The Stars Blue Yonder

by Sandra McDonald

  “Is he ever going to be useful?”

  “With treatment, I hope so.”

  The meeting broke up shortly afterward. Adryn knew she would have to get to the flight deck to supervise the birdie, but she had to break the news to Laura first. She found her down in the infirmary, catnapping on a sofa in the doctors’ lounge. The clean aquarium looked like it was flourishing.

  Adryn brushed back Laura’s bangs and kissed her on the temple. “Wake up, sleepyhead.”

  “Hmm?” Laura blinked up at her. “Hi there.”

  “Hi, yourself.” Adryn pulled up a chair and straddled it. “Sorry to wake you.”

  “It’s not as comfortable as our bed, but someone gave our cabin away,” Laura grumbled good-naturedly. She sat up. “What’s going on?”

  “I have to fly a mission. Birdie run, nothing hard.”

  Laura knuckled sleep from her eyes. “What else? You’ve got that look on your face.”

  “What look?”

  “Spill it,” Laura ordered. A yawn made her eyes water. “Boy, do I need a good night’s rest.”

  Adryn put her hands on Laura’s knees. “Uncle Terry. They’re not sure he’ll be safe when the blue ouroboros comes, so they want me to fly him outside of ship’s range. Make sure it all goes well.”

  It took Laura a moment to see through that. When she did, her eyes widened in horror. “They’re assigning you to a suicide run?”

  “No!” Adryn tightened her grip, ran her thumbs along the inside of Laura’s knees. “It’s not like that. Nothing’s going to happen. Just a bunch of overprotective nansy-pansy worriers, that’s all. He got here just fine, right?”

  Laura was staring at her. “What about Commander Scott?”

  “They’re not going to let her go,” Adryn said. “She has to stay here.”

  “I don’t like it.” Laura leaned forward and took Adryn’s hands in hers. Their wedding rings clinked together. “Get someone else. You’re family. You shouldn’t be involved.”

  “Someone has to do it. Besides, there’s no danger. We’re going to go out, spin around, and be back in time for supper.”

  Laura said nothing.

  Adryn kissed her. “It’s going to be fine.” She was just glad that she wasn’t the one who got to give the news to Jodenny Scott.

  “What did you just say?” Jodenny asked.

  Myell sympathized. Not with Jodenny, but with Haines, who had to withstand her withering gaze.

  The break in Adryn’s cabin had stretched to two hours, a courtesy Jodenny found suspicious. Then Haines had appeared at the hatch with this news.

  “I can’t believe any of you people,” she continued.

  “The decision was made over my head,” Haines said. “The admirals don’t think it’s safe to try and do this onboard. A birdie seems like the best alternative.”

  Jodenny said, “But you’re only going to deflect it.”

  “Yes,” Haines said.

  She turned to Myell. “And you agree with this?”

  “It might be safer,” he said.

  “In the middle of space,” Jodenny said. “Nowhere near any doctors or emergency equipment. The damned thing isn’t even due for hours!”

  Haines said, “The twenty-four-hour clock is shorter when people have traveled through the ouroboros with him. He’s said so.”

  “It’s true,” Myell said.

  Jodenny gave him a narrow look. He knew he wasn’t helping things. The time for tact had passed, though. Aside from a few hours in the infirmary and a postcoital doze, he hadn’t had much sleep lately. He was tired and nervous and sure that above all, he wanted Jodenny and junior safe.

  “We won’t be far,” he said.

  “You could get killed.”

  “Which is why you’re staying here.”

  She gave him a look that clearly said he was an idiot. “Not the point.”

  “Yes, it’s exactly the point,” he said.

  She turned her back on him, furious. Haines lingered in the passage, not looking directly at them. Chief Ovadia, who’d been standing watch, answered a call on his SOEL and said, “They’re ready for you.”

  “Give us a minute,” Myell said, and pulled Jodenny back away from the hatch.

  “I just—” he started, then silenced himself. Words weren’t going to solve this. He grasped her arm, turned her around, ignored the glare in her eyes, and crushed his lips against her mouth. Without syllables he said You’re mine, I’ll be back, and I’m sorry.

  He broke off. She was silent, unforgiving. Myell got two steps away before she said, “Oh, no, you don’t—” and pulled him back for another kiss.

