Wandering Storm

by Steven Anderson

  “What? What are you talking about? There’s no dancing.”

  I stared back at him until he broke.

  “I am doing something after hours. It’s not dancing and I can’t tell you about it, so don’t ask.”

  “I have the same clearances you do and this link is encrypted.”

  “It’s need to know.”

  “Are you doing something brave and noble and stupid?”

  “You’d probably think so. It’s something I need to do.”

  “Kim Hyun-Ok isn’t involved?”

  “Hyun?” He chuckled. “Is that what you’re worried about? No, she’s not involved, but now that you mention it, I might be able to use her.”

  “If you want someone to use, come up here and use me. I could use a good using.”

  He blushed, which made me very happy. “Do you still have that bunch of suggestions that FAC Zero Nine gave you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Tell me about your favorite one.”

  I woke Winona up the next morning at 05:30. “Time to get out of that rack, cadet, do you want to sleep your life away?”

  “What delusion are you having this time, Duse?” She opened one eye a slit and looked at me. I was in my dress uniform, everything immaculate from my cover to my shiny shoes. Both of her eyes opened all the way. “Duse?”

  “What day is it today, cadet?”

  “Oh.” She smiled. “It’s May 14th. Graduation Day.”

  “Best get dressed quickly. We have a solemn ceremony of great solemnity to attend.”

  “Where did you get the uniform?” She was up and stretching.

  “Storm printed it for me. Yours is in your closet. Let’s go quickly. This high collar is killing me.”

  Winona and I marched from our quarters across the Hoog Schelde shipyard to the Esprit Orageux. It was too early for there to be many people around, but the shipyard’s chief design engineer, Ingenieur Schatzki, was just arriving for the day as we reached slipway number three. He stood to attention and saluted us as we passed, and we returned it smartly. I steered Winona to the Sim Lab when we entered our ship. Captain Rostron was already there waiting for us.

  It was a fine day at the simulated Academy, with blue skies and a cool breeze coming down off the mountains from the west. The Captain looked beautiful in her dress uniform, and I felt like I was seeing her for the first time.

  “Class of ’51, parade, REST.”

  We moved our left feet to shoulder width and clasped our hands behind our backs.

  “I do not know what frivolity will occur at the Academy today to mark this occasion, and I don’t care. We are a combat ship on a hard mission with danger all around us. My remarks will be brief so that you may resume your duties.

  “That said, the date of your graduation should not go unremarked. When Lieutenant Holloman asked for my consent to conduct this ceremony, I was only too glad to grant my permission and willing participation.”

  Winona’s eyes glanced briefly in my direction, proud of me.

  “You volunteered for hazardous duty and you have proven yourselves to be adequate in your conduct. I am proud to call you my shipmates.

  “There was a prayer written perhaps a thousand years ago by a brave explorer. Some dispute its origin, but it doesn’t matter since the words are good regardless of who said them or when. He wrote,

  ‘Disturb us, Lord, when

  We are too pleased with ourselves,

  When our dreams have come true

  Because we dreamed too little,

  When we arrived safely

  Because we sailed too close to the shore.

  Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,

  To venture on wilder seas

  Where storms will show Your mastery;

  Where losing sight of land,

  We shall find the stars.

  We ask you to push back

  The horizons of our hopes;

  And to push back the future

  In strength, courage, hope, and love.’

  “My congratulations to the class of 2451. Officers of the Union Aerospace Force, may you lose sight of the land and find the stars. You are dismissed.”

  Winona and I cheered and tossed our caps into the air.

  After talking briefly with the Captain, Winn and I walked back toward our quarters arm in arm, giggling and laughing. We stopped next to slipway number three and watched the ship being built.

  “Winona, do you regret following me here instead of staying on Earth to graduate with the rest of our class?”

  “Sometimes. I had it all planned out, what I was going to do, where I’d be. Meeting Kal makes it worth it. What about you? Are you sorry you’re here on the Esprit Orageux?”

