The Fortress at the End of Time

by Joe M. McDermott

  “With respect, sir, let’s stop pretending you might recommend me up the ansible today.”

  “This is an official proceeding, and interrupting your commanding officer will be noted in the official report of the file.”

  “Sir . . . ,” I said.

  “As far as leadership goes, Ensign, I don’t see any. You lost a crewmember on your first mission. It wasn’t your fault, technically, but plenty of officers manage to have a first mission without losing their crewmembers. On your second major assignment, you attempted to levy charges of sexual assault against my best engine man over playful hazing. Now his performance is down, and the other crewmember involved is angling for an early release. Hardly inspiring leadership, Ensign. Now, as to your recent descent to the surface of the Planet Citadel, you somehow managed to lose everyone who went with you. Sergeant Anderson, our mission-critical pilot, is stuck on medical leave and costing us a fortune in rental fees for his room and board during his recovery. Corporal Jensen deserted right under your nose. Right under it. You did not inspire any leadership in her, at all. I can’t think of a single act of leadership you’ve gotten right. Correct me if I’m wrong, Corporal.”

  “Sergeant Anderson was very sick, and it was critical to the mission to get one of the only two rated pilots operational with safety, sir.”

  “Three pilots, Ensign. You, the sergeant, and me. Three rated pilots, Ensign. I will admit that you made the right call just at the wrong time. You should have alerted the medical staff here on board the station, and he should be convalescing here on board the station. He is costing me money that can’t be used to buy supplies now. I will give you half a point in leadership, out of ten. Honestly, that’s a gift. Nobody respects you, Ensign. Nobody.”

  “Thank you for that, sir.”

  “Now, as to your attitude problem. You are insubordinate. Never enough to get you in actual trouble, but you have been dishonest with me and with crewmembers, and I cannot in good faith recommend your moral character. So, you get no points there.”

  “Any other categories, sir?”

  “Technically, you are proficient at your work, and other than the major, catastrophic error that led to the death of a crewman, you have not had any major issues. On a scale of one to ten, I rate you a six in technical skill and proficiency at your work. This is barely adequate, but you keep losing crewmen. Your physical fitness is also adequate. I will also rate you a six. With a 12.5, total, out of 40, you are absolutely not qualified to transcend up the ansible, much less promote. In fact, strictly speaking, a performance evaluation this low is usually met with early termination of our contract. You should be kicked to the colony with all the costs of your training and transfer strapped to your neck in debt like a dead fish. Ensign, I have decided that as excremental as your performance has been, to date, it is far better to keep you on here until such time as Sergeant Anderson returns to health for exactly one reason: I do not like to fly supply runs. I would rather send a total failure, like you, to monitor the autopilot and handle launch than spend even one minute in one of those hulking tractors piddling around after supply. This will be your job. And, if you do not do it well, I will throw you out of the military so fast you won’t even receive another performance review. You will never transfer up the ansible on my watch, Ensign. I promise you that. You will begin your flight preparations for an immediate departure. Your rank and pay will remain as they are, if only because I cannot demote you below the bottom of the scale. Get out of my sight. You’re the quartermaster’s problem now, not mine.”

  It was not as bad as I thought it might be, but I was shaking. I stood up and placed my hand on the chair to steady myself, my face a mask of a smile and a salute. I turned and left with some solidity. Outside, the quartermaster was there, at ease, with Obasanjo.

  “Come on,” said Q. “Let’s go debrief.”

  Obasanjo patted me on the back and chuckled. “I can’t offer you a stiff drink. The admiral has all the booze.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “I’m flying. I’m serving humanity. Everything’s fine.”

  They led me up to the observation deck. We floated under the stars.

  “Everyone gets slammed the first time,” said Obasanjo. “It’s the budget.” He handed me a sipping bag of jujube tea. “We have to stay within the boundaries of the local economy. It’s not just the budget, though. The admiral is a horrible person. And, short of mutiny, which no one even remotely thinks is a good idea, we just let him play God.”

