien vessel.

Again, Jorgun asked the simple and the obvious. “Where does the pilot sit?”

There wasn’t a chair. The cockpit was a welter of unfamiliar dials and levers all along the edges, but there was no central chair.

“Maybe he doesn’t sit.” Prudence reached with her hand, inside.

“Don’t touch anything,” Kyle repeated automatically. Like she was a child. Or a green recruit.

She didn’t bother to retort to his pettiness. “Put your hand in there, Commander.”

Chastised, he did so. Their arms together, hands almost touching.

“What do you not feel?” she asked.

Dumbly, he shook his head. What he wanted to feel was her hand in his, her warmth and smoothness. But through the insulation of the suit, he couldn’t feel anything at all.

“That’s right. No grav field.” She seemed to think that was significant. Maybe to a spacer, it was.

But Kyle saw something that was significant to a cop.

A blue stain, on the cockpit floor. On the glass. More on the control panel resting on the snow.

“Who flies without passive grav-plating? Even in a tactical craft.” Prudence was shaking her head in disbelief.

“Who has blue blood?” Kyle asked her, pointing to the stains.

She stared down at the little patches of color, silenced.

Jorgun had been thinking his own thoughts. Now he leaned over both of them, reached deep into the cockpit, grabbed part of the floor, and pushed.

It spun, floating freely, a wheel within a wheel. An outer track remained stable, and in the contrast, the pattern leaped out at them.

Eight resting places. Eight kickplates. Eight legs.

Kyle glared at the big man, his suspicion flaring out of control. How could simpleness have seen what they had missed?

Prudence explained, her eyes sparking with secondhand pride. “That’s what he does, Commander. He sees patterns. That’s why he’s on my crew. He can plot a multihop course more efficiently than a computer. They used to call it idiot savant. He’s not stupid. He’s just wired different than the rest of us.”

“Like you told me, Pru, we all have our own special talents.” Jorgun smiled.

“Tell me what you see, Jor.”

Kyle could tell from her voice that she already knew the answer. But she was letting him go as far as he could. Pushing him gently.

“Eight.” Jorgun announced, but then fell silent. That was all it meant to him, but Prudence nodded in agreement.

“Eight places to put your feet. Whoever flew this ship had eight feet. The absence of passive grav-plating tells us they don’t suffer from inertial sickness. And that they’re strong—that fusion nozzle must be capable of at least two or three G acceleration. They could stand up through that acceleration, spinning around, looking for visual contact—that’s why there’s so much glass. Which tells us they have impossibly good eyesight, too.”

“Who has eight feet?” Jorgun asked, confused.

“Nobody we know,” she said.

“Fleet needs to see this.” Kyle found himself hoping that authority would know what to do about it.

“The okimune needs to see this.” Prudence used the old word for the collective human realm, the sum total of civilization, wherever and whatever it might be. A normal person would have said “the world,” meaning his own planet; a sophisticated person would have said “Altair,” the biggest society around. But Prudence thought in wider terms. Like an outsider.

For the first time in his life, Kyle felt provincial, a country rube fresh off the farm. The feeling wasn’t pleasant, but the novelty of it was astounding.

“Fleet first,” he said. “We can’t just put this on the evening news. Can you imagine the panic?”

“Maybe people should be panicking.”

He stared at her. “How would that help?”

She waved her hand, in no particular direction, indicating the ruined world around them. “How did this help?”

“Running scared won’t make it better. You know that.” Was this their plan? To plunge every world within a hundred hops into mindless terror? Oppression always followed fear, like rain after the lightning. He’d studied enough history to know that.

“We don’t know that, Commander. We have no idea what we are up against. This wreck could be the blow that frightened them off, made them retreat in such a rush they only stopped to grab the pilot. Or it could be such an inconsequential prick that they haven’t even noticed it’s missing yet. Maybe running scared is the only thing anybody can do. Maybe Altair is already dead.”

“What about Jelly?” Jorgun’s face was creased with worry and concern. The death of civilizations meant nothing to him, only the death of individuals. Kyle was struck by the difference. There were no individuals for him to mourn. Only the ideal of community, not the fact of it.

“I’m sorry, Jor. We haven’t found her yet. I don’t think we will.” She broke the news to him while he had this shiny new toy to distract him, like a mother to a child.

The giant puzzled over her words, his lower lip trembling, but he did not cry. Like a boy trying to be a man. Kyle started to reach out to comfort him. Like a father, he stopped.

Let the boy show his strength. Let him grow into it.