Shockball

by S. L. Viehl

  “Cherijo, I have never loved anyone in my life before you. It was not my choice to experience these emotions, but I have them. I have come to know them very well.”

  “If it’s any comfort,” I said, feeling slightly miffed, “I didn’t want to fall in love with you, either.”

  “So you understand how I feel. I had greatly anticipated the birth of our daughter, and I deeply regret her loss. But your concerns are unnecessary. We are both young and healthy. There will be other children. I look forward to them.”

  We were approaching the docking entrance for the Truman’s launch bay, which was a good thing—I was about ready to burst into tears and ruin everything.

  Not now.

  “Okay.” I wiped my eyes quickly and straightened my tunic. “We’d better get up to Command and take a look at Operations first.” Something strange shimmered in front of the launch bay. “What’s that weird glow out there?”

  “It is produced by the vessel’s flightshield. The League apparently recently developed technology that would maintain it continuously.”

  I didn’t know much about flightshields, only that they encased a ship in a bubble of power that allowed them to jump to light-speed and slip in between space. Then something he’d said registered. “Apparently? You mean you’re not sure?”

  “The ship is unlike any the League has produced thus far, and represents a considerable advance in star vessel construction. Xonea’s engineers inform me they will have to disassemble the ship itself in order to ascertain the exact design specifications.”

  I was all for chopping it into pieces. Maybe they’d let me watch. “Is it going to let us dock?”

  “Yes. We sent a probe and an unmanned launch through first.” Without hesitation, Reever flew right through the yellow glow and into the bay. He scanned the exterior compartment and performed the routine decon procedures before opening the hull doors. Before I could disembark, he took me in his arms.

  “Tell me you love me.”

  That surprised me. He never asked. “I love you, Duncan.”

  “I will not let you go, beloved.”

  I felt terrible. Guilty as sin. Because I was going to hold him to that promise.

  The Truman was evidently the latest and finest development in star vessels that Terra had to offer—only the best for my creator, of course—and its dimensions made it roughly about half the size of the Perpetua.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cleaner ship,” I said as we walked down one sterile, empty corridor. The Lok-Teel Reever had sitting on his shoulder was going to have a rough time finding something to eat. “Or a more boring-looking one.”

  “You are spoiled by the Jorenians’ penchant for vivid decor,” my husband said as he swept the level ahead of us with a proximity scanner. “Gray is perfectly acceptable as an interior color scheme.”

  “They could have used more than one shade of it.” I sniffed the air. All star vessels had a particular odor. The Sunlace smelled vaguely floral. The Perpetua still reeked faintly of pulse weapon discharge.

  But this hulk didn’t smell like anything. Pure oxygen had more of an aroma to it. It was making me really nervous. Could it be that new?

  What’s wrong with this thing?

  Jenner’s yowl from inside the carrier got my attention. “Do you think it’s okay if I turn him loose now?”

  He’d already put down the Lok-Teel, which started climbing up the nearest wall panel, searching in vain for some dirt to eat. “Yes, let him out. He may detect something I cannot.”

  “Hey.” I glared at my husband before I bent down to release the carrier door. “He’s not a bloodhound, okay?”

  On one of the other ships, Jenner normally would have taken off like a shot. Instead, he sniffed once, then arched his back. Fur bristled. He hissed and tried to climb up the side of my leg.

  I’d seen him do it before. “Joe must have been on board sometime before he sent it from Terra. Jenner only acts like this around him.” I picked up my pet and winced as he dug his claws into my shoulder and chest and slammed his head against my chin, over and over. “It’s okay, pal. If nasty old Dr. Grey Veil shows up, Duncan will shoot him in the head.”

  Reever reached for a hatch panel. “And if I don’t?”

  I took out the syrinpress I’d taken to carrying in my pocket since leaving Catopsa. It pays to be overly prudent where Joe’s concerned. “Then I poison him.”

  The panel opened to a cross section, and Reever made a slow sweep with the scanner, from right to left. He stopped about halfway into the left region and held the scanner steady. Before I stepped over the threshold, the sound of footsteps made both of us freeze.

  “Who’s that?” I whispered, pressing myself up against a corridor wall.

  “It does not show as a life-form on the scanner.” Reever activated his weapon. “Don’t move.”

  “I don’t plan to.”

  The heavy thuds got closer. Reever hid just around the edge of the hatch opening, waiting, ready to shoot whatever stepped through. I held my breath. Jenner hid his face against my neck.

  “Life-forms detected.”

  A small, bipedal drone stepped through the hatch and halted between me and Reever. It was about half my size, encased in bright alloy, and had innumerable sensors paving its upper chassis. Vid receptors scanned me, then Jenner, then Reever.

  “Welcome to the Truman,” it said politely. “Maintenance Unit Nine-Six-One, programmed to assist. How may I serve you?”

  “God.” I slumped against the wall and put Jenner down. Now he took off like a shot—away from Nine-Six-One.

  Reever scanned the little drone, then powered down his weapon. “Nine-Six-One, are you programmed to commit harm to any life-forms?”

  “Negative.”

  “That’s not good enough,” I said. There were all kinds of things this drone could do to us that would not be considered harmful to any life-form, and would still incapacitate us.