  “God, yes.” I looked at her and started giggling again. “How can you even ask that? I’m still planning on killing Marcus the next time I see him, if Mom hasn’t already done it.”

  “I can’t believe you asked the Captain to let you do the graduation ceremony, Duse. It was brilliant.”

  “I was shaking the whole time I was asking her. It took every bit of courage I had, but she loved the idea. And when did she get to be so pretty? Is it because she was smiling part of the time? Is it just me, or was she–” My head wobbled and I found myself on my knees.

  “Are you OK?” Winona knelt next to me.

  “Sam,” I whispered. “He was connected to me, enjoying how happy I was. Then, a few seconds ago, it was like he winked out. No warning, no fade. Gone.”

  “He’s blocking you?”

  “No, no, not like that. It’s like when he transits a DSH. He’s not there anymore. I feel him when he’s blocking, I just can’t read his emotions, but I know he’s still there. I even feel him when he sleeps, the same as I feel you when you sleep. Winona, my Sam’s not there anymore. I think he must be….” I stopped, unable to say it.

  CHAPTER 16

  SAM

  Winona helped me back to my feet and held me close. “He’s not dead. You would have felt something like that.”

  “Would I? It could have been another bomb. They always say that your body is blown apart so fast that you don’t feel it. How could anyone know that?”

  “Ask Storm to find him. She has so many autonomous sensors deployed now that she must have seen something. Do you know where he was?”

  I shook my head. “I always tell him to stay in the hospital, but he doesn’t listen. He keeps telling me how safe it is down there. Storm, can you hear me?” My voice was shaking so badly that I was having trouble forming words.

  “Of course, mon amie. What has happened to upset you so?”

  “Sam. I don’t know where he is. Please, can you find him for me?”

  “It will only take a second.” Twenty seconds passed. “C’est vraiment des conneries. I cannot access any of the feeds near the hospital and the logs are corrupted, making it impossible to retrieve anything for the past thirty minutes. It is as though someone has punched holes through them. I can reconstruct, but it will take several hours.”

  The shaking was making it hard to stand. I opened my mouth to tell her to proceed, but only a whimper came out.

  “Storm, do the reconstruction as quickly as possible,” Winona instructed. “Query every sensor in a two kilometer radius of the hospital and run facial, body, and sound analyses against the list of names I’m sending you.” She tapped quickly on her display pad.

  “Some of these individuals are not currently known to be on Kastanje.”

  “Do it anyway. Also, contact Corporal Kim and Sergeant Hurtado. Make sure they’re safe and tell them to shelter in place until Captain Rostron contacts them.”

  She grabbed my hand and pulled me back toward the ship. “Snap out of it, Duse, right damn now. You’re no use to him or anyone else when you’re like
this. He’s not dead, just missing.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I wiped my nose.

  Captain Rostron met us in the shuttle bay, on her way somewhere. She was back to wearing her standard uniform and standard facial expression. Winona did me the courtesy of telling her what had happened, including lying to her about how I knew that Sam was in trouble, and the hope that he had been kidnapped and not just killed.

  “So you were talking to him when this happened?” She squinted at me.

  “Yes, ma’am. Audio only while we were walking back to our quarters to change. Colonel Gerbrandij said this would happen. He warned us that the factions might kidnap some of our people. This was a sophisticated attack. There can’t be many groups that could find and blind all of our sensors. That should help us find whoever has taken him. I’ll contact the Colonel and have his people start working it. With your permission?”

  “No, not hardly. I’m not convinced yet that the KDF didn’t do this themselves to try and drag us in deeper.”

  “We need to have trust if reunification is going to work. He could help us find Sam before it’s too late.”

  She smiled at me, but it wasn’t the same smile she’d used earlier at our graduation. “You want to trust everyone you meet, Lieutenant. The universe is not so simple.”

  “No, ma’am, I know that. But it should be.”

