by Jean Johnson
Robert tsked as he brought himself into alignment with his seat, warming up his own dashboard. “I see Maria is late this morning.”
“She had a late-night call with her family. Relatively speaking—pun included,” the Finn geophysicist joked. “I understand it was daytime for them, late night for her. I passed her still getting breakfast on my way here, and she told me why she was running late. Though no pun this time; she was standing and walking, but not running. She told me there were twins born to one of her cousins, and she was willing to give up sleep and be a little late to celebrate that.”
“Well, she’d better get here fast,” Colvers muttered, “Or a certain officer will throw the rulebook at her.”
Jackie didn’t pretend ignorance about who he meant. She didn’t address it directly, though she did speak up. “Considering the birth of twins is a joyous thing, and not a case of insubordination . . . I’m sure Commander Graves will let it slide.”
“I don’t know. Do I get a slice of birthday cake?” Robert joked, just as the cockpit door slid open.
“Birthday? Whose birthday is it?” the doctor asked, pulling herself into the now-somewhat-crowded space.
“Your cousin’s twins, so maybe we could have twice as many slices?” Lars joked, smiling at their medical specialist.
“You wish,” she snorted. The Spaniard pulled herself past Jackie’s spot with a little wave. “Nobody hurt themselves on today’s simulation runs. I want to be able to nap through everything. Oh, and if anyone asks, two very healthy baby girls, 3.550 kilograms and 3.727 kilograms. Both of them within a hair of 40 centimeters, one under, one over.”
“Two little girls, nice. First birth, or second?” Robert asked.
“First. They’ve petitioned for a second birth, and got it. About half who have twins first birth get a second. Triplets, not so much,” Maria added. She tipped her head and shrugged—and hastily grabbed at her console as the act made her start to drift away from her seat. None of them were strapped in yet. “Then again, I don’t know many women who, as first-time mothers of triplets or more, would want to go through that again. Not if it’s the first round.”
“Have you had any children yet, Maria?” Robert asked her, looking up and back over his shoulder.
“Dos, gracias. A boy and a girl, Suzie and Michael, fourteen and thirteen respectively. Rolo wanted one of each, and I obliged him. Now they are being cared for by their father and his new wife. Which is fine by me,” the doctor added, holding up a hand to forestall any comments. “It was a good divorce. We fought too much, and in all the wrong ways. They rarely fight, and she gives our children lots of love. They also get to have at least one more, since Paula hasn’t had any yet. ‘An heir for everybody,’ and all that,” de la Santoya quoted the motto of Population Control. “Whereas I get to come back to a career I love, without being told in so many words I’m stupid every day for working up in space when planetside pay is better.”
“Do you miss them?” Jackie asked, curious.
“I usually get them on the weekends, which gives Rolo and Paula time for themselves. Well, when I’m not stuck in space, I can babysit,” Maria amended, reaching up over her head to turn on the life-support sensors. “Anyone else have bambinos?”
“Two,” Robert admitted. “Boys. Dale and Evan, sixteen and fourteen. Roger’s got ’em bunking with his sister’s kids on their ranch. The husband and I wanted ’em to grow up knowing where food actually comes from, so it’s up at dawn, muckin’ stalls, feedin’ cattle, fixin’ the electrofence, and layin’ plans for the vegetable greenhouses come spring. Anyone else?”
Lars spoke up. “Just one. But he is not really my boy. My best friend in college wanted a child, and asked me to be the donor. The clinic had some very interesting magazines for the donors to get in the proper mood. One of them had this—”
“Thank you for sharing,” Brad interrupted him. “We don’t need the details.”
“Any children for you, Brad?” the doctor asked him.
Jackie had her mental shields up, but something beyond the walls enfolding her mind made her look sharply at the lieutenant. His face was tight, his expression shuttered. “We need to focus on our jobs.”
Something about the topic of children, or something related to it, had upset him. Jackie found herself concurring out of sympathy. “Yes, let’s focus on our work, please. They want us launching outsystem by the end of the week, and Lars and I are still in need of practice on our training.”
