Hunted lop-4

by James Alan Gardner

  "They left you on your own?" Benjamin said. "While Mandasars were shooting missiles at your base?"

  "There was only the one missile," I told him, "and I volunteered to stay. Somebody had to make sure the computers finished locking everything down. Anyway, Willow came to get me, so it was all right."

  Tobit asked, "When did Willow show up in the Troyen system?"

  "Right after the others left in the scoutship. Willow’s name just appeared on the base’s list of in-system ships. They hung around for five days, then picked me up to go home."

  "Sounds like they were on a secret mission," Benjamin said with sudden interest. "The way they didn’t come out till everyone else had gone. Orbiting the planet five days even when they might get shot at. Not telling you what they were up to…"

  "Of course, they were on a secret mission, toad-breath!" Tobit rolled his eyes. "For one thing, they were ferrying this queen from Troyen to Celestia… which was probably what got the poor buggers killed. The League takes a dim view of folks transporting dangerous non-sentients from one star system to another. And I’ll lay you good odds this queen qualified as non-sentient — ready and willing to commit murder. You said Troyen’s been at war for twenty years?"

  I nodded.

  "Well then," Tobit went on, "she’d have her own army, wouldn’t she?" He patted the queen’s chitinous flank. "How long d’you think this old gal could play warlord and still keep her mandibles clean… never taking a single wee life except in direct self-defense?" He snorted. "When I studied hive-queens at the academy, no one ever described them as saints."

  "So," I said, "the League killed the queen because she’d killed other people. And they killed Willow’s crew for trying to transport a dangerous creature to another world?"

  Tobit nodded. "It’s the League’s own version of disease control: never let uncivilized organisms leave their home system. This queen must have claimed to be a perfect angel, and Willow’s crew gambled she was telling the truth. They lost the bet."

  It made me feel bad, how I’d been puzzling over things for more than a week without getting anywhere, then someone like Tobit could walk in, take one look, and explain why everybody died. "So," I said, worried this would be obvious too, "who sent the nanites? What did they want?"

  "Fucked if I know," Tobit answered. "What good is stolen venom? And how did the nanites get smuggled onto the ship? Who knew Willow would be transporting a hive-queen? Someone on Troyen? Or maybe someone on Celestia?"

  "Why Celestia?" Benjamin asked.

  "Jesus, boy," Tobit groaned, "didn’t you learn anything at the Academy? Celestia has a Mandasar population too — ten million children were evacuated just before the shit hit the fan on Troyen. Everyone thought it was only a temporary measure; a happy-sappy field trip. But the war’s dragged on for two decades, and the brats have all grown up."

  He turned suddenly toward the queen’s corpse and stared for a few seconds. "Hey… when the Outward Fleet shipped the kids to Celestia, I don’t remember the Admiralty including any queens."

  "They didn’t," I said. "My sister belonged to the Diplomacy Corps back then; the High Council wanted her to check with all the queens to see if any wanted to evacuate with the children. Samantha just laughed — a queen would never abandon her home territory to baby-sit a bunch of kids. It wouldn’t be regal."

  "So Celestia has ten million junior Mandasars," Tobit murmured, "and nary a queen. Then again, who gives a shit? The lower castes are as smart as humans. They can take care of themselves."

  "But they have all these instincts," I said. "They want guidance. They need to be ruled by a proper queen."

  Tobit made a face. "I bet a queen told you that. The poor dear peasants couldn’t possibly survive without kissing my royal heinie." He grunted. "But whether or not it’s true, some of the damned lobsters probably believe it. Especially on Celestia, where they don’t remember life under a queen’s thumb. If they arrived as kids, what are they now, in their twenties? There’s bound to be some who think their lives are fucked up — at that age, you’re supposed to think your life is fucked up — keep your trap shut, Benny — so it wouldn’t surprise me if a chunk of the population thought a queen would make everything better. Somehow they persuaded the Admiralty to bring them one… or else the Admiralty is running a scam of its own and wanted a queen to whip the baby lobsters into line."

  "The Admiralty doesn’t run scams anymore," Benjamin protested. "They cleaned house three years ago."