  “The new lieutenant commander is a bit hyperbolic,” said Q. “Let me try to rephrase. We do what we can with what we have. The admiral earned his place at the top, and we respect that. We also do our best to ensure a smooth operation. I agree that you made some bad calls, Ensign. But I don’t want the admiral’s performance review style to influence your morale while you are working for me. The reality is that he will not be admiral forever, and you will still be here. Work hard, take guidance from your fellow officers, and you will soon be in a place to actually rise through the ranks. I want your next review to be a stellar one.”

  Obasanjo scoffed and laughed. “Q, you are hilarious.”

  Q was mercurial, sipping his tea. We had sweet amaranth bars to chew on, and the stars overhead, and the veil of darkness, there, beyond it.

  “I am a little too busy keeping this old can flying to worry about promotions,” he said. “An attitude that I have been instructed to impart upon our burgeoning Wong here.”

  “Do not accuse me of being anything like him,” I said, with real vitriol in my trembling voice.

  The two men said nothing. They were shocked by it, perhaps impressed. “I apologize if I offended,” said Q. “Everyone’s first performance review is a disaster. The highest first score anyone got was Wong at 18. This has been true ever since our current admiral came into power. There has been a stagnation in the ranks, but he has never thrown any of us from uniform. I do not understand it, nor do I pretend to, but we have our duty, and we do what we can.”

  Outside, a drone passed by, on a cleaning job. It scraped against the glass with some sort of antibiotic cleansing agent.

  “Explain to me,” I said, looking up at the machine out there, “how do we produce our ubiquitous cleaning agents? On the surface, they are quite busy growing food to produce chemicals for cleansing.”

  Q smirked. “It’s ammonia, mostly. Where do you think it comes from?”

  “Urine,” I said.

  “It is quite processed before it becomes ammonia, and a cleaning agent, but it is mostly urine.”

  “We literally cover ourselves in our own urine all day long, don’t we?”

  “Welcome to military service,” said Obasanjo. “It is one of many reasons I suspect we were put here by the enemy as an elaborate joke.”

  “Hey, they always said that war in space was going to be hell,” said Q.

  We ate more and drank more and talked about my new place in the heirarchy, which is to say that I had actual command duties over personnel now, and I would be in charge of the flight crew.

  “If you mess up,” said Q, “it’s you alone out there imploding. You fly alone until the admiral says otherwise. The ships can do a lot on autopilot, and he can always go get you if you die in the can. Mostly, you’re there in case something goes wrong, anyway. You don’t get to pick your team, of course.”

  “Of course,” I said. “How much of what we do is a show we put on for procedure, and how much is actually necessary?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Obasanjo. “It is a deep philosophical debate. If you wish to avoid the seeking of truth in the matter, it is best not to question the surface appearances.”

  “My colleague says that for my sake,” said Q. “We have conflicting notions of reality and truth. I will retire to the monastery someday, and work toward my immortal soul, while he will likely end up insane.”

  “It is not insane to doubt what we see. Quantum scientists do no less. Ansibles were built on no
less.”

  The darkness above us, the universe full of swirling galaxies, an abundance of matter so profound that the mind cannot wrap around either the amount of everything that is or the stark emptiness of what we had on the station. I sipped my tea and imagined a future of abundance here. I could not seriously consider it for long. Most of the universe is a black void of competing gravity wells and quantum information fusing and interpolating and expurgating and moving. In the darkness between galaxies, that great void, there are still such wonders: floating debris of failed worlds, asteroids shimmering away chasing fragments of gravity and bent by other fragments, lost matter hiding to consume all ships and probes in the night sky, and the debris of warships from the last battle, both ours and theirs. I was still in charge of the maps, and I could use that for something, couldn’t I?

  “Captain Obasanjo, have you ever considered seeking out any of the debris of the enemy ships and studying them? There simply must be something out there big enough to study firsthand.”

