The Right of the Line

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Yes,” Alice said, biting down the impulse to deny everything. “It’s me.”

  Her father looked around the compartment as the hatch hissed closed. “What is this place?”

  Alice allowed herself a cold smile. “It is a privacy tube, father,” she said, with a sweetness she didn’t feel. “Crewmen come here when they want to be intimate. It is also a good place to talk.”

  She watched her father closely, trying to gauge his feelings. A flurry of emotions crossed his face, too quickly for her to identify any of them. She’d done her best to choose a place that would make him feel uncomfortable, although - she acknowledged privately - her father had been a starfighter pilot. He’d served on starships too. But then, he’d also been faithful to his wife until he’d caught her having an affair. Alice supposed it was possible that he’d never seen a privacy tube before.

  And he wouldn’t expect me to reserve one for our chat, she thought. What daughter would want to bring her father here?

  “I wanted to talk to you,” her father said, finally. His voice was softer than she remembered, with a trace of a Belter accent. “I tried to contact you ...”

  “Yes, you did.” Alice crossed her arms. “I think I made it clear that I didn’t want any further contact with you.”

  “I’m your father,” her father said. “My flesh and blood ...”

  “My father killed my mother,” Alice snapped. The urge to just lash out was almost overpowering. She’d learnt to control herself, but her control was starting to fray. It would feel so good to ram her fist into her father’s throat. “I was an orphan from the day they took you away.”

  “I know,” her father said. He sat down on the bed. “There is nothing I can do to make up for my crime. I was just so angry.”

  Alice leaned against the bulkhead. “I inherited your temper,” she said. She’d been a holy terror at boarding school. She admitted that, in the privacy of her own mind. She’d come very close to being expelled, more times than she cared to admit. “But a bad temper doesn’t excuse murder.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” her father said. He seemed unsure what to say. “I wanted to talk to you just once, before the end.”

  “You’re going to die?” Alice lifted her eyebrows. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that, not now. Once, she would have been relieved to hear that her father had passed away. “You know it?”

  “This war is going to be bad,” her father pointed out. “That’s why I volunteered for military service, you see. Vanderveken ... was designed to serve as a fast transport, if necessary. I crammed her hull with missiles and set out to serve the combined fleet.”

  “How ... patriotic ... of you,” Alice said. “You don’t know you’re going to die.”

  Her father tapped his chest. “I was frozen for years, as you know. There wasn’t any time to make the proper preparations, either. When I was unfrozen ... well, the long-term effects have been ... unpleasant. I’ll spare you the gory details, but suffice it to say that I am probably reaching the end of my life. The doctors think I won’t last another two years.”

  Alice scowled. “You should have been hanged.”

  “I know,” her father said. “I was just so ... angry.”

  “Angry,” Alice repeated. “You were angry.”

  She glared at him. “You could have demanded a separation, on the spot. No one would have taken her side, not when it became clear that she was cheating on a serviceman who was on active duty. Everyone would have shunned her. You would have been granted custody, even if she fought for us. God damn it, you wouldn’t have had to pay her a penny! She would have had to rebuild her life, while you and we went on ...”

  A wave of bitter anger cascaded through her mind. “Instead, you killed her. I - we - lost our father and mother at the same time. We had to go to Grandma and Granddad, who loved us both dearly but couldn’t cope with two disturbed girls. I went to boarding school and ... and ... they taught me control. They taught me ...”

  But that wasn’t entirely true, she knew. The schoolmistresses had had no qualms about punishing her for fighting, but it hadn’t been the threat of everything from detentions and corporal punishment to outright expulsion that had deterred her. It had been the fear of ending up like her father, of destroying her entire life in a single act of madness. She’d felt her temper, she’d felt the mad urge to lash out with all her strength. And she knew, all too well, that if she didn’t learn to control it, one day it would overwhelm her and her life would come crashing down in ruins.

  “I know what I did,” her father said. “And I’m sorry.”

  Alice clenched her fists. “How many times do you have to say sorry to bring her back to life?”

  Her father flinched, as if she’d struck him. “I can’t bring her back ...”

  “No,” Alice said. “And yet you expect me to forgive you?”

  “I haven’t forgiven myself,” her father said. “I don’t expect you or Jeanette to forgive me either.”

  “The Belters seem to have forgiven you,” Alice snarled. She’d never liked the Belters. She wondered, sourly, if she disliked the Belters because they’d given her father a home. “You have wives and husbands amongst the asteroids, do you not?”

  “Yes,” her father said. “But they haven’t all accepted me.”

  “My heart bleeds,” Alice said, sarcastically. “A man who murdered his wife, trying to live amongst a group of people who regard family as supremely important. I cannot imagine why they might refuse to accept you.”

  Her father met her eyes. “Would you like me to kill myself?”

