by Sean O'Brien
Lawson exploded, “What? You can’t take her with you! Yallia, for Ship’s sake, think about it! What if—”
Yallia stood up and let go of Sirra’s hands simultaneously. She whirled to face Lawson, her expression alone silencing him. “What if what? We’ll be out on a boat. We’re not going to do any diving or blockade running, Law.”
“But….” Lawson stammered his objection, his arms waving in the air before him, trying to indicate danger where his words could not.
Yallia smiled at him in a way that made Sirra uneasy—she felt jealousy well up in her as her grandonly paid that kind of attention to him. Yallia stepped closer to him. She spoke softly so only he and Sirra could hear, and Sirra got the impression that she herself was not meant to listen. “Law, I understand what you’re trying to say. But I haven’t been tested yet—we don’t know whether I’m pregnant. But even if I am, you don’t think two days’ growth will hinder me? If there’s a baby in there, he or she is about as big as the head of a pin. Your gallantry is noted, Law, but it is also about a thousand years out of date.” Still, she smiled and resisted the urge to touch him on the cheek. She backed away and said in her normal voice to the rest of the Originals, “Sirra and I will go on the research vessel.”
“A good decision, if I may say so, Madam Prime. We hardly need a cover story now—you and your grandclone are going to the Bitter Sea for a day of, shall we say, ‘girl talk.’” Kahlman said, a small smile on his face. He looked at Sirra and winked so quickly the girl was not even sure it had happened.
The meeting broke up. Yallia turned to Sirra and said, “Now go to sleep, little one. I’ll wake you early in the morning before everyone else is up and we’ll go sailing. All right?”
“Thank you, Grandonly. I’m sorry if I messed everything up.”
“No. It’ll be fun,” Yallia said. “Now, off with you,” she turned Sirra around and swatted her playfully on the backside.
Sirra giggled and made as if to leave, but she could feel eyes on her back. She turned her head to see Lawson staring at her, an unreadable expression on his face. For a moment, Sirra got the impression the man was fighting inside himself, as if he wanted to say something but at the same time did not want to say it.
Then the moment passed and she started to go. On her way out, she bumped into Kahlman.
“Excuse me, Mr. Kahlman.”
“Excuse me, little one,” he said, patting her on the head, and he left. Sirra still did not know what to make of him. He seemed sometimes to be nice, but other times he seemed…like a computer. Like he was always working problems in his head.
She shrugged and headed upstairs to her room. She did not know how she was going to sleep.
* * *
Khadre gave the tiny cabin on the skiff another worried look. Was that a bit of grime in the corner? She moved towards the suspicious smudge, her lower lip firmly caught between her front teeth. No, it was a shadow.
“Khad, please,” Viktur said, his tone far past exasperation now. He was working topside, watching Khadre through the opening to the cabin below.
“Just giving the room a once-over,” she said, her eyes darting from corner to corner.
“Tenth-over, you mean.”
“It’s not every day we have the Prime Original here, you know. I just want to make sure everything’s in order for her.”
“You gonna sweep the ocean, too?”
Khadre stuck her tongue at him. Despite appearances, she was thrilled at the prospect of taking Yallia aboard and showing her their discovery firsthand. If all went well, she and Viktur would finally get the recognition necessary to continue their studies. The Family had made little secret of their priorities—marine research ranked near the bottom of a very long list. If she thought about the matter hard enough, she knew she would discover that warfare was increasingly becoming the main focus of the Originals. But Khadre preferred not to think that hard. Instead, she concentrated on the mission ahead. Perhaps, somehow, their discovery could avert a war. She did not know how, but as a scientist, a pure scientist, she believed that knowledge ultimately led to peace.
“There they are,” Viktur said, pointing from his vantage point topside.
Khadre scrambled out of the cabin and nearly tripped on the top stair.
“Easy, killer,” Viktur said, laughing.
“What do you mean, there ‘they’ are? Who’s with her?” Khadre squinted into the predawn gloom and made out two figures—an adult and a child. She gave Viktur a worried look and leaped lightly off the skiff onto the pier.
“Madam Prime?”
Yallia emerged from the fog, her right hand grasping the strap of a knapsack slung over her shoulder, her left holding the hand of the little girl at her side. She nodded gravely to Khadre and said, “Hello, Khadre Seelith. This is my granddaughter Sirra. I would like her to come along.”