  A touch of warmth came back into her eyes. “Oh, to be twenty-three again. Lieutenant Killdeer, did Kim and Hurtado report in?”

  “Yes, ma’am. They are secure. Corporal Kim says that Captain Coleridge has been going for a morning run the last couple of days and then stopping at a local bakery called the Exito for coffee and a breakfast sandwich before starting his shift.”

  “So he established a habit. Damn careless. What was he thinking? Well, there’s not much for us to do until whoever took him starts making demands, unless Storm gets lucky with her search of the surrounding areas. They could have moved him half way around the planet by now.” She looked at me, chewed on her lip a moment, and then nodded to herself.

  “Lieutenants, please get back to work on reunification planning. I need the next iteration of your assessment of what it’s going to take to get the mining sector working again, and an update to your resource-loaded schedule of how soon it can happen. Do not discuss Captain Coleridge’s disappearance with anyone else. I need to gauge Gerbrandij’s reaction cold. We’ll meet in the conference room at 12:00 like nothing has happened.”

  I didn’t move. I could feel Winona’s shock at how casually she was taking Sam’s loss.

  “Captain, I…”

  She focused on me, eyes hard. “Something you want to say, Engineer?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I stood up straight and put my shoulders back. “I would like permission to go down there, to the hospital in Oranjestad.”

  “Denied. You have duties to perform here, duties that are part of a disciplinary action from the last time you did something stupid.”

  “Sam was trying to restore the medical AI in the gynecology and neonatal units. I was helping him with it. Really. I’m not lying. That sort of thing is more my specialty than his, or Hurtado’s or Kim’s. We need to finish the job. There are lives at stake.”

  “Clever, but no. I will not have you compounding his carelessness with your own.” She sighed. “Damn it. Gerbrandij is going to insist, once this comes out in the open. The bastard. Like they don’t have any engineers of their own. But, no, you fixed his damn Redoubt and FAC. He seems to think waving the Union and RuComm flags down there will help him. If I refuse, he’ll go over my head to Kimmel. God damn him. Fine, Lieutenant, you will go. But I’m going to drag my feet on this the whole way, so don’t start packing just yet. There’s a good chance we lost Coleridge today; I don’t want to lose you too.”

  Winona waited until we were passing slipway number three again before stopping. “You’re right about this frigate, Mala Dusa. She’s going to be beautiful.”

  I glanced toward the ship, not seeing it. “I’m going to be all right, Winn. Just give me a bit more time. It would help if there was something I could do. I feel so powerless and far away.”

  “You are both of those things at the moment. You are also safe, which is what Sam would want you to be.”

  “I don’t want to be safe. I want to kill all the bad guys and rescue him. I want to be kicking down doors.”

  She looked at me, eyes bright. “I like it when you get like this. Much better than the shaking mess you were earlier. I told Kal what happened. I sent him a message while Storm was searching for Sam.”

  “You didn’t tell me that. You didn’t tell the Captain that.”

  “I know. You’re a bad influence on me and it won’t end well. Anyway, Kal was whispering in my ear while we were walking. Someone attacked two Handhaving officers less than a kilometer north of the hospital early this morning when they tried to stop a couple dragging someone down an alley. One officer ended up getting her neck broken. Her partner is expected to live, but he has a broken arm and a skull fracture. The Handhaving don’t even carry weapons.”

  I took off my cap and tossed it out into slipway number three toward the frigate. It fell at first, and then entered the near zero gravity zone near the ship. I watched it tumbling randomly in the air currents.

  “I’m sorry, Duse. I had suspected that Hannah was responsible for taking Sam, but not now. Killing like that…” She shook her head.

