by Jean Johnson
“More than that, if I can show them how accurate I am with them, I can show them how accurate I’ll be with their ancient enemy. If you’ll recall,” Ia reminded him, “I threatened to point the Zida”ya at them and pull the trigger if they don’t comply. Proving to them that I am that accurate will scare them shitless, in the end. Literally. When I prove my final point to them, the Greys involved in that fight won’t be able to unpucker for three days.”
“So you’re hoping to scare them into compliance, bringing the coming war with them to an end when you need it to end,” he murmured, following her line of reasoning.
“Exactly.” Tapping her workstation, she raised the screens, flipping two of the tertiaries at the bottom so that he could read the information from his side of the desk. Her primary scrolled up the messages as well, facing the normal way so that she could read it, too. “Here’s the first set of messages I want to send. I think I’ve composed them correctly, but there are some probability variables that suggest they might be taken the wrong way. The Terranglo version’s on the left from your perspective, the Shredou on the right.”
“I’ll see what ambiguities I can fix,” Rico promised, frowning at the text.
FEBRUARY 3, 2497 T.S.
KNOT 2,330,427
HELIX NEBULA
“Never-ending battle, never-ending battle,” Helstead muttered in between pulsing the trigger for her chain of cannons. “Never-ending battle, never-ending battle. Please tell me, sir, that we’re going to have a bit of Leave soon? Real Leave, off-this-bloody-mucky-blasted-ship-style Leave?”
“Maybe, if you asked them very, very nicely,” Ia muttered back, slipping their much slimmer ship between two Terran Starcarrier-Class capital ships, “the Salik and the Choya might stop trying to pick all these fights with us.”
Proximity warnings beeped as a clutch of projectiles skimmed past their hull, swerving to avoid the Hellfire. They were Terran missiles, programmed to identify friend from foe and adjust course accordingly. Lasers couldn’t do that, though, and two of them nearly seared the ship as they slid past. Nearly, but didn’t.
Togama, manning the comms, whistled softly. “Wow, Captain, you are certainly stretching the vocabulary of the comm tech for the George Cairns. I don’t think that one’s anatomically possible even for a jellyfish.”
“Unlike the original George Cairns, we will not die of blood loss from a severed limb,” Ia returned calmly, strafing the Hellfire sideways in front of the TUPSF Powahann.
“…Ooh, even nastier,” Togama quipped, touching his headset. “The Powahann’s claiming you’re completely off next year’s Christmas card list, Captain.”
“Really?” Helstead asked, perking up a little. “That bad?”
“Well, somehow I doubt ‘Die in a Salik frying pan, you Shikoku Yama Flightschool reject; get the hell out of our path’ qualifies us for fondly remembered relative status,” he replied. The humor broke up some of the tension in the crew, though not the majority of it.
“Eyes on your boards, thoughts on your tasks,” Ia gently admonished. “Just seven more minutes of close-quarters fighting should see the Salik threat contained.” She flicked on the intercom. “All gunners down the starboard flank, continue to fire on the enemy ships for two more minutes, then cease fire.”
The knots ejected by the shockwave shell from Helix’s age-old supernova made for a rough transition at anything but sublight speeds. Few ships cared to traverse the barriers. Few ships were armored enough to survive the radiation found inside for long, either.
However, each cometary knot was roughly the size of the Sol System, which meant it made for an excellent hiding place for a rather large Salik base. With giant solar sails erected to capture the echoing, last radiations from the exploded star and provide both shelter and power for at least eight major stations, the Salik had parked a sizeable chunk of their shipyards in one of these knots, sucking up all that free energy.
This fight marked one of the few times Ia had agreed to the Admiral-General’s request that she and her crew join a specific battle rather than dash off somewhere else. One more random ship in a joint fleet of over a hundred might not make a difference, but her ship might, and she was striving hard to make sure it did. That meant being hyperaware of exactly where all those lasers and missiles and chunks of debris might fly at any given moment.
“L-pod 53, cease fire in ten seconds,” Ia ordered. “All starboard gunners, L-pod and P-pod, cease fire in one minute.”
