by Mel Keegan
“I’ll catch up with you later,” Travers promised. “And Mick. He’s just sleeping now, isn’t he?”
“Yes. He’s exhausted. I’ll let him sleep for a couple of hours,” Mark mused, “and then wake him before he begins to dehydrate. It’s not a pleasant process, but ask Curtis. It does work. Michael will have enough peace of mind to put the past back into its place and concentrate on the project he’s undertaken.”
“Transspace, the simulator, pilot training,” Travers said thoughtfully. “He ought to be on R&R, just recovering. He still looks like a ghost.”
“Work is better for him,” Mark judged. “I know Michael well enough to know leisure time is almost the last thing he needs.” He glanced at his chrono and clasped Travers’s shoulder. “I must give my own crew a little time. I’m handing over command this evening.”
“And I’m out of here.” Travers forced his feet to work. “Give me a buzz if Mick’s not well. Bill Grant’s probably on Lai’a by now, setting up the Infirmary. I can take Mick right there, if he needs it.”
“I think he’ll be all right when he wakes,” Mark said shrewdly, “but yes, I’ll call you if he’s not.”
The way back to the Wastrel took Travers past the rank of empty labs. The mounds of equipment cases that had blocked their doorways when he and Marin had made their way in were gone now. The Carellan Djerun felt empty and Travers found his hackles rising, his skin prickling. The Wastrel was much larger, with a vastly larger crew, so she felt much less hollow, but even there Neil was aware of a restless sense of movement, change. Nothing was the same. He found himself yearning for the old days of familiarity, stability. Safety?
He wondered what emotions were on his face as he stepped into the stateroom he and Marin had called home for so long. Four cases lay stacked by the door; two more were open on the bed. The closet was wide open and half empty, and Marin’s voice called from the bathroom,
“I wasn’t sure about the last things … check the closet.” His head appeared around the open door. A towel hung around his neck and his hair was still damp; he was barefoot, though he was in pale charcoal slacks. “Mick?”
“Sleeping,” Travers told him. He leaned on the bulkhead by the bathroom, watching as Marin splashed face, throat, chest, with the aftershave he liked. He was waiting for Neil to speak – more than likely guessing how difficult it would be to find words. Travers gestured mutely back toward the Carellan, still hunting for any way to phrase what he felt when Marin said softly,
“It was that bad?”
“Bad enough,” Travers allowed. “The crap that was in his head, it’s a wonder he’s been sane.”
“And who says he’s been sane?” Marin threw the towel into the chute and came to slide his arms around Travers. “Mick’s been holding it together as long as he was wide awake. But the moment he closed his eyes – well, I’ve been there, Neil. Your own mind turns into alien territory. Pray you never have to go there.”
Travers’s arms went around him, held him tight enough for Marin to grunt as the air was forced out of his lungs. “Gives you a new respect for Mick, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, I’ve always known what he was up against.” Marin breathed a kiss into Travers’s left ear. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. No.” Travers permitted himself a groan. “Just let me forget about it now.”
“Mark didn’t tell you the remedy? Double scotch, hold the ice,” Marin said perceptively. “Or a couple of Mountain Mists. Or both.”
“He told me. And I’ll take the booze,” Travers decided. He let Curtis go far enough to look into his face. “I guess I expected some kind of arcane ritual, a lot of mumbo jumbo and muttering in the ancient Resalq language.”
“You mean hypnosis, the power of suggestion? That’s part of it. The charab, the sub-etherics, the 34-Triphenac-A, all have a synergistic effect. The brain settles down into patterns like deep sleep. The mind becomes enormously responsive to instructions. Trust me – I know this. Mark would have asked a lot of questions about Mick’s childhood and youth, yes? Specifically, about various traumatic events … the death of a loved one, a spat with parents, the virgin’s first time, getting dumped by a lover or arrested for some dumb ‘crime of stupidity,’ the kind kids commit so casually. Mick answered?”
“It didn’t occur to him to hold anything back or answer in single syllables.” Travers’s mouth compressed. “Mark never pumped him for the juicy details. Didn’t have to, they just tumbled out. Which is why we used to call the stuff ‘Babble-on.’”