  “You have to come back to me,” she whispered, her mouth against his.

  “I will,” he promised.

  The birdie was a standard Team Space model, with two seats in the cockpit and a seating capacity of forty passengers. Most of the passenger seats were being removed to make room for Beranski’s equipment. Myell tried not to shiver in the coldness of the flight deck while he watched the preparations, which were dragging on longer than expected.

  “She’ll soon be ready,” a voice said behind him. “Should be quite a trip, right?”

  Myell turned to see Cappaletto in his flight suit. “Did you volunteer for this or get drafted?”

  Cappaletto grinned. “Wouldn’t miss it. History in the making, right? I can tell my kids one day I got to ferry around the Hero of Burringurrah himself.”

  Myell was appalled. “That’s not a real nickname, is it?”

  “Oh, sure,” Cappaletto said. “Saved the Earth, all that? Killed by the Roon the night they dug up Big Daddy on Burringurrah Mountain. Plateau. Whatever you call it.”

  The shuttle bay was crowded with too many people for more casual conversation. Adryn and Cappaletto had to do their preflight checks, and the flight crew was busy reconfiguring the shuttle for the deflection equipment. The equipment took longer to load than expected. When it finally came time to board for flight, Myell looked up at the observation deck and saw Jodenny at the plastiglass window. Even from a distance he could tell how unhappy she was.

  He raised his hand. Whether Homer was right about the eddies or not, if he failed and was taken away by the ouroboros, he’d never see this version of her again. If he tried to take her with him, he endangered her life and junior’s to an unbearable degree.

  She raised her hand and then used it to cover her mouth.

  He turned to the ship, unhappiness digging into his chest like a knife.

  Beranski was apparently coming along for the ride. With all of the extra equipment, quarters were very cramped. Launch went smoothly, though, and almost immediately Adryn started steering them away from the fleet.

  “So how will we know when the token ring thing is inbound?” she asked.

  Myell replied, “I’ll look like I can’t breathe.”

  Cappaletto winced. “Sounds painful.”

  Beranski said, “We’re going to capture this thing for you, Chief. No more problems after that.”

  “Then you can make the whole Roon armada disappear, like you did before,” Cappaletto said. “They’ll make all new vids and songs about you. My kid brother plays Burringurrah Quest all the time. Loves to blast the Roon out of the sky.”

  Myell didn’t believe him. “They didn’t really make computer games out of classified military operations, did they?”

  “Not much of it is still classified,” Adryn said.

  On his flight board, a sensor beeped. Cappaletto flipped a switch and it silenced. “The Roon digging out the Big Daddy power source from the Burringurrah plateau. You, the commander, and the admiral all defeated them—no one’s sure how, depends on how much religious stuff you can stomach—and you got yourself killed in the process. You’re looking pretty normal for a dead man, Chief. Or a god. Or a dead god. Whatever.”

  “Not everyone believes that you turned into an ancient Australian god,” Adryn put in. “Right, Doc?”

  Beransk
i grimaced. “I was born and raised in the Russian Orthodox Church, Lieutenant Ling. Australian gods aren’t my specialty. There could be many reasons why the Roon army retreated. Certainly I don’t believe that Dr. Gayle aided and assisted the Roon.”

  Myell squinted at Beranski. “We’ve met before, haven’t we?”

  “Very briefly. I was one of her assistants, back when she was recruiting you and Commander Scott for the rescue mission to save her husband’s team.”

  Myell considered that. Adryn and Cappaletto obviously didn’t know this part of the story and were listening attentively.

  “She was there? At Burringurrah?” Myell asked.

  “She was one of their prisoners. Forced to do what they wanted her to do. I’m sure Commander Osherman will confirm that when he’s able to speak again.”

  Myell would have to ask Jodenny about Gayle. He asked, “The First Egg. Big Daddy, you called it. It’s still there? On Burringurrah?”

  “Under the plateau,” Beranski said, though clearly reluctant to change the topic. “Every now and then people on Earth think about digging it up, and Team Space persuades them not to. We believe it powers the entire Wondjina network. And obviously the Roon want it. So it’s better off right where it is.”

  Myell said, “I imagine Team Space kicks in some financial incentives to keep Earth’s governments from digging it up.”

