by J. E. Gurley
Lyton was waiting for him in the galley. He confronted Ulrich as soon as Ulrich walked in.
“What now?” Lyton burst out. Ulrich could see how agitated the man was and decided to show some restraint.
“What do you mean?” he asked calmly.
“You know what I mean,” Lyton snapped, slamming his coffee mug on the table. “Our AI is beyond repair and yet our, our Captain,” he said with disdain, “insists we continue our mission.”
Ulrich sat down across from Lyton. “I thought you were the one who imparted to us the importance of this mission,” he reminded the Professor.
Lyton was tapping his mug on the table absentmindedly. Ulrich reached over and gently placed his hand on Lyton’s wrist. Lyton looked up and smiled weakly.
“I guess you can see I can’t handle alcohol very well. I feel like I’ve been beaten with a big, thick stick. My body rebels and my mind refuses to cooperate.”
“I understand but you’ll continue to drink, I hope.” Ulrich felt sorry for Lyton but only the alcohol in his bloodstream kept the nanites he carried in check.
“What choice do I have?” Lyton glanced around the galley before his gaze came back to rest on Ulrich. “I have to tell you, I’m frightened. I didn’t expect this. I was concerned about the Phyein, but we aren’t even close yet, and we’ve been near death twice. I’m sure Captain Lightsinger is a capable man, but I fear he has fallen into the Dastoran trap.”
“Trap?”
“Yes, you know, Amissa. Part of her design was to find and control a man such as Jazon Lightsinger.”
“You seem to know a great deal about the Dastorans’ plans.”
Lyton shrugged. “They’re not too different from humans, only more technologically advanced. Some of the lower-level cloned servants know a great deal more than anyone would suspect and are more willing to talk than Lord Hromhada believes. They are frightened.”
“I see,” Ulrich said. It seemed Lyton was a great deal more than a simple expert on Meta-Systems Transitions and the Three Principles. “Why did they choose Jazon, and why did they allow me to come along?” This question had been bothering him for a long time.
“Mr. Lightsinger is a hataalii, a Diné Medicine Man, or at least he was training to become one. He doesn’t believe in the Diné mythology anymore, but the Dastorans do.”
“They do?” This surprised Ulrich. Most Dastorans only paid lip service to their own pantheon of Clan gods. Belief in an earth mythology seemed beneath them. “Why?”
“They do because the Phyein do.”
Ulrich shook his head to clear the cobwebs. “The Phyein believe in the Diné mythology?”
Lyton nodded. “That’s why the Phyein asked for him specifically.”
Ulrich was stunned. “What?”
“The Phyein asked for Jazon Lightsinger. No one is certain why, but Lord Hromhada went to a great deal of trouble to locate him.”
That much made sense to Ulrich. “Why me?”
“Two reasons – one, you are his close companion and seem able to keep him in line, and two, you are acquainted with the Three Principles. You believe in this mission, probably more than anyone. Your belief is essential.”
“What about you?”
Lyton looked down at the table and shrugged. “I once believed. Now, I’m just a walking doomsday device designed to assure the Phyein don’t supplant humanity.”
Ulrich could see the depth of despondency in Lyton’s eyes. To a man who helped develop the very science that discovered the Phyein, being the agent of their possible destruction was almost more than Lyton could bear. The sedative effect of the constant alcohol bombardment that the professor was enduring was making him extremely melancholy. Ulrich wondered if Lyton could carry out his mission if required. Ulrich didn’t envy him his task.
“Lyton, we all do what we must. Perhaps these Phyein will not be the horrible monsters you think. Maybe they are exactly the allies we need to defeat the Cha’aita.”
Lyton smiled. “Do you notice the difference between the various kinds of lettuce in your salad as you’re eating?” He shook his head as he smiled. “Do you think a race such as the Phyein can distinguish such differences between the organic races?”
Ulrich shrugged. “You said they asked for Jazon. That must mean something.”