Vector change slung them around in their seats as she swapped ends. Fightercraft scattered as they slipped past, their plethora of thrusters firing this way and that. Ia didn’t even hear the proximity beeps anymore; it was only the claxons she cared about.
“L-pod 53, good job,” she praised, as the private remotely manning that cannon excluded it from his firing commands. Rippling the thrusters shoved them back in their seats, allowing her to dart the ship toward one of the heavily damaged shipyard stations. “Starboard gunners, thirty seconds to cease fire.”
“Station 5 midpoint in thirty seconds, sir,” Nabouleh told her.
“Shouldn’t we still be firing by that point?” Helstead asked.
“No, that would be bad,” Ia murmured, shifting them to avoid incoming fire from the half of the shipyard station that wasn’t crumpled and on fire. “Starboard gunners, cease fire in ten…nine…eight…”
Missiles swerved in from behind, arcing around to strike at the heart of the damage. Blossom missiles, they impacted in puffs of light, then burst a second time like fireworks going off.
“…Two…one. Cease fire,” Ia ordered. “Cease fire. CEASE FIRE!” she yelled as the timestreams surged up and yanked her down. She could see nothing but the explosions of those blossom bombs ripping apart the shipyard, hear nothing but the click of a trigger being squeezed in ferocious glee…feel nothing but that pulse of light from Starstrike L-Pod 4 burning through the protective nose cone of the missile emerging from the depths of the TUPSF Hardberger’s P-pod 29. That nothingness emerging in a too-late scream. “SUNG, CEASE FIRE!”
Too late. Too late…Too. Late.
The timestream overflowed as it swallowed her down, drowning her. Freezing her with the inability to stop the inevitable. Nothing stopped that bright red beam of light. Not her order, not her wishes, not the chunks of shipyard forced apart by the force of all those explosions.
Water vanished. Water vanished from one lifetime, from a handful, from a hundred and more. The Redeemer’s life dried up and disappeared. The Savior’s course flowed on unaltered. The desert claimed all.
All.
Someone was crying in ragged gasps. Shaking with shock, skin flushed in fire, muscles prickled with ice, Ia stared at her right secondary screen, focused on the cloud of debris. A red circle and line flashed on the screen amid the chaos of battle, along with a simple, death-knelled message:
Fatality 13
Fatality.
How apt.
“Sir,” Nabouleh stated, twisting to look back at Ia. “We’re deadheaded for Station 6. We need to move. Sir? Sir!”
She couldn’t breathe. Claxons wailed in her ears. Ice and fire seared her nerves. Drowned under the waters removed from those vital, vital streams, she could not breathe.
“SIR!—Shova v’shakk,” the yeoman cursed, and whipped back to face her console. “Hotel November, override, override!” she snapped, using her emergency call sign to identify her actions for the bridge’s black box. “Taking the helm!”
The Hellfire slipped sideways under her hasty grab, bruising them all against their seats and restraints. Nabouleh added an abrupt downward shift as well. The collision claxons blared. The maneuver yanked them up in their harnesses and slammed them back in place as the interior safety fields pulsed. Seconds later, the shields compressed, rumbling with a strange sort of hiss.
“Good job!” Helstead gasped as they slid past. “Good job, Yeoman!”
“Captain, we’re getting a query on a Fatality
Thirteen: Friendly Fire,” Togama called out, looking back at her. “What do I reply, sir?…Sir?”
Fatality.
Her moan shifted as her shock morphed into rage. Fatality…FATALITY! It emerged in a wordless scream. Straps broke as she lunged out of her seat. Behind her, she could hear her second officer’s voice. It sounded tinny against the blood throbbing through her head.
“God—Nabouleh, get us out of combat, now!” Helstead snapped, jabbing at her harness clasps. “Togama, tell them we have an emergency on board and nothing more!”
Vision red with rage, Ia didn’t bother to reach the door before she opened it. Her mind stabbed at the controls, sparking electricity through the system. Squeezing through before the panel finished opening, she sprinted up the hall. L-pod 4 was located on the bow, but it was controlled by L-pod 20, and that was one sector forward and two decks up. Doors hissed open, their panels sparking with electrokinetic energy.