  Cappaletto grinned and jerked his head toward the Confident.“Brand new ship, Chief.”

  “We’ve reached a safe distance,” Adryn announced. “I switched on the autopilot. Nothing to do now but wait.”

  The onboard equipment hummed and beeped. No one spoke until Myell asked, “Is everyone going to stare at me until the ring comes?”

  “The price of fame,” Cappaletto said. “Hero of Burringurrah and all.”

  “I wish you’d stop calling me that.”

  Cappaletto grinned. “Sure. Besides, once this is all done with, they’ll be calling you the Hero of Kultana instead.”

  Goosebumps rippled up his arms and down Myell’s spine.

  Surely he hadn’t heard that right.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Kultana,” Cappaletto said. “Right over there.”

  He nodded on the scanner to the icy planetoid on display. Vaguely Myell remembered Adryn mentioning it before. The one tiny barrier between the human fleet and the Roon.

  Adryn said, dismissively, “PX2-843. That’s its official name. Just a chunk of frozen methane floating around in the middle of nowhere.”

  “On the old astronomy charts, they used to call it Kultana,” Cappaletto said. “That’s what Ensign Voight told me. They changed it way back when, though. Made every name more boring.”

  With a quirked eyebrow Adryn asked, “Who’s Ensign Voight?”

  “Astronomy Department,” Cappaletto said. “Nice girl. Likes old maps.”

  “Kultana,” Myell murmured, and now he knew why the blue ring had brought him and Jodenny here. “Can we get closer? Can we—”

  All his air ran out.

  Jodenny had been listening to the conversation aboard the shuttle. She could watch it, too, courtesy of the vids playing overhead in the flight deck observation room, but it was easier to keep her eyes on the bulkhead and listen to Myell instead of see him so far away.

  They still had no good idea when the ouroboros would show up. Her heartburn was back and her poor overtaxed bladder was beginning to kick up again. But she was too tired to get up, even if the chairs in Flight Ops were all uncomfortable.

  She listened as they discussed Burringurrah. Dr. Beranski’s defense of Anna Gayle was admirable if misguided. The woman had been heartily supporting the Roon while Osherman, who’d resisted, had knelt on the ground all beaten and worn. She tried to imagine the First Egg sinking back into the mountaintop, where it remained a source of political wrangling.

  Admiral Nam arrived in the control room. “How are they doing?”

  The flight control officer, a blonde with very short hair, said, “Holding steady ten thousand kilometers to port.”

  Jodenny said to Nam, “I’m surprised you went along with this, sir.”

  He didn’t back down from her cold anger. “I don’t mind losing some battles if it helps us win a war, Commander.”

  “You think one ouroboros can do that?”

  “I’m willing to try. Are you?”

  She turned back to the screen just in time to see panic cross Myell’s face as he tried to suck in air. Jodenny had seen the same expression when he stumbled away from her at the waterfall.

  “The ring!” she said. “It’s coming!”

  They must have heard her on the birdie, because Beranski sprang toward his equipment. Blue light flooded through the compartment and the small ship suddenly rocked, forcing Adryn and Cappaletto to fight the controls. Myell sat, seemingly paralyzed in his seat, tugging at his neck as if an invisible rope had been looped around it.

  “Your equipment’s not working!” Adryn shouted at Beranski.

  “It should be!” Beranski shouted back.

  The birdie shuddered under another onslaught of blue light. Myell wasn’t panicking, but it was clear he couldn’t breathe. Alarms were going off in the birdie, sharp and urgent. On an overvid, Jodenny could see that the ship was diverting off its holding pattern.

  Haines demanded, “What’s going on out there?”

  “We’ve almost got it,” Beranski reported.

  “You don’t have anything,” Jodenny said sharply. “Look at Terry!”

  A deep humming noise rolled through the speakers, and then the vids went dark.

  “Lieutenant Ling, report!” the duty officer said.

  Darkness on the vid. The humming noise shifted tones and became a screech. The duty officer was talking to a second birdie that was shadowing them and Nam was demanding that Adryn answer. Jodenny’s heartburn rose up her throat with the sour taste of bile, and cold sweat broke across her neck. He couldn’t be dead. Couldn’t be, couldn’t be, couldn’t be—

  Adryn’s voice cut through the hum on the speakers. “We’re here,” she reported. “We’re alive.”

