The terminal beeped out the first bars of “Happy Birthday” and Tobit roared in triumph. “Yes! It’s going to be my birthday again tomorrow. See, on the screen? Come on, come on, look at it.” He tapped the words on the glass and read, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PHYLAR, YOU OLD SOT. TODAY YOU ARE 41 YEARS OLD AS YEARS ARE MEASURED ON…Hot shit, I’m forty-one on Melaquin! How about that?”
He looked at us proudly, as if he’d done a trick. Jelca frowned. “I’m not familiar with Melaquin, sir.”
“Not familiar with Melaquin? Not familiar with Melaquin! And you call yourself an Explorer! Melaquin is the big one, cadet, the haughty naughty virgin. Discovered fifty years ago and she still has her cherry.” We stared at him blankly. “Jesus Christ!” he bellowed, “she’s unexplored!”
“You mean they’ve never sent Explorers there?”
“Dozens. Every one went Oh Shit within two hours. Or missing, anyway. Permanently out of communication, which is as good as Oh Shit in my book.”
“What’s so dangerous on Melaquin?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it? No one has a clue.”
“If so many Explorers die,” Jelca said, “why do they keep sending new parties there? The High Council can’t be so criminally irresponsible….”
“You don’t know the council,” Tobit replied. “Besides, Melaquin looks perfect for colonization: ocean, forest, grassland…more like Earth than Earth these days. It’s fertile, it’s temperate, the atmosphere’s breathable…. Everything’s lovely, except some mysterious something that’s lethal. Could be microbes, could be plants or animals, could be sentients for all we know. Wouldn’t that be a kick?”
“But surely,” I said, “a significant culture of sentients would be detectable from orbit. Towns, irrigation canals, campfires….”
“Don’t lecture me on exploring, cadet—I teach that crap,” Tobit snapped. “Melaquin breaks the rules, all right? Melaquin breaks all the rules.”
He fell silent as if he had spoken a truth deserving long contemplation. When he began to snore a minute later, Jelca and I tiptoed out.
Melaquin—Yarrun’s Story
“I had a friend in the Academy,” Yarrun said. Several minutes had passed, the medical team had persuaded the admiral to undergo a physical, and Yarrun and I slouched against a bulkhead outside the infirmary. The time was 04:50 and the entire ship seemed deserted.
Yarrun kept his voice low. His face muscles hurt if he went too long without sleep, and he was ashamed when his diction degenerated. “My friend’s name was Plebon. Did you know him? He would have been a freshman when you were a senior.”
I shook my head.
“His face was like mine. Mirror images, we called ourselves, though he was African and I South Slav. We couldn’t help but be close.”
“Of course.”
“When we graduated, he was assigned to the Tamarack, a frigate doing search and rescue in the Dipper Group. Only one Landing in his first year.”
“Easy service.”
“His letters said it was boring…but I think he was grateful. In the middle of his second year, the Tamarack secretly took aboard one Admiral O’Hara—over 140 years old and no longer helped by YouthBoost. Plebon said the man had begun a mental decline.”
“A suspiciously familiar situation,” I commented.
“Plebon and his partner were ordered to take the admiral to Melaquin. They’d heard of the planet’s deadly reputation so they pulled some strings to demand a Mission Justification Statement.”
“And?”
“The Council claimed that a Landing led by someone with an admiral’s experience would have a better chance of success than a normal Explorer party.”
I gaped at him, speechless. An admiral couldn’t possibly contribute to a Landing. Outward Fleet policy manuals claimed that admirals could rise from any branch of the service—but admirals weren’t deformed, were they? I was sure they were all pampered vac-captains like Prope, without the tiniest particle of planet-down experience. A freshman ECM cadet would know more by first midterms than an admiral learned in a lifetime.
Yarrun continued. “A few hours before the Landing on Melaquin, Plebon sent me a message telling me the whole story. He was afraid he wouldn’t come back.”
“Did he?”
