In Evil Times

by Melinda Snodgrass

  The dismissal meant Tracy wasn’t even able to offset those failures by performing well. It also meant the entire fire team was operating a man down so their performance wasn’t going to be stellar either. There were more than a few mutters and glares directed at Tracy as he left the Weapons deck.

  Tracy headed back to his quarters. His clothing was strewn across the floor and that was going to earn him another reprimand if he didn’t get it cleaned up. On his way his ScoopRing pricked his finger. He keyed the message and received the news that he would be receiving a letter of admonition that would go into his permanent file. Another message arrived informing him he would pull extra duty as punishment. As if the admonition wasn’t punishment enough.

  The door slid open and Tracy was met with a barrage of sound. He recognized Caratolian, but despite the lilting quality of the language it was clear Donnel was cursing. The batBEM was already hard at work folding the clothes and repacking Tracy’s footlocker.

  “Interesting how even in Caratolian a person can recognize cussing,” Tracy said. He pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to push back the bone-deep exhaustion. Tracy sat wearily on the edge of his bunk.

  “Yeah. A beautiful and complex language. Far beyond the ability of humans to grasp, much less master,” Donnel shot back.

  When Tracy didn’t rise to the barb Donnel said gently, “You should grab some sleep.”

  “Can’t. Extra duty. I get to inventory every emergency locker on the ship.”

  “Pricks!” the batBEM snarled. “This is not going to happen again. And I’m going to see to it you have something better than those piece-of-shit rebreathers.”

  “And if I’m wearing something other than standard issue I’ll get busted for that too. So please, don’t be helpful.”

  “Oh not for these pissant drills. No, I mean when it really counts. When… if this ship ever comes under attack. Those ass wipes can choke.”

  Tracy rocketed to his feet, and slapped the Cara’ot hard across the face and kicked two of the three legs out from under him. Donnel fell over. “Never speak of a human that way again. Especially not a human officer in the Orden de la Estrella.” Tracy had to control himself not to kick the crumpled alien again.

  Donnel regained his feet. The absurdly round head drooped, and the four eyes swiveled to the floor. “Your pardon, sir. I was out of line. It was merely my concern for my master that led to my intemperate words.”

  Tracy didn’t dignify the overly obsequious words with a reply. He left to fulfill his extra duty. With luck his anger-fueled energy would sustain him through the day. And there was always O-Trell’s notoriously horrible coffee.

  11

  AGAINST INFINITY

  I’m a glorified telephone operator, Mercedes thought as she sat on the hushed but still bustling bridge of the Nuestra Señora de la Concepción. Admiral Mustafa Kartirci, Duque de Monsarat, was seated in his command chair. He was silver-haired, his face a net of wrinkles. He was also a legend in the fleet and an inspiration to his crew. That was about all he did—inspire.

  Most of the actual work of commanding the enormous flagship fell to his flag captain, Lord Carl Vink, a thin, intense man with eerie yellowish-brown eyes set in a round face. It was an odd juxtaposition on a man so spare. He was also bald as an egg. Vink was known to be tough and not particularly fair. He did not approve of Mercedes, so despite her evident skills in the Infierno she had been assigned to Communications. On the bridge she routed messages to the command podium and scanned the welter of messages arriving at the ship and flying between the decks and the crew. Every other week she cycled down to the Infierno bay where she directed traffic and stayed in touch with the men flying the fighters. None of whom were as good as her. She was bored, angry and jealous of her spouse who was getting to fly.

  Vink directed an order to the lieutenant at Navigation. “Prepare for translation.”

  “Preparing for translation, aye, sir,” the lieutenant repeated.

  The warning was echoed through the massive ship. Mercedes checked her couch restraints. The dirty grey wool outside the view screen vanished, there was the inside-out feeling and they were in normal space, which actually wasn’t all that normal. For the system they’d just entered was clearly a young system being riven by violent forces.

