Alongside that blissful afternoon, I recalled our worst night on Terpsichore, huddled under a tattered awning, sharing a meal scraped out of a dumpster. Sleet fell in sheets but the ice-cold rain did little to dissipate the stench of urine in the narrow and littered alley where we hid and often slept. Our bodies shivered as much from withdrawal as the cold. Desperation had us as firmly in its grip that night as lust held sway over us that long ago afternoon.
Those memories and every one in between them crowded into the space between Estrella and I. Threaded through them all was the same adoring look. The same trusting and open gaze, ever ready to accept whatever I might decide to do, regarded me patiently from the business end of my pistol. Estrella would accept my decision to kill her as readily as she had accepted all my decisions all through our life together, decisions that had robbed us of our innocence, turned us into junkies and criminals, exiled and degraded us into little more than scavenger animals. She had always followed my lead, even unto ruin, because she loved me. And because she loved me still, I could see clearly that Estrella was ready and willing to accept whatever I chose to do next.
Face to face with her again I was confronted with the fact that I had never done right by Estrella. I took her adoration, her almost fawning love and near blind trust to lead her into a life of misery. I had used and abused her admiration as badly as I had young Bannon Orman’s hero worship. Looking into her eyes I knew that she knew it as well. More striking however was the certain knowledge that Estrella had forgiven me all the indignities I had heaped upon her through the years.
I knew too that if I pulled the trigger, my decision to kill her was already forgiven.
“How did you know I was coming?” The moment I spoke, I knew that I could not shoot Estrella. I suspected she knew it too. I kept the gun aimed at her all the same.
“Drake sent me a message.”
“I didn’t tell him I was coming here,” I said. “In fact, I told him I wasn’t going to see you.”
Estrella smiled. “Drake says you’ve always had a tell. You chew the inside of your cheek when you’re bluffing.”
“But I wasn’t bluffing,” I said. “I meant it when I told Drake I didn’t want to see you.”
“It wasn’t Drake you were trying to bluff, perhaps,” Estrella suggested pointedly. “Now please, Gaelic. Put the pistol away and allow me to beg your forgiveness without the prodding threat of murder.”
I lowered the pistol and placed it on the gurney beside me. The room itself seemed to exhale with relief.
Estrella took my hand in hers and kissed it. When she raised her wimpled face to me the tears ran freely. “I am so sorry Gaelic, for leaving you like I did.”
I loosed a heavy sigh, exorcising years of toxic resentment and poisonous hatred. “It’s alright. If you chose the thrills of enhancement over me, it was only because I turned you into a junkie. If you can forgive me for that, which I assume you have, given the dictates of your new found faith and all; I guess the least I can do is forgive you for leaving me behind. So, let’s not waste anymore time on that unfortunate episode. Agreed?”
“Agreed!” Estrella said through a sob.
She kissed my hand again. I took hers in mine and kissed them. We leaned into each other and rested, forehead to forehead, for a silent minute. When I looked up again, Estrella’s face was damp with tears. Twin rivulets had slipped out from under my own lids. Estrella gathered them up with the cuff of her habit before drying her own cheeks. Sister Elizabeth tried in vain to blink back her tears. Even Lieutenant Zapatas’ visage lost its glare.
“I don’t know about anybody else, but I could sure use a drink,” I said.
Sister Elizabeth laughed nervously.
I hopped off the gurney and strapped on my holster. “I’m serious.”
“Sure, there is a bar or two on the station,”Estrella said, taking my arm. “My order forbids me alcohol so I’ll just have a juice.”
“That’s not much fun,” I said.
“It’s a small price to pay for the greater compensations the order affords me,” Estrella said.
I slipped my vest back on. “If you say so.”
Estrella took my arm and led me out of the infirmary. As we walked through the rounded corridors of the station, Sister Elizabeth and Lieutenant Zapatas followed a few feet behind us. The other two knights took positions in front and behind the group.