  Reever nodded. “Nine-Six-One, state your program parameters.”

  “Caution. Fulfilling this directive will take approximately one hundred, twenty-seven minutes. Digest response is recommended.”

  “Please, pick the digest response,” I told Reever. I didn’t want to stand there listening to the damn thing for two hours.

  My husband addressed the drone again. “Delay digest response for one quarter stanhour. Escort us to the helm.”

  The drone made an abrupt about-face. “Please follow me.”

  The helm was in the very center of the vessel, behind a series of protective grids and multiple reinforced corridors.

  “Why all the security?” I asked Reever as the drone deactivated yet another bioelectrical grid.

  “Control of this vessel was very important to whoever designed it.”

  Control. As in who was in. “That doesn’t sound very reassuring.”

  “Considering Hsktskt ship-to-ship technology, and the prospect of impending war with the Faction, it is likely a mandatory and standard design application for all new League vessels.”

  I wasn’t quite so analytical. “Joe probably has it set up so it can be controlled from a remote ship. That’s the only reason he’d allow that kind of safeguard—if he had a back door in.”

  “You are too suspicious.”

  I scoffed. “Spend a few years being chased by Joseph Grey Veil, then come talk to me about my paranoia.”

  The Command Center was compact and efficient, and acted as the brain for the entire vessel. Controls over all levels and systems were at our fingertips. Only the main computer was offline, waiting to be reinitialized.

  Reever sat down at the console, but before he touched the keypad, I grabbed his hand.

  I had the strongest urge to pull him away from the controls and run all the way back to the launch. “What if you reboot this thing and it decides to fly straight back to Terra?”

  “The Jorenians have already downloaded the entire mainframe computer core via the probe we sent
in, and have extensively examined the data. There is nothing in it that presents a danger to us.”

  “What if they missed something?”

  He squeezed my hand. “Then I will be able to see where you grew up.”

  “Very funny.”

  Reever tapped out the required codes, and an image popped up on the vid screen. It was my creator, Joseph Grey Veil.

  “Hello, Cherijo.”

  “Damn, I knew it!” I slapped the console with my hand. “He can’t even give me a present without spoiling it.”

  Joe smiled. “As you know by now, my daughter, there is nothing that will harm you on this ship.”

  “You lie like a floor covering,” I told the image. “And don’t call me your daughter.”

  “It is prerecorded, Cherijo,” Reever said.

  “I don’t care. He still doesn’t get to call me his daughter.”

  Joseph continued. “The Truman is the latest and fastest of the new scout ships being designed and built on Terra. There are sufficient supplies and living areas to accommodate you and a maximum of two hundred additional crew members. I hope you and your friends will use it to attain the freedom you seek.”

  “He’s being too nice,” I said, stepping away from the console. “There’s definitely a bomb on this ship, or something.”

  He wasn’t done, either. “I have taken the liberty of entering a special signal relay program into the mainframe system.” The code appeared briefly below his image. “If you are ever in need of assistance, access the communications array, input this code and a direct relay will be sent to me here on Terra.”

  He still expected me to come running to him for help. After everything he’d done to me. The man’s ego knew no bounds. “When pigs fly.”

  “Good luck, my dear.” The image vanished.

  I wasn’t his dear anything. I turned away from the console, feeling the familiar outrage building inside my chest. “Erase whatever code he put in the computer, Reever.”

  “Cherijo—”

  “Do it. Now.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Endamaged

  Reever had to reinitialize the computers before he could locate and erase the code. I stood there watching until he did. Then he listened to the drone spout a lot of programming directives, while I paced along the length of the helm and brooded.

  “I’m hungry, Reever,” I lied. “Let’s go see what kind of food this heap has to offer.” A couple of weeks on Te Abanor with the bat people were starting to look pretty good to me.

  The little drone thumped over and put itself in my path. “May I escort you to the galley?”

  “Go jump out an air lock,” I said.

  Nine-Six-One started to head for the entrance panel, when Reever stopped it and canceled my directive. When I glared at him, he merely raised one blond eyebrow at me.

  “We can use the drones,” he said, taking my arm. “And a meal interval would be welcome.”

  “When did you get to be so nice?” I said as he guided me out into the corridor. “I don’t remember you being this nice on Catopsa. Or the Sunlace. Or K-2.”

  He paused to remove the Lok-Teel from the wall panel and put it back on his shoulder. “Would you prefer I return to my previous persona?”

  “Which one?”

  “You accused me of having many. Corrupt, evil, traitorous, oblivious, inhuman—”

  Anyone else would have thought he was serious. But I’d been with him long enough to recognize Duncan’s personal version of humor. “Cute. Very cute. No, you can stick with being nice. I suppose I’ll get used to it eventually.”

  “It may even influence your own personality.”

  “Ouch. That was a low blow, darling.” I pretended to clutch my abdomen. Then I went still, thinking of the miscarriage. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—Sorry.”

  The little drone led us to the galley level, and went into some rambling dissertation about the functions of the prep units. I nudged it aside and started dialing.