  He smiled, sadly. “I’m sure the admiral would approve of that ridiculous waste of resources. By the time the enemy returns, who knows what weapons they will have prepared, just as we have great technological improvements of our own. No more rail guns, for instance. No more archaic bullets.”

  “I know, but . . . It would be interesting for you, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes, it would. I would love to see the handiwork of our hidden overlords. Firstly, though, as a scientist, I would doubt it because they are powerful enough to drop a misleading crumb upon my lap. I would really need to study it closely, and compare to the records of the debris, and seek anything that is missing from the record. Anyway, it would be a diversion, nothing more. Our hidden masters prefer to keep us boxed up here, and why not? We can’t do anything to stop them. The universe looks so huge, and it is huge, but it is not infinite. The amount of resources out there is absolutely staggering, but someday, far in the future, the limits will be reached and there would be no more matter to exploit and transform. Any species intelligent enough to play the long game would know that, right? There are always limits to resources, even these seemingly limitless ones. They can hold us here on the worthless rock until such a time as they need it. They can study us. They can manipulate us, even, and make us believe in things that help the cause of the enemy. Ultimately, we are locked in a nightmare from which our best and easiest path is the one with as little pain as possible: Obedience to the mission.”

  “My cynical compatriot. Someday you will abandon your nihilism for something. I pray for you.”

  “I weep for all of us,” he said, “and humanity. Also, if you think there’s a pussy shortage, consider how few interesting and likely young men are sent along. I swear it is a conspiracy against me by the enemy for attempting to discover their plot. The only one on the surface I know about transitioned.”

  “Amanda is very beautiful now,” I said. “Have you seen her since the transition?”

  “I have,” said Obasanjo. “I remember before it, and she was still so young. She was a beautiful boy, but too young for me, then.”

  I sipped a bit of my tea, and felt full and empty at the same time. Of all my sins, I regret my failures of lust the most, even though my pride is probably the worst of the bunch.

  Now, oh confessor, this was my early life on the station. Please, if I may be forgiven for skipping ahead a little. The actual details of my life from there were mostly a long series of busy tasks, and all the supply flights Sergeant Anderson could no longer fly. Actually, his healing went so slowly, he was discharged in the second month, to spare the military the expense of his room and board, and he was left to his own devices on the planet surface while his wife remained alone in the stars. The thing that hurt me the most, during this phase of my life, where I was slowly coming into my own as an officer, was the specter of Sergeant Adebayo Anderson, proud and strong, and miserably lonely in the dining hall, or on duty, or anywhere else. I often tried to sit with her, just to keep her company, when I could. I, too, was very lonely. I felt a terrible weight around her, and when she gave me her familiar smile, with such sadness in it, I wished I could do something for her. She was a reminder, in case I ever tried to forget, that my decisions had consequences and doing the right thing would often still cause suffering in others. She was very grateful to me for his healing on the surface below. That made it worse.

  I flew down to the surface, and I waited in the monastery, and Amanda often came to me there, and we shared lunch and I helped her with her jobs. We wind surfed together, leaning into the sails that powered simple skiffs over the dunes, wind lashing against our safety gear, and huge speeds in such strong winds. She taught me how to climb along the cliffs after salt rocks, with a rope and an anchored line. We kissed, occasionally. Of course we did. We leaned into each other and felt a closeness that I had never before felt. She was younger than me, and she was afraid I would not accept her body, I knew. I was afraid that I didn’t know what to do with my own, much less hers. Oh, confessor, I would admit if during my brief respites on the surface, during negotiations and loading and unloading, if anything happened then. We were good friends. We smiled warmly for each other. We wrote letters all the time to each other. It was little more than this for a long time.

  Permit me to skip ahead, then, to the death of my first nemesis: Admiral Diego.

  Only barely promoted up to lieutenant, but four years older with one more terrible performance review behind me that seemed to have no connection to my actual on-the-mission performance and promotion, the spiteful old man drank himself into a stupor and shot himself in the head with an antique weapon. We don’t even know where he came up with the flintlock pistol.

