Here Be Dragons

by Alan, Craig

  “Yes.”

  “You said you never wanted to hurt me.”

  “No.”

  “Answer honestly. If you had to do it all again, would you?”

  Anne pulled back to look her in the eye. For a moment, Elena thought that more tears would spill. But it was a brief moment.

  “Yes. I would.”

  Elena leaned forward and kissed Anne again on both cheeks, lingering with her lips against cool skin. She whispered into Anne’s ear.

  “Go back to your ship. I’ll lie for you, but I won’t wait for you. Not anymore.”

  Anne pulled back, and their bodies peeled away from each other. They had to grab at the rail and reel themselves in.

  “What if I had said no?”

  Elena didn’t answer. Instead she held out her hand once more, and this time Anne shook it. When the ritual was over and professionalism had been satisfied, Anne kissed Elena one last time. Elena’s hands went to Anne’s cheek and neck and buried themselves in her hair, and she could feel a hand held to her beating heart.

  “I love you,” Anne said.

  It was not until Elena said it that she knew it to be true.

  “I love you, too. Goodbye.”

  They left the lights off, and Rabin Weizmann in his place of honor. He had earned it.

  Outward Bound

  Six months earlier

  Elena was a hero.

  She found that she had suddenly become the second most famous person in the solar system. She couldn’t log onto the globenet without seeing her own face plastered on every channel, her name on every tongue. Her officers smiled and applauded everywhere she went that first day, and hands clapped her back constantly. Glenn’s skeleton crew, most of which had known her only briefly, had queued up to shake her hand. She refused enough drinks to float Gabriel. Elena made the mistake of signing one autograph, after thinking that the man was joking, and suddenly found herself besieged by more requests.

  They were all so proud of her—and seemingly, her alone. There had been forty four other people on Gabriel that day, including three that had been on the bridge with her, and she couldn’t have done anything without them. But the crew—and public at large, from what she could tell by her brief and bemused forays online—seemed only vaguely aware of this. As far as they were concerned, she had vanquished the traitors in single combat.

  No one loved a drone. Nor did they love the drone wranglers, the anonymous operators who sent them into battle. The drone was too cold, too sterile, and too distant to arouse the passions. You couldn’t shake its hand. It couldn’t give you its autograph. But this battle had been fought just above their heads. A hostage situation, with a gun pointed to the head of everything in Earth orbit. Not only that, but some damned fool had leaked the claim of a nuclear threat to the press. It could have been aimed anywhere, and at any one. Rumors spread in every city in the Global Union that they had been the target, and half the planet was convinced that Elena had personally saved them from annihilation.

  Not one of the news stories mentioned Hyperion-1.

  There had been no question of continuing with the trial cruise, and Gabriel had returned to Glenn Station, where a confused and irate Chief Officer Erdogan had refused to let them dock. He had only relented when Solstice Station explained to him the situation, and it was when he heard Elena’s side of the story that his face took on the expression of naked admiration that she would come to know so well in the next few days. She had been forced to endure the well wishes of not only Glenn’s staff, but also her own crew, most of whom were seeing her for the first time since the crisis had began.

  Hours later, after she had successfully parried the last offer of a drink—her unwanted companion from Election Night had reappeared, more ardent than ever—Elena had retired to her stateroom and, warily, checked her messages. Her inbox, unmanageable at most times, had simply exploded. Someone had leaked her private address, and she was stunned to see that 10,031 new messages had appeared since she had last checked it, six hours before.

  Elena searched for one, and only one.

  People, strangers, have been bombarding me with questions all day. At work, during lunch, on the street. They even came to my door. I thought it was a mistake, and then a joke. I could not believe they wanted to speak to me. I suddenly remembered what it was like, during the bad times, when the vultures had circled all around us. You remember those days, I am sure. But this is different, for this time I am not ashamed. I will die before I deny that you are my daughter, even to escape their relentless stalking. I don’t understand what happened today. I know only that if you did it, then it was the right thing to do. I am as proud of you as I have ever been. If you need me, I’m on the next plane. With all my love, Mama.

  Her mother had not gone anywhere near Earth in fifteen years. Elena held her bracelet to her heart and crawled into her hammock to finally sleep.

  Vijay rang her doorbell that night. She pretended not to hear it.

  The first thing Elena did the next morning was request a new comm account. Her old one would undoubtedly be turned over to investigators, and the flooded inbox would be their problem, not hers. She resolved to hold this new account close to the chest.

  Elena began to write her statement. There would be no need to report for duty, not today. Gabriel wasn’t going anywhere, and a ship in drydock hardly needed to be fully manned. A single duty officer on the bridge was all she needed. Elena wished that she had at least sketched her impression the day before. The three other members of the bridge staff were required to write on the Victory incident—her mind refused to call it a battle—as well, and more of the crew might be ordered to do so later. Significant discrepancies would lead to trouble, but she would never coach any of her own people.

  When Elena was done she filed the report, and chanced the globenet once more. The first hectic day of reporting had ended, and the basic facts were well known. The Global Union’s journalists were searching for color, and more and more of their articles contained the words “Ernesto Gonzales.” The contrast must have made for good drama. Elena shut the monitor down without reading past her father’s name, laid still in her hammock, and waited.

