The Fortress at the End of Time

by Joe M. McDermott

  We stood there, staring at each other.

  “The Osprey is here,” she said.

  “Corporal, if Wong has done something against the martial code, there are ways to handle that. Speak with his commander. Go to the quartermaster, your own commander. There is chain of command.”

  She laughed at that. She smacked her knee. She looked up at the sound of the flying vehicle, and grabbed a small sack of personal items from under a couch. “That’s my ride,” she said. She moved fast, then, jumping out the back of the tent, where I didn’t even know there was a door.

  Amanda grabbed at her, but Jensen threw her off into the sand. The Osprey landed, but it wasn’t Garcia flying it. It was Brother Pleo. He waved at me and winked, and in a moment, Jensen was on the cargo bay and off the ground.

  I cocked my head, curious at what had just transpired.

  Amanda pointed up. “That’s not my father’s Osprey. That’s the monastery’s!”

  “Did he send them instead?”

  She didn’t know.

  I checked my messages. While I was looking, I got a response from Wong:

  That would be too bad. I hope she comes back on her own.

  Of course, he hopes no such thing.

  This was the moment I truly hated Wong. He had his revenge on me, by conspiring with Obasanjo to send me to the surface. I would be in command of the loss of Corporal Jensen.

  I called the monastery, and Brother Phong answered.

  “Where is Brother Pleo?” I said. “I was told this was his number.”

  “He is not at his desk, at present. May I help you?”

  “Where is he right now?”

  “I don’t have that information, Ensign. I can leave a message for him.”

  “Do monks have handhelds?”

  “Oh, no. That is against our vows of poverty and contemplation. No. We do not.”

  “Does the Osprey he was flying a second ago . . .” I took a long, deep breath, trying to remain calm. “Does that have a protocol I can reach?

  “I am not aware of any Osprey flying. Are you suffering from heat stroke, Ensign? Do you need us to arrange a pickup?”

  Garcia arrived, then, and Amanda waved him down. He surveyed the scene while Amanda filled him in. He thought it was hilarious. His big belly laugh annoyed me.

  “I’m fine,” I said, when he asked.

  I sent a note to Obasanjo.

  I believe Corporal Jensen is deserting with the aid of the monastery. We need to file a complaint. She was just evacuated from where I found her by Brother Pleo in an Osprey owned by the monastery. I am being stonewalled by Wong. He knows. Please advise.

  Mr. Garcia waved me over. “Exciting day,” he said. “I thought you’d be interested in visiting the mountain.” He tapped the water tank. “Something funny was going on.”

  “If you knew, you should have told me from the beginning.”

  He shrugged. “Politics, man. I avoid it. The monastery is always pushing the military around. The military is pushing the monastery. Both are trying to be the kings of this hole. It’s a waste of time. There’s so much land out here. Come on, help me load up. We can sell this crap back to the monastery and keep the water in our own tanks. I’ll split you in on a quarter if you help with the lifting.”

  Amanda was already loading up.

  While her dad was folding a tent, and we were working on the hose for the water line, she stopped suddenly and walked over to me and put her hand next to mine on the hose.

  “Hey,” she said. “About me. I want you to know something, okay?”

  “I am busy trying to figure out how to get my AWOL soldier back to space, Amanda. I just want to get back to the monastery and find my missing soldier. That is the only thing my brain is thinking about right now, okay? Can you help me with that?”

  “I don’t know. Okay, but, listen. Amanda was my mother’s name. I wasn’t born with it. I’ve had a lot of surgery. A lot of people in the monastery don’t accept me, but I always knew what I was, and it cost us both a lot to get the ansible time for surgical tools, and I hoped meeting someone who didn’t know me before . . .”

  I turned to her. To me, it wasn’t important. Is it sinful to say that I found her attractive? I admit that I did. She was beautiful in her desolated way, with her long limbs and long nose and red-sand cotton hair and all windswept.

  “Amanda, I don’t care about any of that. You are who you are, and it’s not important to worry about it. This isn’t the time to talk about it, either.”