  They were on the edges of a protoplanetary disk. Formation was far enough along that a lot of the gas and dust were gone and three gas giants had managed to form. They were striving for primacy as they tried to negotiate their orbits. The rest of the material had begun to coalesce into rocky planetesimals though there was still a lot of material occluding the visual view. At this distance the system’s star was a white-hot ember.

  One gas giant was misshapen as if a bite had been taken out of its side. Another showed jagged red lines where impact forces had released some of its molten core. The hydrogen in the atmosphere was starting to burn. It appeared there had been a recent (in terms of system formation time) collision between two of the planets. The third, smaller giant had been left unscathed for now. There was a welter of moonlets being tugged to and fro by the gravitational forces of the three massive worlds.

  Now that they were out of Fold, Mercedes had a flurry of messages to comb through, finding the ones that needed to be sent to Monsarat or Vink right away. As she prioritized messages and sent them over she listened to the chatter from various decks and the discussions on the bridge. Scans were being run, readings taken, planets charted to see if there was anything useful or of interest on or around any of the fifteen proto-planets orbiting this white-hot star. What was clear was that there was no Goldilocks world. Any planet that wasn’t a gaseous ball was a slowly accreting ball of rock.

  “Radiation off these giants is playing hell with our sensors. Not to mention the gravitational forces and magnetic fields,” she heard Vink tell the admiral.

  “I doubt there is any danger, Carl, apart from the vagaries of this system. We’ll take our measurements and move on.”

  Unless an officer was on a private channel, Mercedes got to hear and monitor all communications to and from the bridge so she heard when Commander Lord Lewis requested permission to send out the Infierno pilots for a drill.

  “Dangerous with these tricky conditions,” the admiral said.

  “It’ll be good for them,” Vink countered. “Most of the time they may as well be delivering mail.”

  “Exactly,” Lewis said. “Let’s shake them up a bit.”

  “You’re not going to risk them all,” Kartirci warned.

  “No, sir. We’ll send them out in two groups.”

  “Very well then,” Kartirci said. The order to the pilots went out to report to their fighters.

  Mercedes’ relief arrived as she was sending a handful of messages down to the autocrat who ruled engineering. Gelb had been two years ahead of her at the High Ground. His father was a mere caballero so Gelb wasn’t getting a lot of attention. Two years on and he was still a lieutenant. They both felt stymied, which had created a sense of camaraderie. Mercedes stood, they saluted each other and she handed over the headphone.

  “Anything pressing?” Gelb asked.

  “No, just the usual.”

  “What are you up to?”

  “I should go to the gym, but I think I’ll go watch the fun from the launch deck,” Mercedes replied.

  “Torture yourself, you mean,” Gelb said with a smile. The downward-curving dueling scar on his chin set an odd counterpoint to his upturned lips as if he wore a comedy/tragedy mask.

  “A little of that.”

  Gelb took her chair and she moved to the command podium to salute the admiral and flag captain. “Lieutenant Princess Arango requesting permission to leave the bridge.”

  “Granted.” Kartirci gave her an indulgent, grandfatherly smile. Vink gave her a tight nod, his lips set in a thin line.

  Various hombres and officers got on and off the lift as it moved through the decks. It still felt strange to receive a salute. She was
used to giving crisp salutes and getting back rather dilatory salutes from superior officers. To have ordinary star men snapping to attention was almost embarrassing. Especially since she was a mere lieutenant. Though to be fair she was also the heir to the Solar League so that was probably part of the reason for all the spit and polish.

  Eventually all the other officers were gone as they descended to the bowels of the ship. The two young hombres and a fusilero pressed themselves against the walls of the lift. There were surreptitious glances, elbows dug into sides, head ducking when she would manage to catch an eye, and outright blushes when she smiled.

  “So, crazy solar system, huh?” she said, trying to put them at ease.

  It didn’t work. They all snapped to attention again, saluted and said, “Yes, ma’am.” One of them slipped and said “sir” which earned him a fist slug on the shoulder and a glare from his companion.

  Woman and princess aboard a ship of war. No matter what I do I’m a unicorn. Will that change when women become more commonplace?

