A. Warren Merkey

by Far Freedom

  “I think it is the place. We need to at least eliminate it as a possibility.”

  “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 said. “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 barbarian?” 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 barbarian jumpship isn’t inherently faster due to simplicity.”

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

  “It is,” Iggy answered.

  “Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  “Stand by to ping,” Horss ordered. “Double ping on my mark. Mark.”

  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?”

  “Embedded in the southern hemisphere. Ten degrees east longitude, thirty-seven degrees south latitude. It penetrated forty meters. It missed a major jump field emitter by less than a meter. It took a bite out of us, but we took one out of it. It looks like it’s disabled.”

  “I want an engineering team and ten Marines on site now,” Horss said. “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 debris cluster,” Freddy said. “Not enough detail to say more than that.”

  “Get us into the debris field,” Horss said.

  “No sign of explosive decompression,” Iggy studied the probe data of the embedded jumpship where the Freedom’s jump envelope sheared off a section of its hull, exposing internal structures to open space. “The entire crew must still be alive, but their jump circuit is ruined.”

  “The map of the interior is complete,” Wingren said, “No life signatures. They must be using i-fields.”

  “This will be a ghost fight,” Captain Aguila said to his squad of Marines. “How do we get in?”

  “You don’t,” Iggy said. “The jumpship has a transmat. They used it to wink into the Freedom. Redeploy to intercept barbarians inside the Freedom. Commander Wingren and I will disable their transmat.”

  Section 027 Messages from a Rapist

  Eventually she must think of such things. She didn’t want to. Time 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 baby inside her, she had to remember how she was conceived. She had to beat her feeble logic against the sharp corners 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 painting. She didn’t have the skills to frame it properly. They 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.

  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 Demba 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. 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 he raped? How many Union citizens had he killed by his Navy orders? She always knew 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, 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. Kidnapped by barbarians? 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 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. She had left Etrhnk, knowing who he was and never telling him. She had left him to die, unfairly hating him for what he did to her.

  Aylis was alone in the hospital. It was coming for her. She could smell its evil. It would find her, explode in her mind, shatter her emotions beyond repair. It was even worse than being raped. The truth would kill her.

  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. His genetic identity would not be directly available. But she could still identify his relationship in records she did have aboard ship.

  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.

  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.

  This 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 even 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 of himself 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 closer to her than Phuti and Nori.

  If it was Pan who was missing Direk would have remembered him. He had too many memories of Pan, too much shared experience. Pan would have left too great a hole in his memories to not be noticed. The person who was missing must have been too briefly in his own memories, but perhaps more fully in the memory of his dead copy.

  He needed to see if his co
py’s auxiliary memory was still viable. He needed to absorb it. He dreaded doing that, fearing for his own identity. He did a terrible thing, his copy, executing four men he judged guilty of raping Jamie.

  A terrible thing.

  The ghostly memory brushed past his conscious and he leaped into the darkness to grab it. A pattern coalesced for an instant: Sammy. Freddy. Jamie. Horss. It was all he could grab before the klaxons sounded.

  Direk accessed his shiplink and searched for the cause of the critical alert. He saw the ship was under attack and was possibly boarded by hostile forces. He made use of algorithms that Security used to detect abnormalities in the life aboard the ship. He saw he was near one such abnormality. He set out to intercept it.

  Sammy, Freddy, Jamie: Zakiya’s children? Horss: not her child - but he jokingly offered himself for adoption. The missing person was Zakiya’s child? How could Zakiya not already know that, if that was a valid hypothesis?

  Direk looked at the bottle in his hand. Water, under pressure, could be used to detect an invisible combat soldier. What one did after that was limited to muscle and bone. He made himself invisible.

  The bottle in his hand. A bottle of… medicine? Whoever it was he was trying to remember, Direk thought, would also not remember things that were dangerous to remember, things that could expose himself and others. He would be invisible. even invisible to himself. He would not even know who he was. He was so important that his own true identity would be lethal knowledge. A bottle of medicine…

  Antidote! The antidote was never administered! He had not remembered! He missed the ship!

  Who? Zakiya’s child. Somebody very important. Important beyond being her child.

  Petros!

  Direk found himself standing in blood and watching horror. From the progress of the invisible attacker Direk knew he was behind him. People fled away from him in all directions but the way ahead offered the most victims. He dodged the staggering wounded and stepped around the fallen, tagging their locations in his data augment. The neighborhood lane opened onto the village commons just ahead, where people were rushing to get within a Marine defense perimeter. The barbarian seemed to favor what was probably a large knife, although he also used a slug weapon and a beam weapon when he could not get close to his prey.

  Direk sprayed the water. He moved closer. He made himself visible. He seized the invisible demon with all the strength the Mnro Clinic’s secret labs bestowed on him. He threw the enemy down and tried to pin him there while he probed the creases and field joints of his d-field. He found the neck and above it the head. He wrapped one arm around the invisible head and turned it in the only direction the d-field permitted. Turned it too far.

  In time the d-field would exhaust its power, as would the i-field. The intruder would not be viable by then.

  Section 028 Little Heroes

  “They’ll never find us here,” Ibrahim said, pulling the cabinet door closed but leaving a small gap he could see through.

  “What’s happening?” Sammy asked. He huddled behind Lam’s nephew in the empty storage cabinet. He called him Abie. Abie called him Sammy.

  “Maybe it’s just a drill,” Abie answered, holding the door very still.

  Sammy didn’t like the dark but he did like the excitement of hiding. Still, he didn’t feel right about what they were doing. “We’re not supposed to hide. We’re supposed to go to a designated location.”

  “Where?”

  Sammy didn’t know, so he said nothing. If Mom asked him where he was during the drill, he wouldn’t lie to her. He just hoped the drill would end soon. The klaxons were very loud and wouldn’t stop and were beginning to scare him. At least the cabinet shut out some of the blare.

