by Jean Johnson
Togama cleared his throat. “Right. Tell her to mind her own business, then hang up on the Admiral-General herself. I always wondered what it would feel like to be caned…”
“I suggest you not joke about that in my presence,” Ia stated flatly, flinching inside at his careless, unknowing words. “Not today, and not for the rest of this week. As you were, meioas.”
Nodding to Spyder, she retreated through the back door to her office, and from there, to her private quarters.
CHAPTER 14
There was no greater hell in my life up to that point than the moment I realized my teacup had broken and that it lay shattered at my feet. No greater release into purgatory than to realize I had one chance at duct-taping it back together. One shot at using a trompe l’oeil trick to fool the universe into thinking the cup was still firmly intact.
I can’t tell you what I did, and I won’t tell you what I did. Not ever. Explain a stage magician’s trick, and all the magic of it, all the wonder and the awe and the innocence of one’s ignorance are thus forever lost. In fact, it can never again be regained; the illusion is spoiled, for the wires will always be on the mind. But I did it. And I paid the price for it. I paid for every drop spilled from that shattered, rebuilt teacup.
~Ia
Summoning her faction protector was not too terribly difficult. Ia had already practiced the mental twist of energies that opened up the tiny thread of a cosmic string permanently linking Belini to the corner wall of her living room. The one thing it did take was power, which was why she had stocked up at the command console.
It took a while for Belini to respond. As she waited, Ia probed at the timestreams, trying to shift herself away from that endgame desolation. The interior of her head felt broken and bruised. She did manage to shift her viewpoint back to where she should be, in the here and now…but every time she pulled out, then flipped back in, the desert at the end of the game was the first thing she could see. Not the waters of her own life and not the grassy banks of a thriving prairie.
The flash of light against her closed lids and the slight shift in air pressure that teased across her face warned her that the Feyori had arrived. Opening her eyes, Ia watched the silvery-dark sphere dip partway into the wall. That dimmed the overhead lights for several seconds, until the overgrown bubble lightened from deep grey hematite to an almost platinum shade. A flash of light popped the soap bubble, depositing Belini on the carpeted deck.
Bare toes digging into the light grey pile, she shifted her hands to her pink-clad hips, once again looking like a demented, wingless pixie. “Well. I certainly didn’t expect you to call.” She paused, eyed Ia, then shook her head. “Almost made it, didn’t you? Like I told you, I’m not going to help.”
“What?” Ia frowned for a moment in confusion, then shook it off. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I called you because I need a very big favor. One that is in your best interests…because if you don’t help me, to my exact needs, the Game ends. In fact, the Game has ended.”
That made the Feyori frown. “What do you mean, the Game has ended?”
Ia sighed and explained. “One of my stupidest gunners refused to stop firing when I ordered him to. His weapon impacted on a fellow Terran ship, and destroyed one of the projectile turrets…and with it, destroyed its gunner. That gunner was to have been the great-plus-grandfather of one of the key figures I needed to have in place to guide the Savior into preventing the destruction of this galaxy. The destruction that would have put an end to everything your race is currently doing with the matter-based species.
“That destruction will put an end to everything…unless you and I can fool the universe into thinking that that gunner is still alive and still available to take his rightful place.”
Belini wrinkled her nose. “No,” she stated flatly. “Absolutely not. I have my own places to be—”
“Not you,” Ia dismissed, rising from her couch. “Private Finnimore Hollick has volunteered to be the body and soul to be sculpted into the missing gunner’s place. I do need you to stick around long enough to pretend to be Hollick in his place, but there should be a chance to kill him off in a bodiless way in about a week if we do everything right. At that point, you can pop off to wherever, and the broken bits of the universe will have been duct-taped back together.”
She considered Ia’s words, her eyes aquamarine, not quite silver. “What about this Hollick fellow? What about his rightful place in the universe?”
Ia shook her head, raking one hand through her hair. Again, her bangs were irritating her, a stupid little bother in the face of this disaster.