Everything was energy. The red of her fury had altered her view. Doors and bulkheads, floors and ceilings, everything glowed. Everything pulsed. It was all just matter, but it was also oddly see-through. As if she could, if she tried just a little harder, reach out and reach right through it all.
She knew she couldn’t force open both doors of the sector seal. They were pressure-locked against being able to do that, to prevent both negligence and stupidity. Just as she crossed the first of the two thresholds, something struck her from behind. She staggered forward, throwing up her hands to shield herself from hitting the forward door.
The blow was a body. Arms and legs wrapped around Ia’s frame, heels hooking around her waist, bicep and military-issued bracer digging into her throat. Still enraged, Ia reflexively tightened her neck, staving off the pressure which her 3rd Platoon officer tried to apply.
As a force of body, Helstead’s efforts were negligible; Ia was too angry to notice her efforts as more than the wings of a butterfly beating on her back and throat. As a force of will, however, Helstead’s mind slammed down on hers like a sledgehammer.
(Stand down, soldier!) she snarled, hooking her right arm around the wrist of the left to apply more leverage against Ia’s windpipe. (I said STAND DOWN!)
The command exploded in her head, snuffing out half the fire and fury. Ia collapsed to one knee. Helstead squeezed again.
(Stand down!) she commanded. (You will NOT attack Sung! Stay down! STAY. DOWN.)
The word-thoughts struck her in another blow. Ia’s leg slipped out from under her. She had never faced the force of a psychodominant before, let alone one of Helstead’s high rank. Dazed, struggling to breathe, she groped for her rage-scattered wits.
(I don’t care what he’s done, you will not kill him!) Helstead growled, squeezing her arm for emphasis. Ia choked and she eased up slightly—then squeezed in again. (You will keep him alive!)
(Alright!) she snarled back, capitulating to the sheer weight of the lieutenant commander’s demands. (Alright, he’ll live! For now.)
Surging to her feet as the forward door slid open, Ia strode down the hall. It wasn’t difficult to move with the shorter woman on her back; stocky as she was, Helstead didn’t weigh nearly as much as Ia’s exercise weight suit. She did stagger, though, when the ship rocked around them, attacked by enemy missiles. At least the movement forced Helstead to shift her left arm, clutching more now at Ia’s shoulders than compressing her muscular throat.
The rage was coming back. Swift strides turned into jumps as she ascended the stairs, not bothering with the lift. More doors hissed open, clearing the way. Clinging to her CO, Helstead continued that low, steady, mental hiss, (…You will not kill him…you need him alive…you will not kill him…you need him alive!)
An outward snap of her hand hissed open the L-pod’s door. A slash snapped the restraint straps. With a startled yelp, Private Goré Sung tumbled through the door and swayed to a halt. The only thing preventing Ia from slamming him bodily into the far bulkhead was that damnable, insistent, nagging whisper named Helstead.
Jerking him closer with a clench of her fist, Ia stopped him telekinetically, halting him centimeters from her face. “You shova v’shakk-tor!” she snarled as he stared back at her with brown eyes so wide, she could see the full ring of their whites. “You have slaughtered this galaxy!”
Grabbing him physically by the throat, she dragged him—both of them—into the desert. Forced him into life-stream after life-stream at the galaxy’s end. Forced him to watch worlds being devoured and stars torn apart.
(You need him alive!) Helstead yelled deep in her head.
(No. I do not. Not anymore.) She flung both of them out. Not gentle. Not kind. Sung gasped for air, choking like a drowning man, though Ia wasn’t physically squeezing his throat. Helstead clung with trembling limbs.
(You…you can repair…) she gasped.
“HOW can I repair a DEAD MAN?” Ia screamed with mind and voice. Sung winced. She didn’t see what Helstead did, her attention reserved for the careless murderer in front of her. Ia flung him up with her mind and her hand, slamming him into the ceiling, provoking a pained grunt.
Helstead dropped free. She landed on hands and knees behind Ia, panting from the force of that mental counterblow. “I…I don’t believe…in the…the no-win scenario, Captain,” she growled between breaths. Her hand gripped Ia’s ankle, reinforcing her words mentally as well as physically. “And I know you don’t! You. Will. Drop him!”