  “Be at ease,” she said to them all, and then said to the blushing S-1 who had called her sir, “It’s okay. I know this is confusing.” That made him blush all the harder.

  The hombres bolted when they reached their deck, and Mercedes was left with only the fusilero who, emboldened by her deigning to speak to them, explained how he was heading to the armory because the targeting system on his rifle was on the fritz and he needed to get it either fixed or replaced.

  She made sympathetic noises and then they arrived at the lowest deck. The fusilero went left toward the armory and the virtual range and Mercedes turned right toward the Infierno launch deck. As she was walking there was a lurch and Mercedes found herself heavy enough to make her ankles ache for a second or two, followed by a flash of weightlessness.

  “Whoa!” She grabbed for a handhold. Vink’s voice came over the intercom. “Personnel be advised that the gravitational forces have briefly affected our artificial gravity systems.”

  “Well duh,” Mercedes muttered.

  “Engineering is recalibrating to account for these forces and there should be no more fluctuations, but be alert and exercise caution.”

  Exercising due caution Mercedes slipped through the doors of the launch deck. Pilots were donning their battle armor. Commander Lewis was talking with Captain-Lieutenant Lord Novek who commanded first squadron. Mercedes scanned the crowd for Boho and found him checking the seals on his battle armor, in particular the pressure webbing that would keep blood from pooling in his legs when pulling high gees. Her husband didn’t look happy.

  He was standing with the third-year ensign Caballero Jace Turner, who was doing his fleet rotation aboard the Concepción. He should have done his rotation with the rest of their class the past fall, but a drug-resistant case of Markham’s disease had sent him first to the hospital and then home to recuperate after the Isanjo virus had run its course. It wasn’t common for a human to catch an alien bug, but Jace had been unlucky. Which was sort of his M.O. If some outlandish accident was going to happen it would happen to Jace. Right now his cheeks were as red as his hair and he looked both excited and scared.

  Commander Lord Lewis broke off talking with Novek, walked over to Boho and Turner. Mercedes arrived just as he said, “I’m pairing you with Turner, Lieutenant. Ride shotgun with him and keep him safe.”

  “Yes, sir,” Boho said. “Begging the Commander’s indulgence… perhaps this is a bit too tricky for a third year.”

  “Begging the Consort’s indulgence, but that’s why I’m pairing him with you. You’re one of our best.”

  Not true, Mercedes thought, I am, but of course she didn’t say it. Lewis moved away, Jace went to his fighter, and Mercedes went to her husband. She went on tiptoes and kissed his cheek. The frown didn’t ease.

  “This is nuts,” Boho grumbled.

  “I think it looks like fun.”

  “Oh yeah, just tons of fun. Fuck up and fall into the gravity well of one of these giants, get crushed into paste. Real fun.”

  “So don’t fuck up,” she said lightly.

  “Wow, that’s helpful!” he replied.

  Mercedes took a step back, both hurt and angry. “I was just teasing.”

  “Well don’t!”

  “You’re really worried.”

  “Yeah, I am.”

  “You’re a terrific pilot.”

  “With an anvil tied to my ankle,” he said with a jerk of his chin toward Jace. “And it won’t matter how good I am if the magnetic fields fry our electronics. We become just another piece of detritus to get sucked in by one of the planets.”

  “That won’t happen. The shielding on the fighters is too good. And as for Jace, you’re good enough for the both of you,” she said soothingly.

  He forced a smile. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. Jack me in?”

  “With pleasure.”

  They moved to his fighter and climbed the sloping sides of the saucer. Boho dropped down into the cockpit and closed his helmet. Mercedes laid down on the skin of the craft and plugged his helmet into the fighter’s control panel. The gimbaled couch molded to Boho’s body ready to read even minute muscle movement. She patted the top of his helmet and slithered down off the Infierno.

  The ground crew, Lewis, and Mercedes retreated from the launch deck. Lewis turned to her. “I know you’re off duty, but would you like to run on ops for this drill?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They entered the control room. Lewis tapped one of the controllers on the shoulder and indicated for him to move. Mercedes took the chair, slipped on her headphone and eyepiece that would enable her to shift between cameras both in the pilots’ helmets and in the cockpits of the different Infiernos. It was a pale semblance of flying, but it was something.

