by Dave Bara
“Are you sure you want to ask it?” she said. I shook my head.
“I don’t want to ask it, but I need to know the answer,” I said.
“Be careful, Cochrane,” she warned. I didn’t heed it.
“Did you know my brother?” I demanded. The suddenness of my confrontation surprised her. Her face flushed, I couldn’t tell if it was with anger or embarrassment.
“What are you implying?”
“Nothing,” I said, which was true, and it made me think perhaps I should have been implying something.
She straightened her spine, as if making a decision. “I was on the Minerva when the accident occurred, Peter. I was a lieutenant and I was on damage control duty in Propulsion that day. When the impeller bulkhead blew I was one of the first ones down there to douse the fire. I personally pulled your brother’s body out of the hold. He was one of nine we lost that day,” she said. “Is that what you wanted to know?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t realize—”
“I know,” she said. “It is safe to say that I felt your brother’s loss more acutely than most. Now, please, don’t ask me any more questions about this. I won’t answer,” she said. I nodded, accepting her explanation for the moment.
She looked down the hallway toward Tralfane’s quarters, just a few feet away. “And now, I believe you have a meeting with a Historian, Mr. Cochrane. Best get to it. That’s an order.”
Then she walked off without another word as I stepped up and knocked firmly on the library door.
I got no immediate response, so I waited a few more seconds and then tried the door handle, which, to my surprise, turned easily, and the door opened.
The library was fascinating. Four walls, two decks tall with a balcony, full of books in wooden shelves from floor to ceiling. There were two separate ladders for climbing to the highest level. I’d never seen so many printed books in one place in my life, not even in a museum. Chairs, research tables, and linked terminals were dispersed around the room in a comfortable manner. Our family had extensive volumes at home, but mostly for show. These days, like most navy personnel, I did most of my reading on a terminal or a plasma pad, or via a com.
Bound books, however, still retained their popularity. Nothing had ever replaced the experience of holding real paper and soft leather in your hands. Oh, you could read faster, you could read while you were asleep, or read via com download and have perfect, instant recall the next day. But no technology could replace the simple fact that human beings read for one primary reason more than any other: they enjoyed it.
I ran my fingers across the bindings of the volumes on the near wall, feeling the snap of the leather on my skin. It was pure tactile pleasure, like nothing I’d experienced since my early school days. A moment later I was scanning titles like Aircraft Structures by Perry, History of the Imperium by Wallace Shondar, and Hoagland: The Man and His Vision by S.D. Morton. My eyes settled on a beautiful brown leather-bound version of Melville’s Moby-Dick, or The Whale in a case filled entirely with fiction. I’d read Moby-Dick in school, years ago, but this volume looked ancient. I couldn’t resist and reached out to take it off the shelf. I got a jolt of static shock for my trouble.
“Ouch!” I said out loud, shaking my stinging finger at the sharp pain.
“That case is all virtual volumes,” said a voice booming out from behind me, “and they’re available on the terminal in your stateroom. The originals are stored back on Earth, in several different museums.”
I turned to face the voice. The man who had entered the room was well over six feet tall, perhaps six-and-a-half. He had a full head of salt-and-pepper hair with a predominance of gray at the temples. His face was all sharp angles and craggy lines, worn by years of experiences I could only dream of, though appearance wasn’t a useful factor when calculating a Historian’s age. The Earthmen were well known for their anti-aging regimens. He wore the traditional garb of the Historians, a formfitting black suit with an insignia of open hands on the chest, signaling an openness to sharing knowledge. But he didn’t look like the type to be trifled with, not at all.
“I’m Tralfane, ship’s Historian. Lieutenant Commander Peter Cochrane, I presume?” he said.
“Yes, sir,” I replied. The “sir” might not have been appropriate, as he technically had no rank, but he was an imposing figure and the honorific just came out of me. I moved to shake his hand, but something about his demeanor stopped me after taking only a few steps.
“How much time do you have on the longscope, Cochrane?” he asked. I found myself responding instantly.
“The requisite two terms at the Academy, three hundred twenty hours of in-service training, and I’ve spent the odd hour on the ’scope since as an Academy Instructor on Starbound.”
He looked put out at my response. “That’s not much, but it will have to do,” he said. He motioned for me to join him at a large wooden reading table. We stood opposite each other with the table between us. He looked at me with an expression that implied not the slightest interest in me as a person, but only in what I could do to assist him in his tasks.
“I will be installing several new displays on the longscope, starting today,” he said. “And I’ve informed Captain Zander of the need for the upgrades.”
“Then he’s approved them?” I asked.
“Captain Zander has no knowledge of what the upgrades do or why they’re needed. I told him only as a courtesy,” said Tralfane. That was certainly within his rights as Impulse’s Historian, but I found myself doubting that my friend Serosian would have behaved in the same way. Every impression of this man reminded me that he was not Serosian. “The upgrades will require you to stay clear of the apparatus for several hours during your shift on the bridge. Do you think you can manage that?” he said. I found the question demeaning in its tone but responded professionally.