“The party went no-comm in less than ten minutes.”
“That’s what ‘expendable’ means.”
It was a phrase we Expendable Crew Members used among ourselves: That’s what “expendable” means. It was better than “I’m sorry to hear that” or “I understand your loss.” Those were things people said to distance themselves. And no Explorer was distant enough.
Melaquin—A Theory
“So,” I said, “your friend was sent to Melaquin with an admiral who was going senile. And here we are, with the same kind of mission. You think the Admiralty might be using Melaquin to get rid of embarrassments?”
Yarrun shrugged. “When YouthBoost fails, mental decline can be rapid. Some admirals may become children overnight…and as children, they may refuse to resign voluntarily.”
“They could be discharged with a competency hearing.”
“The press always has a field day over competency hearings,” Yarrun replied. “So do lawyers. It’s unhealthy for Fleet morale.”
“So to avoid bad publicity, the High Council assigns unwanted admirals to suicide missions? And who cares if they kill a few Explorers at the same time?”
Yarrun gave another shrug and a sigh. “That’s what ‘expendable’ means.”
Part III
PLANS
Planning (Part 1)
After a long while, Yarrun asked, “How do you want to try the Landing?”
I had been pondering the same question—self-pity could only hold my interest so long, and then training took over. “Phylar Tobit claimed Melaquin was more like Earth than Earth,” I said. “If he was right, we won’t need extreme heat or cold equipment.”
“Suppose there’s some natural phenomenon that produces bursts of extreme heat or cold.”
I shook my head. “It’s possible…but the drop-ship would be watching from orbit, and anything like that would be picked up by sensors.”
“Of course. But would they tell us?”
“What?”
Yarrun didn’t look at me. “Even if the High Council knows what is deadly about Melaquin, would they tell us? They don’t want a successful mission. They want the admiral to die.”
“Oh shit.”
“Precisely.”
A Possible Out
Harque and Prope came through a hatch halfway down the hall, saw us, nodded, and dropped their eyes. The captain asked my chest, “Is Admiral Chee still with the doctor?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t that a long time for a simple examination?”
“No doubt Dr. Veresian wants to be thorough,” Yarrun answered. “One doesn’t like to misdiagnose an admiral. And this particular admiral is unlikely to be a cooperative patient.”
“True.” Prope looked at her watch. “It would still be nice to get some sleep.”
Harque produced a smarmy expression and an unctuous voice. “Perhaps, captain, you could ask the doctor to hurry things along. The examination is just a formality, after all. Isn’t it?”
He smiled more at us than at Prope, to see if we understood what he meant. We understood indeed. At least Prope had the decency to be uncomfortable that this was all a sham. She muttered, “I’ll speak to the doctor,” and entered the infirmary with Harque on her heels.
“Before the Landing, I’d like to kick Harque’s teeth out,” I said. “What could they do about it?”
Yarrun closed his eyes a moment, searching through the vast fund of regulations stored in his brain. “Maximum penalty for striking a subordinate officer is six months imprisonment, plus demotion.”
“Hmmm.” I tapped my fingers on the bulkhead behind me. “That’s a lot better than landing on Melaquin.”
Yarru
n’s eyes narrowed in thought, then he shook his head. “It’s a secondary offense—punishment can be deferred if the offender has duties of overriding importance.”
“Like accompanying an admiral to his execution.”
“Mmm.”
I considered the possibilities a little longer. “Of course, punishment can’t be deferred for a primary offense.”
“No….”
“Primary offenses: treason, mutiny, desertion, homicide, possession of a deadly weapon on an interstellar vessel…anything else?”
“Assaulting a superior officer.”
I contemplated the options. “Pity. I’d have to attack Prope instead of Harque. You could do Harque, though. A knee in the testicles would be appropriate, don’t you think?”
“Dislocating his shoulder would be better—I’d like the crew to admire my restraint.”
“Black both his eyes,” I suggested, “and the crew will pay you a bounty.”