“Well, we’d be launching a lot sooner if someone hadn’t taken the first week off,” Colvers said, his tone laced with a pointed reprimand.
“I didn’t take the week off. I was working,” Jackie countered just as acerbically.
“Oh, sure, working on what? Handshakes and smiles all around? Visiting every corner of the planet so your face would be all the more well-known?” he prodded.
“I was working on an introductory presentation for any peaceful, friendly aliens we encounter,” she stated, struggling to keep at least half her attention on her console tests. She still had a few subsystems to check, to make sure his tampering had been cleared out of the system.
“What, a song-and-dance routine? You think flashing your fat thighs will—”
Jaw clenched, Jackie unleashed her psi. The whole cockpit vanished around them, leaving them floating in space. Colvers swore, Ayinda yelped, and the doctor started muttering a prayer in Spanish, crossing herself. Robert twisted in his seat, looking all around at the star-strewn night enveloping them; he bumped into the holokinetically cloaked console and clung to it, hands clasped on apparently nothing, though something was obviously there.
“. . . I like this,” Lars murmured, his voice warm and his head nodding in appreciation as he peered around. “Can you do auroras, too? I love watching the aurora borealis, back home.”
A whoosh of sound—she had an aptitude for sonokinesis, too, tied to her holokinetic ability—and the stars swirled, twisted, dove . . . and they appeared to arrow down toward a blue-white-green-brown marble that rushed toward them, swelling faster and faster.
“Okay . . . Okay, that’s enough! Thank you!” Robert called out, clinging to his unseen console. “Thank you, Major.”
Jackie halted the image and dissolved it with a faint tinkle of crystalline chimes. She rubbed at her forehead. It wasn’t easy, blanketing the whole cockpit from their sight; so many angles of viewpoint to work with in such a confined space was far more difficult than it seemed. She had rushed the image of stars-to-planet because she hadn’t wanted the flaws to be noticed by anyone.
Brad pulled himself around in his seat, glaring at Jackie. “Don’t you ever do that again!”
“Behave professionally, Lieutenant,” she countered, holding his gaze, glad she wasn’t much of an empath. Just the look on his face was not pleasant; being hammered by his actual emotions would have been worse. “You keep pulling fat jokes out of the air, I am going to alter that air until you change your attitude. You will now take a twenty-minute break, Lieutenant Colvers. Do come back sooner, should you regain your composure and your professionalism.”
He snarled under his breath as he exited, displeased at being ordered to leave. But he left, letting the hatch hiss shut behind him. If he had left without asking or receiving permission first, it would be seen as Dereliction of Duty, a serious accusation under Space Force law. If he had attacked her, which he looked like he was a handful of heartbeats from doing, that was an even worse offense. Brad would never thank her for it, but as a superior in his chain of command, by ordering him to take that break, she had saved his boots from being court-martialed.
Finished with her prayers, Maria crossed herself one more time, then said in a shaky voice, “It has just occurred to me that . . . that you could kill someone with that gift. Make them think a cliff is bigger than it is, make them walk into an open elevator shaft . . .”
“I am well aware of the difference between what I can do, Doctor, and what I shoul
d do. I pass each of my ethics exams with flying colors twice a year, like clockwork. Because I am ethical and moral,” Jackie stated flatly. “And I recite every day, in the Oath of Service, that I will not use my powers, responsibilities, privileges, skills, or abilities to break the law. That would be breaking the law.”
“But you are also a soldier, mente bruja,” the doctor returned quietly. “And soldiers sometimes have to kill.”
Jackie sucked in a breath. The nickname, mind witch, wasn’t an insult, and wasn’t meant as an insult. It was the rest of Maria’s statement that disturbed her. Jackie punched at commands on her console, trying not to think too hard. She let out a hard breath a few moments later. “. . . I know. And the precogs are showing things where we may have to get in a fight. Myself included. Let’s get back to work, shall we? Colvers messed with my consoles, so I want to do a sound-check test to make sure I’ve fixed everything. Doctor, would you be willing to go aft and check the rooms for the intercom system with me?”
“Sí.” Maria pulled herself free of her station.
“Gracias,” Jackie murmured.