There was little doubt that Yallia did not expect a refusal, and Khadre immediately responded with more enthusiasm than was sincere. “Sure! Hello, Sirra. I’m glad you could come. Would you like to see the fishies?” She bent down to the girl and thrust their faces close, as if the girl was hard of hearing or mentally deficient or both.
Sirra blinked at her. Khadre knew how foolish she looked, but she could not start over and reintroduce herself to the girl. To her relief, however, Sirra smiled brightly, and Khadre felt the little girl take an instant liking to her.
“Fish,” Sirra said. “There’s no such word as ‘fishies.’ Or ‘fishes,’ either,” she added.
“Actually, there is such a word, Sirra. ‘Fish’ can mean one fish or many fish of the same kind. ‘Fishes’ means many fish of different kinds.” Khadre said, smiling. She, too, liked the little girl, even if she could not say why.
Sirra said, “Oh!” and looked up at her grandonly with glee.
Khadre caught the glance and took a chance. “You already knew that, didn’t you?”
Sirra laughed openly. “Yes, I did. Can we go on the boat now?”
Khadre looked at Yallia. “Are there any more preparations to make?”
“Not from me. I am ready to leave as soon as you are,” she said, her tone indicating that she expected the moment of departure to be right away.
“Then take my hand, Sirra, and we’ll go aboard,” Khadre said, holding her hand out to the girl. Khadre straddled the skiff and the pier and helped Sirra step aboard, then looked uncertainly at Yallia. “Do you need—should I—” Khadre said, her hand neither at her side nor extended far enough out for Yallia to hold.
“I think I can manage,” Yallia grumbled, then boarded without holding Khadre’s hand. She looked around the skiff with an air of disdain. Sirra had introduced herself to Viktur, who had started giving her a tour of the vessel. “Tell me about your safety precautions,” Yallia barked.
Khadre coughed. “We have a signal beacon that broadcasts our position to a monitoring station on land, and we have some emergency rafts, rations, emergency medical supplies—”
“No life jackets?”
“Life jackets?” Khadre blinked. “Well, no, ma’am.”
“Why not?”
“You can’t really drown in this water, ma’am. The salt content is so high that a person floats quite comfortably without effort. The real danger comes from cold, not drowning. And we have chemical warmers for that.”
“Hmm.” Yallia did not seem satisfied.
Khadre looked at her in exasperation. “I can probably fashion some life jackets if you want, ma’am.”
“Eh? No, I was thinking about something else. Your beacon. What would happen if you turned it off?”
“Well, the station would not know where we were. Unless we radioed in.”
“Surely they would have some idea. You know where you are going to find the creatures, yes? And the station knows it, too, right?”
“I believe so. There is pretty tight security, but I think Del, our station monitor, knows.”
“Then we will turn off the beacon. I
f you need to inform your partner at the monitoring station, do so.”
Khadre swallowed. “Yes, ma’am.” She squeezed past Yallia, who seemed disinclined to move, and climbed up to the conning platform. She activated the skiff’s radio and told Del of the change in plans. He accepted the new data without comment, wished her luck, and switched off.
“Grandonly!” Sirra called from the bow, “Look! I think the sun’s coming up!” The morning had grown gradually brighter, and the green-grey fog had diffused the light of Epsilon Eridani to an emerald glow.
Viktur bent down and whispered something to Sirra, who giggled and shouted again, “Cast off mooring lines, you swabbie!” She looked at Viktur who, laughing, gave her a thumbs-up. “You want to drive the boat?” he asked her. Sirra’s eyes grew into saucers and she nodded vigorously. Viktur and Sirra started towards the conning platform.
Khadre happened to be looking at Yallia after Viktur’s exchange with Sirra, and saw the Original attempt, unsuccessfully, to suppress a smile. Khadre felt warmth course through her, and it was only then that she realized how tense she had been with Sirra on board. The old woman was powerful and knew it well. Until the moment she smiled at her grandonly’s antics with Viktur, Khadre had wondered if the formidable woman had a softer side. Now she knew, and the knowledge simply added another level of awe to Khadre’s attitude.