“I only chose him to be a crew member because of three things. He has the right skills and instincts to do his job well. His presence or absence in any other part of this war will not have made a damn difference one way or another. And because a part of me knew there was something he could do that would help my cause. I thought it was just be a steadying, faith-filled influence among my crew, but…
“This is probably the most extreme thing I could have asked of him, aside from maybe asking him to pull out his own intestines with a rusted spoon,” she quipped sarcastically. “But I did ask, and he did agree to it. And don’t tell me you can’t do it. I know you can.
“You said yourself you saved Jesse Mankiller’s life, and that you can take on any shape you like. I know the Feyori calling himself Doctor Silverstone can read thoughts and reshape his own body to copy the life and memories of a man whose hovercar crashed in the Australian bush. And with my help,” she stated, “plugging the two of you directly into the missing gunner’s original life-stream, we can guide him into having the right memories and making all the right choices the original would’ve made. A perfect trompe l’oeil replacement. Or at least one hopefully good enough to fool Time itself.”
Belini considered her words. Drawing in a breath, she asked shrewdly, “And how will you explain how this gunner survived?”
Ia spread her hands. “Lieutenant Commander Helstead is a teleporter. She sensed the danger he was in, and teleported him blindly onto this ship.” Her own words made her pause; Ia realized with another sick flush of ice and heat that such a thing would be a violation of the Admiral-General’s command to permit no one else aboard…Feyori notwithstanding. Swallowing, she added, “That’s why we’ve been locked down under the claim of an Ultra-Classified Situation. The teleport stunned him psychically. I then ordered him to be kept sedated while I figured out where he came from and what to do with him.”
Nodding slowly, Belini accepted that line of reasoning. “That might actually work.”
“It has to,” Ia murmured. “I can’t see any other options.”
There was another option, but Ia knew it would involve the deaths of a good three or four Feyori. That was not something any of them were prepared to do. Not at this point in the Game, not when Ia herself was still a mere pawn and not a powerful fellow player.
“So,” Belini muttered, ticking off the options on her pixie-slender fingers. “We have a willing body and soul to take the gunner’s place. We have myself to take this Hollick fellow’s place for about a week, until I can safely pretend to die and head off on my own business. And you’ve covered how the gunner gets on board. Do you at least have bits of this missing gunner’s body on hand, so I can get a direct reading of his genetics?”
Ia opened her mouth, then closed it. Tightening her jaw, she pushed past the desert now occupying the back of her mind, forced herself to the present patch in the timestreams, and rooted around in the very recent past. Finally, she nodded. “I don’t have the whole body available, but there is a surviving bit of it tumbling through space. It’s badly burned and frozen, but it should still be enough for you to read his DNA and rebuild Hollick in his shape.”
Belini held out her hand. “Show me.”
Nodding, Ia gripped it and complied. When she was sure the Feyori knew exactly where to look, she released the other woman. “While you go do that, I’ll
fetch Hollick up here.”
Belini rolled her eyes. “If he’s going to be sedated, he’ll have to be stashed in the Infirmary, now won’t he? Come on, think, woman. That’s what that blob of grey stuff in your skull is supposed to be good for, with you fleshies.”
“Well, if you’ll excuse me, I just had my entire reason for living smashed at my feet,” Ia retorted, hands going to her hips. “And for some God-be-damned reason, I cannot approach the timestreams from my usual spot in the present but am instead stuck with the pain of arriving in the midst of the desolation caused by the Zida”ya fleet! I think, given all the shakk I’ve just gone through, that I am holding it together fairly well in spite of all that!”
The look the Meddler gave her was a cool, assessing one. Finally, Belini nodded. “Right, then. Keep holding it together. This will take a lot out of both of us. Go make yourself useful by hauling several power cables to the Infirmary. This isn’t reshaping myself, and it isn’t restoring a woman’s rightful body from a broken to a whole state. And you had better be right about being able to pattern his mind and his life-choices, or all this effort will go to waste. All this energy will go to waste.