CHAPTER 3
SEMBER 7, 9507 V’DAN STANDARD
(JANUARY 12, 2287 TERRAN C.E.)
V’DAN IMPERIAL WARSHIP T’UN TUNN G’DETH
FROZEN-YELLOW-ZEPHYR, SUGAI SYSTEM
This was it. This was the moment prophesied. Heart pounding in terror, brow dripping sweat into his eyes, for a moment Li’eth seriously contemplated telling the priests to stuff their tomes and portents out an airlock. Mentally, not personally, since they were not here to yell at. For a moment, the weight of the laser in his hand was a tempting weight. The kind one applied to one’s head.
The T’un Tunn G’Deth was not quiet in the last throes of its death. Claxons blared, sirens wailed, and through the ship’s intercoms, his fellow soldiers could be heard screaming, either in defiance as they fought or in pain as they retreated, or in begging for someone to shoot them. Some of the monitors on the bridge still worked, most turned inward, showing the backwards-kneed, tentacle-armed monsters sweeping the other decks, shooting to maim and incapacitate rather than kill. Of the three that showed exterior shots, one showed a close-up of the enemy vessel latched onto their hull, and two showed debris drifting away from the far side of the ship. The last of the three also held a sliver of a view of the urine-yellow methane planet whose mining stations they had been trying to protect, and a view of more ships fighting in the distance.
Gravity fluctuated, making his stomach lurch with the unexpected loss-and-tug downward. The scanner tech, Ensign Gi’ol Chasa-nuq’ara, looked up and back at Li’eth, her blue eyes wide, her face pale and sickly beneath her gray spots. “Captain . . . the rest of the local fleet is . . . We’re trapped. The Salik shot out the mail courier. Their homeworld fleet . . . they won’t know we need . . . needed help for another three hours . . . half an hour to speed up, use faster-than-light, then . . . then slow down again . . .”
The Gatsugi home fleet would not be able to save them in time. Their enemy was almost to the bridge. The blast doors would slow them down for a little while, but not nearly long enough to hope for a rescue.
Li’eth swallowed. This was it. He opened his mouth to give the seemingly suicidal order to surrender—prophecy said that some of them would survive—but a zzzap and the smell of scorched flesh jerked every head of the crew toward the sound, and the sight, of a male body slumping sideways in his restraint harness.
“This is it, then,” Leftenant Superior Dai’a Vres-yat muttered, eyes wide with horror at what the portside scan tech had done. She swallowed and looked down at the gun holstered on her thigh. “I . . . I guess . . . we only have . . . one choice left . . .”
Something thumped on the blast door sealing the bridge. Everyone froze. The console with the dead tech had a monitor showing the corridor leading to it, and the armored aliens contemplating how to get inside. The Salik were clever; they would figure out a way.
“. . . I will surrender.” That caused heads to whip around. Of the twelve remaining members of the crew on the bridge, eleven of them looked at their commanding officer. “I suggest you do, too.”
“You’re insane!” Leftenant Superior Shi’ol Nanu’oc hissed. “Do you want to be eaten alive?”
“No. But . . .” Drawing in a deep breath, he spoke firmly. “I have been holding a secret, passed to me from the highest levels of the Empire. I was informed that this ship, particularly its officers . . . will be involved in a prophecy.”
“Oh, not that damned Sh’nai nonsense again!” V’kol dismissed, scowling at his friend and Captain. The leftenant superior turned away from his useless console, most of the gun emplacements on the ship long since damaged beyond any help.
“While there is life, there is hope,” Li’eth asserted, holding his friend’s gaze.
“What hope?” Shi’ol demanded. The image on the monitor for the corridor outside showed a large bulky weapon being brought forward. “I’m going to die on this ship, and one of my stupid cousins will get the title . . .”
“This ship’s officers, some of its officers,” Li’eth stressed, “will not only survive, but be rescued from the enemy’s grasp by beings from the prophesied Motherworld. If they find us in that grasp, they will join with us and help us defeat—”
“Taka taka taka,” V’kol mocked bitterly, fingers and thumb flapping like a beak as he interrupted his commanding officer. “I am not inclined to throw my life away, but neither am I inclined to risk the high likelihood that I’ll be eaten alive. Do you even know who will survive?”
