Then... no Sirius?
Abruptly, right on the edge of a dream, I remembered crouching in the ruins with Jade, Jade kneeling before me, shrugging out of her grimy coverall, clinging to me and...
All of a sudden, I remembered how she cried after we made love, clinging to me, shaking, so afraid...
I came back to consciousness, clutching Violet, Jade’s terror ringing in my ears, then... bang.
Violet murmured, “Murph... ?”
I whispered, “Nothing. Bad dream. Sorry.”
She reached back and patted me gently on the thigh. Snuggled closer against my chest, settling back toward sleep.
It was a while before I could relax again.
o0o
About a dozen kems from the SAAG base where Squadron 33 was billeted there was a little patch of woods, a swatch of field with a winding stream where some of us used to go during off duty time. Not quite a park, overgrown, weedy, kept up mainly by the action of trampling feet—plainly artificial, like everything else.
Violet and I had our picnic blanket spread on yellow-green grass by the side of the stream, which bubbled softly in the background, a flow of pale, yellow-brown water, the reason the place was called Runnymead. Because of it, because someone once wondered about the name and had the commissary place a special order, we were drinking mead now, honey-scented stuff so different from beer and wine it was in a class of its own. Drinking mead, eating little sandwiches, fatty gooseliver paté, almond butter with marshmallow, some sliced stuff they call dachshundsarsch synthesized in a habitat I’d never heard of before, nodding to Santry’s portable freeze-frame while we watched her play in the water with Regis.
He looks silly with all that dense black hair pasted flat to his skin, fat pecker bouncing into view from time to time. Santry, though... I tried hard not to watch her too much, too closely, water streaming from her long, shiny black hair, making her skin glisten in the sunless light of the bright yellow sky.
All the same, Violet put out her hand, reclaiming me with a touch.
Political news on the freeze-frame. A lot of it, focused through the spin filters of Standard ARM, all about what was going on in the Jet. Negotiation. Endless negotiation. Standard and seven or eight other really big companies leading a legal challenge to the Althing’s blizzard of new regulations, its horde of new regulatory agencies.
Governments have no right, the freeze-frame said...
I looked back at the stream. Santry and Regis were standing belly to belly in waist deep water, faces pressed together. Violet had her head down on the blanket now, just touching my side, arm thrown over me in a protective curl. I wondered for just a moment what she was thinking; wondered if I was supposed to ask.
All around us, little blue flying things buzzed from flower to flower, little things Santry insisted were called hummingbirds, though I couldn’t see them well enough to know if they were truly avian, or something else. Big blue bugs, maybe. Bees. Or just completely man-made doohickies, left over from when this place had been something else.
Special program coming up in the freeze-frame, transmitted broad-band across all local channels, straight from the Standard ARM news center. I felt Violet stir by my side, lifting her head slightly. Out in the stream, Regis and Santry were grinding gently against each other, and I realized they might actually be fucking under the water.
Beyond them, beyond the stream, beyond the far field and a rim of woods made up of raggedy yellow trees from which thin plumes of pale blue smoke seemed to rise, a dome of glittery white ice stuck up straight through the yellow sky, poking through the habitat’s eutropic shield into airless space.
While I watched, a vic of turretfighters rose from the base beyond the hill, friends of ours, I supposed, banked hard, sparkled blue exhaust, accelerated and was gone.
Odd.
Not your usual sort of maneuver, this wasteful use of emergency thrust. More a livefire combat sort of thing...
Then the freeze-frame chimed, much louder than the volume setting should have allowed, the same noise it’s supposed to make when they announce some sort of civil emergency in a populated habitat. You hear that chime, then somebody tells you to run for your life.
Out in the stream, Regis and Santry went suddenly still, holding each other close. Maybe Regis is having his orgasm now, pulsing softly away inside her. But then they pulled apart, with evident reluctance, heads turning to face the shore.
And then the freeze-frame told us, in so many words, that the Government and Althing of the United Habitats of the Centauri Jet had withdrawn from all negotiations, had then nationalized corporate operations on all member worlds. Ours, and everyone else’s.