  Tobit reached out and pretended to whack the boy on the helmet. "Every time you say pig-ignorant things like that," Tobit said, "I dock another point off your performance evaluation." He turned to me and rolled his eyes. "Fucking useless cadets."

  7

  GETTING WARNED ABOUT MY FUTURE

  We kept poking our way forward through the ship. The closer we came to the lounge, the more nervous I got that the Explorers would think I was a terrible captain for not cleaning up. The refrigeration had stopped people from rotting too much, but they’d still messed themselves when all their muscles went limp; the place smelled like a toilet no one had scoured for a long time. I kept apologizing in advance, saying I’d wanted to tidy up but knew I wasn’t supposed to touch anything no matter how bad it got. Just as we went through the door, it finally occurred to me Tobit and Benjamin wouldn’t smell a thing — they were closed up in their suits, with their own air and all, so I was the only one who had to hold his nose.

  Even so, young Benjamin went stone quiet when he saw dead people lying around — a lot of them naked and none nice to look at anymore. Tobit seemed okay till he caught sight of the admiral woman who’d kissed me; then he stormed straight to the corpse and stared down at it.

  "What’s wrong?" I asked. "Do you know her?"

  "I know the original," Tobit answered, "and I guess there’s a slight resemblance. Explains why Ms. Deadmeat here thought it would be a good costume for the party. But it’s not the real Admiral Ramos. Just some chippie dressed up." He turned away quickly. "Do me a favor, York, and scrub that crap off her face."

  "I can clean up now?"

  "As if anyone ever cared. It’s not like there’s a question about cause of death. Right, Benny?"

  Benjamin was staring at the Willow’s captain. The captain’s holo-surround had used up its battery power days ago, so you could see the man himself now. He was wearing his uniform shirt, but from the waist down, all he had on were white socks. It was a pretty undignified look for someone of his rank. If I were a captain and thought I might die, I’d aim at leaving a more presentable corpse.

  "Benny," Tobit said. "Partner mine. Prospective pride of the Explorer Corps. Are you with us?"

  "What? Oh. Sorry. Do you want to move on?"

  "No," Tobit answered, "I want to go home for a bubble bath. We’ve wasted enough time on goddamned standard procedures." He glowered at the boy for a moment, then said, "For novelty’s sake, how ’bout I give you a direct order? Head back to the hold, cut off the queen’s venom sacs, and pack ’em for transport back to Jacaranda."

  "What?" The boy’s voice sounded like a yelp. I felt kind of yelpy myself. Mutilate a queen? Even if she was dead, that was nigh-on sacrilege. "Why?" Benjamin asked.

  "Because somewhere on Willow" Tobit replied, "there are nasty wee nanites who want to steal her venom. Christ knows why they want it, but I can’t imagine it’s for the blissful good of the universe. Besides, it pisses me off when people sneak nano onto a navy ship; just on general principle, I don’t want the bastards to get what they’re after. Best way to do that is haul the venom back to Jacaranda — empty the place so the nanites are shit out of luck." He held his hand up quickly, to stop me from saying anything. "And before you ask, we’ll have Jacaranda triple-check to make sure we aren’t carrying nanites ourselves. Our micro-defenses aren’t half-bad… on the rare occasions we’re willing to cool our heels six hours in quarantine getting a full nano scan."

  Benjamin’s eyes were wide. "You really want
me to hack the sacs off?"

  "Not hack, you lunkhead. Perform a delicate surgical excision. With all due care and safety. Use a scalpel instead of a chainsaw. You know — finesse. Now get your scrawny butt moving."

  The boy sounded sick but he started off. I called after him, "Be careful, okay? Venom is dangerous stuff."

  "He’ll do fine," Tobit said. "Benny trained for Medical Corps before he transferred to exploring. He has great hands with a scalpel."

  "Thank you," Benjamin called back over his shoulder. He could still hear Tobit’s words over the ship’s speaker system.

  "But you’re a piss-awful Explorer!" Tobit shouted as the boy disappeared.

  I think Benjamin gave Tobit the finger, but it’s hard to tell with a tightsuit’s bulgy gloves.