Li’eth bit his lip. He couldn’t say that he was destined to survive without the others demanding why. That was a secret he did not dare let out, lest he be hauled all the way to the Salik motherworld to be eaten, a fate that would more than likely throw off the prophecy of being rescued while still in space. At least he had applied a fresh layer of concealer to his cheek just this morning. With luck, the tough covering would not wear or peel off before he was rescued. If he was. “The legends say that five will survive. We know the Salik eat the officers last, saving them . . . us . . . for ‘special’ meals.”
“You don’t even know if this is that ship,” the gunnery officer scoffed.
“If it is . . . then doesn’t the Book of Sh’nai speak of the Motherworld having everything we need to defeat our enemies?” Ba’oul Des’n-yi asked. “If this is that ship—if any of our ships are that ship—then doesn’t the hope of one of our ships being the one whose crew greets the beings of the Motherworld mean it’s worth risking death by . . . by being eaten alive? If it means setting up everything so that the Salik do get stopped . . . then . . . then I will surrender, too. If the Captain will, I will. I’ll take that risk.”
Gi’ol swallowed, but nodded. “I will, too.”
Shi’ol, seated on the far side of the room from the scanner tech, rolled her eyes. “Oh, why not . . . I’d hate to let the title fall into a collateral line if there’s a chance I might survive . . . and if I tell them I’m a Countess as well as an officer, they might save me for last—if only so we can be in accordance with prophecy,” the blonde added as the brown-haired weapons officer gave her a suspicious look. “I’ll even kiss the feet of whoever gives us whatever it is we need to defeat the Salik.”
Considering their logistics officer was rather proud of being the 373rd Countess S’Arrocan, and did not hesitate to wield her title in off-duty superiority over the mostly common-born crew, the idea of the arrogant woman kissing anyone’s feet was a high concession on her part.
“I don’t know if I can risk it,” one of the other ensigns down at the front of the bridge said, her eyes wide, her voice tight with fear. “I’m not one of you . . . a-and my jungen isn’t fancy, or . . . or special . . . They’ll eat me alive.”
It pained him to do it . . . but Li’eth unstrapped from his seat. The blast door pinged and cracked; the actual view of the door wasn’t on camera, but it seemed they were using some
sort of laser to burn their way through. Stepping down through the tiers to the ensign’s station, he unholstered his laser and offered it to her. “Do what you feel you must. Ensign Kar-tal. As I will do what I must. This ship and her officers are involved. Some of us will die . . . but some will survive.”
She took the weapon with trembling fingers, gaze locked on the weapon.
“If you are still alive when they cut through . . . drop your weapons and place your hands on your heads in surrender. Comply with everything they’ll tell us to do . . . unless and until they come to eat you. Then you give them every last scrap of hell you can.”
He paced back to his station, hoping he looked confident. Hoping he sounded calm. He didn’t feel that way inside. Thirty-two years was not nearly a long enough life span. He did not want to die just because the Sh’nai prophecies might have been misinterpreted.
“Most likely . . . they’ll just stick one of their stunner weapons inside, once they’ve bored a hole, and knock us all unconscious. A mercy, for not having to say, ‘I surrender,’” he added grimly. “But while there is life, there is hope—too many of the Sh’nai prophecies are coming true, Leftenant Superior Kos’q,” he added to V’kol, hearing the officer draw in a breath to protest. “Dislike the religion all you like, the words of the Immortal have guided us with palpable accuracy through the millennia. Misinterpreted, sometimes, but accurate when viewed in retrospect. The time of the return of the Motherworld is very near, and this is the ship that starts it.
“We just have to hold on to the hope that some of us will survive to see it all unfold.” Reseating himself, he didn’t bother to strap back into the restraints. The gravity weaves lurched again, their power source faltering. Giving up, Li’eth relatched the buckles, not wanting to injure himself before capture. The Salik tended to eat the injured ones first, along with the weakest, least-ranked, and least-interesting sentients.