* * * *
The city still lay in darkness. Standing at the window of Cab Barrett's apartment, and looking out over a MinTar she'd never seen before—one with no more light than the stars could shed—Maddy realized that she was shivering. Before she could make up her mind to step away, into the blackness of an unfamiliar room, she felt something warm being hung over her shoulders. “Central heating doesn't operate without power,” Barrett said, as matter-of-factly as if she'd been remarking on the weather outside. “And it's been long enough now for us to start feeling it. There'll be frost before daybreak, I think. The latest one I can remember here, and I've lived my whole life in MinTar."
“How long has it been out? The power, I mean?” The girl thankfully clasped the blanket, and wrapped herself inside it.
“Too long.” Which was probably Cab's way of saying that she didn't know, either. “Would you like to lie down, Maddy? Or sit down, at least?"
“I'll sit right here.” No, she didn't want to move away from the window. Maddy sank down on the carpet, tucked her legs beneath her body, and huddled into the blanket's shelter. After a moment Barrett sat down beside her, and threw a second blanket over them both. And after that, without realizing it was happening, the woman and the girl both fell asleep.
Maddy woke to the peculiar hiss of the window's transparent but absolutely unbreakable pane being vaporized. She started onto her feet, and tried to pull her companion up with her. She expected the doctor to be heavy, of course. Barrett was a solidly built, mature adult, while Maddy had a skinny adolescent's physique. But Barrett wasn't just heavy. She was immovable!
“Cab? Cab, what's the matter?” Maddy knew that there was a flitter hovering outside the hole that used to be a window. She could see its silhouette against the stars—was it still night, after all this time? But she only glanced toward the nearly silent vehicle, because the body beside her was slumping now and bearing her down. Nearly cutting off her breath, with its dead weight...
Maddy's own breathing stopped, then, for a long and dreadful moment. She put her palm against the woman's chest, and then her fingertips to Barrett's throat. To the spot where a living Human's pulse should be—but nothing moved beneath her touch.
Hands, big hands, gripped her by the upper arms. They pulled her up, and out from under Barrett, and away. Not gently, but not with deliberate brutality, either.
She didn't fight back. She had no idea who the flitter's occupants were, or where they were taking her, or why. But with this most recent loss, she felt pushed beyond caring.
* * * *
Aurelia Paré had forty-six years’ worth of experience in diplomatic service. This posting to Narsai, though, was her first as a full-fledged ambassador. Until now she'd believed that the Benedon fleet's arrival had turned things around completely, converting the debacle of the past six months into triumph. But all that changed with a frantic call from a ship in orbit, not far into what had promised to be another boring evening at this embassy which (for obvious reasons) wasn't hosting the normal succession of after-hours social functions.
A civilian ship's captain, not one of the C.O.'s of the Benedon battle group, asking (demanding, pleading!) to be put through to Paré herself, in such forceful and desperate terms that the subordinate taking the call attempted to do that; and Paré, who truly had nothing better to do just then, accepted. Thank goodness.
All the ships in Narsai's skies were civilian ones, now. And those (like the one belonging to the captain who'd raised the alarm) that hailed from Inner World ports were hanging in their orbits on high alert, ready to make for open space and safety on the briefest possible notice—because who knew what might happen next? In light of dreadful news from elsewhere which Narsai Control had been stopping (per Aurelia Paré's orders) before it could reach the planet's citizens; but which the ships could, and did, access directly?
I'm here on this damned Outworld—never mind that it was actually colonized not long after New Orient, it's still an Outworld!—without backup, now. And from the sound of things back home, no one's going to send help no matter how loud I yell for it. The whole damn galaxy's turned inside out, and upside down to boot; and I'm on my own. Heaven knows for how long. So I've got two choices. Try to keep the upper hand—or throw open the gates, tell my Marines to put down their arms, and ask the locals for mercy.
Now, that's a no-brainer if ever I've heard of one!