“So tell me Esty, why are these Imperial goons in the OZ?” I asked after strolling along in silence for a while. “Last I heard treaty forbade their presence in this space.”
“Unless an Open Zone government requests our help fending off an invasion,” Lieutenant Zapatas answered behind me.
I stopped and turned to the knight. “And who made this request?”
“The request came from the Daimyo of Takama-No-Hara herself,” Zapatas responded. “Before it was destroyed in orbit, one of her ships detected a Federation Corvette in Amber’s space. She feared that they were there to aid Amber’s pro-Federation Coalition defeat her Independence Alliance.”
“Were they?”
Zapatas nodded. “The Imperial Paladin Lyonesse and her Halberds were immediately confronted by the Federation Destroyer Republic, half a dozen corvettes and what was left of the Coalition’s fleet as soon as we arrived in Amber space. The Lyonesse was badly damaged and we lost a Halberd and four Angels in the battle. By God’s grace we prevailed. The Republic and her surviving corvette retreated into deep space. The Coalition fleet, that portion we did not destroy, retreated planetside.”
“I heard there was fighting on the ground,” I said.
“Toshogu, the Capital was under siege when we arrived,” the knight said. “We broke the siege but it was a costly victory. There was a platoon of Fed mechas and three Psion battleborgs aiding the Coalition.”
“Is the fighting over?”
“For the present,” Lieutenant Zapatas answered. “The Federation and their Coalition allies have been thwarted, but not yet defeated. Coalition forces still hold two of the three islands of Takama-No-Hara.”
“Drake mentioned that there were Federation troops on Ramage,” Estrella interjected.
I nodded. “Troops on the ground and ships in space.”
“He didn’t mention anything about ships,” Estrella said.
“He wouldn’t have known,” I said. “They were entering Ramage space as I was leaving. They chased me out, would have destroyed me if they could. It was the Independence and two of her corvettes.”
“Just three ships?” Zapatas asked.
“They were the only ones who showed up on my scope,” I said. “They were at the edge of the system, practically at the limit of my Strumpet’s scanner range. Could’ve been more we didn’t see. I would count on it if I were you. And they entered from Hegemony space.”
The Imperial Knight nodded slowly as he considered the many possible ramifications of the last point.
“So you’ve explained what brought you to Amber,” I said. “What are you plasteel-plated goons doing here on Krestor?”
“We’re here to defend the station,” Zapatas said. “Captain Maddox of the Lyonesse has charged us with securing it and the foundry as well as helping with their evacuation.”
“Expecting to be attacked, are you?”
“There is little cause for optimism from the diplomatic front,” the knight replied. “We could use your ship in the evacuation effort, Gaelic of Arkum.”
“You want to use my Strumpet?”
“We would fix her up for you at no charge and even throw in a new crystal,” Lieutenant Zapatas said. “To be honest, we’ve already begun the repairs.”
“I don’t recall granting you that authority.”
“You were a prisoner when I made the decision,” Zapatas said. “You being a pirate, it was within my authority to confiscate the Strumpet.”
“Again, I say, I don’t recall granting you any such authority.”
“Please Gael,” Estrella
said, squeezing my arm. “The Haven Jitney Service is a Federation company. They’ve grounded their fleet. The Federation has ordered them not to assist us.”
“I saw two of those jitneys inbound,” I said.
“They were already enroute when the order to cease and desist aiding Krestor Station was issued,” the knight said. “They tried to return to Haven empty but I dispatched the Prydwen to dissuade them from that course.”
“And we all know how persuasive you can be, lieutenant,” I said with a sneer.
Zephrinus Zapatas lowered his eyes for a beat. It was a flash of sheepishness, I presumed.
“If you do not wish to volunteer the use of your ship, we would… I will, of course, understand,” the knight said. “You will not be forced to cooperate. I pray however that you accept the repairs and the neutronium crystal as compensation for your poor treatment at my hands.”