Khadre climbed down from the conning platform and untied the ropes from the starboard cleats, throwing the rope onto the pier. Khadre saw out of the corner of her eye Yallia watching her and thought she saw grudging admiration in her expression. When Khadre finished untying the ropes, she pushed off from the pier with her foot and called out to Viktur, “We’re clear!”
Viktur engaged the screws and the boat started forward. Sirra held on to the helm, eyes fixed ahead, while Viktur stood behind her, judiciously holding onto the wheel under Sirra’s right hand.
“Look, Grandonly! I’m driving!” Sirra shouted.
“You sure are,” Yallia shouted back. She turned to Khadre. “How long until we reach your creatures?”
“About two hours.”
Yallia nodded and continued to watch Sirra at the helm. Khadre followed her gaze. The girl seemed oddly comfortable there, even though she had probably never been on a boat in her short life. As the women watched, Viktur said something to Sirra, and she released the wheel. Viktur threw a few switches and took Sirra’s hand to lead her down from the conning platform.
“We’re on auto now,” he explained. “I thought Captain Sirra would like to see the drone.”
“Can I, Grandonly?”
“Of course, dear. But don’t touch.”
“I won’t.” Viktur led Sirra aft to look at the cyborg submersible.
Khadre and Yallia stood perhaps two meters apart and watched. Khadre had dozens of questions to ask the Prime Original but could not begin to frame them properly. Mostly, she wanted to know why the Originals had taken such an interest in the creatures. She was not naïve—pure science for its own sake was rarely held in high esteem by politicians, even ones as enlightened as the Originals. Why, then, the sudden interest, to the point of sending the highest-ranking member of the Family to personally oversee the study?
Khadre could not ask the questions. It was not for her to receive explanations from her elders. She simply did as she was told and hoped for encouragement and praise.
The next two hours were uneventful. To Viktur’s obvious surprise, Sirra did not tire of the novelty of being on board the skiff—she still thrilled at the buck and spray of the sea. She spent most of time near the bowsprit, bracing her teeth into the wind and laughing as the ship heaved gently, its internal gyros absorbing much, but not all, of the roll of the sea.
“Coming up on target area,” Khadre called out form the conning platform. “I’m going to slow us down to one-third.” The hum of the motor changed pitch and the craft gradually decelerated.
“Khad, put her back on auto and come down to help me with Nimmo.”
“I want to get closer manually. Less work for Nimmo.”
“I’ll help you, Viktur,” Sirra said, advancing toward the cyborg.
“No, skipper, this is for me and Khadre to do. You have to watch out for monsters, remember?”
Sirra smiled at Yallia and turned back to the bowsprit and looked out at the sky. Yallia looked fondly at her back. The girl was too old to believe in monsters, but she was willing to humor the young man.
Khadre eventually came down from the conning platform and helped secure Nimmo to the hoist. She activated the winch and lowered the drone into the water.
“Now we go into the control cabin to monitor and guide the drone,” Khadre said to Yallia, who nodded gravely and turned to Sirra.
“We’re going to go into the cabin now, Sirra. Come on.”
“Okay,” she said, but something in the sky caught her attention. “Hey, Vik, a bird!”
Yallia began, “Sirra, come on. We’ve no—”
“Wait a moment, Madame Prime,” Viktur interrupted. “What do you see, Sirra?” He scrambled past a startled Yallia and came up next to Sirra. She pointed to the sky where a black speck hovered near the horizon.
“What is it? Why such excitement over a bird?” Yallia said, annoyed, despite her own protestations against her pseudo-noble status, that Viktur would so causally interrupt her.
“We’re over one hundred and fifty kilometers from land. Much too far away for solo birds. We’ve never encountered any this far out,” Khadre said.
Yallia wondered at the worry in her voice, but before she could comment on it Viktur shouted from the bow, “Khad! Can you get the binocs and take a look at this?”
Khadre bounded to the conning platform and opened a compartment, withdrew a pair of binoculars, and focused them on the speck.
“It’s not a bird,” Khadre said, unable to convey any emotion save surprise. “It’s a flyer. Coming at us.”
“A flyer?” Yallia said, shocked. She came to the bottom step of the conning platform and reached for the binoculars. Khadre handed them over without a word.
Viktur said to Sirra, “Okay, I’m going to show you something fun now. It’s down in the cabin, though. Come with me?” He said, trying to keep his voice calm but firm.