So Paré's thoughts went, after she finished that call and verified what the terrified Terran-registered freighter captain told her. And small for the job now facing them though her ground forces were, she put them to work immediately. Moving to secure her hold on Narsai—starting by shutting down the planet's power delivery grid. That way her people could do what needed doing without interference.
First order of business: Get rid of every known member of the so-called militia. Including both those who'd had sense enough to collaborate by coming out in support of Farren Kourdakov's governorship, and those who had not. Anybody who'd had military training, Aurelia Paré wanted gone; because loyalties that had already changed once could shift again, just as easily.
Second order of business: Since she supposed she'd have to go on working through that beardless twit, Kourdakov, Paré ordered her best people to go out into MinTar and to other locations on Narsai, and bring back the young governor's nearest relatives. All of them. Which wasn't many, actually, with former Fleet Admiral Romanova gone off to exile on Mistworld, and with Narsai's draconian population control keeping even its most powerful families’ numbers in check.
She had the list of them memorized, because it was so short and because getting custody of every person on it was so important. Ivan Romanov. Lorena Romanova, his wife. Tena Romanova, Ivan and Lorena's daughter. Kyle Kourdakov, Tena's husband. Madeleine Romanova. Who were, respectively, young Farren's grandparents, parents, and ... fiancée? Or wife? Paré found Narsatian marriage customs puzzling, yet not sufficiently interesting to make her pay close attention to them. (Or maybe she was just too disgusted by them, actually. Girls Madeleine's age simply had no business in consummated relationships, and that was that! Local mores be damned!)
Anyway, here was the first arrival of those five. Madeleine herself, Narsai's youngest Council member (another utterly ridiculous custom!), stood at the door to the Ambassador's office. The Marine escorting her, hand still on the girl's shoulder, spoke brusquely. “Ma'am, you wanted to debrief each detainee on arrival. Didn't you?"
“Yes. I did give that order. Ms. Romanova, come in and have a seat.” Paré gestured not toward a guest chair, but (as the girl's disheveled clothing, ghost-pale face, and vacant brown eyes registered with her) toward a wide and comfortable sofa instead. “Sergeant, would you please ask the kitchen to send up a tray with refreshments for two? Native foods, a light supper. Or maybe it's actually time for an early breakfast by now. Cook's discretion, I think."
“Ma'am.” The Marine nodded, although surely he wasn't accustomed to being given that sort of order, and went away. After he'd gently but firmly pushed the girl into the room.
Madeleine Romanova stood where she was, and stared at the Ambassador. After a moment, Paré (who had already risen from the desk and come round it) simply went up to her, took her by the arm, and guided her to the sofa. Thinking as she did it that the girl was obviously not just frightened, but in shock.
“What happened to you?” Paré asked, as soon as she'd pressed the child down on the cushions and seated herself to one side.
“Since starting when?” Young Madeleine found her voice (a low-pitched, not at all girlish one) without further coaxing. “Yesterday afternoon I was getting ready to go to MinTar Medical with my grandparents, because the Council was going to meet and replace Granfer in its senior chair. Two turncoat militia-women showed up at our door and killed them both. My grandfather, and my grandmother. Later that night, after I'd been to my first Council meeting—to take over my grandfather's seat, since you sent my Mum into exile and sh
e's not here to hold it—my cousin protected me when my betrothed husband tried to force me into doing something I wasn't ready to do yet. Then the power went out, and stayed out, after my cousin took me home with her. And I fell asleep by the window, waiting for morning to come, and woke up to find my cousin dead beside me and some Marines in a flitter grabbing me to bring me here."
“All that, in less than a day's time?” Paré shook her gray head, and felt an unaccustomed pang of guilt. She'd borne two daughters, long ago; and one of these days, after this assignment for sure, she really would make time to go to each of her girls’ homes and get acquainted with her grandchildren before those kids started having families of their own. She had a granddaughter, named for her in fact, who must now be just about Madeleine Romanova's age. It really was too bad, to put a thirteen-year-old through so much.