Lyton yawned. “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps I need more sleep. I have found it difficult to dream as of late.” He looked at Ulrich with a pained expression. “What do you think it means when a man no longer has dreams?”
Before Ulrich could consider an answer, Lyton stood up and walked to the door. “I will leave you to your thoughts.”
Ulrich watched the professor as he shuffled out the door, back bowed as if carrying a heavy burden, which he was. Ulrich surveyed the items in the cold-storage pantry, mentally listing the Earth foods he had missed over the past few years, but none of them called to him with the eagerness he had hoped. His appetite, normally the best part of him, had deserted him during his conversation with Lyton.
“Damn the man,” Ulrich cursed as he slammed the door to the cooler. He sat down with a glass of hot, Fallusian tea, slowly sipping the anise-flavored beverage as he tallied the pros and cons of the mission, dismayed that the cons list was so much longer.
Ulrich knew he could never get Jazon to turn back, even if he was certain doing so would be the best course of action. Once Jazon had the bit between his teeth, all he could do was run. ‘Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes’ seemed to be his motto when cornered. They were surrounded by enemies, both on the ship and outside in the depths of space.
If what M’Kat had said were true, the Trilock would not allow Occam’s Razor to pass through their territory without stripping it down bolt by bolt until they understood the Dastoran technology behind it. They were now in the fringes of Trilock space. Without the ability to make an Interstitial Skip, they were sitting ducks. No wonder Jazon had locked himself on the bridge.
14
“Hyperion’s curls; the font of Jove himself; an eye like Mars, to threaten and command”
Hamlet Act III William Shakespeare
“What do you mean ‘go back’?” Lyton shouted when Jazon told him of his decision to return to Pralax, scene of the recent disastrous battle.
“We have no choice. We can’t continue in our present condition. The Skip engines are underpowered. Life support is only eighty-five percent. At some point, it will fail. We need crystal power relays and replacement stabilizer nodes. We should be able to find replacements at Pralax in the derelict ships.”
“But what if the Cha’aita ships are still there?”
Jazon scratched his head. “I doubt that they will be. The battle is long over. If we can find spare parts on one of the derelict ships, we should be able to make repairs.”
Lyton shook his head in denial. “I don’t like this robbing the graves of the dead. It’s unholy. Besides, most of the ships were vaporized.”
“We’re not picking their pockets, Lyton,” Jazon returned. “We’re salvaging spare parts from disabled ships. Even when a ship goes plasma, some pieces break away.”
“The dead are restless.”
“The dead are dead. They’ve done their bit and left this world. We have a mission,” Jazon shot at him, tired of Lyton’s reluctance. “We have no choice.”
He didn’t consider revealing to Lyton of his own long buried Diné beliefs, surfacing unbidden, as he considered his next actions. To the Diné, a person’s ghost, or chindi, haunts the place in which it died. The chindi was the evil part of a person. Diné will leave a house empty in which a person dies.
Lyton sighed. “How long will it take?”
“At this speed? I estimate four hours to reach our destination, and then three or four hours to salvage the parts that we need and install them. After that, we’re on our way. With engines at one hundred percent, we can Skip to a point that would take us twice as long to reach at this snail’s pace. That will make up for an
y time we lose by going back.”
Lyton nodded. “This time distortion confuses me. It’s just that … I don’t know how much longer I can continue to drink. I didn’t anticipate how I would react to consuming alcohol.”
Jazon, too, was concerned with the metal–eating nanites coursing through Lyton’s blood. “Can you deactivate them some way?”
“Yes, but it will destroy them in the process. It’s the only weapon we have.”
“I see. Well, I’ll try to speed things up as much as possible. If Amissa …” He left the rest unsaid.
Reading his concern, Lyton tried to reassure Jazon. “She is stable. I’ve done all I can do for her.”
Jazon said softly, more to himself than Lyton. “If only we had a functioning AI, we could probably reach the Claw Nebula with the Skip engines we have, but we don’t.” They had him and he wasn’t an AI.