“Not really.” Marin frowned, obviously thinking back to his own passage through this rite. “The shot of Triphenac is actually much too small to make you say something you don’t want to. But when you’re full of charab and the sub-audio vibrations are in every bone in your body, you just open right up. You strip yourself naked and gut yourself with a small, blunt knife. And that,” he sighed, “is the only way to align the apparatus so tightly, the bad memories can be fogged over without dulling the good times we want to remember, and the critical things we have to remember. How’d you like to forget being beat up, and at the same time also forget the time you won big on the roulette wheel and spent a whole night with one of StarCity’s patented palomino Companions?”
“Damn.” Travers’s hands cupped Marin’s face, where the cheeks were so soft, just shaved. “A lot of hocus pocus would have been easier.”
“If it worked. Alas, magic rarely does. I could wish it did!” Marin leaned over to kiss, a fleeting brush of lips which deepened swiftly and clung for a long time.
They might have shoved the open cases off the bed and locked the door, but a chime from the threedee intruded and Travers glanced into the display, astonished to realize how he had lost track of time.
Etienne said quietly, “Colonel Marin, Colonel Travers to Ops.”
“Is this it?” Travers’s heart performed an odd double-thud. A few items of clothing he wanted still hung in the closet, and he was up off the bed and sliding them off the hangars as Marin reached for a tunic.
“Maybe – probably.” Curtis dropped the indigo silk over his head, shoved the sleeves up above his elbows. “Are you done here?”
“I think so.” Travers dumped an armful of Borushek linen and synthetics into the nearest case and dropped the lid on it. “Anything else you want?”
“Just this.” Marin leaned back into the bathroom for the aftershave and wedged it in the corner of the last case, between a handy and the black leather box containing chrono, cufflinks, the earrings he rarely wore, the platinum bracelet and arctic jade rings Travers had bought for him in a tiny craft store in Dominguez – how long ago?
The cases locked down. Curtis loaded them on the top of the stack and gave Neil a curious look. “You’re wondering if it’s not too late to cut and run.”
“Too late to even think about it now,” Travers said dolefully. He smoothed the collar of the tunic around Marin’s shoulder, where the sheer fabric felt like skin and had already picked up his body heat.
They were about to step out when Marin stopped on an impulse. “Have you sent any messages?”
“Messages – who to?” Travers was taking a last glance around the cabin, looking for anything he had missed.
“You have siblings,” Marin said quietly. “A sister and two brothers, isn’t it? There’s an even chance this could be the last outing for us. I thought you might like to leave something formal … perhaps a letter for an attorney regarding certain bank accounts on Jagreth.”
The thought had never even crossed Travers’s mind, and he did give it due consideration while Marin found a pair of Tai Chi shoes and worked his feet into them. “Then again,” he said reasonably, “you have parents somewhere out there. You’ve lost track of them, same as I’ve lost track of the kids – Allan, Ewan, Sibyl. If Fleet got its hooks into them fast enough, Allan and Sibyl are already in uniform. Ewan should be way back on Darwin’s. He’ll be sixteen soon, probably bugged out of his uncle’s home
to live with his mates.” Neil’s head shook slowly. “There’d be no way to get a message to them, even if I wanted to, since the war … and the truth is, those kids wouldn’t thank me for contacting them, not just to make some half-assed farewell.”
“But I doubt they’d turn their noses up at the money,” Marin guessed. “Nor would my parents! I just have no idea where they are. I’ve been thinking for a while, I should leave a message with my old attorney in Westminster, pending Lai’a returning. If we come back in a month or a year – or ten! – the message is automatically deleted. If we don’t come back in that amount of time, the attorney tracks my parents down, right back to Earth itself, if necessary. They’re blood of my blood … for all I know, I could have siblings I know nothing about, especially if my parents broke up, found someone new, started new families. A few Dendra Shemiji dollars might change the color of the future for them.”
He made a strong argument. Travers indulged himself in a sigh. “Sentimentalities, practicalities? I’ll go along with the second. I fought with those kids – when they were just bratty little kids – too long and hard to have any sentimentality about ’em.”