  Obasanjo sent me back a message.

  They are definitely stalling me, too. They’d love nothing more than to convert the whole station into a peaceful ansible for their ministry. They don’t think we even need a military presence here. Do you have evidence against them? Against Brother Pleo?

  Brother Pleo was flying the Osprey that picked her up. I didn’t get a picture of him. The campsite is well provisioned.

  No pictures, though? Next time, get a picture. Look for serial numbers on the stuff. Get pictures of them. Send to me, not the admiral and not Wong. Me me me. I am the only one who can stop their reckless shenanigans. The war effort must not be compromised by self-indulgent pacifist assholes!

  I snapped pictures of serial numbers from the campsite, as I was able, and sent them all up the network line to Obasanjo. Nothing would come of it, of course, but it felt like I was doing something to help the investigation.

  If anything, I was fueling leverage for negotiations with the monastery. I was securing more shriveled red jujubes, and more frozen vegetables, more amaranth grain, and more boarding space for soldiers seeking vacation from the difficult conditions in space.

  As night finally fell, Amanda and I were following the rope line up from the bottom of the mountain, to the top, where the Hemi waited for us, patiently, holding our ropes. Amanda smiled at the slow sunset over the vast plains. She was born here, to this desert and this way of life. Her mother was dead and buried here. Her father longed for an empire of water and trees. It was hard not to see the lines on her face where the starlight pushed through to skin and tanned her natural brown to something deeper. It was hard not to think that there might be a future down here, after all, and maybe Jensen wasn’t so crazy to just walk away from the void above.

  Amanda turned to me and smiled a siren’s smile. She was tough and athletic and young and there was a ghost of the boy in her movements, if I knew to look. I never bothered to think about it, I must confess. She was what she said she was, and there are plenty of ways to procure children that humanity long ago stopped concerning with the traditional concept outside of lingering religious strictures. Even those seemed to ebb and flow with the ministers. If this ministry, here, spurns Amanda as she has spurned me, then this will hold my heart apart from the community of brothers.

  I saw a future in that sunlight, with Amanda, on that day where I knew my career in space was damaged badly, again. I don’t know what I would have done without that hope on the ground. I needed time for my plan to form.

  I flew back alone, with a full hold. Jensen was missing, and the monastery was stonewalling us. Sergeant Anderson was on medical leave on the ground and could not enter zero-gravity for at least ninety days, possibly more.

  The admiral told me he needed me to come in to meet with him when I returned.

  The stars in the sky, the huge black veil of void between galaxies, and the gorgeous golden star at the heart of this system all soothed my pit of dread with their eternity. I felt so small in that little ship, alone. I felt like I was not even remotely aware of the vastness of everything, and it was all so vast. Floating through the dark, observing my ascent past the gravity well of the planet, at escape velocity, I cut a clean delta vee toward rendezvous with the docking bay and coasted the rest of the way, with only minor correctives. It was the best flight I had ever accomplished, using the least resources, and I swooped in straight to the docking bay connection in a direct line. The thrusting microwave engines
pushed against my flight, gently slowing me to a precise connect, not even a bump or a twinge. I wanted this to be on record, my perfect flight.

  The quartermaster met me at the door. “I have been sent to relieve you of duty pending an investigation. Hand over your tablet, please.”

  I cocked my head. I handed over my device.

  “Corporal Jensen is not aboard. Sergeant Anderson is not aboard. Just you. Is that correct?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “The admiral is furious. You understand?”

  “No, I don’t. I tried to stop Jensen. And Anderson was so sick he could barely walk.”

  “Excuses won’t help you now, Ensign. Come on.”

  I wasn’t led to the admiral’s office. I was led to the brig. Wong was there, just promoted after his performance review, smiling and preparing a cell for me. Everyone had been promoted but me. “An interesting voyage, I take it?”

  “What did you do, Wong?” I said. “You set me up.”