Lyton turned to leave. When he reached the door, he stopped and added. “She’s still alive. There’s always hope.”
“Yeah, hope.” He didn’t add that hope was the last bastion of fools. They were a on a ship of fools, and all the hope in the universe wouldn’t change that one iota. Fools on a fool’s errand.
Jazon didn’t bother to inform any of the others of his decision to return to Pralax. It was his decision to make and his responsibility to bear, right or wrong. He couldn’t abandon the mission. That would mean abandoning Amissa. Twice, while connected to the ship through the neuro-link, he had thought he felt her presence, as if she were watching from somewhere in the distance but unable to communicate. He had called out to her but received no reply. If they returned now, he knew Lord Hromhada would order Amissa’s death, and the next clone body resuscitated. This Amissa would be gone, perhaps forever, and with her death, his last chance to be free of her as well. Her ghost would own him just as she did now.
“Captain to crew,” he called out over the comm. “We are returning to Pralax to search for replacement parts for the Skip engines. Out.”
He turned off the comm before the barrage of protests could assault him.
They were in the middle of a Sargasso Sea of wrecked ships, drifting like flotsam and jetsam on the uncertain gravity tides of the massive red sun Pralax. The ruined hulk of one Cha’aita vessel was already feeling the pull of the bloody star, slowly entering the outer fringes of the greedy corona. Swirls of burning incandescent gas licked it as a dog licks a bone, savoring its taste before cracking it for its marrow. Jazon watched with morbid fascination as the remains of the ship melted like butter under the fury of the sun, leaving globules of molten metal drifting like seeds cast to the wind before finally swallowed by the sun’s gravity. Fragments of destroyed ships drifting in small clouds looked like droplets of blood in the eerie glow of the crimson sun.
“It’s almost beautiful,” Ulrich commented. “If you didn’t know people had died here, I mean.”
“I still don’t like it,” Lyton insisted, his face twisted into a frown. “It’s a graveyard.”
Huumba, more direct, pointed to the broken pieces of a Dastoran Thistleship, drifting in a slowly dissipating cloud of gas and ice crystals. “We should be able to find what we seek there.”
Jazon nodded. The Drone, at least, appeared cooperative.
“Methurish and I will go,” Huumba suggested. “We know the Dastoran ships best of any here. Methurish is a ship’s engineer.”
Jazon looked at him, trying to read his intentions. “You wouldn’t want to look for weapons, would you?” he suggested.
The Drone shrugged. “Of what use against your mind control of the autodestruct device would they be? I go because you cannot. Your loss would endanger the mission.”
“I thought you wanted to scrub the mission.”
“My personal desire is no longer of importance. If we can find the parts, we can continue. That is best for all.”
“Okay. You can go, but be careful,” Jazon cautioned.
“You are concerned for me?” Huumba sounded incredulous.
“I may need you on the weapons before we’re through.”
Huumba nodded as if this answer satisfied him. “We will prepare.” He turned and hurried off.
“Are you sure we’re safe here?” Ulrich asked Jazon.
“No.”
Ulrich offered Jazon a startled look.
“We are not far from a Trilock base,” M’Kat suggested. “I could summon help.”
Jazon sneered at the ambassador. “I’d rather blow us all up.”
The Trilock retreated under Jazon’s withering stare.
“I feel rather like a grave robber,” Lyton announced.
Ulrich glanced at Lyton. “More like salvagers, you mean.” He turned to Jazon. “Could there be survivors?”
“It’s unlikely. Without shields, the radiation would fry anyone, and some of those flares are extremely hot.”
Ulrich’s face darkened. “How hot do these flares get?”
Lyton picked up his comp pad. “There are four types of solar flares: C-class, which do very little harm; M-class, which can cause some communications blackouts; and X-class, which can wipe out planetary power grids and satellites.”
Ulrich counted on his fingers. “That’s only three. What class are these?”