“And my parents just vanished,” Marin added with rueful humor. He gave his hand to Travers, and when Neil took it, placed a deliberate kiss on the knuckles. “All the family I need is either right here, or heading across to Lai’a on the next shuttle. And if it’s ‘goodnight, sweetheart,’” he added cuttingly, “it looks like we’re all going to go out together. Which is the point, Neil. Mark is our sole beneficiary, but he’s on Lai’a too. If we all go out together, and if we don’t leave documentation, in seven years the government of Jagreth will seize the money … and I worked too hard, ran too many risks to earn it, just to let some politician have it! So –?”
“All right.” Travers decided. “We better take care of it soon. They want us in Ops. If there’s time, I can draft something for your attorney right there.”
“Time?” Marin was looking over Neil’s shoulder, where a drone sled had just appeared. Handling arms were already extending toward the baggage; the humans were simply in the way. “Time,” Curtis said darkly, “is something we don’t have.”
The crew lounge adjacent to Operations was busy. The scents of food, coffee, rare liquors, wafted from the ’chefs and the bar, and Travers realized how long it was since he had eaten. The Ops room itself was idling, with Etienne monitoring ship functions, Lai’a, the Mercury, the Carellan, and Hellgate itself. Travers glanced into the big threedee and saw the familiar amber status bars: the crews of all vessels had been called to standby.
Between the wide, open armordoors Richard Vaurien and Tully Ingersol were talking softly. Travers caught snippets of routine ship business, references to the Cerberus, the mining operation on the Bronowski Reef, shipments of raw materials coming in to feed the fabrication bays, shipments going over to the still-outfitting Esprit de Liberté, a courier which had just arrived from Velcastra, and multiple messages from the Lai’a complement queued to be transmitted when the ship left. Two more would soon be added, directed to an attorney’s office in South Westminster.
At last Richard held up both hands. “Enough. You don’t need me to second guess you and hold your hand, Tully. You can mind the store – I don’t doubt it. If I did, I wouldn’t be passing command to you.” He dropped a hand on the smaller man’s shoulder. “Just keep us out of trouble. She’s all yours.”
“Hey, Rick.” Ingersol’s face was uncharacteristically grave. “This ship’s home. I never lived anywhere else since I walked away from Fleet.”
“Since I recruited you.” Vaurien’s face creased pleasantly in a reminiscent smile. “I haven’t forgotten. You were the best Weimann specialist who couldn’t get a contract with any Deep Sky company for love or money.”
“Because my family were Freespacers,” Ingersol said fatalistically. “They still are. They didn’t stay in the Deep Sky for long – just long enough for me to get my freakin’ conscription notice, and if I’d cut and run, I’d have been wanted as a deserter – which means a military firing squad, if the bastards catch you! I didn’t go to a regular school, didn’t have a fixed address, didn’t even have a bank account till Fleet set one up for me, so they could pay me that pittance they have the nerve to call a salary.”
And life was fine for him, so long as he served on the Fleet tender Livingstone, Travers knew; but as soon as he was back in civvy street, prospective employers looked into his background and saw nothing they trusted. The day Vaurien called him, Tully Ingersol was bunking in a small hotel on the rink in the Port of Marak. And he had been seriously considering reenlistment as the alternative to a return to a Freespace colony where the air was thin, the gravity high, the sun small and dim, and where he was out of luck if he wanted more than work on the heavy machinery in the silicate dust of open-pit mines which had ripped open half a continent. Ingersol did not know it at the time, but his luck had actually turned. He already knew the name of Richard Vaurien from so many Freespace ports, including Marak and Halfway itself; he returned the man’s call.
“I’ll keep us out of trouble,” he said dutifully. “We’re going to be friggin’ busy, Rick. There’s still a hell of a lot of work left on the Esprit.”
“And don’t,” Vaurien said emphatically, “let Chandra Liang, or Tarrant, or Prendergast, press this ship into anything that smells even vaguely like a military assignment!”