And then the freeze-frame said, All Standard ARM personnel will report to their duty station immediately.
Beyond the glitter-ice hill, another vic of fighters lifted off from the base, banked hard, sparkled blue, and was gone.
We got up, slowly, silently, while Regis and Santry waded to shore. Slowly folded our blanket, put away our food, slowly walked back to the flyer we’d borrowed for the afternoon. And Violet held my hand more than usual.
o0o
War, they say, is just business conducted through other means.
No time flat and we were aboard the 331, Violet and I, out in the dark between the stars with the entire squadron, escorting three LSTs full of Standard ARM AstroMarines, Sammies they’re called, from the base complex at the Nulliterrae Swarm to a piece of Standard real estate called Morgan’s Round. Standard’s until just the other day.
I could look out through my biggest freeze-frame, see the boxy LSTs surrounded by a swarm of little turretfighters. And, off to one side, our unmanned companion, a bulbous, matte black Smoky Rose Gun Platform.
Unmanned but for a laconic AI who knew it might be expended like so much ammunition.
Do your job, it seemed to say. I’ll do mine.
The connecting hatch to the pilot’s nest slid open and Violet popped her head and shoulder’s through, filling the module with her faint lavender scent. Looked around for a second, then slid on down, squirming in beside me.
Not supposed to do this. Technically we’re in combat right now, but what the hell. Morgan’s Round is still a hundred hours away.
We’d made love in this little vacuole from time to time, giggling away at our naughty little transgression, but not now. Violet just seemed to want to hold me close, snuggle beneath my arm and look out at the stars. After a while, she whispered, “Just like it was before...”
Before?
Before a hundred years of solitude. A hundred years in which Violet the Optimod went to a hundred little wars all by herself. A hundred years in which I wandered, loved and lost, fought and was defeated...
An abrupt memory of Jade surfaced.
Nothing left of her inside me now but a memory of a dead woman’s body sprawled headless in some bloody grass. All the good parts went away, poisoned by that last.
Violet said, “Just like in the Glow-Ice days. You and me. Dûmnahn...”
You and me. Dûmnahn. The dead and the dying. Remember them too.
She said, “I wonder where he is now? Sometimes I still miss him, after all these years.”
I held her close and said, “Maybe we’ll see him again some time. After all...” After all, he’s still alive. We could easily run into... one of him. Run into a being somewhere that calls itself Dûmnahn and remembers both of us, just the way you remember characters in a book. Not quite like old friends, but...
Violet whispered, “Bastards.”
That was like old times too, back when she still had the will to hate what’d been done to us all by... Hell. By the people who pay us, that’s all. When did we lose the will to hate them? Maybe when they gave us these nice, cushy jobs. Maybe when they let us... be together.
All these weeks, so much like Heaven. So much like...
And then, unanticipated, came the warning chime, loud in our ears.
Over the freeze-frame,
Palafox’s voice cried out: “Tally-ho!”
Bring your revolver, Watson. The game is afoot...
Little blue lights, sparkling against the sky.
Coming our way.
o0o
The little blue lights descended on us, but we’d seen them in time, several wings of Jettie fighter craft, spiraling in toward us, spiraling in for the kill I suppose. As it happened, we had better ships than they did.
Violet oiled out from under my arm, slid back up to the pilot’s nest, hatch snapping shut behind her. I felt my heart start to pound as I ignited the inertial harnesses, as I put my hands in the sidesaddle interface controls, looking at this freeze-frame and that, making sure all was right with my engines and subsystems and...
The ship bounced and tugged at me through the inertial compensator field as Violet made it twist and turn, our wingman, the ship holding Santry and Regis, turning hard alongside us, crossing the path of the three LSTs, whose Sammies, right now, must be holding on tight, hoping they weren’t about to die, swooping low above Smoky Rose who, I noticed abstractedly, was rolling about its long axis.
Right. Right. Things you can do too...
I said, “Weapons systems up. Optical alignments to null. Pulse radar...” Damn it. Ah. There.