“Where would I spend it? Melaquin?”
The joking died. We were ourselves again, in the night-lit corridor of a silent ship.
Still…I was appalled at the thought of dying stupidly.
“What’s the penalty for a primary offense?” I asked quietly, though I knew the answer.
“Banishment,” Yarrun replied. “There’s no other penalty possible.”
“The nearest exile world would be Mootikki, right?”
“It’s the only one in this sector.”
“Mootikki…. ninety percent ocean, and semi-sentient water spiders that eat anything with a pulse?”
Yarrun nodded. “That’s Mootikki.”
Pause.
“A cakewalk,” I said. “Wouldn’t faze the greenest cadet.”
“We’ve seen worse,” Yarrun agreed.
A long silence trickled by. My palms were sweat-moist behind me as I leaned them against the wall.
Yarrun finally spoke softly. “Are we going to do it, Festina?”
“The High Council is sending us to a planet that has killed who-knows-how-many teams already. They are providing us with no information, not even a standard AOR summary. They’ve put us under the command of a man who is clearly unstable, possibly senile, and certainly ignorant of the principles of exploration. To all appearances, they are dispatching us to die just to rid themselves of an embarrassment. What’s a few bruises compared to that?”
Yarrun, in a whisper: “We’ll need witnesses.”
I pointed to the door in front of us. “If we go for Prope and Harque while they’re in the infirmary, Dr. Veresian and the admiral will see everything.”
Another long silence. At last, Yarrun said, “We’ll just shoot them with stunners, won’t we?”
“Of course,” I replied. “We don’t really want to hurt anyone, do we?”
Weapons
Stunners were Landing weapons, intended to stop alien animals without killing them. They fired an invisible cone of hypersonic white noise, intended to disrupt electroneural activity for two and a half seconds. Sometimes, the shock stopped whatever was trying to eat you; sometimes, it didn’t. On a human, a single stunner blast caused about six hours of unconsciousness followed by a vicious bitch of a headache, but it did no true physical damage.
Every Explorer longed for a more powerful weapon now and then; but the matter was out of our hands. The League of Peoples utterly forbade lethal weapons of any kind on board starships, and as far as anyone knew, the ban had never been broken. No one could say how the League did it…although there were rumors that the races known to humans were merely the tip of the League iceberg, that there were far more advanced and mysterious creatures who simply hadn’t bothered to contact us. It was suggested that these creatures watched us invisibly, maybe even living amongst us without being seen: gaseous things or sentient patterns of radio waves, monitoring our actions or even our thoughts.
Certainly, the League seemed to pick up intentions clearly enough. After all, you can kill a person with almost anything, from laser drills to a plain old brick; but the League permitted such things to pass freely through their quarantine, because they weren’t intended as weapons. On the other hand, if you had murderous thoughts about strangling someone with your shoelace…. Well, if you had murderous thoughts at all, you’d never leave your home planet ever. Somehow, the League simply knew.
Always.
It was disturbing when you thought about it—like magic. Any sufficiently advanced technology, et cetera.
Our Assault
When I took my stunner from the locker in the Explorer equipment room, the butt felt oddly cold and metallic. I had seldom touched the pistol with my bare hand—on a Landing, we wore tightsuits covering our whole bodies. Even on a planet with good atmosphere and temperate climate, there were a thousand reasons to remain sealed off from the environment. I couldn’t remember the last time I had touched a stunner ungloved.
Yarrun and I exchanged glances at the door of the infirmary. We hadn’t said a word since we left to get the weapons. Now he smiled…a hideous sight. I nodded and palmed the ENTER plate.
Inside, the air smelled of disinfectant. Dr. Veresian had drawn Harque and Prope into his office, and was talking to them in a low voice. The admiral sat without pants in an examination chair, drumming his fingers on the arm-rests.
Prope turned at the sound of our entrance and saw the stunners. “Is there some problem, Explorers?”
“In a manner of speaking,” I said. “We’re unhappy with this mission.”