  “Terry,” Jodenny said. “Talk to me.”

  Silence on the audio. The video remained dark.

  “We’ve got the ring,” Cappaletto reported. “But Chief Myell’s not breathing.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Myell was floating in a sea of murky green light, his arms and limbs akimbo. He wasn’t sure if he was alive but he sure hoped he wasn’t dead. Death in this endless sea of blue wouldn’t be a kind fate at all.

  “Fate,” a voice sneered. “What do you know of fate?”

  He turned in a green hallway lit by a single garish lightbulb. There stood the Flying Doctor, his cloak of black feathers fluttering in a non-existent breeze.

  “This is Kultana,” Myell said. “This is where you didn’t want me to come.”

  “You see it but you don’t understand it,” the Flying Doctor said. “Typical of your kind. You are no threat at all.”

  Very clearly, a woman’s voice said: “Inscribe.”

  Myell turned to see who she was, but the green light of the hallway collapsed into utter darkness. He coughed, thrashed, and opened his eyes to find himself on the deck of the birdie, with Chief Cappaletto’s hands on his chest. Cappaletto was breathing hard and had a worried look on his face. Myell realized he’d been performing resuscitation on him.

  “He’s awake,” Cappaletto announced.

  “Uncle Terry?” That was Adryn, chewing on her bottom lip in worry. Jodenny’s voice nearby asked, “Terry?”

  He coughed some more and rubbed his throat. “I’m here. Why is everything blue?”

  Cappaletto nodded toward the back of the birdie.

  The blue ouroboros spun slowly, humming. Beranski smiled triumphantly. “I caught the fucker.”

  Captain McNaughton disagreed entirely with the proposal to bring the captured token ring back to the Confident. Admiral Nam said he
understood and that was fine, but the Melbourne had no such qualms and would be happy to claim the ouroboros as Team Space property. Admiral Su surely weighed in on the matter at some point, but Jodenny wasn’t privy to that part of the conversation. More debate followed, perhaps more negotiations and payoffs, and in the end Adryn Ling piloted the birdie to the Confident’s auxiliary docking bay, where it could do the least damage if the hull was breached or compromised in any way.

  Chief Ovadia kept Jodenny out of the docking bay control room.

  “Orders, ma’am,” he said. “You can wait over here, in the pilots’ ready room.”

  Jodenny considered arguing with him, but Junior was kicking and her energy was draining away. Besides, Ovadia didn’t look like he would be an easy sucker for disobeying orders. Or for tears, which she could maybe deploy at a strategic point later.

  The ready room was small and sparse, but there was a sofa. She didn’t sit down. Instead she paced until the hatch opened and Myell returned to her. She flung her arms around him.

  “It’s fine,” he said, holding her tight. “They got the ring.”

  “I don’t care about that,” she said, her eyes wet against his shirt.

  “Did you hear what Cappaletto said about that planetoid?”

  “No. What?”

  He rubbed her back and eased her to the sofa, where she sat against him. She had never felt so exhausted in her entire life. It was entirely possible she might fall asleep against him.

  “What about the planetoid?” she asked.

  Myell shrugged beneath her. “Humanity’s last stand. PX-whatever. Stupid name for it.”

  That sounded like a non sequitur, or would have if her brain wasn’t so foggy and slow. She was content to simply listen to the steady beat of his heart. Behind them, the hatch opened. Jodenny didn’t bother opening her eyes. Myell’s voice rumbled in her ear as he said, “She needs to rest.”

  Jodenny forced her eyes open. “You, too. But what about the ring?”

  “The bastard’s not going anywhere,” Myell said. “Dr. Beranski swears it.”

  It took some pointed discussion to get their own quarters, instead of displacing Adryn and Laura again. Spaceships in wartime didn’t usually deploy with empty accommodations for the convenience of time travelers. Finally a senior officer volunteered to move, and they were quartered in a cabin with a bed wide enough for two, if they spooned together side by side. Jodenny splashed water on her face, threw her uniform into the corner, and crawled under the sheets. Myell picked up her trousers and shirt, hung them in the locker next to his own, and slid up beside her.