  Alice blinked. “What?”

  “To kill myself?” Her father’s voice was flat, as if he was too numb to feel anything. It struck her, suddenly, that she’d inherited more from her father than just a nasty temper. “To deliberately end my life?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Alice snarled.

  “I can’t undo what I did,” her father said. “All I can do is try to make up for it.”

  Alice clenched her fists until her nails were digging into her palms. “Do you think there is anything you can do to make up for it?”

  She cursed herself for agreeing to meet him, she cursed him for being a monster ... who wasn’t, in the end, very monstrous. She knew there were worse people out there. She’d taken a professional delight in ending the lives of men who ran rape camps, who exploited refugees or used women as nothing more than breeding stock to produce more fighters ... she knew there were even a handful of abusers who were very close to home. There had been one girl at boarding school ... if the rumours had been accurate, the girl’s father had been a true monster. She shuddered at the thought. Why couldn’t her father have been a real monster? It would have been so easy to hate him.

  And no one would have blamed me if I’d killed him, she thought, numbly. No one at all.

  “I have to try,” her father said. “And if that means facing you, and your temper, then that is what I have to do.”

  “Yes,” Alice said. “But I want nothing from you.”

  She forced herself to relax. It was hard, so hard, to keep her temper under control. A single punch ... she could take him out of her life completely. Or she could snap his neck. Or draw her sidearm and put a bullet into his skull. She wanted to do it. Yes, she wanted to do it. He deserved to die. But it would destroy whatever remained of her career. She’d lose everything in a single moment of madness. She’d ...

  She’d be just like her father.

  “There isn’t anything you can offer me,” she said. “There isn’t anything you can give me that would please me. Even your death wouldn’t make me feel any better about ...”

  She shook her head. She’d brought some of her troubles on herself. She could admit that, at least in the privacy of her own mind. And others had happened because no one had known what the virus could do until it was too late. But many of her problems had stemmed from her mother’s death, and there was nothing he could do to change that. No on
e could change the past. All they could do was try to move on.

  “I understand,” her father said. “I wanted to see you, one last time, before ...”

  “You’re not going to die,” Alice said, firmly. “And I’m sure Jeanette would be a great deal more sympathetic.”

  “We did exchange a few messages,” her father said. “And she ... she isn’t happy, but ...”

  “Her father murdered her mother,” Alice mocked. “Why in the name of God Almighty would she be unhappy?”

  Her father flinched, again. “Alice ...”

  Alice cut him off, ruthlessly. “You know, when I was at boarding school I slapped a girl. She’d mouthed off to me ... I’ve forgotten what she said, now. Something bad enough to anger me to the point I slapped her to the ground. Hard. And I was punished for it, of course. They never let you get away with anything at that school.

  “And you know what? Everyone was scared of me for weeks afterwards. I’d been punished - they knew I’d been punished - but they were still scared of me. Scared to talk, scared to open up, scared to invite me to join them ... if I hadn’t been sporty, I would probably have been friendless for years. I’d served my time and they were still reluctant to let me get close to them again. And you have the same problem. You did something unforgivable. Why do you think anyone has to let you in? Why should my sister and I ever trust you again when you destroyed our family?”

  She took a breath. “Society punished you,” she said. “But do you think that’s enough to make up for what you did to us? Or to convince people that you won’t do it again?”

  “I know,” her father said. “But that doesn’t stop me wanting to reconnect with my children.”

  “I don’t want to reconnect,” Alice said. “I know, you’re my biological father. But you destroyed all right to call yourself my father the day you destroyed my family. There’s nothing you can do to fix it. The little girl who came to you for a hug when she fell off the bike and scraped her knee is gone.”

  Her father stood. “I understand,” he said. “And I won’t call you again. If you want to talk ... you can call me instead.”

  “Thanks,” Alice said, sourly. She wanted to kill something. “Bye.”

  “I am proud of you, for what it’s worth,” her father added. “You’ve done well for yourself.”

  He left before Alice could think of a rejoinder. Her mind was churning, a tidal wave of bitterness and resentment and a sense that - once again - she’d lost something important to her. She wanted to run after him, although she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. Hug him, or put a bullet in him. She damned him, savagely, for coming to her. She would have been happier if she’d never talked to him again ...

  ... And then the alarms started to howl.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Admiral Zadornov had been in the CIC when all hell broke loose.

  She had been, she had to admit, frustrated with the caution of her superior officers. The various governments on Earth were reluctant to condone raids into Margo, let alone attempts to fight her way back into Falkirk or even invade Alien-One itself. She understood their fears, but she also understood just how dangerous it was to do nothing. The cold realities of interstellar warfare meant the human race simply couldn’t be strong everywhere. They needed to take the offensive before the virus slipped more raiders into the inner systems and started tearing the guts out of the human race.