“According to the ship’s computer, Z-class, a rather rare occurrence. The temperature inside some of these flares can reach 100 million degrees Kelvin, and, unshielded, the radiation would strip the skin from your bones instantly.”
Ulrich shuddered. “Not a pleasant environment.”
Lyton performed some rapid calculations on a comp pad. “No, it is not. I suggest we leave as soon as possible. These flares are unstable, probably due to all the localized energy discharges during the battle.”
“Not as much energy was released as a sun, surely,” Ulrich countered.
“No, no. Our concern is merely this quarter of the sun’s chromosphere. The release of so much energy pushed the chromospheres inward, creating a gravity dimple on the sun’s surface. Now, it is flowing back, like a tide. The first tendrils will reach the derelicts, and us, in less than two hours.”
“That hastens our timetable a bit,” Jazon muttered. “Huumba,” he called over the comm, “Get moving. Time’s wasting.”
He brought Occam’s Razor as close to the piece of derelict ship as he could safely manage. By extending the shields, he could provide some coverage for Huumba and Methurish as they went about their salvage work. He snagged the fragment with a cable to stabilize the debris’ rotation.
“Many died here,” M’Kat commented to Jazon.
“I don’t see the remains of any Trilock ships,” he said icily.
“As I said, my people do not trust the Dastorans. We will not throw away our ships in a lost cause.”
“A noble cause,” Jazon corrected.
M’Kat sneered. “Noble cause. That is a concept where the lower classes offer their lives for the benefit of the nobility. We are a warrior race. We fight battles we can win.”
“Or run from them.”
M’Kat pointed to the graveyard on the view screen. “Do your dead rest more quietly thinking they died nobly? I see many Alliance ships wasted for no reason other than to confront the enemy in some useless plan gone awry. Your people spend its warriors too cheaply.”
There was truth in M’Kat’s words that Jazon didn’t want to admit. He had been a pawn in such a battle. It had removed any lingering doubts about the infallibility of command he had. He still remembered the faces of the men he had led in battles that, in all probability, meant nothing to the outcome of the war. Yet, if men chose not to oppose tyranny simply because it might mean their lives, then tyranny would win. Freedom to die for a lost cause or in a wasted effort was better than doing nothing and forcing everyone to pay the price for their reluctance to fight.
“Yes, they rest better. They fought as best they could against superior odds. They didn’t run. That’s noble. That’s endurance, and endurance will win th
is war. Giving up is not an option to my people.”
M’Kat shook his head and stalked out of the ready room. Jazon sat back and waited. It was Huumba’s show now.
As Huumba and Methurish clambered aboard the destroyed Dastoran Thistleship by the simple expedient of walking through a hole blasted in a bulkhead, Huumba couldn’t help staring at blood-red Pralax, or Eye of the Beast in Dastoran, staring down at them as if challenging them.
“This section is no good,” Methurish growled, staring at the readouts on his scanner. “It received a high-energy blast. All nodes here are fused.”
Huumba nodded, or tried. The bulky excursion suit made walking difficult, much less showing expressions. The extra shielding was necessary but cumbersome. He was sweating profusely in spite of the loud hum of the suit’s air conditioning system droning in his ears.
“We must continue to the next section, then,” he proposed but didn’t move. His reluctance to move deeper into the destroyed ship concerned him. He wasn’t afraid of the physical dangers that they faced. It was more a feeling of guilt at trespassing on the graves of so many valiant men. The living should not trouble the dead.
Methurish touched his shoulder, prodding him on. As he entered the shadows of the ship, the temperature dropped dramatically to a more comfortable level. There was no sound except vibrations picked up by his magnetic boots. One vibration reverberated in the upper frequencies, almost as if a choir were singing, or a man’s wail.
“What was that?” Methurish asked in concern. He, too, had felt it.
“Unknown,” Huumba answered brusquely. “Continue.”
It took them almost an hour to locate a hull section with intact electronics. Working frantically, careful not to damage the delicate crystals, they managed to salvage almost enough relays and nodes to complete repairs on Occam’s Razor.