His very playfulness and rapport with the girl now worked against him as Sirra reacted to the almost undetectable hint of anxiety in his voice. She broke from him and ran to Yallia.
“Grandonly, what is it?”
Yallia lowered the binocs and held Sirra with her free hand.
Viktur took the binoculars from her and watched the flyer. “If it keeps coming at this speed, it’ll be over us in about a minute.” He lowered the binoculars and added, “We’d better hail them, see what they want.”
“Mister Ljarbazz,” Yallia said softly but with iron in her voice, “that is a Dome flyer.”
Viktur started at her. “Of course, Madame Prime.”
“It is almost certainly a drone, like your submersible. There’s no one on board.”
“But surely if we hail them, whoever is controlling it will hear.”
“Hear us? Certainly. But that won’t stop them. You don’t have anything we can use on them, do you?” she asked calmly.
It took Viktur a moment to understand what she meant—she had refrained from speaking directly because of Sirra. But as realization dawned on him he shook his head.
“Do you want me to hail them or not?” Khadre said from the conning platform, her eyes glued to the approaching flyer. There was no need of binoculars now—the outline of the machine was clearly visible to the naked eye.
Yallia hesitated. She was loath to give away their position, but the flyer was obviously approaching them. Whatever secrecy the mission had started under had been lost. She looked up at Khadre and said, “Go ahead.”
Khadre immediately switched on the communicator and spoke into it. “To unidentified flyer: this is the research vessel Beagle. What can we do for you?” T
he flyer had slowed, its twin engines changing configuration to turn it into a sort of helicopter. When it was completely transformed, it hovered perhaps one hundred meters above the skiff.
Yallia let go of Sirra suddenly and strode up to the conning tower while Khadre still waited for a response. Viktur held Sirra, who let out a fearful whimper.
Yallia snatched the transmitter out of Khadre’s hands and snapped, “Dome flyer! You are interfering with peaceful Family scientific research! You will withdraw immediately!” Khadre could barely hear her, despite her shouting, above the roar of the flyer’s engines.
Khadre looked at Yallia, startled. What was she doing? She sounded as if she wanted a confrontation with this thing.
There was still no answer from the flyer. Khadre shouted to Yallia, “What do they want? Do you think they’ll try to board us?”
“There’s no one in it,” Yallia shouted back. “It’s a drone.”
“But what—” Khadre’s eyes widened suddenly. “Get down!” she screamed, pushing Yallia off the conning platform as the two slugthrower emplacements on the flyer shed their camouflage and spat projectiles at the Beagle.
Viktur and Sirra crumpled to the ground as soon as the shooting started. Yallia and Khadre crawled down the steps of the conning platform, scraping skin off their elbows and forearms as they went, making their way to Viktur and Sirra.
The flyer rotated to cover them and continued to pump high-velocity bullets into the skiff. Most of the slugs tore through the flimsy materials of which the skiff was constructed—only a few bounced off the tougher metallic elements of the craft.
“Over the side!” Khadre said. She started to push Yallia over the railing, but could not accomplish this without getting to her knees and lifting the older woman. She knew that by getting up, she would lose whatever soft cover she had behind the conning platform, but she needed to save the Prime Original. Yallia entered the water gracelessly but at least now had the bulk of the skiff between her and the flyer.
The deafening roar of the autocannons ceased, and Khadre wasted a split second in looking at the flyer in renewed horror. A new weapon sloughed off its camouflage and began to track the skiff. Khadre did not know weaponry, but this belly-mounted cylinder looked distinctly more powerful than the slugthrowers. With a sudden flash of understanding she knew the flyer’s cybernetic brain (or human pilot back in the Dome) had decided the time for antipersonnel weapons was over. Khadre saw the flame shoot out of the flyer’s belly turret and strike the skiff mid-ship. The heat of the blast almost knocked her out and the air displacement sent her skidding against the portside railing. The skiff was ablaze and would soon founder. She crawled towards where Viktur had sheltered Sirra with his body and grabbed her partner by the shoulder. He fell away from Sirra, his face reduced to a pinkish mass of bone pulp. He must have been hit by one of the first bursts from the flyer’s autocannons as he had dived to save Sirra. Khadre forced herself to look away from Viktur and saw Sirra huddled under the lower stair of the conning platform. She was still alive—her eyes met Khadre’s in terror.