by Chris Walley
How strange. I despise humans, these feeble, inelegant, cumbersome organisms with their flawed, crude logic and their utterly irrational actions that come from a processing system awash with chemicals. So why do I feel regret or guilt?
She pinned down the cause of her misgivings. I have been too long with humans, and something of their irrationality has transmitted itself to me. It is a contagion. I need to be on my own. I must be rid of them.
That decided, she simply erased the feelings that had troubled her.
There was no time to be wasted. Betafor found the transmission codes for the Comet and sent an urgent message asking to speak to Commander Lezaroth.
“This is the ship’s computer.” The voice was smooth. “The commander is currently unavailable, and all non-priority urgent calls are being diverted.”
Betafor identified the tiny, telltale resonances in the voice as those of a late-issue PR6000X model. “This is an urgent call,” she insisted. “He will wish to receive this.”
“If you leave the message, I will put it in his inbox. He will attend to it later.”
Recognizing that there was no point in arguing with a unit that lacked higher logic circuits, Betafor compiled a text message under the header “Urgent information on Merral D’Avanos.” In it, she said no more than that she had some information on how Merral might be trapped and asked for the call to be returned as a matter of urgency on a secure low-frequency line that would bypass the main communications system of the Sacrifice.
“Very well. Take this message.” She transmitted it with an urgent icon. “I want you to make sure that Fleet-Commander Lezaroth sees it as soon as possible.”
“Thank you. I will ensure your message is forwarded. Thank you for your call. Peace and prosperity to the lord-emperor forever.”
Betafor hissed quietly to herself, “Stupid machine!”
18
Lezaroth was walking around the upper deck of the Comet. It was partly for exercise and partly because he found that walking helped him think through things. Today he had plenty to think about, so much so that he had ordered isolation from calls from anybody except the lord-emperor.
Matters were delicate. He had to ensure that events moved smoothly over the next dozen hours. While the lord-emperor had been unthreatening when he had appeared in the Nether-Realms, and it was plain that the gift of hostages Lezaroth brought was going to be welcome, these were no guarantee of safety. With Nezhuala, there were no guarantees.
Lezaroth gazed around at his surroundings, and a bitter contempt flared. I hate this ship. I hope I’m never on anything like it again. My task today is not just survival; it is to ensure that I am given command of something more worthy.
He paused at a viewport and, screening his eyes from the burning disk of Sarata with his hand, peered through the tinted glass. He could make out at least three of the Worlds of the Living and after a few moments made out a cluster of small particles that gleamed like metal filings. A battle group, and from what he had heard from the lord-emperor, one that was probably ready to go.
He was struck by a sudden concern. I know very little of what is going on in the fleets now—who is in charge, what the command structure is, or whether allies or enemies are in power. I am vulnerable.
He considered checking the official news outputs but realized that this was useless. They would say nothing except what the lord-emperor wanted. There was no alternative except logging on to the military service sites, where soldiers, as they had done since time immemorial, would anonymously post comments, rumors, and experiences. It won’t hurt to announce that I am back in the system. If you are absent for too long, they assume the worst, and someone will start angling for your position.
He strode back to his cabin. There he ordered the wallscreen on and began logging on to the network. As he did, he saw that he had an urgent message icon flashing. He was about to open it when his log-on was accepted and the wall seemed to explode with data and a blast of noise. The screen was filled with endlessly overlapping frames filled with line after line of messages, images of the lord-emperor, and clips of ships or weaponry.
Lezaroth knew what had happened and cursed himself for his stupidity: he had opened the high-speed military link on a civilian system that couldn’t handle it. He tried to freeze the flood of data but failed. In desperation, he turned on his neuro-augment system to intervene directly, but that only made things worse, and messages began spilling over into his body. He heard voices in his head.
“The lord-emperor today opened . . .”; “The thousandth ship was completed . . .”; “It is my life’s purpose to serve you . . .”; “Recruitment figures are up . . .”
Data Overload! flashed across the screen.
Wincing at the volume of sound in his mind, Lezaroth ordered a full reset. In an instant the screen faded to black and noises, both real and in his mind, ebbed away.
He shook himself.
It can wait.
He wondered briefly what the urgent message had been and then ignored it. If it had been from the lord-emperor, it would have come through direct. And if not, it wasn’t important; after all, the lord-emperor was the only one that mattered.
Merral stood behind Laura on the bridge of the Sacrifice as they started deceleration.
“Are you okay with handling this?” he asked.
“Mmm. But I never thought I would be so glad that space is big.” She bobbed her head at a screen with a vast number of gleaming dots with flashing red squares overprinted round them. “There’s about a hundred of them just there, all the same class as the Triumph of Sarata.” She gave him a smile. “We really don’t want to hit one of those guys. Or even get their attention. And that is just one cluster. Betafor says it’s a battle group. There are another six or seven of those.”
“In other words, we’re like a mouse tiptoeing through a herd of elephants.”
“It’s worse. Elephants only accidentally kill mice.”
