by Zieja, Joe
“This may take a while,” Deet said.
“Alright,” Hart said, stretching his broken leg. “I suppose I could go and check on the—”
“I’m done,” Deet said.
Hart gave him a look.
“What? We’re in the intergalactic era of technology. That was a really long time I just took to do that.”
Humans’ perception of time was almost comically narrow.
Shaking his head, Hart relaxed on the crate. “So? What did you find?”
Deet thought for a moment how best to phrase what he’d discovered. In truth, a greater analysis of the data would take even more time—and not just a few nanoseconds. He’d have to cross-reference some of the other deactivated droids to collect a big enough sample to make any judgments. He was a droid, not the media; statistical integrity was important to him.
“Are you familiar with the old human argument of nature versus nurture?” Deet asked.
“Sure,” Hart said.
“These droids didn’t become self-aware. They were programmed that way from the very beginning.”
“What does that mean?”
Deet searched through all the figures of speech and metaphors he’d learned and tried to find one with adequate application. He located one in his database and beeped with excitement as he prepared to relay it.
“It means whoever Mother Nature is, she’s a raging [FEMALE CANINE] who wants to kill everyone.”
* * *
“I’m changing our destination,” Alandra said as they neared the bridge. A dormant thought that had been lying in wait inside her head suddenly sprang to life. “Take us to the kitchens.”
“As you wish, Grand Marshal,” Xan said. He made a few adjustments to the controls and they changed course, entering the channels within the ship to get there faster.
The image of the spilled liquid on the floor in the medical bay stuck in her head. Alandra knew that smell—it was Urp Unguent, a chemical compound that occurred naturally within some of Urp’s deepest mines. It was possibly one of the deadliest poisons known to nature. Or, depending on how you used it, a delicious ingredient in one of several gourmet sauces, some of which they served on the Limiter on special occasions.
Alandra didn’t think a cook had been by for a visit.
She had pressing business on the bridge, as she’d said. But first she was going to find out who had tried to inject her soon-to-be-husband with poison.
* * *
I. Rogers had not, despite the implications of this thought, met such a person before.
Grumbling Bellies
Rogers’ stomach felt like it was trying to eat its way out through his rib cage. He was afraid that, if left unchecked, it would either create a black hole due to a rapid gravitational collapse or develop a will of its own and cannibalize his other internal organs. At least five times now his hand had reached unbidden for his datapad holster, wanting desperately to call the Grand Marshal so that he could finally eat. Surely this must be against the laws of armed conflict. It was a deprivation of the necessities of life, no different than locking him in a box in the middle of the desert.
Alandra Keffoule was killing him as surely as if she had put a knife in his heart. The experience so far on the Limiter had been miserable. It had been cruel. It had been madness. It had been at least ten minutes since Rogers and Keffoule had parted.
But the length of time didn’t matter! It was the principle of the situation. You didn’t just withhold food from a man until he agreed to marry you.
Well, that wasn’t exactly how she’d phrased it. Rogers didn’t have to marry the Grand Marshal to eat; he just had to eat with her. Like a pet, or something. It was weird, yes, but maybe it wasn’t as brutal a proposition as he’d originally thought. Besides, he was really hungry.
Taking the datapad out of its holster, he looked at it, frowning. Thelicosan troops passed him in the hallway where he’d stopped—he hadn’t gotten very far in ten minutes—and whispered to each other in hushed tones. Rogers marveled at how perfectly he understood all of them. Even the grunts spoke in perfect Standard; he didn’t know what crazy dialect lessons Tunger had been taking. For example, he understood very clearly that the two soldiers who had just walked by him thought he looked like a “foppish clown.”
They were completely and totally wrong, but he could certainly understand them. Rogers adjusted his uniform and gave a snort. It wasn’t like their uniforms were at the height of fashion. Whereas the Meridans had at least tried to design something compatible with any time period in the last three centuries, the Thelicosans looked like they had patched their uniforms together from an amalgamation of Old Earth military units. Puffy pants, tight, short-breasted jackets. Some of them even had capes! Or cloaks, whatever. Who wore those?