I looked at the Imperial knight for several seconds before laying an avuncular hand on his shoulder and said, “I’ll tell you what, goon, if you’ll sweeten the offer by buying the drinks tonight then you got yourself a deal. I’ll take as many bodies with me as you can stuff into my Strumpet.”
“And that will square things between us?” Zapatas asked.
I hit the knight’s kisser with a right cross. His head snapped to the side and then slowly turned back to me.
“Gael!” Estrella exclaimed in exasperation.
I ignored her and kept my focus on the knight. “That squares us,” I said.
He nodded as he sucked blood from his lip. “Fine,” he said at last.
13
The Equus Lounge was a dimly lit room maybe forty yards long by half that much wide. There was an oval island bar in the center manned by a slender, silver-haired woman. A score of two and four-top tables of smoky vid-glass were strewn in a seemingly random pattern throughout the floor. There were a dozen booths raised along the length of the outer wall which was a transparent, concave, floor to ceiling sheet of Crysteel that looked out at the stars. The lounge’s equine motif was ubiquitous and yet subdued. The base of the redwood bar was carved with a bas-relief of galloping horses. Behind the bar, six polished brass horseheads served as taps. Hand-high luxstone sculptures of horses in various poses glowed with a soft, milky light from the center of every table and booth.
Only two of the tables were occupied. A young couple and a trio of older men sat at opposite ends of the lounge. Both parties were watching the news on their table tops as they drank. They looked up briefly when we first entered but soon returned to their viewing as we ordered our drinks.
Lieutenant Zapatas arranged to have our tab comped. While the bartender poured our drinks he addressed his men. “Sub-Lieutenant Ringo, you’ll stay with our guest. Weber, you’re with me.” He then turned and left with his fellow knight in tow.
I led Estrella to a booth. Sub-lieutenant Ringo gestured Sister Elizabeth to a table several yards away, granting Estrella and me privacy, but also positioning himself to have a view of both the entrance and us. He removed his helmet at the table, revealing an earnest-looking young man of about twenty-five with short-cropped, dark and curly hair. The nun and the knight tapped their glasses, sipped their juices and began conversing softly.
I clinked glasses with Estrella. “To old friends.”
“And new beginnings,” she added.
She sipped her orange juice through a pair of thin cocktail straws. I took a swallow of my brandy.
“How much did Drake tell you?” I asked, swirling the brandy in its snifter.
“He told me about the cancer, if that’s what you’re hinting.”
I nodded. “I’m sorry that our new beginning is going to be a rather short-lived affair.”
She reached across the table and gave my free hand a squeeze. “We will make the most of whatever time God is good enough to allow us.”
I smiled, perhaps a little wanly, “Would that be the same God who was good enough to give me the cancer?”
“Drake also said you were quite dismissive of the Faith.”
“Drake turned out to be a rat after all,” I said with an exaggerated shake of my head.
Estrella gave the back of my hand a playful slap. “Oh, don’t be so hard on him. It’s not ratting out to inform family of one another’s state and goings on.”
“I was just kidding,” I said. “I love the guy! I was thrilled to see him again. But it has been a long, long time since I thought of myself as part of a family.”
“No one could blame you for that,” Estrella said. “But however tenuous our connections, we should consider ourselves family. It’s one of the few blessings we can salvage from our otherwise dysfunctional upbringing.”
I took another sip of the brandy. “Dysfunctional? That’s curious. Drake called our upbringing ‘unnatural’.”
“What do you think of it?”
I looked into the snifter, searching for an answer in the brandy as I swirled it in the glass. After a moment’s consideration, I could only shrug. “I guess I haven’t given it much thought. I will say, it did have its moments.”
A smile tugged at the corner of Estrella’s mouth. “Yes, it certainly did, thank goodness, though we may not be thinking of the exact same moments right now.”
“No?”
“Most probably not.”
“You’re not disavowing what you and I once had?”
“Our love? Never,” Estrella said with a shake of her head. “I’ll cherish that till my dying day… and beyond! But I do wish we had been raised differently, raised to believe that we were more than mere flesh and blood.”