“That’s understandable,” she replied. “It’s an open secret that Explorers have been Lost on Melaquin. But the order came directly from the High Council.”
“It seems foolish to throw away our lives for no reason.” I raised the stunner. “What would you do in our position?”
Prope calmly lifted a hand. The ghost of a smile played about her lips; maybe all her life she had been waiting for a chance to show how relaxed she could be at gunpoint. She turned to Harque as if there were no weapon trained on her. “Lieutenant, what’s the punishment for a primary offense?”
Harque quoted the regulation with a smirk. “The offender shall be set down on an approved exile world with no less than three days food and water rations, two changes of suitable clothing, and a knife whose blade does not exceed twenty centimeters in length.”
“And what is the nearest exile world, lieutenant?”
“I imagine it would be Mootikki.”
“But suppose I were shot by a stunner and was unconscious for a few hours. Another hour to convene a court martial, perhaps two hours to go through the formalities…. Where would we be then, lieutenant?”
“Not far off Melaquin.”
“And Melaquin,” Prope said, turning back to us, “is also an approved exile world.”
“That’s not in the registration catalogue,” I objected.
“There’s a lot that isn’t in the registration catalogue.” Harque grinned nastily.
I tried to keep my face steady, but my stomach had been carved hollow with one sweep of an invisible scythe. The captain put on the look of a big sister who’s caught you playing with yourself. “My orders from the Council mentioned that some Explorers try to…waive this sort of mission in various ways; but all the loopholes have been plugged, believe me. You two can choose to be banished to Melaquin as criminals with little more than the clothes on your back, or you can land as Explorers with all the preparation and equipment the Jacaranda can muster. Now if you want to fire, go ahead. It’s five o’clock in the morning, and I could use the sleep.”
Yarrun’s hand touched my wrist, lowering the stunner for me. In a moment, he took my arm and nudged me out the door. As it closed behind us, I could hear Harque snicker.
Yarrun said, “I’ll take the stunners back and lock them up.”
I put an arm around his shoulder and squeezed lightly. “It was a childish plan anyway.”
He slipped away and walked off slowly, tapping the guns against his thigh with eve
ry step. I slumped back against the bulkhead and tried not to think of how good it would feel to plunge my fist into someone’s face.
Admiral’s Escort
Admiral Chee poked his head out the infirmary door. He still had no pants on, just blue boxer briefs.
“Are you a guard?” he asked.
“No.”
He slipped into the corridor with an ostentatious attempt at stealth. It was unnecessary—I could see that the people in Veresian’s office had closed the door, leaving the admiral unattended.
“I’m not supposed to be out here,” Chee said with great satisfaction. “They thought they could stop me by stealing my pants.” He raised a hand to his mouth and blew a raspberry salute back toward the infirmary. “It didn’t work, did it? And do you know why? Because I’m an admiral and people are more embarrassed seeing my ass than I am showing it. Watch.”
He spun around and hiked up the back of his shirt to give me a better view of his skinny flanks. Reflexively, I flinched and the old man cackled with glee.
“Rank hath its privileges, Ramos! I’m not embarrassed and you are. You’re blushing something awful…one side of your face, anyway.”
I was too stunned to react, flabbergasted by what he’d said. While I was still trying to decide whether to be hurt or furious, the admiral gestured at a blue jacaranda painted on a nearby door. “What’s this tree?”
“A jacaranda,” I answered, still feeling numb.
“A jacaranda…that sounds familiar.”
“It’s the name of the ship.”
“I know it’s the name of the ship,” Chee snapped. “I was making a joke.”
“Sorry, sir.”
“What’s behind this door?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Why don’t you know?”
“I’m an Explorer, sir. We don’t get to see much of the ship.”
He snorted. “Can’t be much of an Explorer if you’ve been here six years and haven’t explored the ship.”
Once again, I was taken aback: how did he know how long I had been on the Jacaranda? But he was already off on another tangent.
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