“I’m a Feyori, child,” Belini reminded Ia. “I don’t like to waste my food.” Popping with a flare of light, she re-formed as a silvery soap bubble and swooped through the cabin wall, vanishing.
Ia sighed and scrubbed at her face. Yet another person to drag into the conspiracy. God, she begged, help me. Make sure Jesselle Mishka is in a cooperative mood.
He was perfect. Joseph N’ablo N’Keth, twenty-seven years old and identical to the original in every way that frozen chunks of DNA and increasingly easier pre- and postcognitive forays onto the timeplains could make him to be. Exhausted yet elated, Ia probed the timestreams one more time and nodded in satisfaction.
The original paths were still damaged, but much of it could be salvaged. Only a few things would have to be changed here in the near future, and at about one hundred to one hundred and twenty minor, major, and key timing points down the way, depending on how things panned out. She’d have to stint herself on sleep again to rewrite several of her prophetic directives, but it wouldn’t be a waste of energy.
“Blood pressure 103 over 65, encephalographic activity normal, delta brainwaves declining,” Mishka reported. “You even managed to re-create traces of mucus in his lungs from a minor chest cold. A pity your kind won’t cooperate more often to help heal the injured and dying.”
Belini narrowed her eyes but didn’t deign to speak.
Ia did it for her. “Doctor, have you ever contemplated the philosophy of why people die? Even the Feyori do it. There is a reason for it.”
“And that reason is?” Jesselle asked, arching one blonde brow in skepticism.
“Contemplate it,” Ia told her bluntly, not willing to give the other woman a free ride. “Can you keep him sedated?”
“I can. And I have agreed, having voiced my objections, to uphold this little charade,” the doctor added. “You’re lucky Private Hollick was willing to undergo a telepathic scan from me so I could make sure he was fully informed and truly willing.”
“I had my own objections as well, Doctor,” Ia told her, “but they got blown to pieces by Sung’s willful little act of disobedience. Helstead, stay here and stand watch over our guest. I’m going to go order the ship into dock, and call a shipwide boardroom meeting. The two of you are exempt from attending, since I need you to keep an eye on our ‘guest’ here—Belini, charge back up and get changed into your new body,” she added. “You’ll need to show up as Private Hollick.”
“Sir, yes, sir,” she quipped, flipping Ia a fluttery mock-salute.
Rolling her eyes, Ia retreated from the Infirmary. She was exhausted and would not be able to rest for many more hours to come, but the timestreams were back under her control. Bruised and banged about, duct-taped together with a snapped wrist much like Private Sung’s, but once more hers to command.
She prayed all the way to the bridge that she would never have to do that again.
It was still third watch, but Togama wasn’t on duty at the moment; he had been replaced by Private James Kirkman. Nabouleh was back on duty, having swapped places with Sangwan twice over the last three hours. Spyder wasn’t on the bridge. Technically he was supposed to be asleep by now, and Ia had granted him leave to go, since all they were doing was floating in space several hundred thousand kilometers away from the remains of the Salik base.
Altering Hollick had consumed a lot of their spare time, shattered and duct-taped back together as it was, a lot more than a Feyori needed to just change themselves, or to heal someone else. His mind and his memories had taken longer to create than his revised body.
“Private Kirkman,” Ia stated as she entered the bridge, “contact the TUPSF Hum-Vee and inform them that most of our situation has now been contained. Tell them we are coming in to dock, and ask them for a gantry position and refueling priority. Once you have done that, contact the Hardberger and let them know we are on our way in to coordinate with them for the arraignment and war tribunal of Private Goré Sung regarding the Fatality Thirteen: Friendly Fire incident.”
“Aye, Captain. Ah, sir,” he added, twisting to look back at her, “the Admiral-General left standing orders to be contacted the moment you broke communication silence. Shall I put you through?”
Pulling her headset out of her pocket, Ia nodded. “Ping the Admiral-General and connect us the moment the call goes through.”