  As soon as the boy was out of sight, Tobit popped off his helmet. That surprised me; Explorers are supposed to stay suited up whenever they’re on a mission, even if it’s just over to another navy ship. For another surprise, he reached up to the bulge on his throat — his communications implant — and gave it a double-tap. "There," he said. "I’m not transmitting anymore." He took a deep breath. "Christ, it reeks in here, doesn’t it?"

  "Sorry."

  "Not your fault, pal. You wanted to leave everything as is because you thought there’d be a real investigation. Which there won’t."

  He gave me a long look as if trying to decide something. Me, I was just trying not to stare. Tobit’s face had a ravaged flush to it, pockmarked, red and veiny. An old soak’s face, though I couldn’t smell booze on him. Maybe he’d been an alcoholic but had lately gone on the wagon; or maybe he had some genetic condition that made him look like a lush. Sure, that had to be it — Explorers always had things wrong with them, whether they looked funny or smelled funny or sounded funny. Phylar Tobit’s problem was just a whiskey-ish face. The navy surely wouldn’t let drunks be Explorers.

  "We don’t have much time," Tobit told me, "so just shut up and listen, okay? It turns out, York, you’re in a shitload of trouble."

  "I’m sorry," I said. Apologizing was always a good first step, even if I didn’t understand what I’d done.

  "Nothing to feel sorry about," Tobit replied. "This crap-fest isn’t your fault. But the Admiralty is plotting a cover-up, I positively guarantee it. They’ve lost an entire ship because navy personnel acted non-sentient: all of Willow’s crew, and maybe the admiral who gave them their orders. That’s the sort of thing the High Council dearly wants to keep secret. Makes the whole fleet look bad."

  "I can keep secrets," I said.

  He patted my shoulder. "Yeah. Sure. But the Admiralty won’t take the chance. They only trust certain types of people — assholes who want to be admirals themselves and will do anything to get into the inner circle. Our beloved Captain Prope is like that, and a lot of other folks on our ship. High Admiral Vincence has stacked Jacaranda with scumbags who don’t mind taking orders that would disturb normal navy personnel."

  "Orders like what?" I asked.

  "Like making you disappear, so you can’t spill the beans. Prope already has reassignment papers for you; I read them when I accidentally logged onto her computer and decrypted all her files. You’re headed for some godforsaken outpost in the back of beyond, where contact ships only show up once a decade. A one-man station. Jacaranda will take you straight there without a chance to talk to anyone, then they’ll fly away without looking back." Tobit gritted his teeth. "You won’t be the first person our shite of a captain has marooned."

  For a second I didn’t say anything. You can’t imagine what it’s like, to be going home after twenty years-twenty years on a moon with nothing but vacuum outside, like a prison except no one has the decency to call it that — and just when you think it’s all over, that you’ll soon see grass and sky and lakes again, someone decides you’re going to be dumped on some new lonely dung heap. And why? Because a boneheaded admiral wants to hide you away from everyone else, for fear you’ll make him look bad. The story of my life.

  "So what should I do?" I whispered to Tobit. Whispering because if I didn’t whisper, I’d scream. "I’m stuck out in space," I said. "I can’t run away."

  "Yes, you can," Tobit answered, "but you have to make your move while you’re still acting captain of Willow. Hop into one of the evac modules and declare an immediate forced landing emergency. Use those exact words: immediate forced landing emergency. The ship-soul will launch all the escape pods straight toward Celestia, because it’s the optimal site for a forced landing right now: close by and habitable. You hit it lucky there, York — Celestia is a free planet, not part of the Technocracy. Once you touch down, the navy has no legal right to drag you back."

  "But won’t Jacaranda stop me from getting away?"

  "They’ll try. But they can only catch one pod at a time. Even if they’re lucky, they’ll only grab four of the eight pods before you reach Celestia’s atmosphere. You’ve got a fifty-fifty chance of making it to the ground."

  "And a fifty-fifty chance of getting caught."

  "So what?" Tobit asked. "The worst they can do is banish you to some asswipe of a planet, and they plan on doing that anyway." He gave me a yellow-toothed grin. "You have dick-all to lose, York. And Celestia is reportedly a cream-puff world: all tame and terraformed. If you lie low for a while, you can head back for the Technocracy eventually. Within six months, some new crisis will make the High Council forget all about you. Admirals have the attention span of lobotomized gnats."

