Cryptikon Far Freedom Part 2

by Warren Merkey

jumpship," Freddy said. "It's too far off to be certain of killing it with a jump."

  "It'll come closer," Iggy said. "They know they're in mortal danger but I don't think they would do the sensible thing: escape to notify others of our threat. They want to know who is attacking them."

  "They may already know of us," Zakiya said. "The Navy would have told them."

  "We could ping," Horss said. "Ping and jump. See if it jumps where we were. Then jump for the kill. I'm assuming, because of their lazy navigation methods, that we can compute jump addresses faster than they can."

  "Mother?" Jamie said

  "We don't know if this is the place," Zakiya said. "It may not be worth the risk."

  "I think it is the place," Jamie argued. "We need to at least eliminate it as a possibility. We'll never be any safer here than we are right now."

  "It would also be very useful to have the jumpship wreckage," Iggy repeated his wish.

  "The captain on duty makes the decision," Horss said. "Do you want me to relieve you, Jamie? I'm paralleled with you on the data."

  "Command is yours, Jon." Jamie got up from the captain's chair.

  "It jumped!" Freddy warned. "I've lost it! You must jump now!"

  "Why?" Jamie asked, after she jumped the Freedom to a random location.

  "It may be able to find our quantum pathway signals quicker than we can find its signals, because of the size difference."

  "Cat and mouse," Horss said. "Give it your best shot, Jamie. You're my gunner."

  "Do you think we can recycle our accumulators as quickly as the Fleet?" Jamie asked.

  "Direk designed it so we can cross-couple the starlight drive generator to the jump accumulators," Iggy said. "We can't know if the Fleet jumpship isn't inherently faster due to simplicity."

  "If cross-coupling is a command function," Jamie said, "do it."

  "Already done," Iggy answered, his hands and eyes playing over his instruments.

  "Ready?"

  "Ready."

  "Stand by to ping," Horss ordered. "Ping!"

  An active sensor sweep struck across the gulf from the Freedom. Jamie made the Freedom jump a short distance to one side. The proximity alarm sounded. Jamie jumped the Freedom again.

  "Where is it?" Horss demanded.

  "Embedded in the southern hemisphere!" Iggy said. "Ten degrees east longitude, thirty-seven degrees south latitude. It penetrated forty meters. It missed a jump field emitter core by less than a meter! It took a bite out of the hex shield, but we took one out of it. It looks like it's disabled."

  "Engineering team and ten Marines on site now!" Horss ordered. "It may still have harmful potential and surviving crew. Remain on high alert and ready to jump."

  "I have an anomalous target painted in the dark Oort cluster," Freddy said. "Not enough detail to say more than that."

  "Get us into the debris field," Horss ordered.

  = = =

  "No sign of explosive decompression," Iggy said. "The entire crew could still be alive, but they can't jump now."

  "The map of the interior is complete," Wingren said, "No movement. No human shapes. They are either concealed somehow or have departed their ship. And there is a transmat in this little ship!"

  "Sound intruder alert!" Captain Aguila ordered by shiplink. "How do we get in?" he asked Khalanov.

  "Take your men and try to protect the crew!" Khalanov ordered. "Wingren and I will cut our way into this little boat and disable its transmat."

  The two engineers and the Marines stood in a ring around the damage in the hull of the Freedom where the sheared-away remains of the embedded Fleet jumpship filled a circular incision in the outer hexagonally-plated hull of the Freedom. They were dressed in tight gray vacuum suits, playing the beams of personal lights onto the glittering exposed innards of the small jumpship. Above them, millions of unseen fragments from the ancient chaos of star formation floated in the darkness. A distant point of light - one of the local trinary stars - shone brighter than other stars. The dull surface of the hull of the Freedom quickly faded in distance from this illuminated point of attack, visible only as an absence of the galactic panoply of lights.

  Quickly, one at a time, the eleven Marines vanished, leaving Khalanov and Wingren alone. Then several more engineers arrived to help, bringing cutting equipment.

  2-28 Messages from a Rapist

  Eventually she must think of such things. She didn't want to. Time had dulled the edge of horror. But her brain, in typical perversity, ignored the happiness Jamie and Direk gave her, and instead led her into the brutal past. If she thought of the fetus inside her, she had to remember how it was conceived. She had to beat her feeble logic against the painful clues of a puzzle of terror. It was impossible to believe an elite Essiin could have raped her. If it was truly impossible, then Etrhnk could not be Essiin. Then he was who she knew he was! Think of something positive and stay away from the humiliation, the violation, the pain! That was not important!