  One moment, the display had been showing the growing fleet of warships holding station near Zheng He; the next, the display was full of red icons. For a moment, Svetlana’s mind refused to believe what she was seeing. It was a drill. It had to be a drill. There was no way that hundreds of alien warships could have slipped so close to the human ships without being detected. The MNF had deployed hundreds of scansats and recon platforms, scattering them over the inner system without - for once - the slightest hint of concern about the cost. A handful of ships might sneak through the cordon, but an entire fleet? No. It couldn’t have gotten so close without being detected ...

  ... And yet, somehow, it had.

  “Alert the fleet,” she snapped. It couldn’t be a drill. No one would have risked carrying out a surprise drill without informing her, not when it could lead to disaster. The last thing the frail alliance needed was a deadly friendly fire incident. “Bring the ships to battlestations, send a message up the chain to Earth ...”

  She forced herself to think as her subordinates hurried to work. Admiral Weisskopf was technically in command, at least as long as the MNF remained at Zheng He, but he was out of touch. He’d gone on an inspection tour, if she recalled correctly. God alone knew when he’d be able to assume command, if indeed he was in a position to assume command. He could be on a shuttlecraft, flying through the worst of the storm. She keyed her console, informing the fleet that she was assuming command. Weisskopf could take it when - if - he reached a CIC of his own.

  “Missile separation,” one of her aides snapped. “I say again, missile separation!”

  “Holy God,” someone breathed.

  Svetlana was inclined to agree. The enemy ships were firing thousands - no, hundreds of thousands - of missiles. She hadn’t seen anything like it, not outside simulations where the designer had given the enemy impossible capabilities to see what the trainees would do when faced with a no-win situation. The MNF might not have enough point defence to survive the storm, no matter what it did. She knew, all too well, that the fleet would be damaged. The only question was how badly.

  “Move the smaller ships into position to intercept the missiles,” she ordered. On the display, both sides were launching starfighters. She cursed under her breath. The ready squadrons had already launched, of course, but the remaining starfighters were taking their time. Of course they were. The pilots had been asleep, or drilling, or fucking, or whatever they did when they were not flying their starfighters or waiting in the launch tubes for the command to fly. “And order the starfighters to join them in engaging the missiles.”

  A chill seemed to blow through the air as more enemy ships made themselves known. There were hundreds of them: battleships, carriers, cruisers ... and dozens of converted freighters, spewing out missiles at a terrifying rate. How the hell had they managed to get so close? She didn’t have to look at the system display to know that the enemy had pulled it off perfectly. They were not only in engagement range, although that would be bad enough; they were blocking her line of retreat to the next system. The MNF had to win the engagement or break contact, neither of which would be easy. She felt her heart sink as she watched the wall of missiles raging into her formation. Her ships had been caught with their pants down. This was going to hurt.

  They used a Catapult, she realised, numbly. Why hadn’t they seen it coming? They knew it was possible. The Second Interstellar War wouldn’t have been won without a Catapult. But they also knew that Catapults were both incredibly expensive and dangerously unpredictable. It had quite simply never occurred to any of the planners that the virus would not only build a Catapult, but several Catapults. We keep thinking of the virus as being limited by human economics ...

  She shook her head. That was a problem for later. Right now, she had a more immediate problem.

  “Admiral, the missiles are entering the outer edge of the defence perimeter,” an officer reported. “We’re killing hundreds of them.”

  And there are thousands to go, Svetlana thought, silently thanking the planners who’d insisted on constant missile defence drills. The MNF might have been caught by surprise, but its datanet was already weaving the fleet and its point defence into a single entity. Hundreds of missiles were vanishing from the display, the weapons that had killed them already moving to challenge the next target. But for every missile the point defence killed, two more seemed to take its place. We’re badly outgunned.

  She watched, grimly, as the first wave of missiles started to slam home. The virus was deliberately targeting the smaller ships, clearing the way for the second wa
ve of missiles. Svetlana tapped commands into her console, ordering the point defence datanet to assign more weapons to cover the smaller ships although she knew it was pointless. There were too many missiles, with too many possible targets. A battleship, powering up her drives, found herself targeted by a swarm of missiles. Four lasted long enough to strike her hull, inflicting enough damage to cripple her. A fleet carrier was less lucky. Seven missiles slammed into her hull, setting off a chain reaction that blew her to hell. Svetlana cursed under her breath. The ship hadn’t even managed to launch all her starfighters before she’d died ...

  “Shinano is gone, Admiral,” an aide said. “Foch is taking heavy damage ...”

  “Order the fleet to cover the carriers,” Svetlana ordered. The virus was going to devastate her fleet ... and the hell of it was that she could barely hit back. “And signal the planet. They are to implement the emergency procedures and go underground.”