“If you say you need the longscope, then certainly it’s yours. I won’t be disturbing you, or it, in any way during my time on the bridge, if that suits you.”
He shook his head. “You don’t understand. I will not be on the bridge. I will be in my sanctuary. All the work will be done remotely. I need you to not touch the equipment for security reasons. Do you understand?”
I nodded. “I do.”
“Good,” he said. “The process between us will go much smoother once we have established boundaries. I expect that you will have no problems taking orders from me?”
I hesitated. I already had enough people giving me orders that could cause conflicts. “As long as they’re about the longscope or your other equipment, no problems,” I said.
“Good,” Tralfane said again, his face not changing expression in the slightest. “When you eventually log on to the longscope you will see displays that you cannot access. Ignore them. They will only be activated if I deem it necessary. Your part in that process will be to follow my instructions and carry them out precisely. Do you have any questions?”
I found myself frowning at him and his importunate manner. “Only one,” I replied. “How will you let me know when the ’scope is clear to use again?”
He brought his hands together above the table. “I will inform you. That’s all you need to know,” he said. I just stared at him a moment, expecting more. When nothing was forthcoming, I asked another question.
“Are you expecting trouble when we get to Levant?” I said.
“That’s two questions, Mr. Cochrane,” he said. “And you already know the answer to the second one.”
I looked at him but he remained completely impassive, like a stone monument standing across the table from me.
“You’re still here, Mr. Cochrane,” he said.
“I am,” I replied, then I clasped my hands in front of me, matching his posture, and leaned forward. I wanted answers, at least as many as I could get.
“What happened at Levant?” I a
sked.
“Is this about the attack as a whole or about your girlfriend?” he said. I thought about that for a second.
“Both,” I said.
“I’m under no obligation to tell you anything,” he snapped. I was ready with a response.
“Consider it a courtesy that will help us to establish proper ‘boundaries,’” I said. He looked at me with disdain. Clearly this was a man who didn’t like being challenged. Nonetheless, he chose to reply.
“You saw your navy’s report, did you not?” he said.
“I did.”
“Then let me just say it was mostly accurate in its assessment,” he said. I waited for him to continue. When he didn’t I asked another question.
“So the displacement waves were generated by First Empire technology?”
“Undoubtedly,” he responded. “And your government has good reason to be worried. This ship as it’s currently trimmed will have difficulty defeating that kind of defense. Zander is on a fool’s errand, and he may lose his ship in the process.”
Now I wondered if I might have an ally after all. “If you were to intervene, or upgrade Impulse’s weapons and defensive capabilities—” I started. He quickly cut me off.
“There are limits, Commander, to what a Historian can do, let alone to what I am willing to do to save this ship. Now as to the matter of your secret orders—”
This time I interrupted. “You know about that?” I said. He looked at me like I was a child.
“We gave you longwave and Lightship technology. Do you suppose that we don’t know how to use it in our own best interests?” he said. I had no answer to that. “It is possible, Mr. Cochrane, that your orders and my own may have some areas of overlapping interest. But don’t count on me for support. Am I clear?”
“Perfectly,” I replied.
“Good. One more thing to keep in mind.” His eyes bore down on me now. “You may have to be prepared to lose a battle to prevent a war, for the greater good. Even if it means disobeying direct orders from your commanding officers. Are you prepared for that?”
It was the second time I’d been asked that question, and I didn’t like it any better this time than the first.
“I’m prepared for that eventuality,” I said. Tralfane smiled. It was cold and cheerless.
“Then I can see why your government picked you for this mission.” With that, the room went silent and our conversation appeared to be over. I started for the library door without another word.
“Did you want to see the images of the attack on Impulse?” he said. That caught me by complete surprise. I half turned back to him and crossed my arms.
“Are you trying to hurt me?” I asked. The Historian shook his head.
“No. I just thought you had a right to see it,” he said. I nodded and sat down at a reading terminal. After a few moments he brought up a video display. A chronometer ticked by in the lower right-hand corner. The video was grainy but detailed enough. It was undoubtedly from one of Impulse’s longscope cameras.
I watched as a white-hot energy wave smothered a tiny shuttlecraft. It twisted and burned, tumbling out of control, tossed around like a dried leaf in the winter wind. Inside, twelve of my countrymen, one of them Lt. Natalie Decker, burned with the flame of a thousand suns unleashed upon them. The shuttle rolled on through space, second after agonizing second, until the tracking camera lost sight of it.
Suddenly the visual display changed to show a camera view from the stern of Impulse, looking forward toward her baffle shields. Purple sprites rippled along the length of her body as her shielding kicked in, struggling to absorb the impact of the rogue wave. Ruptures opened along her leading edges and amidships, her Hoagland Field collapsing under the strain as bolts of energy streaked through to singe her shining hull. The camera view flickered for a few seconds but stayed on just long enough for me to see bodies flying out of Impulse’s belly and into the vacuum of open space. There, the image froze, leaving my navy comrades hanging in the cold abyss. A few moments passed as I held my breath, nauseated by what I had seen. Then, mercifully, the display went black.