But dammit all, that was the Narsatians’ own fault! Not that of Aurelia Paré, or of the Terran government she represented.
“Yes. And before that, someone kidnapped me to keep me from leaving for Mistworld with my mother and her husband.” The youngster was alert enough to censor what she said, Paré suspected, in spite of her emotionally battered state. She hadn't, for instance, mentioned hearing from young Kourdakov about the departure of the Benedon battle group—or maybe that hardly seemed important to her right now?
If not, the Ambassador couldn't blame the kid for feeling that way. “I'm sorry,” she told young Madeleine, in a tone that she hoped sounded both gentle and motherly. “We meant for you to go away with Admiral Romanova and Mr. Casey, you know. That would have been a great deal better for everyone."
“A retired officer's addressed and referred to by the last rank he held. Why do you people always call my stepfather ‘Mister’ Casey, when you must know it ought to be ‘Captain'?” Now the kid didn't sound numb anymore. She sounded peevish, instead. But anger was a typical coping mechanism, for someone overwhelmed by loss—recent or anticipated. As well as for any Human similarly exhausted, frightened, and uprooted from all that was normal and familiar.
No, this wasn't the time to remind her that Lincoln Casey—as a Morthan hybrid—could no longer hold status of any sort in the Commonwealth's military. Not even earned retirement status, although so far the Diet hadn't cut off such men's pension benefits. (Morthan hybrids living off Mortha were almost always male. And for those in military service, the male to female ratio was a simple 100 to zero.) Paré ignored the question, and didn't mind that the requested tray arrived just then. Much faster than she had thought it would, but the kitchen would be operational for breakfast preparations by now, anyway. The Ambassador's office had no windows (it was too well protected inside the Embassy for that), but a glance at her chrono told Paré that dawn must soon reach this longitude.
She would let the girl get some nourishment into her before she put her together with that pup of a “betrothed husband.” Perhaps the Ambassador should even get her own doctor to administer a mild sedative, and allow Madeleine Romanova a few hours of rest. In a sense, bringing the young couple before their worlds’ citizens as both the Commonwealth's appointed rulers and as what they'd been born—landed members of the local aristocracy, who naturally possessed the right to exercise such power—was urgent. But Paré knew that if she tried to do it with half of the pair (the stronger and smarter half at that, she realized now that she'd met the girl!) dazed, exhausted, and too grief-stricken to function without lashing out at whatever happened to irritate her, Terra's representative on Narsai might get an exactly opposite result from the one that she needed to achieve.
* * *
Chapter 20
“There's no reason why you must stay here now. Mortha's going to be fine on its own, with no more threats from the blasted Commies to think about. There's no way in the universe we can thank you properly for driving the last of them away, but at least we can avoid holding you here when we know you want to get back to your home.” Mortha's matriarch made that informal yet dignified speech to the crew (corporeal and noncorporeal alike) of the SHIP that had lifted, now, into her planet's skies. She stood on its bridge, speaking face to face with its captain (a Mistworld Human whose body housed the essence of a young woman who'd “died,” physically speaking, in the same battle that claimed the bodies of the three Fralick brothers); but its comm system carried her words to everyone else's ears.
“You're welcome, ma'am. One of your people helped us fourteen years ago, when we needed it most desperately,” answered the young female captain. “All of us, you realize. Human Mistworlders, and the rest as well. And six months ago when we asked for assistance again, for ourselves and for the other Outworlds, you helped once more. At the risk of exactly what happened, when the Commonwealth found out and decided it didn't want competition for resources it was pouring into creating more and more gen labor."