“True. So, are you nervous?”
She flashed him a weak smile. “Betafor says that the lord-emperor has advanced the departure of the fleet. It seems they’re so busy getting their act together they are overlooking such minor details as an incoming destroyer on an odd course.”
“That’s an act of grace. You know, I was warned that this was going to be difficult. I should have asked how difficult.”
He walked to the front port and peered out. The disk of Sarata, gold through the protective pane, was far bigger than it had been. A faint point of flight lay due ahead, the jets of the Comet. With the hostages on board.
And suddenly, he thought of Isabella, and he felt moved by a sense of loss. Is it for her or for what she represents? My past, now gone beyond recovery. He shook himself and stared at the twinkling clusters of red-bracketed light. The nearest of the great fleets. “How close are we to the Blade?”
“Half a million kilometers away and decelerating.”
It is too slender to be seen with the naked eye from here. But not for long. “And the nearest fleet?”
There was a consultation with the screen. “The closest we get will be twenty thousand kilometers away.”
He heard the unspoken unease in her voice. Neither of us prefers to spell out the dangers, but that close we could be blasted to fragments in under a second. “So there’s no reason why we can’t make it to the Blade?”
He saw a brief, wary smile. “Not for the moment. But things can change.”
“Of course.” Merral began to walk away and then stopped. “Oh, Captain, an order. Most of us will be going aboard the Blade. There’s a possibility that it could all go badly wrong. If we get taken, or killed, then I want you to take this ship back to Farholme. That way we may salvage something from the mission.”
She swallowed, looked away, and nodded. “Understood, sir.”
Merral held a briefing with Ilyas and Helena where they sorted out plans, then addressed everyone except Betafor and Laura.
“We will need every
one on this,” he said looking around. “There will be no reserves.” Unfortunately. He was aware of Anya’s cold stare.
“Let’s look at what we have to do,” Merral continued, gesturing to the holographic model, which had the main elements of the structure cut away. “There are two docking ports, and the enclosed corridors from these run through the upper part of a big loading area to join just beyond.” He traced the corridor with his finger. “We need to be ready and waiting at that junction.” Merral checked the solemn faces for any differences of opinion and found none. “You will be in two teams, Green and Blue. Green will be fifteen strong and will go ahead first. I will lead it with Ilyas. Green Team’s priority is grabbing the hostages and getting them back to the Sacrifice. Blue I will come to in a moment. We will all be in Dominion armor with Dominion weapons so that even if they see us, they may not suspect anything. One person from each team will have enough swords for everyone in a backpack in case of Krallen attack. There shouldn’t be more than ten guards there, so we . . . neutralize them. If that means killing them fast, then let it be so. There is no alternative. Not here. Is that clear?”
There were mute nods.
“Good. Now, Green Team gets the hostages back to the ship fast. But we must assume that, by now, the Blade control may be alerted. This is where we need the Blue Team.” He pointed at the model again. “Just beyond the junction is a stairway up to the right. Here. It leads to the upper control center on the floor above. This is apparently where most of the external aspects of the Blade, such as communications and docking, are handled. The moment our people are rescued, Blue Team will go to the control center entrance and set off explosive charges. The idea is to cripple the defenses and delay any pursuit. We may even do some damage to this ghastly thing. One other thing: I have arranged for several shoulder-cams to be operational. The signal will be fed back to Laura on a tight wavelength. It will be a record . . .” He left the sentence unfinished. A record of what happened in case we perish.
“Questions?” he asked.
There were a number, and to many Merral could only say, “I don’t know” or “We’ll soon find out.” Eventually, someone asked whether they faced the risk that the Blade might stop them from undocking and hinder an escape.
“It’s a good reason to disable the control center. But Betafor says there is an explosive bolt system and that, if worse comes to worst, she can decouple us that way.”
Merral caught the look in Lloyd’s eyes. We are trusting her with a lot.
“Anything else?”
No one spoke.
“Very well. Helena and Ilyas will assign you to teams now.”
Merral, on the bridge, stood staring at the Blade of Night through the front port. It had become visible to the naked eye at a distance of fifteen hundred kilometers and now appeared like a glittering scratch across the sky.
He heard Laura call his name. As he walked over to her, he sensed that she was grappling with something.
“Sir, Betafor says we have been assigned the right docking bay. It’s confirmed.”
“Good. Were there any suspicions?”
“Betafor says not. She told them that we were operating under the special orders of the lord-emperor. That seems to have done it.”
“That’s good.” So why does her face look as if she has bad news to tell?
“There’s a problem, though. They insist we dock five minutes after the Comet. Blade control prefers not to dock ships simultaneously.”
“Five minutes! We’d better move fast.”
It’s going to be tight. Merral moved to tell the team. As he did, he found himself praying. Dear Lord, we are going to need help.
On the Star, Azeras was sitting in the mess eating a bowl of soup when he was abruptly struck by his situation. He put his spoon down on the table and stared around the empty room. There is no one else here. I am alone. He felt exasperated by the thought.
