Balance of Terror

by K S Augustin

  Kad breathed in deeply, appreciating the aroma of unfiltered nature.

  “One of our other professors used to live here,” Lazt explained, “until she fell pregnant. She wanted to be close to work and her family, so we found her larger accommodation nearer to the campus. This place has been vacant for more than a year now, which is a shame. I’ve always thought it would make the perfect home for the right person, and something about you strikes me as being the right person, Dr. Skylark.”

  He put the right amount of inquiry into his last statement, but Moon ignored it. With deliberation, she turned her back on the both of them and walked towards the house.

  “You’ll have to forgive her,” Kad said in the silence that followed, “her journey here has not been without pain.”

  Lazt watched Moon’s receding figure circle the small front garden. “It’s nothing I haven’t seen before,” he assured Kad, his expression sober. “All of us newcomers have had to leave something precious behind. The beauty of Credis is that we’ve learnt not to ask uncomfortable questions of the recent arrivals. We’re well aware that people heal in their own time.”

  “Do you get many Republic refugees coming here?”

  Lazt smiled reassuringly. “Not as much as some systems we’re in contact with, but we get a steady number each year. It’s my personal opinion that the people who come to this planet are the most damaged, which is why they choose the farthest outpost from the life they knew. But they are also the most valuable, for who else would the Republic seek to destroy but those with the greatest potential? And they do realise that potential here, Dr. Minslok. Your friend will be safe in our hands.”

  The two men watched as Moon disappeared into the house.

  “I hope Doctor…Skylark decides to stay,” Lazt mused. “Our institute could certainly use the kind of expertise she has.”

  “She hasn’t taught a classroom of students in years,” Kad warned.

  Lazt waved away the objection. “That’s what they all say. It’s like falling off a science bench. Do it once and you never forget.”

  They stood in companionable silence until Moon reappeared.

  “What do you think?” Lazt asked, slipping easily back into the role of an enthusiastic persuader.

  “It’s a lovely house,” Moon said faintly. She looked around. “A lovely position.”

  She’s hooked despite herself, Kad thought with satisfaction. That was the first hurdle out of the way.

  “Maybe we can head back and get the paperwork in order?” Lazt suggested. “Sign you up and start the process rolling?”

  For a moment, Kad thought the administrator had moved too fast but, after a slight hesitation, Moon nodded and he silently breathed a sigh of relief.

  Obligingly, Lazt kept up the friendly patter on their return trip. “As you can see, it’s not far from work. There used to be a garden up there behind the house as well – I don’t know if you noticed. It would look lovely if someone decided to rehabilitate it. There’s also a lake association if you’re thinking of indulging in any recreational activities. They have a wide range of craft and equipment available, as well as an excellent group of instructors if you’d like to take up a new sport. And, of course, I already mentioned the staff’s winter sports club. You can get involved as much, or as little, as you like, Dr. Skylark, although I’m sure that classes will keep you fully occupied for the first few months.”

  The paperwork took almost three hours to get through and, by the time they left, Lazt had also burdened them with an orientation pack and a temporary speeder for Moon’s casual use.

  “I…hadn’t expected any of this,” Moon finally admitted as she piloted the craft to her new home. She looked dazed and a little bewildered, but Kad was happy to finally see a different expression displace the usual sadness.

  Seated next to her, he stretched out his legs and smiled. “I don’t see why not. It’s not many top-flight physicists who decide to defect from the largest government in the galaxy.”

  Moon glanced at him in horror. “Do you think he knows who I am?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t think it would take much to figure it out. For all its isolation, Credis likes to keep up-to-date on Republic news. But they also respect people’s privacy.”

  “I won’t get involved in weapons research, Kad.” Her voice was firm. “Not again.”

  “They won’t expect you to. They have other priorities besides developing weapons, and applied physics is a hot field.

  “They’re always on the lookout for physics professors,” he added carefully, watching her with a sideways look.

  She sighed, keeping her gaze on the terrain speeding past below them. “Srin would have liked that. To be appreciated for his knowledge. To have his abilities used to benefit all people, not just a few.”

  Her voice didn’t break. She’s finally come to terms with Srin’s fate, Kad thought.

  He was impressed with the skill with which she settled the speeder down, next to her new home.

  “Do you have to get back to the Tale straight away?” she asked, turning in her seat.

  “Not yet,” he replied slowly. “In fact, I was hoping you’d invite me in and ask me to celebrate a private house-warming with you.”

  Moon laughed but again, Kad noticed, it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Of course. But, if the place was vacant for a year—”

  “Before we left,” Kad interrupted, “Lazt whispered that he’d had some necessities packed into the storage compartment while you were busy filling out forms.” He jerked a thumb at the front of the speeder. “Want to take a look?”

  Moon was so close to collapsing into a blubbering idiot that she wondered how she managed to organise her small cache of supplies in the kitchen. When Kad opened the speeder’s storage compartment, and Moon saw the neat packages of food and drink, she was so overcome with emotion that she could only stand there and stare for long seconds.

  Maybe Kad had picked up on her paralysis because he acted as if nothing was wrong, calmly ferrying the goods from the vehicle into the house. When he came back to fetch a second handful, she felt she was finally composed enough to help him out.