  The first visitors to arrive at Glenn Station that day were from the Office of Special Investigations. Elena had not been informed in advance, and she doubted that this had been an oversight. The agents were the first people she had met in twenty four hours who were not in the least bit impressed by her. They asked to speak to her, privately, in Chief Officer Erdogan’s office, which had once been her own. They pointedly did not mention her stateroom aboard Gabriel.

  That depends, she said. On whether you will be speaking to me, or with me. She technically outranked them both.

  With you, they assured her. That was a miscommunication.

  Should I bring a lawyer, she asked. The Judge Advocate General could have one here in a few hours.

  If you have done nothing wrong, they said, then you do not need a lawyer. We are only talking.

  That was not a yes or a no.

  It is what it is.

  Am I under arrest?

  Absolutely not, they said.

  They assembled in Chief Officer Erdogan’s office. Elena immediately took the seat behind the desk, and waved them to the chairs in front of it. Erdogan excused himself nervously and closed the door.

  They questioned her for eight hours. After two, Elena realized that they were waiting for her to break.

  They asked about Victory. They asked about Phobos. They probed her political opinions. They examined her travel schedule. They needled her about her love life. They criticized her crew. She never broke, never snapped, never lost her temper or her patience. She listened and spoke for eight hours, and never asked for a glass of water until they did first.

  After eight hours they brought the hammer down.

  I didn�
��t realize until today that you were that Gonzales.

  Elena stood.

  We’re done here.

  But we’re still talking, they said.

  You can talk, she said. I’m leaving.

  We can’t stop you, they said. But we can go over your head. The Director will order you to submit for questioning if necessary. And if we have to do that, round two won’t be nearly as fun.

  Elena stopped and turned at the door.

  See you then.

  She left. Elena walked back to Gabriel, and for the second time in two nights collapsed into bed, exhausted. She fell deeply asleep before it occurred to her to check her messages.

  That night, the doorbell did not ring.

  She awoke the next morning to find that the OSI agents had disappeared. Erdogan had no idea why or where they had gone. They had left in the night without telling a soul. Elena was insulted that they hadn’t the courtesy to face her again, and she wondered why they had come at all. She had all the proof she’d needed that she’d obeyed a lawful order, and even the appropriation of the Transcom satellite could be excused under both Global law and Agency regulation. The investigators had seemed more interested in who she was than what she had done.

  Elena could tell that her own people were growing restless. Gabriel had been grounded pending the investigation, and was now back in its dock and hooked up to the station’s systems. There was plenty work aboard ship when it was under construction, out to space, or being refitted, but this was none of the above. The crew manned their posts for each shift, but there was nothing to be done. They wondered what was going on, how long they’d be here, and why the chief wasn’t reporting for duty.

  With her ship grounded, Elena was too. Every other member of the crew was also a member of a department—bridge, deck, engine, medical, and steward. But she was the commander, provisionally, for one flight only, and that flight had been canceled. Elena was, in Space Agency euphemism, “awaiting orders.” Until she was officially given a new assignment, she was in limbo.

  Technically she was no longer entitled to the use of her own stateroom, but no one aboard Gabriel or Glenn would have said such a thing to her. Elena did not dare her leave the cabin, which would have forced her to look at the ship and the crew that were hers no longer. She stayed in her hammock, reading shift reports that had been dutifully and pointlessly filed, feeling hemmed in by the bare walls. She had not even removed her spacesuit, as if to do so would be to admit what she had lost.

  During the first day Elena had assumed that new orders would arrive as matter of course. During the second day she had begun to worry that they would not. During the third day she did not worry at all, and slept.

  She was awoken the next morning by the intercom. It ordered her to report to Erdogan’s office on Glenn Station, immediately.

  Elena acknowledged, and rolled slowly from her hammock. She had known for weeks that this would be coming, but not so soon. She wondered idly what charges they’d managed to cook up, and whether it had already been leaked to the press. She didn’t want her mother to find out that way.

  The deck was quiet when she finally left the stateroom, for the first time in forty eight hours. Elena made her way through the airlock and descended the ladder into the station without glimpsing another soul. She noted dispassionately that her coriolis induced vertigo had disappeared.

  Elena opened the door to the station, and found the entire crew of GSA-1138 Gabriel and Glenn Station standing at attention in the curved gallery before her. At the front and center of the procession were Vijay and Erdogan. They were in full dress uniform, and as they approached her Elena saw that Vijay’s sleeves no longer bore only two stripes, the insignia of a Second Officer. Now he had three, like she and Erdogan.

  Erdogan explained that, since she was officially awaiting assignment at the station, the notice had been sent to Glenn instead of Gabriel. And that Vijay had insisted that protocol demand she report to them and not the other way around. And that somebody—not saying who—had gone ahead and told the whole damned crew.

  Vijay stepped forward, smiling, and removed the three stripe insignia from the ribbed sleeves of her spacesuit. He replaced them with two silver stars, one for each of her arms. Then he swept Captain Elena Gonzales into a hug as her crew cheered.