Something flashed outside, nowhere nearby.
I shoved my face into the multiplexer and had at them.
There. There.
Bright blue stars whirling all around.
That one. Now.
The star went nova, burst into a pale blue puffball and was gone, like so many dandelion seeds blowing on the wind. Do I really remember that? Yes I do. We had dandelions in Audumla, I think. Can’t remember. Can’t remember.
Not now, I...
There! There! That one!
Another blue fireflower, another Jettie gone off to Uncreated Time.
Twisting. Twisting. Multiplexer looking around. Looking for...
Cold sweat bathing my face.
All gone. Every last one of them.
Three LSTs cruising onward serenely, as though nothing ever happened. Over there, Smoky Rose was falling back into place, gunports sliding shut all over its hull. Wonder how many Jetties it killed, all by itself?
Orb.
I got two.
Good work. Good work, I...
All around us, Squadron 33’s turretfighters were sliding back into place, slowing down, taking up there positions and I...
I said, “Violet?”
Nothing.
“Violet? Where are Santry and Regis?” Not like them to be out of position.
There was a long, empty silence, then, ever so softly, she said, “They bought it, Murph.”
I tried hard not to understand, but... I can’t remember. Did I see it happen? Can’t remember. Some time, while I was making fireflowers out of those two Jettie ships, a Jettie gunner was looking through his own multiplexer, heart pounding, thoughts chaotic, as he made a fireflower out of them.
Nothing left of them but atoms.
Atoms and memories.
And whoever did it, they’re gone too.
How many people did we kill today?
Don’t know.
More to come.
So we flew on, flew on to Morgan’s Round, dropped on it out of a dead black sky, doing our job of killing, and Palafox, damn him, played “Hall of the Mountain King” over the intercom, while we flew and killed, and killed some more, until the job was done.
o0o
It seemed like no more than one long day, two quick pulses of battle separated by a few score hours of unnervingly empty travel, stars a motionless backdrop as we slid our deadly way toward Morgan’s Round. Then we fought, twisting, turning, skidding from kill to kill, while Smoky Rose turned its guns on a garden-green world below, fires blooming in cityscape as we fought through the heavens.
Somewhere near the end of it all, long after the Sammies were down and doing their job, 331 was rammed by a dense ball of electrically charged plasma, the hot, gasified remnants of an enemy ship.
I remember how Violet screamed as fire danced and roared on the inside of our hull. Remember how sparks jumped from my fingertips as I pulled them from my sidesaddle interfaces. Maybe I screamed too, calling out Orb’s name in vain. Not much time for screaming: I felt the ship surge and buck underneath me as Violet struggled to regain control, as I made a frenzied dance from frame to frame, trying to see if...
Palafox: “331! Status, 331!”
“Uhhh...” Orb, get it together! “Gun systems down, Leader. We’re out of it.” No shit... “Uh. Engine power at 4 percent and falling.” Falling fast.
“Can you make it?”
“Uh...”
Violet snapped, “We’ll be all right, Leader. Pick us a spot.”
Silence.
She said, “God damn it, Palafox!”
He said, “Uh. OK, 331. Sammies’ve recaptured the Standard stage at Hobart 5 Intersection, just over the limb from your position. I’ll let ‘em know you’re coming.”
Very dry: “Thanks.”
And what if she’d told him the same thing my instruments told me, that we stood a better than even chance of splattering ourselves all over Morgan’s nice round landscape? Well, you know the drill. Try to come down on residential habitat. Not so god-damned expensive to replace.
The ship started to shudder and sway, stars, explosions, pseudoplanet on fire below, all of it tipping back and forth, back and forth. I realized with a pang of horror that the inertial fields had come down. We run into anything now, anything at all, and I’ll be jelly between the switches of my fucking circuit breaker panels in the twinkling of an eye.
“Violet?”
Moment of silence, then a tight, “Not now.”
OK. Understood. Do your job.