  “You were the ranking officer during the voyage. I told you to take her in. That you failed at it is cause for concern. An investigation is only natural. If you had nothing to do with it, you will be out of here in no time.”

  “Don’t give him false hope, Wong. The admiral is pissed. You’re under Article 32 now.”

  The quartermaster looked in at me. “Obasanjo has volunteered to be your advocate. Do you object?”

  “No offense to Obasanjo, but I will decline. If the admiral is pissed at me, I would prefer an advocate that doesn’t cause any more friction. Who else you got?”

  “NetSec says he could do it, in a pinch. He doesn’t like you, though.”

  “Well, at least the admiral likes him, right? This is actually not a criminal proceeding or a court martial. This is just an Article 32 trial—a big show because the admiral is pissed. I did my duty. Sergeant Anderson was very sick. He will be back. Corporal Jensen deserted on her own, likely with help from Wong. Let’s try and make the old man happy, okay? What is his goal here? Am I an example to others to maintain order, or am I actually under investigation? I have nothing to hide. My reports are honest. I did the right thing with Anderson, and I failed to capture Jensen, who was in collusion with Wong and the monastery. I am a pilot, not a security officer. I have limited hand-to-hand, no investigation training.”

  Q put his hand on my shoulder. “The admiral hates you. The best thing to do is take whatever he gives you and preparing for the next phase, after service. I will alert Lieutenant Commander Obasanjo and Captain Nguyen.”

  I said nothing else. What was there to say?

  I sat in my cell, and wondered immediately what was so different from quarantine, from the monastery monks in their cells, from my duties day to day, my meaningless, make-work duties. This is where I first learned how pointless it was to concern oneself with prison cells when so much of our life is indistinguishable from prison out in the far colonies. Without that indifference to punishment, I could not achieve my greatest feat.

  I waited for a day before anyone came to see me.

  Nguyen came to me, early in the morning and exhausted like he had been sitting at his terminal all night, and he woke me up. “Hey, moron,” he said. He was rail thin, sickly looking, and wore a scowl like others might wear a jaunty cap. “Wake up and talk to your advocate.”

  “Give me a minute,” I said. I sat up and stretched and tried to shake the cobwebs loose. I had no data access. I had been sitting in a cell, staring off into the void and wondering what horrible food I would be served next under the terms of my confinement, and if anything could be worse than what we were already fed. “Okay, when am I out?”

  “No such luck. You didn’t do anything wrong, per se. Obasanjo and the quartermaster both think you’re just unlucky. Doesn’t matter to the old man, does it?”

  “Would you like my version of events?”

  “Nope. You aren’t guilty of anything but pissing off the admiral. You think Jensen’s the first deserter? The monks have it down to an art. They want to shut this station down as a military installation, make it just another supply line for their mission. They want to embarrass us with desertion figures. They want people to think of deserting before they think of suicide. They poke and prod our network, and we poke and prod theirs. We are not enemies, but we are adversaries. Did anyone explain this to you?”

  “I’m afraid not. There ought to be a manual or training module.”

  “Everyone else sort of figures it out right away. You are dumber than you look, and you don’t look smart. So you didn’t do it. So what? The admiral comes back from the plague and immediately two crewmen are stranded on the planet, and we’re paying the monastery for room and board on one of them, and here you are, the officer in charge of this disaster. Right after Ximenez, too.”

  “I messed up, but it wasn’t my fault.”

  “It was your responsibility, Ronaldo. Just like when you lost a crewman the first time you flew. Man, you have got wicked luck. Right. Right. Your written statement is accurate?”

  “It is. You can consult with Amanda Garcia if you like.”

  “No, we can’t. Not without running over monastic wires, and why would we do that? You’re telling the truth. So what is your goal here. What do you want?”

  I wanted to fly on patrol, to hunt the enemy out in the long night between galaxies. I wanted to have a brilliant career and transcend to other colonies, and expand with humanity, where my descendants became as numerous as the stars.

  “I will accept whatever the admiral decides,” I said. “I respect his judgment and his authority. I do not feel I have the right to any assessment of my fate if I am such an incompetent officer.”