  “What are you hungry for?” I asked Reever over my shoulder, deliberately forcing a cheerful note into my voice. “And don’t pick anything from that third planet in the Tupko system. I can’t handle food that talks back to me.”

  “A simple vegetarian dish will suffice.”

  The program produced two reasonably attractive Tuscan salads, along with Jorenian morningbread and two servers of mint tea. I checked everything first with a scanner before I let Reever touch a single crumb, but found no trace toxins.

  “He had to rig something on this ship. He’s not capable of simple decent human behavior.” I cautiously tasted my tea. It was on the weak side; I’d have to fiddle with the unit’s preparation submenu algorithms later. “If not the drones, the computer, or the food supplies, then what else could he have sabotaged?”

  “Perhaps he truly meant what he said. He wanted you to attain freedom from the Hsktskt and the League.”

  I gave him an “oh, please” look as I fed the Lok-Teel a crust. The blob enveloped the scrap of bread and ingested it immediately.

  “People are capable of changing, Cherijo.” He gave me a slight smile—something he’d been working on, practicing in the mirror for months. “You changed me.”

  “You never told me what you were like before I met you, so I can’t exactly judge.” I sampled the salad. Not bad. “Joe hasn’t changed. He’s just trying a new angle, like the good little mad scientist he is.”

  “Do you want to know what my life was like before I met you?”

  It would keep me from having to come up with dinner conversation. After that thoughtless remark I’d made before, I was all for that. “Sure.”

  “When I was a child, traveling with my parents, I often considered suicide.”

  I spilled my tea, and the Lok-Teel oozed over to mop it up. “What?”

  Duncan calmly picked up his server and took a sip. “It seemed a logical solution. My experiences were for the most part unpleasant, mentally and physically.”

  “Okay.” He was serious. “What changed your mind?”

  “Establishing telepathic links with other species. Sometimes their emotions filtered through. They were all different, and often confusing. Only one thing did they all seem to have in common. A desire to love, and to be loved. I didn’t understand it, until I met you.”

  “This is the part I don’t get. What’s so special about me? Other than the fact I’m a genetic construct being hunted by everyone on this side of the galaxy.”

  “I wasn’t sure myself at first. You are physically attractive for a Terran, I suppose—”

  I sat back in my chair. “You suppose!”

  “And you are a skilled physician and surgeon. But it was more than that. I have spent most of my adult life living among and communicating with thousands of other species. Yet all I had to do was see you, hear your voice, and I knew I had encountered someone more unique than any life-form I’ve ever known.”

  I was still burning over that he-supposed part. “And you got this from just seeing me at the Trading Center on K-2?”

  “It was not limited to that. I watched you. I could feel the emotions emanating from you, more clearly than anyone I’d ever met before. You immerse yourself in what you do for others. Yet you rarely if ever give a thought to what will benefit you personally.”

  I shifted, uncomfortable with the picture he was painting of me. “Don’t make me out to be a saint, Duncan. I’m not.”

  “No. You are completely dedicated to your work. You devote yourself to healing the sick and the injured, no matter who they are or what they have done to you, when others would simply let them die.”

  I thought of SrrokVar, the Hsktskt physician who had tortured me and dozens of other slaves on Catopsa as part of his research into xenobiology. I’d mutilated and nearly killed him with a pair of bonesetters. “Not always.”

  “You fight for freedom, for yourself and others like you. Alunthri, the slaves on Catopsa. Even a Hsktskt OverSeer.”

&nb
sp; I didn’t want to think about FurreVa. After fighting so hard to give her a normal face and learning to become friends in spite of our differences, losing her had been agonizing.

  “That’s just doing the right thing,” I said. “Any decent person tries to live their life like that.”

  “Then decent persons are rarities indeed, for you are the only one I know.”

  “I keep telling you, you need to get out more.”

  He reached for my hand, and the light fell on the terrible scars crisscrossing the back of his. “All of this drew me to you, but when we linked for the first time, I felt your emotions through you, as if they were my own. I began to understand how empty my life was. How meaningless it had always been, until I met you. I had finally found the reason to live.”

  “So, that’s when you fell in love with me?”

  He shook his head. “No. That was when I decided I was going to have you as my mate.”

  I made a face at him. “And love just happened to get in the way later?”

  “I knew I loved you the day you limped into the medical bay on the Sunlace, your hands broken and torn, your leg bleeding from an open artery. And still you went over to the cleansing unit to scrub for surgery.”

  That seemed a pretty gruesome moment to pick. “What, the sight of all those compound fractures and third-degree burns dragged you completely under my spell?”

  “No.” He looked away for a moment. “Before I came to Medical, I had been told a Healer had been blown out into space when the buffer on level seven reformed. I thought it was you.” He paused. “A few minutes later I came to Medical and saw you there. Alive.”

  He’d never told me that. “God, Duncan.” I started to shake as I remembered that day. That moment. The same moment I’d finished reading the list of the injured and dead, and hadn’t found his name on it. The exact moment I’d realized I’d fallen in love with him. “You know, on the cosmic scale of coincidences, this one blows everything away.”

  His eyes narrowed as he looked at me. “You felt the same? At the same time?” I nodded. “Then it is simple, isn’t it? We were meant to be together.”