  Everything had moved so quickly, like the speed of light, from preliminary discussions with Administrator Lazt while they were still a week away from Credis, to the whirlwind meeting and Moon’s hesitant new signature on the university’s forms. If this had been a strategy on Kad’s part to distract her from her ever-present grief, he had done a good job. In fact, looking out of the elevated kitchen window to the nodding flower stems in the overgrown side garden, Moon wasn’t sure she would have had the strength to complete both the niceties and formalities on Credis without her old partner around. Whether he knew it or not, Moon was comforted by his presence and she knew she would feel anxious when it came time for him to leave.

  The living room of the house was well situated, overlooking the placid lake and surrounding forest below, and Kad was standing by a large window, admiring the view, when she entered.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it,” she commented, putting the tray down. She poured out two glasses of local wine and brought one to him. “Srin would have loved it here.” She looked around. “He would’ve loved the house too. It’s a little too big for one, but I think it would have suited two people very nicely.” She swallowed a lump in her throat then gulped at the wine. Imbibed in haste, the alcohol etched a trail of irritation down through her chest.

  “Moon…,” Kad hesitated. “Why don’t we sit down? We really haven’t had a chance to talk since, E-Beta, have we?”

  “No, we haven’t,” she agreed. There wasn’t any furniture in the living room, so they moved to the adjoining dining area. Moon knew what Kad was going to say, but she wasn’t going to let him shoulder the blame for what happened.

  “Kad,” she began, speaking first before he had a chance to do much beyond opening his mouth, “I wanted to tell you how much I appreciated you being there after…after Srin’s death. Yo
u spoke to Needann on my behalf and yet, during the month and a half it took to get here, I know I treated you – and everyone aboard the Unfinished Tale – as if you didn’t exist. I was so wrapped up in my grief, I didn’t appreciate what you and the crew were doing for me, and I, I want to apologise for that.”

  “Moon—”

  She held up a hand, silencing him. “If Srin had to die anywhere, and I couldn’t be there with him,” bright tears filled her eyes as her voice broke, “I’m glad that, at least, he had you.”

  Kad exhaled heavily. “I wouldn’t be so quick to thank me for that, if I were you,” he said, twirling the stem of his glass. The brusqueness in his tone brought her head up.

  She frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

  Kad took a deep mouthful of wine then set the glass down again. “When Srin found out that your bags had been accidentally swapped, he was devastated. Then, the more he thought about it, the more he began considering it an act of fate. Without him around, he figured, Needann couldn’t blackmail you. You’d be free to live out the rest of your life without interference. That was one of the promises he extracted from me, to find you a place to call home. The other,” Kad paused, “was to let him die.”

  He shook his head. “Moon, it’s one thing to shoot someone in self-defence, or to know that they were killed in an event you couldn’t stop, but to watch a sentient being disintegrate in front of your eyes….”

  He gulped at his wine again. “I couldn’t do it.”

  Moon’s frown deepened. “You…what?”

  “Even though it was what he wanted, even though I had promised him that I would, I couldn’t follow through, Moon.”

  Dammed hope flared in Moon’s chest. Her nose tingled and a new round of tears began running down her face. “What do you mean, Kad?” She knocked her wine over as she lunged at him, grabbing and shaking him with trembling fists. “Tell me! What the hell happened to Srin?”

  “You told me about your escape from Slater’s End, do you remember?” Kad’s voice was deadpan. “We were aboard the Tale after I picked you up from 3 Enkil IV. And you spoke about that xeno-biologist, Hen Savic, and the drug regime he’d concocted. Later, after we evacuated Excalibur, when I was going through your rucksack with Srin, I noticed the sage green towel you had carefully secured in a stat-pak.”

  “His original medication,” Moon murmured. Her hands dropped away. “The drug responsible for keeping him alive and wiping his memory.”

  “That’s right. And I remembered that stat-pak when I was in the medical bay, watching Srin die. And I thought, what if?”

  “You used it on him.” Moon’s voice was barely above a whisper but, in the complete quiet of the empty house, it sounded as loud as thunder.

  “We weren’t delayed getting to E-Beta because of a Republic exercise,” Kad continued, watching her carefully. “We were delayed because I took Srin to a medical specialist I trusted.”

  “Kad—”

  “She confirmed that the only way Srin was going to get better was by undergoing extended gene therapy treatment. There would be ups and downs, she told me, progress then some regressions, but she rated the chance of success at better than fifty per cent. I thought of you and whether you’d accept those odds.”

  “In a heartbeat,” Moon said.

  Kad nodded. “That’s what I thought, so I told her to go through with it.”

  “So you’re saying,” Moon’s eyes blazed, “Srin’s alive?”

  This time it was Kad who held up his hands. “Hold on, Moon. Before—”

  Moon shifted in her seat as if it had been set on fire. “I’ve got to see him! Where is he? Dammit Kad, how could you bring me all the way to this damned planet and then tell me this!”

  “Right now,” Kad told her, raising his voice above her objections, “this separation is the best thing for him.”

  He waited until Moon subsided before continuing.