  Tobit obviously didn’t know who my father was… or he’d know Dad wouldn’t be so quick to forget. On the other hand, I figured my old man wouldn’t waste energy chasing me if I stayed out of his way — more than anything, he just wanted to pretend I didn’t exist.

  I asked Tobit, "Will you get in trouble for telling me this?"

  He shook his head. "Nah — they won’t have any evidence. I’m not transmitting back to Jacaranda, and you can erase Willow’s records of this conversation. You’re the captain; you have authority to wipe all the memory banks here if you feel like it." Tobit grinned. "I also have a friend in high places: the real Admiral Ramos. She was the one who drafted me for First Explorer on the Jacaranda… to counterbalance whatever shitwork Prope is up to. Eventually the council will find an excuse to get me reassigned; and Ramos will send another of her favorite Explorers to keep Jacaranda honest. Even a dirty-tricks ship needs Explorers. Otherwise, the lily-fingered crew members would be the ones marching into stink holes full of rotting corpses."

  Tobit gave a sour look at the nearest dead bodies… and at that very moment, Willow’s alarm bells started blaring out RED ALERT.

  8

  WILLOW EVACUATING

  The lounge’s vidscreen lit up on its own, showing the view through Willow’s hull cameras. "Danger status one," the ship-soul announced. "Awaiting captain’s orders." Its computer voice sounded sharper than usual. That wasn’t good — voice synthesizers don’t simulate emotion unless it’s really important for people to pay attention.

  On the vidscreen, a new ship had popped up between the Jacaranda and Starbase Iris: a ship shaped exactly like Jacaranda itself but painted black with starlike speckles. The paint job looked prettier than the navy’s boring old white, but it sure wouldn’t work as camouflage… especially not at the moment, when the black ship was surrounded by the milky swim of a Sperm-field.

  "What the hell’s going on?" Tobit asked. "Civilian vessels shouldn’t come anywhere near… holy shit!"

  The strange black ship had just shot two missiles at Jacaranda.

  The ships were less than a kilometer apart, so it didn’t take long for the missiles to cross the gap: two flashes of flame and vapor racing toward their target in less than a second. I caught my breath, wondering what would happen when the rockets struck home… but instead of banging straight into Jacaranda’s hull, they angled off to swish close by on either side.

  The missiles missed the ship, but snagged Jacaranda’s Sperm-field.

&nbs
p; Oh. Now I understood.

  The missiles plowed on into empty space, and the Sperm-tail bagged out to stay with them, as if the milky field had got caught on the missiles’ noses. Probably, it had; I guessed that both missiles were using Sperm anchors to latch onto the field and drag it with them. They continued angling off in opposite directions, spreading Jacaranda’s sperm envelope wide, like two hands inside a plastic bag, pushing out hard to make the bag stretch.

  At the last second, the milky color of the Sperm-field broke into an unstable glitter of green and blue and gold; then the field popped like a soap bubble, stressed beyond its limits.

  The missiles continued on their courses, disappearing into the darkness of space.

  So much for Jacaranda’s ability to go FTL. The crew would need twelve hours to generate a new field and get it aligned properly around the hull. That gave the black ship loads of time to do whatever it wanted and still escape without pursuit.

  The stranger ship swiveled its nose toward Willow. "Uh-oh," Tobit and I said in unison.

  Tobit slammed his helmet back onto his head. Even before he’d locked it in place, he was yelling into the radio, "Benny, evacuate the ship. Don’t ask questions. Now, now, now!" "Do you think they’re going to board us?" I asked.

  "Maybe," he said. "Or they might take Willow in tow and run off with the whole damned ship."

  Steal the ship? While I was acting captain? I didn’t want to think what Dad would say about that.

  "No more lollygagging," Tobit shouted, grabbing my arm. "We have to get out of here."

  He dragged me from the lounge and down the corridor to the nearest evac module. It wasn’t far — in a navy ship, you’re never more than ten seconds from an escape pod. "Get in," he said. "Next stop, Celestia."