“Four,” Ingersol said thoughtfully.
“Four what?” Vaurien demanded.
“Four times you’ve said that.” Ingersol gave him a look of mock reproach. “They can ask. But I’m not dumb enough to go along with their kind of monkey shit. Beside, they got plenty to play with. The Chicago and the Kiev – the Elstrom and the Sark, I guess – plus most of the battle group from Omaru blockade, and God knows how many ships coming in from the Middle Heavens after the mutinies. Have you seen CNS lately?”
For what might have been the first time since recruitment, Vaurien formally offered his hand, and Ingersol shook it. “I don’t know when we’ll be back,” Richard said honestly. “I don’t suppose the Zunshu are going to keep any kind of schedule that’s convenient to us. It could turn into months, Tully.”
“It could be years,” Ingersol said baldly, “we all know the truth. And the worst of it is, you probably won’t be able to call home. We’ll muddle through, Rick. You … just be bloody damn’ careful,” he added bluffly.
“That, we can do.” Vaurien turned away, surveyed Travers and Marin with a wry look. “You’d better be ready to ship out.”
Travers jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “A drone came for the baggage. Game on?”
“We’re just waiting for the shuttle.” Vaurien’s brows arched. “Barb already went aboard. Bill’s been there for a few hours. Where’s Mick?”
“Still on the Carellan,” Marin told him. “He’ll shuttle over with the Resalq party.” No need to say that he was very likely still asleep, and would be shaky in the aftermath of a procedure Vaurien probably could not even imagine.
“I was talking to Mark not half an hour ago,” Travers added. “Their labs are in transit.”
“It’s happening.” Vaurien shuddered animatedly. “I’m fine, so long as I don’t think about what we’re doing. And the sound you just heard,” he rasped, “is the shuttle docking.”
A dull bellchime had rung through the ship’s airframe, and a pulse sped in Travers’s temple. “Where’s Harrison?”
“Last I heard, he was still on the Mercury, handing over command to Yvette Lansdown. She’s been his XO and comm officer for long enough, he trusts her the way I trust Tully. He and Jon should be transferring to Lai’a with a few of Bravo Company – about now, in fact. Roark and Asako are already aboard, getting the Harlequin hangared and rigged to transport. Harry,” he added, “delayed long enough to go over intelligence that just got in on a drone courier out of Velcastra.”
“Any surprises?” Marin wondered.
But Vaurien made negative noises. “You know Chandra Liang has Daku sources in Haven and Lithgow. His people there place the Avenger in the Middle Heavens – the Confederacy isn’t even game to deploy her to the Deep Sky, which tells you the truth loud and clear. The government of Earth is running scared, even before they get the news from Jagreth. The reports they’re about to receive about the London should send the Avenger scurrying right back to the homeworlds. You know how their minds work. They’ll see her as their last line of defense between Earth, Mars, the Jupiter system, Titan … and us. As if we’re quite likely to show up, gunning for them, as soon as we’ve secured our own backyard.”
“If we did,” Travers said grimly, “there’s not one damn’ thing the homeworlds could do about it. We could take the Avenger like that.” He snapped his fingers. “And they bloody know we could.”
“At this moment they suspect,” Vaurien mused. “When they’ve seen the London data, yes, then they’ll know. The balance of power has shifted. A year ago, with the super-carrier battle groups they owned the Deep Sky and everything, everyone in it. Now? Well, if the Commonwealth was as evil as we’re being painted, we’d be cruising into the Sol system with a Freespacer fleet of drone asteroid miners like the Cerberus, armed with Zunshu weapons. We’d slap the shackles on them, the way they’ve had us in chains for decades.”
“Thank any god you care to mention,” Marin said bleakly, “the powers behind the Nine Worlds Commonwealth don’t think that way.”
Vaurien was nodding, though his face had set into grim lines. “But the Confederate government will certainly use the media to convince the public we do. Dread of reprisal will hold the homeworlds and the Near Sky in an iron grip. Which the Earthers need,” he added, “since it looks like they’re already starting to lose control of the outer systems of the Middle Heavens. Have you seen the news lately?”