“I have chosen to be alone,” he said under his breath, but as he said it, he felt as if he heard the distant echo of laughter and of song.
There are more ghosts in this room than when we were in the Nether-Realms.
“I am leaving them all behind. It’s my choice,” he said in a slightly louder voice and rose to his feet. After slinging his bowl into the autowasher, he walked away down the corridor.
On some strange impulse, he stepped into the gathering room. As he stood there, his eyes turned to the mural. For long minutes, he stared at the familiar faces. Slowly, compelled by something beyond himself, he approached the wall and traced his finger over some of Slee’s bold, fluent lines.
“I shouldn’t have come into this room,” he said aloud. I’m talking to myself too much.
He looked around. His former colleagues had left the ship in such haste that many of their possessions were still around. He picked up a sketchbook and flicked through, looking at the drawings of a remembered Farholme and its people, and then put it down. On the chair nearby was an ancient bound novel, and he skimmed through the pages idly. He realized that he had grown to like Communal and the rich elegance of its grammar. Again, just beyond his hearing, he seemed to hear singing and music filled with praise and hope.
More ghosts.
Something like a dialogue began in his brain.
One voice, soft and nostalgic, seemed to say, I thought I could live without them, but now I find that I can’t.
A second voice, harder and colder, answered. You can. Remember, you’re the sarudar, the great survivor. You were one of the few to escape your world and the only survivor of the Rahllman’s Star. You have been among these people, and you have been affected by them. But it will not last. You don’t need them.
The first voice lost no time in a rebuttal. They wanted me to become one of them. They offered me friendship.
You would never really have been one of them.
With time I might, the first, soft voice protested.
No, you would always have been a freak.
Maybe. But they didn’t treat me like a freak.
Azeras stared again at the pictures; then he got up and walked to the door.
What are you doing? the harder mental voice asked indignantly.
I’m going to follow them. I’m going to see what happens up at the Blade. I’ll drift behind in Below-Space, with a minimum signature and a probe. I just need to see how it ends.
He was aware that he had clenched a fist.
You’re a fool. It’s terribly dangerous. There are a thousand ships there ready to destroy you.
He turned up toward the bridge, his pace quickening.
Cut and run now. The second voice said with almost a note of desperation. Or they’ll be the death of you.
I’ll die anyway, the first voice retorted. I’ve run a long way, too. Maybe it’s time to stop running.
You don’t belong to them.
He gave a snort of derision. There is no one else to belong to.
On the bridge, Azeras thrust aside the voices in his mind and began tapping controls. Twenty minutes later, he had changed orbit and put up a surveillance probe and was following the Sacrifice.
“I’m just following at a distance,” he said in a whisper. “That’s all. Just following.”
On the Sacrifice, Betafor considered what to do now.
Eight hours after she had sent the message to Lezaroth, there had been no reply. He had either not received it or, for some reason, had dismissed it. As a result, any hope she had of negotiating an arrangement with him or the Dominion seemed to have vanished. Betafor knew that she was, to use the human word, frustrated. Her options were limited. She considered the possibility that she might be able to sneak off the ship once they docked, but she was aware they were wary of her. And it was not just the formidable Lloyd; Laura also seemed to watch her now. The conclusion was inevitable: her best hope was that Merral would achieve his objective and they could safely and speedily leave Dominion space.
As she checked her conclusion, Betafor
saw Laura come over to her. She bent down as if trying to put herself on the same level. “I have a question, Betafor. Is there any danger that the Blade control might try to seize this ship remotely? override our controls?”
“They may try, Captain, but you remember that on this ship . . . as on the Rahllman’s Star, the key systems are locked. Only you and the commander can override them.”
The captain’s face showed an expression that Betafor knew was the strange human emotion called embarrassment.
“Yes, of course. And that is completely adequate?”
In a fraction of a second, Betafor had called up the list of systems that were locked. Atmosphere, gravity, steering, propulsion, ports . . .
“Yes,” she said, “all systems that might pose a threat to the ship or the crew are locked from external takeover.”
“Very well,” the captain said. “That is all. I just wanted to check.” She walked away.
Betafor looked at the list again. What I said was not true. Or not entirely true. There is one threat that is not locked because no human on this ship knows that it exists.
She linked to the internal ship network to check the diagnostic signs of the twelve Krallen in their container in the aft hold. Deep in stasis levels, they were all stable and functional. She could not lock them from external use, because she didn’t have the authority. It was—to use the human word—ironic that the only people who could didn’t know they existed. Betafor checked the doors of the container and reassured herself they were locked. Even if the Krallen were awakened, they were secure behind a sealed door. If they were to be released, she would do it, and at a time of her choosing.
Fifty kilometers away from docking, Merral returned to the bridge to find that the long, leaden line of the Blade now bisected the screen from top to bottom. The surface was not entirely smooth but broken by secondary structures protruding from it. If he peered down at the lowest depths, he could make out that the Blade slowly faded away into Below-Space.