  The day of his death, he shouted at Obasanjo for hours through the wall. His spew of invectives seemed to cease about four hours into his tirade. By then, he was into the depths of his third bottle. He stared at it for a while, slowly drinking it down. After the third bottle, he reached into his desk and removed the replica of a thousand-year-old weapon, an astonishing artifact to find out in the middle of space. He smuggled materials in with every transport. He had a massive seed bank hidden in his room, but no one has found any more whiskey. He had baubles, books, and priceless treasures passed along from the ansible, somehow. One of these things was a flintlock pistol. Understand the ferocity of the old style, the black powder and ball. Round things passing through flesh do far more damage than puncturing things. The shape of bullets for hundreds of years was more of an arrow than a ball, because the arrow was considered more humane. This ancient weapon would shatter everything in a cascading wave of pain, like stabbing oneself through the chest and bone with the handle of the knife instead of the point. It was a horrifying, disastrous mess of blood and tissue. His head was blown apart. He slumped over the desk, while Obasanjo—curious at the sudden boom—poked his head into the office assuming a bottle had been dropped or thrown and might need cleanup. Obasanjo closed the door quickly and locked it from the outside. He called for Wong and Q and the rest of the officer corps.

  Between performance reviews, I saw Admiral Diego only in the cafeteria at breakfast, and he did not speak to me and I did not speak to him. When he died, I was horrified by the tapes, but I was more horrified by the ranting and the drunkenness and the stain on his honor that his end entailed.

  Our staff meeting the day afterward was very grim and quiet.

  Wong broke the silence. “My investigation is complete, by the way. I know when the weird little device was passed through the ansible. It was with Tech Private Chet Detkarn. I haven’t told her what was in the briefcase she was ordered to carry through. I think we can all agree that she didn’t know anything. Antiques like that are far above her pay grade. He had no will and testament. Everything goes into a storage room, even the antique. Legal decisions will be sent to us. We cannot dismantle anything until decisions come from HR on Earth.”

  “The monastery can’t have any interest in an antique pis
tol used to commit suicide.”

  Wong shrugged. “I don’t think they’re interested in anything. No one is. That’s the conundrum. Except the seeds, there’s a whole bunch of contraband he copied over, that is priceless among collectors on Earth, but this is the Citadel. Now nobody knows who owns it, and nobody wants it. It’s junk. Anybody want his toy collection? I can report it stolen and refuse to investigate and leave it at that.”

  Q grunted. “Can you at least forward me an inventory. Some of it might be useful for spare parts and raw materials.”

  “I can do that,” said Wong. He bent over his tablet and started pushing the keys to make it so. We sat in silence, waiting for him to finish.

  Eventually, Captain Nguyen, the NetSec, stood up and kicked the wall. “Who’s the boss now? Q? Wong? Obasanjo? Me? Who’s running the show until the new guy gets here? I’m a moron computer tech. I don’t know how to run a damn station. I’ll retire before I’m put in charge. Obasanjo, don’t you run most of it?”

  Obasanjo looked over at the quartermaster, with a wicked grin. “Q, you outrank me, don’t you?”

  “Oh, no. Don’t even set me up for that.”

  “Sorry, Commander,” said Obasanjo. “It’s true, though. You outrank us all, right? You haven’t been here as long as Nguyen, but you outrank him, and you’ve been here longer than Wong and me.”

  “Lord, have mercy on my soul. I’m so close to retirement. Fine, I’m the acting admiral. Who’s going to be the new Q in the meantime? I can’t do both. I can’t manage personnel work crews and ship maintenance while simultaneously coordinating with HR and writing all the reports.”

  “Not it,” said Obasanjo. “I’m the supply line to the monastery, and I’m local HR. I don’t have the tech certifications, either.”

  “Don’t even look at me,” said Nguyen. “I’m software, not hardware.”

  Everyone suddenly looked over at me.