“You’re a brave young man for watching that,” he said. I thought I detected the first bit of respect I had seen from him in his eyes, but it vanished quickly. “I wanted you to know what you were going to be up against.”
I swallowed hard into a dry throat, then stood to leave as quickly as I could go.
“Mr. Cochrane,” he called from across the room. I stopped. “I understand you had a close relationship with the Historian assigned to Starbound,” he said.
“Serosian,” I replied. He looked at me coldly.
“Understand, I am not him. There are different schools within the Church of the Latter Days. They have differing philosophies about how to best help your civilization return from barbarism. Not all of us believe this quaint little Union is in your best interests.”
“So you’re in favor of a return to Imperial rule? A second empire? After what you just showed me?”
Tralfane shook his head. “I never said that,” he said. I contemplated this, not sure I could trust him, but certain I would probably never know.
“Fair enough,” I responded.
“One last thing. I expect complete secrecy in these meetings. You are not to share the content of our conversations with anyone. That includes Captain Zander or Commander Kierkopf,” he said. I tilted my head at him, deliberately, to let him know he didn’t intimidate me.
“I’ve sworn an oath to the service to always tell the truth,” I said, “and I have no intention of breaking that oath for you or anyone else, sir. But I also have no intention of offering up sensitive information on a lark, either. Just don’t make me choose between you and my oath and we should get along fine.”
“Good,” he replied, then turned and strode purposefully away to his inner chambers.
On the Bridge
An hour later I was freshly showered, shaved, dressed, and ready to take my station on the bridge at 1200 hours. With just a few minutes to go until my first duty shift aboard Impulse, I stepped into the empty lifter and pressed the button for the bridge. I felt a slight tug of motion as the lifter began ascending the conning tower, passing through the artificial gravity wells of several decks as it climbed. A ship with a functioning Hoagland Field provided equal protection to all areas of a space vessel, making the location of the bridge a style decision. When the Lightship designs had been drawn up they had debated placing the bridge somewhere more practical, perhaps even deep in the center of the ship, but in the end tradition had won out, and the builders of the Lightships had chosen to put the bridge “on top.”
I took in a deep breath and closed my eyes, taking the last few moments to contemplate my situation and how far I had come. I’d dreamed of being a spacer since early childhood, then had given it up for a shot at professional soccer in my early teens before recommitting to a career in space when we had lost Derrick. Since that day I’d worked almost nonstop to get to this moment, and although it hadn’t come aboard Starbound as I’d dreamed, I was still undeniably excited by the step into the future I was about to take.
The doors slid open and I stepped off the lifter and onto the bridge of Impulse at precisely one minute to noon, wearing my newly pressed Quantar Navy jacket. The USN patches and crest were sewn on at the arms and breast, as I’d requested, and I had Derrick’s lieutenant commander’s pins on my collar.
I took in the bridge, laid out in three levels, with the massive main plasma display taking up the far wall. The microscopic com implanted in my inner ear provided me with a variety of possible overlays for the display; Tactical, Systems, Visual, and Infrared were among my choices. Using the com with the visual options activated was reserved for officers and necessary bridge personnel, and managing the different displays without being distracted was an acquired skill, but one I’d been working on for
almost two years. I was ready. I decided to set the display setting on Systems so I could monitor shipboard activities, which would be my most likely function as third. The display would stay centered to me as I walked about the bridge, tracking with me as I went until I changed my settings.
I acknowledged the bridge duty guard with a nod and then proceeded to the elevated captain’s station. Lucius Zander sat with his back to me, surveying the bridge and its myriad activities.
My eye was immediately drawn to the polished gold of the longscope, situated on the same level as the captain’s chair next to the Tactical station. I turned to observe the empty Historian’s post behind me. It took up half the back wall with its various display panels and workstations, all dark now. My curiosity at the goings-on there would have to wait for another, less pressing, time.
Below, six crewmen, including Jenny Hogan wearing a green Carinthian Navy jacket, I noted, worked at the nav, helm, and con stations, which were recessed so their seats sat a few feet below the floor of the captain’s deck. Another level below them, a dozen or so junior officers occupied the daily duty stations: Environmental Controls, Engineering, Central Computing, Weapons, Propulsion, and the various and sundry operational activities of the ship. George Layton was absent, perhaps on a different shift than mine, and Commander Kierkopf was busy at the engineering station, no doubt monitoring final repairs.
I checked my watch one last time and then cleared my throat as I rounded the captain’s chair.
“Lieutenant Commander Peter Cochrane reporting for duty, sir,” I said, standing to attention.
Zander swiveled in his chair and looked up at me, coffee cup in hand. “Welcome, Commander,” he said. Then he took a sip from his cup, never taking his eyes off me. He set the cup down and casually sat back in his chair. “I’m looking forward to having you aboard.”
“As I’m looking forward to being here, sir,” I replied. The next few minutes were taken up with general conversation about the layout of the bridge, duty stations, personnel, officer shifts, and the like. Then he got down to business.