Well, Rogers kind of wanted a cape.
But more than that, he wanted dinner. He looked again at the datapad, currently inactive, and danced a couple of his fingers across the screen. Wasn’t it tantamount to treason to eat with the enemy, or something like that? It just seemed like something the commander of the Meridan fleet shouldn’t do. Particularly after he’d been tricked, assaulted, kidnapped, and proposed to.
Then again, sharing a meal was classically one of the most relationship-building activities two people could engage in. Not that he wanted to build a relationship with Keffoule or anything. A professional relationship, sure. That would be fine. It could be called a relationship when any two people interacted somewhat regularly. That was the definition of the word, right?
Rogers sighed and leaned back against the wall, tilting his head to look up at the ceiling. He was thinking in circles now—very poorly drawn circles. But that was what five to seven minutes of absolute starvation would do to a man. As his stomach rumbled again, threatening to overtake his body and his sanity, he realized he was faced with two very basic, very simple choices:
On one hand, he could call Keffoule.
On the other hand, he could die.
The choice was obvious. He’d have to die. Rogers was the commander of the Meridan fleet—he had to be courageous in the face of torture and almost certain death at the hands of hunger. It was far beneath his dignity to dine with the enemy—never mind marry them. They would write about him in the history of the impending war as the fearless leader who never succumbed to the enemy’s pressure even when circumstances were dire. Yes, he would rather die.
Someone passing by mentioned Sandwich Hour, which literally sounded like the best time of day he’d ever heard of. His stomach grumbled, and he was calling Keffoule before he knew what he was doing. His self-preservation instincts had completely taken over; this situation was now out of his control. There simply was nothing he could do about it.
Keffoule’s face appeared on the datapad, though it was just a still shot and not a live video feed. For how terrifying she looked in person, her government mug shot barely did her justice. Her soft features were all set in a way that made them look hard as stone; she looked terribly bored.
“Yes?” she said, sounding impatient. Considering how coy she’d sounded earlier, this caught Rogers a bit off guard.
“Uh, hi,” he said.
“Oh, it’s you,” Keffoule said, her tone changing. Perhaps she was in the habit of picking up her datapad without looking to see who it was. “What can I do for you?”
Get me off this ship, he thought. Maybe with lunch in a bag.
“I, uh, heard one of the soldiers saying it was Sandwich Hour,” Rogers said, trying his best to sound casual. Of course she knew why he was calling, but it wouldn’t hurt to be a little circumspect.
“Yes, we have it every day,” Keffoule said. “Any soldier can use her meal card to access an all-you-can-eat sandwich buffet.” She clicked her tongue. “It’s a pity you don’t have one. We make excellent sandwiches.”
How could a woman make the word “sandwiches” sound seductive? Worse than that, why did Rogers like it? Holding firmly to the picture in his head o
f the Viking—however nasty she’d been to him lately—he tried to calm his rumbling belly and act cool.
“I’m starving and I’ll do whatever you want if you’ll let me eat.”
Nice going, commander of the 331st.
A moment of silence passed. Had this just been a trick? Something to toy with him? Was he actually being tortured?
“Xan will meet you momentarily with a Chariot,” she said. “He will escort you immediately to my chambers, where you and I can . . . chat . . . over a meal.”
He could practically see her smirk over the datapad. It made his skin crawl.
“Right,” he said. “See you then.”
“Yes,” Keffoule said slowly. “You will.”
Rogers heard a sound like the click of a woman’s nail on a datapad. He was about to put his datapad into his holster when he heard shouting coming from it.
“Hurry, Xan! No, I don’t care. Go! Tell the chef to get working immediately. We’ll worry about the poison later. I’m going to get ready.”
Rogers nearly dropped the datapad. Keffoule had forgotten to hang it up. Oh, and she’d said “poison.” Poison.