  “My mom works for the Union. I don’t know how many people she’s killed for them or during the rebellion she led on Bodens Gate before that. It took me a long time growing up to realize what she is and why she sometimes wakes up screaming in the middle of the night. It took even longer before I could admit to myself what it meant and to still love her. I could feel it sometimes, you know? In my bedroom at night when I was little, I could feel her terror and remorse. I used to think she just had bad nightmares. But it was memories. Real memories. You’re right, though. Killing unarmed peace officers isn’t something she would do. She would have found another way. Who has him, Winn?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll figure it out together, and then you’ll go down there, find Hannah, and start kicking down doors until he’s back in your arms.”

  We went back to our quarters, changed, and I pretended to be useful while Winona updated our reports.

  I waited with Winona outside the shipyard’s conference room for Captain Rostron to arrive. I glanced at my watch for the tenth time. 12:08. The Captain was late. The Captain was never late.

  She swept past us a minute later, radiating barely controlled rage. “With me. Don’t sit. Don’t talk.”

  We followed her into the room and stood behind our chairs trying to keep all expression from our faces.

  “What the hell happened this morning?”

  She had caught Colonel Gerbrandij off guard. He was sitting calmly, drinking coffee with his aide-de-camp and Major Zweig. “Captain, I was only just informed an hour ago. We have a team already working with local authorities. Everything that can be done, is being done.”

  “Why wasn’t I informed immediately?” Her voice cracked as if she would have preferred to be screaming at him.

  “I tried to, ma’am, but your ship’s AI said that you were in conference and not to be disturbed. She refused to interrupt you.”

  “Really?” She pointed over her shoulder. “My ship is not far from here, Colonel. You couldn’t be bothered to walk that distance?”

  Colonel Gerbrandij’s face flushed, whether from embarrassment or anger I couldn’t tell. “As I said, we are doing all we can to recover your officer. No demands have been made as of yet.”

  “Find him, Colonel. I don’t care what you have to do. Find him and return him to me undamaged. These negotiations are at an end until I have my officer back. Is my position clear? No Union funds, no RuComm technical assistance, not
hing until we have him back.”

  “That is not reasonable, we will do what we can, but I warned you that–”

  She turned sharply and left without another word. Winona and I scurried to catch up. We stayed with her, not speaking, until we were back on board the Esprit Orageux with the airlock sealed behind us, and sitting in the small conference room off the bridge.

  She shook her head and grinned. “What do you think, Winona? Did I convince him that I was angry, irrational, and unpredictable?”

  “Yes, ma’am, and I would add dangerous. You shocked him. I believe your performance worked perfectly. I could tell that he was lying about not knowing who kidnapped Sam, and he obviously knew about the kidnapping well before an hour ago. I’m not sure if the KDF is responsible or complicit, but they know more than they’re willing to tell us.”

  “What about you, Engineer? What is your assessment?”

  “Colonel Gerbrandij and you are playing games to establish dominance, and using my husband as a pawn. You both bluster when you should be working together to save his life.” I knew my ears were red and I was starting to shake again, not with fear, but anger.

  “You have it backwards. I’m trying to save a Union officer’s life by scaring the crap out of Colonel Gerbrandij and his staff. I spent two very long hours convincing General Kimmel to give me the latitude to try this gambit. It’s probably the only chance Sam has of living through this. What would you do differently?”

  “After what just happened in there? I’d go to the Colonel and beg him to find Sam. I’d offer him anything that is in my power to give him, I’d offer to…Oh.” I put my hand over my mouth, my anger dissipating. “This might work.”

  “What are you seeing, Lieutenant Holloman?”

  “You want to get rid of him. Your plan will do that and bring Sam home safe. If it works.”

  “That’s right. The KDF should be in a subservient role to the Provisional Government. So far, he’s refused to step down, and instead, he’s continuing to consolidate civil power in the military.”

  “You want me to go to him just like I said, begging. He’ll think I’m prepared to betray both you and the Union to get Sam back, and that I’ll be willing to give him information he shouldn’t have, maybe work behind the scenes to have you replaced with someone more compliant to his desires. You’re hoping that by helping me and finding Sam, that he’ll reveal connections between the KDF and the factions that will get him fired, maybe even arrested.”