  On the launch deck the giant bay doors finished their ponderous slide. The view outside showed a quarter of one planet, the bands of color like a mad artist’s palette. Beyond it to the left was the burning world. The wounded planet was out of view on the other side of the Concepción. Mercedes pulled up a hologram so she could see all three worlds, their eighty-plus tiny moons that they traded back and forth like square dancers in an elaborate do-si-do. The fighters showed as tiny sparks, lightning bugs against infinity.

  She brought up an overlay of gravitational fields. The path for the fighters was a narrow one. She next added a layer for the magnetic fields. She was starting to be glad she wasn’t flying this particular drill. A final layer detailed the rocks they had managed to locate using the ship’s sensors. There was no way they had tracked all of them.

  The holo was a kaleidoscope of intersecting and twisting lines and colors. Her fingers flew across the keyboard calculating safe routes for the fighters. She adjusted the colors so the flight paths were a heavy red line. A hand squeezed her shoulder, startling her. She had been concentrating so deeply she hadn’t heard Lewis’s approach.

  “Good work, Lieutenant Princess. Send it.”

  “Yes, sir.” Mercedes sent the image and her calculations to the fighters.

  “Well… fuck.” Novek’s voice coming in over the radio.

  * * *

  Like most disasters it came suddenly and without warning. A large rock struck Lieutenant Milán’s Infierno. He overcompensated and threw the fighter into a tumble. Mercedes heard Jace yell excitedly, “I’ll get him.”

  Boho’s frantic order, “No! Wait!”

  “I can nudge him,” the ensign replied.

  “Let him try,” Novek ordered.

  Mercedes switched to monitor Jace’s helmet. “Jace, you’re coming in too hot!” she said. “Give Milán a chance to right himself.”

  But her warning came too late. Milán did manage to regain control, which Jace had not expected. His fighter skidded across the edge of the other Infierno, which sent Jace caroming off in an unexpected direction and directly into the pull of the battered giant. He was burning his engines in a desperate attempt to escape but it
wasn’t working.

  Lewis grabbed up a headphone. “Cullen, get in there. With both engines you can pull him out.”

  “It won’t work. We don’t have enough thrust,” Boho yelled.

  Lewis glanced over at Mercedes who was running frantic calculations. “He’s right.”

  “Very well—” Lewis began, but Mercedes interrupted.

  “There is a way. If they fire their slugs in concert and at the right moment it will add enough thrust to break them free. But it would take both fighters.”

  “And if you’re wrong we lose two ships and two pilots,” Lewis said.

  “I’m not comfortable with this,” Boho said. Mercedes had a sudden uncomfortable memory of Tracy saying something hateful when he received the news that she would marry Boho. He’s a coward.

  “It’s all right.” Jace sounded young and frightened, but determined. “My mistake. I’m the only one who should have to pay for it.”

  “You’re a brave man, Jace,” Boho said, and there was something about the remark that just infuriated Mercedes.

  She stood and ripped off the headphone. Lewis misinterpreted her action. “Yes, Princess, you shouldn’t have to see this.” Condescending, sympathetic. Mercedes wanted to slap him.

  She left the control room, went to her locker and donned her battle armor. She was trying to go fast so of course it made her clumsy. It seemed to be taking forever even though only a few minutes had elapsed. Once armored and helmeted she raced onto the launch deck and climbed into a fighter. The pilots of second squadron stared at her. The lieutenant assigned to the Infierno she’d commandeered gaped at her.

  “Well, don’t stand there. Jack me in!”

  “Ma’am, I don’t think—”

  “I am the Infanta. That is one of my subjects out there and a fellow officer. Do it!”

  He did. “Clear the deck and launch,” she ordered the others.

  They clattered off the deck and the bay doors began to open. Lewis had been too involved with the unfolding crisis to notice. Until now. “Who authorized a launch?” he howled.