Randall Kane, listening with the others on the bridge (where he'd already been assigned a post), wondered briefly if his new commanding officer realized that he truly was a gen as well. She didn't seem to him, on their admittedly brief acquaintance, like the sort who would deliberately say something against another's origins—especially not in that other person's presence. Unlike his former Star Service colleagues and friends, this woman did know what he was—or at least, she'd been told. But he thought, as he considered her words now, that she quite likely hadn't internalized the truth about him yet. That she simply couldn't think of him, standing there without a visible gen-mark on his forehead and with skills equal to her own (or maybe better, since his military training and experience were of far more recent vintage), as having the same origin as “trogs” who dug in the mines of those Inner Worlds that still had ores to exploit. The same origin as “tars” who manned the larger Star Service vessels’ lower decks, or any of the other gens who performed boring, dangerous, and thankless tasks on which Commonwealth citizens didn't want to waste (and risk) their lives.
He'd been the next step. Both he, and his predecessor Rachel, had blazed the trail for a new class of gens, endowed with the personality traits and intellectual abilities that made a person capable of exercising command authority. Which should, eventually, have freed wildling Humans entirely from the perils that military service entailed—but both Kanes had turned out to be spectacular failures. Randall hadn't rebelled and run away on his own initiative, like Rachel; but the minute he found himself free was the last time he'd looked back at his old life.
He would go to Mistworld now, and live there among other freed gens. He would leave behind him a Mortha struggling to absorb the tremendous influx of deported Commonwealth medics—but at least the Morthans could do so, now, without interference from the shattered Commonwealth, or threats from an almost defunct Star Service. Yes, he thought their matriarch was speaking today from her heart, and not just from her hopes.
She ‘ported down to the surface. Randall Kane took his station, and the SHIP got underway. An hour out from Mortha, it “transitioned.” That word in Standard came closest to describing what actually happened when every telepath on board combined energies to fling the SHIP across space, or perhaps to bend back the cosmos and let the SHIP move from one fold to the other before the universe returned to its normal configuration. Their young captain, guided by the somewhat older spirit co-resident with her own consciousness, brought them to the coordinates of the star system that was their destination.
And found the Mistworld system gone.
* * * *
“I'm trying to remember the last time Ewan called me ‘Mother’ instead of ‘Mum.’ I guess that should have been my clue, this morning, that he wasn't happy about what I was asking him to do. But he's never been the sort of boy—or man—who sidesteps what's difficult, and avoids having to face it. Did I push him too hard, Linc? Is that why he and his brothers took off the way they did?” She didn't want to talk about this in front of their hosts, familiar though Nah Trang and Fort surely were with Ishi who was Nadja's son. Urgently though she still wanted to find out
Maddy's status, now that the Star Service battle group had left Narsai (following the most disastrous mutiny in Human military history), her sons’ reaction to her near-demand for Mistworld help had made her reconsider both her approach and her timing. Not to mention reminding her that she had four children again, not just one—and that Maddy was undoubtedly quite safe, in the experienced care of Katy's own mum and dad.
“Katy, I think you need to talk to other Humans who've had to deal with this ‘hosting’ business. I know you don't want to do that, because of the way it might be misperceived. But I don't see how else you'll ever find out what you need to know.” They were walking on the headland together, near where the flitter had landed on the day they arrived, and the sun was sinking just as it had then. Soon, of course, they must make plans to move out of Nadja and Astin's home. Perhaps they would go to a different settlement entirely, as they took up permanent residence on Mistworld. As they found work to do day after day, month after month, year after year. As they made a life on this planet, together ... a life that Katy had been certain, when she came here, she could avoid.
This was temporary. She would soon go home to Narsai, and if she had to stay here longer than anticipated she would find a way to bring Maddy to join her. She'd believed that with all her soul, and hadn't allowed herself to doubt it—until today.
They'd been walking side by side without touching. That was rare, when they were together in a setting like this one. But for once she hadn't wanted to be in physical contact with her partner, and no one had to tell him when that was the case. Now, as she made up her mind about certain matters, she put out her hand for his clasp. “I need to know a lot of things!” she said, with a sigh that hurt her chest. “I thought by the time we got to be this old, Linc, we'd be so wise that I'd never have to feel this way again. But it never gets easier, does it? After all."
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