“What difference would that have made?”
“Perhaps none,” she answered. “And perhaps, it might have made all the difference in the world.”
“How do you figure?”
“I’m not absolving us of our personal responsibility,” Estrella said. “But our upbringing helped set us all on our paths of self-destruction.”
“I’ve always thought I was that catalyst,” I said. “Me and the bio-enhancers, that is.”
“I hope you’re still joking, Gaelic,” Estrella said. “You can’t blame yourself for anything I or Drake or any of the others did under the influence of enhancers, certainly not for taking them. It was our decision, not yours.”
“I introduced everyone to them,” I said. “I was the source.”
“Yes,” Estrella agreed. “But we were already damaged goods, Gael; all of us. Long before we first shot up, even long before you first used nanites in the FF, we were already beginning to abuse other drugs, to drink too much to abandon ourselves to lust’s every whim.”
“Well, that last part wasn’t so wrong, was it?” I asked, grinning slightly. “It’s a perfectly natural act, after all. Our elders said so and all our farm animals seemed to agree.”
Estrella smiled sadly. “Our elders rejected the insane consumerism of the Federation at large, but they clung to the Physicalist view of the cosmos that underlied it. They taught us to believe that we we were nothing but flesh and blood, no more than meat and chemicals and a little electricity; cleverer than farm animals, sure, but essentially the same.”
“That strikes me like a pretty reasonable view of humanity,” I said.
“It’s a horrendous view, Gael,” she said, growing animated. “It’s a pitiable caricature of what we truly are: immortal God-wrought souls! To accept the fragmentary view of humanity which Physicalism proposes is to cheat ourselves to… to wound ourselves deeply.”
“Wound?” I asked, taken aback by the turn in her argument. “That’s a bit much to lay at the foot of an idea.”
“Ideas have consequences, Gael,” Estrella said emphatically. “They have real world, flesh and blood consequences. To accept that truncated view of humanity cuts us in half. We sever our divinity from our animality. That’s a more crippling wound than the loss of a limb. That’s what our upbringing did to us. And unfortunately, what wounds the child often ails the adult to the
grave.
“That’s why I say it was not your fault. We commune kids were in a poor position, in too spiritually impoverished a condition to say no to the use of bio-enhancers. The pursuit of pleasure was our greatest motivation. Why would we have said no to a new source of pleasure?”
“You’ve become quite the philosopher, Esty,” I said with a slight laugh.
“I’m boring you, I’m sorry.”
“Hardly,” I said. “It’s just a headier conversation than I imagined us having but, I guess we can’t really talk about the weather inside a space station.”
“What would you like to talk about?”
“You, of course,” I said and polished off my drink. I put the snifter down, fingered a circle around its base, thumbed the vid-glass and tapped the refill tile that appeared.
“What do you want to know?”
“Well, for starters, you can tell me how this happened,” I said with a gesture that took in the whole of her. “How did you come to decide to wear a tent for the rest of your life?”
Estrella threw her head back and laughed. I smiled, reminded of her younger self.
“Where do I begin?”
“Start on Terpsichore,” I suggested. “What happened to you after I was arrested?”
She became somber again in an instant. “I thought you didn’t want to revisit that episode.”
“I don’t,” I said. “We’re starting right after our parting. Did you manage to get away?”
“Alright,” she nodded. “Yes, we got away. We hid in the sewers for a few days. It seemed so much longer though.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Even when we finally surfaced, it was only for short forays to gather food and information,” she said. “The law was coming down hard on all the gangs. Most of Ridge’s people were rounded up or killed in the effort. With the noose tightening, Ridge and I fled Tyree.”
“Just Ridge and you?”
“Yes.”
A perverse need compelled me to ask, “Ridge and you, you two didn’t…?”
Estrella met my interrogative gaze squarely. “I’m afraid so.”
One Last Flight: Book One Of The Holy Terran Empire Page 12