Sung dropped. He thudded onto the deckplates with a groan and a faint crack, one hand caught awkwardly under his ribs. With a feral snarl, Ia flung the force she had been about to use on him into the bulkhead to her left. It crunched, denting inward by at least a third of a meter. Her hand snapped out again, and the dazed private was yanked up, body floating horizontally in her grip.
Coughing, he squinted at her. Ia leaned in close, but did not touch him. She let the madness in her gaze, the rage barely leashed in her words, do all of the damage.
“Pray I can find a way to fix the dead man you’ve destroyed. Pray I can find a way to replace his life! Because of one man’s death, unless I can fix it, you have doomed this entire galaxy to a fate worse than a Salik’s favorite lunch. Pray I can find a way,” she snarled, bringing his nose to within a centimeter of her own. “Because if I cannot…pray I kill you before I am through!”
Flinging him away, she let him tumble down the corridor. He grunted and yelled with each impact before skidding to a stop. For a moment, he tried to get up, then groaned and sagged to the deck.
She hadn’t killed him. By luck, and the grace of God, or at least by the demands of Delia Helstead, Ia hadn’t killed him. But it was a near thing. As it was, Ia could not see what to do with him. The timestreams were nothing but barren, bleak desert around her, empty fields with nothing left but cracked and lifeless dust.
Behind her, she heard the other woman pushing to her feet. “…Orders, sir?”
Oddly enough, Helstead’s simple question centered her. Ia still couldn’t See a damned thing, but her training as an officer kicked in. There were rules and regulations for this sort of thing. Rules and regs that had to be followed. Hands fisted against the urge to physically express the rage morphing back into grief, Ia swallowed.
“Take the prisoner to the Infirmary. He has a cracked wrist. When it has been set, lock him in the brig. The prisoner is not allowed to speak to anyone about anything other than his wrist,” she added tightly, glaring at Sung as he started to stir again. “Unless and until I can figure out what to do with this nightmare he’s caused, this ship stays on lockdown, category Ultra Classified. No messages out but for the fact that we’re on lockdown.”
“That won’t cut it with the rest of the fleet, Captain,” Helstead told her. “They know about the Friendly Fire. They will be expecting an acknowledgment and an arraignment.”
Ia cursed under her breath. Her head hurt, throbbing with the ache of her unsatisfied rage. Scrubbing at her scalp to try and ease it enough to let her think, sh
e dislodged her headset. Impatiently, she stripped it completely off, glared at it, then wrestled the thin curve of plexi back over her head. “Captain Ia to Private Togama.”
“Togama here, Captain. Uh…is everything alright?”
“No. Acknowledge and register the Friendly Fire with the TUPSF Hardberger. The accused is Private Second Class Goré Sung. Inform them we will be contacting them with the details of his arraignment and tribunal at a point in the near future, then broadband cast to the fleet that we are experiencing technical difficulties of an Ultra-Classified nature and will be disengaging from combat and remaining silent while those difficulties are addressed.”
Wincing, she tried to focus her thoughts on the timeplains. The wafting dust of the empty desert clung to her feet like cement. Head throbbing, she forced herself all the way back to the present, to survey the wreckage of the Now with a dispassionate eye.
“Addendum, inform the TUPSF La Granger, Sword’s Breath, and Saibo-Maru to stay out of the sunward side of Station 3’s wreckage. Tell the TUPSF Dian Wei to break off in two minutes and spend a full minute coming about before reentering the fight. And tell Admiral P’thenn aboard Battle Platform Hum-Vee that there are sabotage systems still active on Stations 1, 3, 5 and 8. Boarding parties must use extreme caution. Repeat that we are going to be running silent under an Ultra-Classified-Situation flag, then do just that.”
“Ah…Aye, sir. I got all that,” Togama replied. “Sir, what is the situation?”
“That is on a need-to-know basis, and you do not need to know.” Pulling off the headset, she let the band curl up and stuffed it into her pocket.
Helstead had edged around her in order to approach the injured private. Pulling him to his feet, she wrapped her arm around his ribs. “With permission, Captain, I’ll take him to the Infirmary.”