  It was hard to believe that she had last visited Port Avramovich only a few weeks before. The station had looked very different to her then. Of course, she had looked very different then too. She had been in civilian clothes, one tourist among many. Now she was in uniform, and a celebrity. She was a hero.

  Everywhere she went strangers approached to shake her hand, until it was red and swollen. Those that didn’t want her hand wanted her picture, and she was constantly greeted by the sight of people holding up their arms so that the cameras built into their bracelets could snap her photo. She was forced to smile so often that her jaw ached. It got to be where Vijay was less her executive officer than her bodyguard. A contingent of civilian Port Av security guards had been offered to them as an escort from one plane to the next, but, being proud officers of the Space Agency, they had refused. That had been stupid.

  Port Avramovich was so large that the wall of the centrifuge was almost flat, and it spun so quickly that she could almost run. They somehow managed to fight their way from their ferry on one side of the station to the shuttle on the other side, two kilometers away. Whose idea it had been to assign their plane to the opposite gate, she had no idea. The ticket agent quickly waved them aboard with only a cursory check. Elena and Vijay would be the only two passengers on this hop. The crowd of onlookers swarmed in behind them and washed against the security checkpoint.

  The last thing Elena heard before the doors closed was a strange man proclaiming his love for her.

  Solstice Station, however, was just as she remembered it.

  She didn’t see much, which was somewhat of a relief. Three kinds of people found themselves assigned to headquarters. There were Flag Officers posted here as a matter of right, staff officers who had fought to be posted here because they hoped to one day be Flag Officers themselves, and line officers who had fought to be posted here so that they wouldn’t have to serve aboard ship. Elena had not been any of the three, and they’d known it.

  Solstice was the same basic design as Port Avramovich, a colossal barrel which floated at Earth’s libration point beyond the Moon. Elena tasted acid in her mouth as the plane went in for approach, and had to ask for a pouch of water to wash it out. She was whisked from the terminal and through the main concourse by two brisk, cheery officers from Public Affairs. Elena hadn’t spoke to Public Affairs on official business in fifteen years, and the previous experience had not been a happy one. She ignored their busy, shallow chatter as much as possible. If Vijay had not been there to run interference, she may very well have strangled them just to shut them up.

  They took her to something called a green room, a deeply confusing name as it was actually painted a pale blue. There were leather chairs and couches, a table laden with fruit and bottles of water, and a long counter fronted by canvas backed chairs and topped with a row of mirrors.

  One wall had been decorated with an enormous photo of the final signing of the Treaty of Jerusalem. The other was lined with computer screens crawling the most popular news channels. A retrospective from the Nile on political violence within the Global Union helpfully informed her that this had been the most dangerous terrorist attack since the Union Day bombings of 2137, when a pro-independent group back home had attacked the Concordia building in the capital and killed over five hundred people.

  Public Affairs steered Elena past the inviting leather chairs and sat her down in front of one of the mirrors. A makeup artist approached and came perilously close to having his arm broken when he tried to apply foundation to her face. Across the room, Vijay smiled and shook his head, and Elena allowed the makeup man
to continue. Public Affairs babbled in her ear all the while.

  Someone was shouting two minutes. Public Affairs badgered Elena to her feet and took her to a door opposite the one she’d come in through. She stood by the edge of the stage and refused to look past the curtain. She could barely breathe, and could see herself fainting the moment she stepped into sight. There was a wave of applause from outside the room, and then Vijay was at her side, his hand on her shoulder. She didn’t want to leave. Her face was frozen.

  He gave her a small kiss on her cheek, and that got her to smile.

  She walked out onto the stage, and the applause grew to a roar. Elena glanced the audience and saw that it was filled with press, officers, and politicians. Last week none of them had known her name, if she was lucky, but now they were standing and cheering. The clamor was so loud that it ran together into a dull rumble that vibrated in her ears. The stage itself held more Flag Officers and Deputy Directors than Elena had seen in the flesh in her entire career.

  The Director of the Global Space Agency was the only person there who looked like he wanted to be someplace else more than Elena. She shook his hand and took a seat as he walked to the podium. He began to orate, but Elena listened only to the thundering of the blood in her ears.

  The speech was over before she had heard a word, and suddenly it was quiet. Everyone was looking at her. Elena stood as tall as she could get, shoulders squared, and strode to the podium. The Director, smiling through his teeth, opened a velvet-lined mahogany box, took the medal from it, and pinned a silver circle above a golden ribbon to her dark blue jacket. It was official. Elena Gonzales Estrella was a Hero of Earth.

  This time she couldn’t shut the noise out.

  She sat in the green room a little more than an hour later, holding her wounded right hand by the wrist. Vijay stood guard by the door to the stage in case any well wishers tried to get in a final word. Most of the men out there, and some of the women, could have fit both of her hands in one of theirs, but that hadn’t stopped them clamping down on it as if they had been dangling from the side of a cliff. Vijay had brought her a bowl of ice and a towel as the Public Affairs officers hovered excitedly and uselessly. She sank into it with a sigh, and closed her eyes.