  “The admiral likes obedience. It might be a shrewd play with that angle. Okay, but beyond that, what do you want?”

  “I am going back to sleep, okay? I appreciate your advocacy on my behalf.”

  “Do you want out, is what I am asking. Should I ask for your early release to the planet?”

  “No,” I said. “No, I don’t want that at all. No. If it is suggested as a solution, I would prefer a vigorous defense against it. I came to serve in the war with honor, not slink away to some miserable rock. I do not want out at all.” I was startled by his suggestion, by how similar it sounded to a prisoners’ sentence. I wanted to transcend. I didn’t want to die on a desert plain, disgraced and dishonored, living in a hole that stank of sweat and algae, waiting for ice comets and talking about ice comets.

  “Good to know.”

  He left me just as suddenly as he arrived. He didn’t see people much, and he was rumored to have a strange fetish, but I don’t even presume to know what it might be. His weight changed quickly, and dramatically, and if he had been on planet with me, I might have wanted the medical technician to check him out.

  When I woke up again in the morning, Wong knocked on my bars with breakfast, and Nguyen was right behind him. “After breakfast, you go to the admiral alone,” said Wong. He opened the bars for me, and put a bowl of gruel in my hand. He left the bars open.

  “I don’t even get to speak for myself?”

  “Nope,” said Nguyen, “I did all the talking for you. It was better that way. He really doesn’t like you.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Thanks for your advocacy. I owe you one.”

  “You definitely do,” he said. “Don’t ever ask me to do this again, moron.”

  Wong stood waiting for me beside the open door. I ate quickly, just what I needed to keep the butterflies down, and not too much. When I stood up, I shoved the bowl straight into Wong’s uniform, splattering the gruel. He laughed at me. “Jump out an airlock, Wong,” I said.

  I tried to push past him, but he was much stronger than me. He stood in my way, smiling like a cat with a mouse in its teeth. It was menacing. I pushed again, against the wall of him, smearing myself with the damn gruel on his chest, and I was outmatched and I knew it. “Get out of the way, Captain!”

  He chuckled and sto
od aside. “I’d watch your tone, Ensign,” he said. “You are being recorded.” He pointed up to the cameras everywhere, in every pinhole and crevice and nook of the station. Everything here is recorded. We all knew that.

  I stormed through to the stairwell, and up to the admiral’s office from the brig. I saw no one in the halls, and I imagine they were keeping clear. Only the admiral truly knew what my fate would be. He would horde his decision like a miser, dripping only snippets of truth out to watch others dance upon the thread.

  Obasanjo was also sitting outside the door. He waved at me and winked. “He’s waiting for you, Aldo.”

  “You all right?”

  “I’m fine, as always. You look a fright.” He pointed to the uniform. He had a handkerchief in his pocket and helped me clean up the worst of it. He patted my cheek. He looked like he wanted me to kiss him, but I didn’t want to kiss him. Even if he transitioned, I wouldn’t be attracted to him. It isn’t fair to him, but nothing is ever fair in the military.

  The admiral bellowed my name. I stood in the doorway at attention and saluted my commanding officer.

  “Sit down, Ensign. It’s past time for your performance review. Let’s see if you are going to be recommended for promotion up the ansible, or if you are going to be stuck here at this miserable post for your entire career for nothing.”

  I sat down. I thought of telling him to go ahead and tell me what he really wanted to say, sarcastically. Silence seemed wiser.

  “To make this all official, I’m going to make it clear that this is your performance review. Officers are held to a higher standard than mere enlisted. We are leaders. We are the ones who stay for decades, sometimes long past retirement, to serve the mission. We are not just measured for tardiness and demerits. We are expected to build the future for humanity in the stars, to find the enemy where it hides, and to defeat the enemy wherever it appears. For this reason, our evaluations are different. If you excel as an officer, you may be recommended by me for a transfer along the ansible to available positions in the hundreds of colonies that need good officers.”