  The glorious painting. She didn't have the skills to frame it properly. The ship had constructor machines that could build a string bass for Direk of surpassing quality, but not a simple picture frame of a design she liked. Or was she avoiding displaying the portrait? She still kept the painting rolled up and hidden away.

  The painting. It was so terrible to have such a wonder of creativity linked to her personal tragedy! She had not even disclosed to Zakiya or anyone else that she had it. As if it was a prostitute's payment. Why did Etrhnk give it to her? Because he would lose it soon anyway? Why did he even have it? He couldn't have known who Zakiya was. It must have required real effort to steal it in the short interval available to do it, in the midst of the violence and fire. Why? Only because of its intrinsic value? Or did he have another reason? Why did Etrhnk give it to her?

  The rape. Try to ignore the evil of it! Why did he rape her? He was pretending to be Essiin. Rape was almost unknown to the Essiin. It violated their aesthetics. Logic and aesthetics. Truth and beauty. How could he be such a perfect fake Essiin and ignore their ethics? How many other women had Etrhnk raped? How many Union citizens had he killed by his Navy orders? She had sensed he was a genetic fake. Then he revealed the ice eyes, the stripes. God, the stripes! He was a zebra, black with white stripes, a work of art, a living portrait, stunning, perfect. She had wanted to believe, in her fear and panic, that she had been wrong, that he really was Essiin. But he was too perfect, too rare! The ultimate Essiin recessive genetic construction! He was too unique, especially as Commander of the Navy. That had to violate Essiin aesthetics and logic. Was he kidnapped by barbarians, or some such extraordinary scenario? Why would he survive in their midst, even flourish, to rise to his exalted position? Still pretending Essiin discipline. Too imperfect! Too illogical! Too ugly! His very perfection and illogic damned him. Damned her.

  Aylis Mnro had created this monster named Etrhnk! Now she had to admit she was also a monster. Now she had to confirm it. And then she would have to lose her best friend forever. Battered and violated, she had left Etrhnk, knowing who he could be and never telling him. She had left him in his ignorance, unfairly hating him for what he did to her.

  Aylis was alone in the hospital. It had come for her! She could smell its evil! It would take root in her mind and explode, shattering her emotions beyond repair! It was even worse than being raped! The truth would kill her. It should!

  She went into the lab and did the tests she had put off for irrational reasons. Was Petros the father of her child? She did not have access to the complete records of the Mnro Clinics. Etrhnk's genetic identity would not be directly available. But she could still identify his relationship in records she did have aboard ship: the records of the crew, of one crew member.

  She looked at the results and sat down and wept for hours.

  Only the terrifying klaxons of war drove her away from despair and toward duty.

  = = =

  Direk awoke to mental turmoil surfacing from dream into reality.

 
; He was not happy. He should be happy. Jamie was happy. Zakiya was happy. Even his mother seemed happy at times. Direk was not happy. He was not unhappy. He was worried.

  When he saw Jamie, when he touched her, the worry fled only for a few moments. This wasn't happiness; it was distraction. It was unworthy of him to complain, no matter how long he had deprived himself of happiness, no matter how close it now resided, but just out of reach.

  An elusive memory would nearly appear to his conscious when certain conditions were met. He thought he had removed enough distractions from his mind that he could concentrate on the problem of remembering. He couldn't see a pattern that would identify the conditions to be met, that would loosen the memory from its hiding place.

  There was no doubt it was a deeply hidden memory, thus implying extreme importance. That he could even sense that it concerned the identity of a person was probably a significant but limited achievement. It could mean that he had no further memory to discover, that the full memory belonged to the Navy-officer copy who was dead.

  That Direk had the riskiest responsibilities, some of which he remembered, some of which he might be able to deduce. That Direk needed to help build the ship. He needed to be sure Zakiya and Iggy and Jamie and his mother were on the crew. Pan should have been on the crew. Who else? Someone who was at least as close to her as Phuti and Nori?

  If it was Pan who was missing, Direk would have remembered him, remembered Harry. He had too many memories