I found a control frame that was still working, put both my hands in and started to feel around. Restitutor Orbis, I... Well, shit. Lookee here. I mated two disconnected subsystems that seemed otherwise all right, felt the world suddenly stabilize as the compensators came back up. Watched, blinking, as the engine power histograms climbed toward green.
Violet’s voice, gasping in my ear: “Oh, God, Murphy! Thank you.”
And so, down we went over the humped-up hills of Morgan’s Round, me at least praying all the way, hoping like hell old Orb was out there somewhere, approving of the work I’d done, brave, brave little man-child, that he’d give us a little push, you see, and today wouldn’t be my day to settle back for a nice long rest in Uncreated Time.
There!
Familiar looking Standard ARM installation, buildings like broken teeth, fire and smoke still coming out of them, surrounded by neat green lawns, little lakes and... yes. One nice landing stage, painted pale blue, Standard ARM logo with its blazing sun and double-thunderbolt, just off to one side of the Sammy LST...
Violet said, “Jesus. Hang on, Murph!”
I felt the shields sputter and start to fall. Reached inside the control frame again, but... fuck. Useless. The ground seemed to be coming up awfully fast now and... Fire sprayed outside as we poked through the eutropic shield, hull suddenly coming alive, rattling, banging, wind moaning just a few cems away.
Now. Now... I felt like shouting up to Violet, telling her we really ought to be slowing up now, getting ready to settle down on the stage and... I took a quick look at the histogram, watched it fall through blue and amber to red. One percent. No more.
So.
I tried to imagine what it would be like when we hit the ground in just a few seconds. Would I see the walls explode apart, just before I died? Would I carry that memory with me into death, a seed on which my next life would have to form?
And how many of those marines are going to die now, just because we were afraid to?
No answer.
The image of Restitutor Orbis and the promise of Uncreated Time suddenly faded, receding beyond my reach, leaving me with nothing.
Then Violet applied lateral thrust. I co
uld hear her grunt, high and raw, through the intercom, as the world outside twisted and spun, going flat underneath us, racing by, racing... the ship screeched as she touched down, running not quite parallel to the surface.
Bang.
The emergency pyros went off by themselves and the ventral hatch blew, falling away. Down below my ass, a hand’s breadth away, I could see the blue-painted surface of the landing stage rushing on by.
Look at those fucking sparks, will you?
The ship screeched to a halt, rocked once, and was still. I sat back, looking up at the ceiling, with all its dead instruments, smelling a tang of burnt metal, feeling the sweat trickle out of my hair and run down the back of my neck like hot oil.
Then the connecting hatch to the pilot’s nest, twisted and askew in its mount, creaked open, and there was Violet, blood coming from her nose, looking down at me, eyes so very wide.
She whispered, “Murph?”
I reached down comically and felt the seat of my pants. “Hey. Do farts have lumps in them?”
A bizarre, lopsided grin, then Violet started to sniffle as she slid through the hatch on top of me, getting blood on my nice, clean uniform.
o0o
It took less than a minute for the rescue team to get over to what was left of 331 and get us out of there, though they said they were somewhat alarmed when they cranked open the upper hatch and found the pilot’s nest empty. There’s no provision for bailing out of a turretfighter. I mean, where the hell would you go?
They had an ambulance ready, but we didn’t really need it. I had some burns on my hands that they fixed up with a quick spray; Violet’s nosebleed had come, apparently, from the force of her sudden stop as she flew out of her crash net and went face-first into her dead viewscreens.
I was absolutely fucking blind up there, she told the medics. Just hoping the god damned radar altimeter was right...
Back along our track, you could see a long, white gouge where we took the paint off the landing stage. We missed running into the LST by about six ems, which would’ve made a fuck of a mess.
Scared the shit out of me said the medic. We were parked right by the fucking ramp...
Good enough is good enough. I turned and looked in the direction we’d been going. Edge of the stage right there. Then a parking lot full of surface effect cars, most of them still neatly in their spaces, the cars of the landing stage employees. Then a nice terminal building whose front glass wall had been blown out by some earlier event, shards sprinkled like diamonds all over the lawn.
When We Were Real (Author's Preferred Edition) Page 23