Obviously she was trying to kill him. But why? Why bring him here, ask him to marry her, and then plot to kill him? Maybe she was trying to make it look like an accident. But why go through all that trouble? Nobody would actually believe it had been an accident. Maybe there was some sort of weird black widow culture in Thelicosa. That would have been a great thing for Tunger to tell him when Keffoule had been trying to propose to him! This was all Tunger’s fault!
Suddenly Rogers wasn’t very hungry anymore. He was about to make a run for it—though he had no idea where he was going to run—but then he heard that ridiculous puttering noise. Xan had already arrived. The floating platform, glowing faintly blue on the bottom, didn’t have any apparent steering mechanism, nor did it operate on tracks of any kind that Rogers could see. Somehow, the floppy-faced man guided it slowly over to where Rogers was considering how much easier it would be to hang himself in a place that actually had gravity.
“Captain,” Xan said, his sagging cheeks creating perhaps the most unique combination of accents in the entire Fortuna Stultus galaxy. “If you would come with me. Simply step onto the back of the Chariot, and we will be off.”
Rogers eyed the “Chariot” suspiciously. He’d been around plenty of strange technology in his time, and he had an inherent interest in how things worked, being an engineer and all. Yet somehow he didn’t trust this particular piece of machinery. Perhaps it was because of who was riding it; perhaps it was because of where it would take him. You know, to be poisoned. But basic propulsion theory said that it either shouldn’t have worked or it should have been melting holes in the floor wherever it went. He wondered if he could break the ice with Keffoule by talking about it. Or would she think he was gathering information for use against them in the war?
“If you don’t mind, Captain, the Grand Marshal’s time is quite valuable. I would rather you not waste it.”
Rogers frowned at him. That was the first hint of emotion he’d heard in the man’s voice, and it hadn’t sounded positive. Perhaps Xan was protective of his employer—a sort of Stockholm syndrome. Then again, Rogers thought he’d be pretty grumpy too if he had weights hanging from his face.
“Alright, alright,” Rogers said. “I’m coming.”
Slowly, he moved around to the back of the Chariot, where an opening in the guardrail allowed him to step up onto the platform. It didn’t even move with the added weight of Rogers’ body; it simply felt like Rogers had stepped onto a new surface. Where Xan was standing, Rogers could see some slight indentations in the floor. Perhaps Xan controlled it just by distributing his weight differently. There had been that technology on Old Earth, but people looked so damn silly using it that it had been banned by international law a hundred years before the collapse of the Milky Way.
“You’ll probably want to hold on,” Xan said.
Rogers reached for the railing, but before he could get a firm grip the Chariot shot off across the ship.
“Waaah!” Rogers postulated as he was thrown about the platform. He flailed his arms wildly, grabbing hold of the railing just in time to prevent his legs from slipping out the bottom and dragging the rest of him with them. The shiny metallic surface of the ship flashed by underneath him, inertial wind blowing through his uniform. This thing was fast.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Rogers cried as he scrambled to get to his feet. No sooner had he gotten his heels under him again, however, than Xan took a sharp turn, giving Rogers a rare and intimate insight into what it felt like to be a flag in the middle of a thunderstorm.
“I advised you to hold on,” Xan said. “I cannot he held responsible if you did not heed my warning.”
“You gave me half a second!” Rogers said, finally standing up.
“I assessed that that was enough time.”
Rogers was about to tell him exactly what he could assess when he was suddenly distracted by the knowledge that he was about to die. The Chariot was moving so fast that he couldn’t see the faces on the people they were passing—nor did he have any idea how they had survived on a ship that had these magical go-karts flying around everywhere—but he could absolutely see that they were just a few seconds from crashing straight into a wall at terminal velocity.
“Look out, you crazy son of a bitch lunatic, oh shit!” Rogers further postulated.