Dropping into the command seat, she hooked the headset in place, then started to pull the restraint straps in place. They were still broken, snapped physically and telekinetically in her earlier rage. Sighing, Ia gave up trying to secure herself. None of their maneuvering needs would require it in the next several hours; it was just habit for her to buckle up in this chair.
“Private Rammstein,” she ordered the man seated at the operations console, “put in a work order to engineering to get up here and replace the command-seat safety harness, plus the straps in L-pod 20. I want fresh sets ready to go before we leave the zone.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Captain, we have pingback. Conversational lag is four and a half seconds,” Kirkman warned her. “Admiral-General Myang on the line in three…two…”
Christine Myang appeared on the screen. Her face was creased, her eyes bleary, and her chin-length, grey-salted black locks were mussed. She was also clad in a loose-necked tunic in a faded heather grey, and her face hovered unnaturally close to the pickups, looming too large on Ia’s main screen. Blinking twice, she focused on the screen at her end and narrowed her eyes in a silent, furious glare.
It took effort, but Ia did not flinch. “Admiral-General, sir. I apologize for the lengthy delay, but the Ultra-Classified security protocols had to be maintained. We sustained minor damage to the main cannon, which had to be fixed immediately,” she lied smoothly, “and…have had to contain an unexpected addition.”
“Contain?” Myang asked, voice rough from sleep. “Unexpected addition? Explain.”
“We are inbound to Battle Platform Hum-Vee, where I will be personally escorting Private Sung to his tribunal session as soon as it can be arranged,” Ia stated blandly. “The charges are twofold, Fatality Five: Disobeying a Direct Order, and Fatality Thirteen: Friendly Fire. I am fully aware and prepared to carry out the double-indemnity sentence of corporal punishment his actions will accrue, and will do so without restraint or hesitation.
“I do, however, need…beg…a suspension of our standing orders to permit no other personnel aboard the Hellfire,” she continued. That earned her another narrow-eyed stare. Drawing a deep breath, Ia explained. “We initially thought—as does the TUPSF Hardberger—that their gunner was killed when Private Sung fired through the Salik shipyard debris and struck a missile emerging from the old Kellick-class projectile-pod turret, number 29, on board the Hardberger. This was not the case.
“Lieutenant Commander Delia Helstea
d, reacting on instincts triggered by my telepathically broadcasted precognitive distress, blind-teleported him instead to the safety of our ship. He was knocked unconscious by the transport, and Helstead and I abandoned the bridge as soon as we realized he was on board. We have kept him sedated this entire time, firmly secured under observation in the Infirmary,” Ia told the head of the Space Force, breaking Fatality Forty-Three: Perjury, by lying to her superior officer without hesitation. “By the letter of our orders, his presence aboard is a violation of our Ultra-Classified status. By the spirit of our orders…he hasn’t seen a damned thing.
“So I request…I beg,” she added, meeting Myang’s soft frown through the vidlink, “that you forgive his trespass and dismiss the charge of Grand High Treason that would otherwise be incurred, as there is no possible way he could learn any of this ship’s secrets, sedated as he has been all this time.”
Several seconds ticked by. More than enough to send Ia’s words all the way to the Admiral-General’s quarters back on Earth and send back a response, thrice. Finally, Myang grunted, “Why should I? What’s so goddamn special about this one soldier that you panicked so hard, it caused your junior officer to risk both of you being hanged for daring to bring him on board?”
“I don’t think Helstead was actually thinking at that moment, sir,” Ia pointed out carefully. “Her reaction speed to my distress was faster than conscious thought. She has been recovering from a backlash headache all this time. As for why…this gunner is one Private First Grade Joseph N’Keth. He was and is destined to be the great-plus-grandfather of one of the key figures who will prevent the Zida”ya from successfully invading and destroying our galaxy three hundred years from now.”
“You mean two hundred and ninety-nine,” Myang corrected her. “It was three hundred years into the future last year.”