  “Both he and the medical staff can concentrate on getting him better, not fending off the impatient questions of an arrogant, imperious woman interrupting their schedule every fifteen minutes.”

  A twitch of Kad’s lips lightened the statement and, after staring at him for a long moment, Moon eventually chuckled and sat back in her chair.

  “By rights, I should wring your neck,” she told him, looking at him then flicking her gaze away, unwilling to believe.

  “I’m sure that’s only a little part of what Needann would do, if she ever found out,” Kad added wryly.

  “But she could find out!” Moon’s eyes widened with concern. “If she questions the crew aboard your ship, surely someone will let your secret slip out.”

  “And why would she question anyone aboard my ship?”

  “Well, because….” Moon looked confused. “Aren’t they all part of the same rebel network?”

  Kad tilted his head to the side. “It’s not organised in quite the way you imagine. The Unfinished Tale is actually my ship, Moon. It doesn’t belong to Needann, just as E-Beta is her child and doesn’t belong to me. This layer of independence in our dealings makes it that much harder for the Republic to trace ownership of assets and tie us all together in one conspiracy. The other advantage to such an arrangement is that I pay my crew, Needann doesn’t. And, it follows from order to entropy, if she doesn’t pay them, she can’t claim their loyalty.”

  Moon wanted to make sure she had heard Kad correctly “So nobody really knows about what you did?”

  Kad shrugged. “That’s not strictly true. A couple of dozen people know but, considering how big the galaxy is, I’d say that’s an acceptable disclosure rate.”

  “When do I get to see him?” Moon asked sharply, getting back to the most important question on her mind.

  “I knew you’d be unstoppable once you got an idea in that head of yours. You’ve always been like that.” He smiled gently. “A communication arrived from my doctor today. Srin is making very good progress. He’s in rehabilitation at the moment. From what I gather, he went through the genetic equivalent of having a thruster outlet pipe shoved down his throat before the engine got turned on. It blasted out all the bad bits but, unfortunately, a few good things went with them.”

  Moon held her breath. “Such as?”

  “He’s still slated for a full liver transplant. Thankfully, the organ was grown from his own cells, so that should lead to minimal complications. There’s also indication of some neural difficulties but only time will tell if they’re permanent.”

  Oh no, Moon wasn’t letting him off the hook that easily, especially not after what she’d been through over the past few months. “What kind of ‘neural difficulties’?” she asked in a steely tone.

  Kad looked discomfited. “His, ah, computational abilities still appear to be intact but his coordination is severely hampered. At the moment, he’s described as being the equivalent of a stroke victim. As for his memory…I really don’t know, Moon. His childhood and early adult memories appear to be fine, but anything more recent is hazy. He gets agitated when questioned about events, so the staff have been holding off asking anything difficult.” His gaze begged for her understanding. “It could all be gone. All memories of you and what you went through together.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Moon said, feeling strong for the first time in weeks. “We went through something similar many times before. We can do it again.”

  “Just…don’t be surprised if he’s not the way you remembered him.”

  “When do I get to see him?” Moon repeated.

  “I was told, four months.”

  “Four months? From now? That’s insane.”

  Kad laughed. “Moon, only five minutes ago, you thought the man was dead. Now you’re quibbling over four months?”

  Moon had the good grace to look abashed as her cheeks flamed. “All right,” she conceded. “Four months. Then what happens? Do we go and pick him up?”

  “I’ll bring him here. The less you’re seen in Republic space, the bett
er. I don’t even want my doctor putting two and two together.”

  “Kad,” she stopped, her voice choked with emotion. “I don’t know how to thank you for this.”

  “Just keep your damned mouth shut, Moon,” he laughed, and rose to get another glass so they could do a proper toast.

  Prologue

  Moon didn’t know why she was taking so much care with her clothing. She eyed herself in the mirror as her trembling fingers adjusted the collar on her blouse. Professor Lazt had called a spontaneous department meeting…to introduce a new member of staff, he said. And something told her that it had to do with Srin.

  The timing was right. It was almost four and a half months since Kad had left Credis after delivering his world-shattering news. In the interim time, Moon had been unbelievably good. She hadn’t sent comm calls winging across the stellar vacuum every day, asking for – demanding – updates on Srin’s condition. She hadn’t pestered Kad for his daily schedule for the next six months. Instead, she had concentrated on her students, finding her work strangely satisfying. What she was teaching wasn’t as sophisticated as her previous research, but the combined interest and dedication of her students was almost as rewarding.

  She took a quick look around her house. It had taken a few months to find the pieces of furniture she wanted, but she wasn’t in a hurry. For the first time in years, she felt as if she could breathe freely. It was a heady sensation.

  By the time she arrived at the campus, half of the department’s staff had already assembled in the staff room. She smiled and murmured greetings to those present and perched in an unobtrusive corner of the room, on top of a conveniently located data unit.

  When Lazt entered the room ten minutes later, his guest in tow, Moon held her breath.

  It was him. Srin.

  Lazt stood at the front, gesturing Srin to stand beside him. With narrowed eyes, Moon took in every centimetre of her ex-lover’s appearance.