The suicidal maniac piloting this death machine seemed unconcerned. Rogers wondered if he would have been able to tell if Xan had been concerned. As the distance between them and the wall became so small that it would no longer have been possible to stop, Rogers wondered what the hell the point of poisoning him would have been.
As Rogers lamented the fact that he still hadn’t had a decent drink, a very neatly concealed circular panel on the wall opened, and suddenly they were inside the walls. A plexiglass tube surrounded them on all sides, and the low hum of the Chariot became a high-pitched whine as they picked up even more speed.
“Oh, sweet mother of everything in the galaxy,” Rogers breathed. “A warning would have been appreciated.”
“You didn’t seem to take my first warning very seriously,” Xan said levelly. “I thought offering another one wouldn’t have served a purpose.”
Rogers gave him a dirty look, but the droopy-faced assistant wasn’t looking at him. While his heart slowly crawled back into his rib cage, Rogers took a moment to admire the strange view of the Limiter’s guts. The tunnels built to carry these Chariots were somewhat transparent, absorbing and reflecting the light from the bottom of the platform and giving everything an eerie light-blue glow. Rogers got the sensation that he was being irradiated, but he attributed that to the iridescence. Irrespective of the reality, he was able to breathe for a few moments and focus on the view. Occasionally the Chariot tube would come out of the walls for a moment, treating him to a few impressive spectacles of the Thelicosan hangars. Neatly arranged Sines and Cosines—the two main types of Thelicosan attack craft—were being worked on by maintainers next to an array of shuttles and smaller cargo ships.
At least, that was what he assumed he was looking at. The whole scene went by in a fraction of a second, which really only reeducated Rogers as to exactly how fast they were going.
“Are we almost there?” he asked.
Xan didn’t answer. Their little tube space was starting to feel a bit cold. But then again, he was pretty sure they’d just passed through a giant refrigeration unit used to store some of the ship’s food. He thought he saw a really, really big cake.
A few more strange ins and outs—why build a transportation system that went through a giant refrigerator?—later, Rogers felt the Chariot start to decelerate. Thankfully he was holding on this time, so he wasn’t catapulted into the door. The circular opening parted, allowing them access to what Rogers assumed was the Limiter’s equivalent of the command deck. A spacious hallway, com
pletely empty of other troops, held several doors and a narrow corridor that led off to some other part of the ship he couldn’t see. How did the troops who didn’t have access to Chariots get around?
Before he could rationalize and organize all the thoughts he was having, which included marriage, poison, food, food, and food, he was standing in front of a large door with Keffoule’s nameplate on it.
“So, um,” Rogers said. “This is it, huh?”
Xan ignored him and pressed a button on the panel. After a moment, the cool, composed voice of Keffoule echoed through the speaker.
“You may come in,” she said simply.
The door opened on its own, revealing only a small slice of Keffoule’s room before Xan brushed swiftly past Rogers and blocked his view. Taking a deep breath, Rogers wondered if he was really, actually hungry enough for this.
Then the smell of meat and grilled asparagus wafted, atop a delicate cloud of butter, out of the door and into his nose. And before he knew it, he was inside, the door closing behind him. Did it slam? Did that slam dramatically echo with a sense of finality and ominousness? He would have argued that it did.
Confidence, he said to himself. You’re an acting admiral, not some awkward primary school idiot.
And then, suddenly, for reasons he couldn’t quite understand, he was angry. Angry at himself for not being able to get the 331st out of this situation without a war. Angry at Keffoule for engaging him in this strange and more than a little scary marriage ritual. Angry at the Viking for insulting the size of his tactics. Angry at Tunger because it was sort of a default setting.
Here he was, kicked in the face, goaded into having dinner with the enemy, and now he’d come all the way up here only to be poisoned by a narcissistic seductress who either wanted to marry him or kill him or maybe both.
So it was a rare moment when R. Wilson Rogers actually strutted into the room, ignoring his surroundings, and fixed his eyes on the Grand Marshal.