  “I wish we had shiplink augments,” Abie said, “so we could listen to what’s happening. I could hear Uncle Lam. I could tell him where I am.”

  “They won’t give one to me, either.”

  “Do you hear people running?”

  “I can barely hear you, Abie.”

  “Are you scared, Sammy? I think I am. Almost. We’ll be safe, if we stay in here.”

  “Safe from what?”

  “I don’t know. We can pretend the barbarians are boarding the ship. Are you sure they’re just humans, like us?”

  “I told you I saw them.”

  ” You didn’t make them sound very scary.”

  “I don’t like to talk about them.”

  “Then they are scary. I like to be scared.”

  “Then you’ve never been really scared.”

  “I want to be a Marine, like my Uncle Lam.”

  ” You already told me that.”

  “You want to be a Navy officer, like your mom?”

  “I suppose so. But I like what Uncle Phuti does, too. He gets to talk to so many people.” He liked that Abie always referred to Zakiya as his mother. He never contradicted him. Abie could see there was no genetic relationship between her and him. Abie was a good friend. It was wonderful having a friend who was almost his size and age.

  ” She seems too nice to be a Navy admiral. Do you love her?”

  “Why do you ask that?”

  “I love my mother. It’s good to love your mother. Does Admiral Demba love you?”

  “Is that important to you?” Sammy was sure she loved him. He loved her.

  “It is! You’re very different from everyone I know. Admiral Demba is great and powerful. I want to know that you’re both good people who can love each other.”

  “We are. We love each other.”

  “Good! I really like you, Sammy. You make me think about things. Tell me more about the barbarian world. Tell me again how Admiral Demba escaped the

  380 Far Freedom Lady in the Mirror.”

  The door to the room opened and they could hear voices. Frightened voices. Sammy tried to see over Abie’s shoulder through the crack. He leaned too hard and the cabinet door opened too much. Two grownups saw them: a man and a woman. The woman registered shock at seeing them and motioned frantically for them to stay where they were. The man had a terrible cut on his back and was dripping blood on the floor. Abie pulled the cabinet door back but still kept the crack to peer through.

  “More people!” Abie said. “They’re closing the door.”

  “There are children here!” someone gave a whispered shout.

  “Where?”

  “In the cabinet!”

  “This is the last room! We have no choice!”

  “It was right behind us!”

  Sammy could hear a loud ripping noise that almost seemed to be coming through the cabinet. People screamed and backed toward the far wall where Sammy could see them through the gap in the cabinet doors. Several of them were injured by something and were flailing arms and brushing at burned spots on their bodies. The ripping stopped. The odor of burned metal reached even into the cabinet. Then the hammering began.

  People shifted against the walls and cowered behind pieces of furniture and storage containers. Something made the smoke in the room swirl as it crossed the floor. The ghostly something stepped on melted pieces of metal, sending them skittering and clinking.

  It became visible. Abie opened the gap wider, to see better, even though Sammy squeezed his shoulder as a plea to stop. Sammy saw the barbarian pivot to let all the terrified people see him and fear him. He wore a black uniform, almost like a Navy admiral, all but obscured by a harness that held multiple weapons and other machinery. He took off a helmet to reveal a scarred face: young and brutal, devoid of pity. He dropped a rifle-like weapon on the floor. He pulled a knife from a scabbard and began to menace people with it.

  The barbarian lunged at several people, playing on their fear, making them cower and try to evade the blade. He cornered a woman who couldn’t stop crying and pricked her with the tip of the knife, making her scream. When she reflexively reached out to push the blade away, the barbarian cut off her arm just below the elbow. The woman fainted. The barbarian leaned over to threaten a finishing
cut.

  Abie threw open the cabinet, shoving Sammy backward to propel himself outward. He dashed forward, scooped up the weapon the barbarian dropped on the floor. On a dead run, he closed on the barbarian, bringing the weapon down with considerable force on the arm that held the knife. The knife fell out of the barbarian’s hand, preventing the death of the woman.

  The barbarian turned on Abie, blocked a second blow with ease. He grabbed Abie, wrenched the weapon from his grasp. Sammy fell out of the cabinet, his eyes still on Abie, as Abie tried to fight, kicking at the barbarian. The barbarian held Abie up by one wrist, swung the weapon across his forearm, breaking his arm bones. Abie screamed in agony. The barbarian prepared to deliver another blow to Abie.

  Sammy was already running across the room, his movement hindered by his cramped good leg more than the regeneration machine on the other. He threw himself against the back of the barbarian’s legs, causing him to lose his balance and go down on his knees. Sammy bounced from the impact, caught his hand on the weapons harness on the back of the barbarian. As the barbarian got to his feet, Sammy climbed on his back and tried to get an arm around his neck.

  The barbarian felt Sammy climb his back and seemed not to care. He still held Abie by his broken arm. He shook the broken arm, making Abie scream. Sammy beat on the barbarian’s head with his free fist, trying to distract him. The man turned his head to look at Sammy, ignoring the pummeling Sammy gave him. Before he could turn back to Abie, Sammy gouged the barbarian’s eye with his thumb.

  The barbarian threw Abie across the room, dropped the dead weapon, and reached for Sammy. Sammy tried to wrap his legs and arms around the barbarian but in only a few painful moments the barbarian gripped him by the throat, raised him up, glared at him with his undamaged eye.

  Sammy kicked hard with the regeneration machine, finding a soft spot in the barbarian’s torso, causing him to grunt in pain. The barbarian swung Sammy around, slapped him hard with his free hand. Sammy lost the focus in his eyes and couldn’t see the barbarian preparing to slam his fist into his face.