Reluctantly Anton Brand stripped the Hawking’s escort until every functioning warship had entered the battle. Soon even hastily commandeered armed merchant ships joined the battle. Anton Brand had at this point committed every ship that carried a weapon except the Hawking itself. The station was simply too valuable as a base to risk in combat. But this meant that before the final stages of the conflict had been joined, Brand had committed all but his last reserve.
Under sublight drive the sheer bulk of the Hawking made the battlestation slow and hard to maneuver. This meant that the three hundred laser cannon and two hundred missile tubes that served as the station’s final line of defense had to be manned constantly. All were needed to drive off the occasional Ichton sortie against the station itself. Already stretched to the limit, the Fleet personnel turned to the civilian levels for reinforcements. Considering the low level of morale, this was not an easy task.
SHOOTING STAR
by Jody Lynn Nye
“Never!” Lyseo announced with a look of horror. He glanced up in outrage from the image of his face in the makeup mirror to those of his two visitors.
“C’mon, Hammy, we need you to bang the drum. It’s just a few little training films. So what?”
The scene: Lyseo’s dressing room. The characters: Arend McKechnie Lyseo himself, Fleet Lieutenant Jill FarSeeker, and Kem Thoreson, Lyseo’s personal manager. The time: perhaps badly chosen.
“So what?” demanded Lyseo. “I did training films before I took up performance art, me bucko. I even did a recruitment film for the Fleet.” He drew himself up from his chair into a perfect attention stance, and forty years dropped from his mobile face as it formed into a look of terrified obedience. “Lyseo does not repeat himself.”
Morale Officer FarSeeker sighed. She was a small, businesslike woman of twenty-nine, with a thick knot of straight black hair tied up at the back of her head. “What constitutes repetition, Lyseo?” she asked patiently. “You’ve done Old Earth classics a thousand times.”
“But never the same way twice,” the actor explained, his long hands describing the cone of a spotlight before him, obviously peopling it in his mind with actors. “Ah, the differences you can bring out, the nuances of emotion!” He regarded her sternly. “How many nuances can there be for ‘slide bolt home, making certain the power supply is disengaged before disassembling’?”
Jill FarSeeker laughed, losing her composure. “All right, they are boring, but they’re necessary. Be reasonable.”
For her, Lyseo allowed a tiny smile to touch his eyes. He gathered up her hands in his and kissed them. “Lyseo is never reasonable either. Why me?”
“McCaul’s idea, really. We’re running out of trained gunners, and frankly, our only remaining pool of beings from which to draw is the civilian population of the Hawking. It’s a frightening concept to most of them, so our demonstrator needs to be a civilian. The Fleet won this engagement, but casualties were higher than we expected. We’ve only got a few days to enlist some volunteers, while the Hawking cleans up in this system and we move on to the Emry’s. Our scouts report we’re going to face a massive force there, and we need backup techs. The Emry are already skirmishing with the enemy, so time is short. I could use someone from the theater company, but Kay wants the most visible, most impressive, most charismatic personality on board the ship to be the center of these videos. Your presence alone will make more people watch them.”
With every erg of praise, Lyseo was visibly softening. “These monstrosities won’t be beamed back to the Alliance, will they?” His daily performances interpreting his impressions of life on board the Hawking were broadcast toward the Alliance star cluster to be collected on museum-grade video cube as his legacy to Art. The Fleet concurred in the practice, seeing Lyseo’s visible support of the Hawking and its allies as a way to help secure funding for domestic projects as well as keep interest alive in the battlestation project itself. The same charisma was vital to engender enthusiasm in the instruction program.
“Not if you don’t want them to be,” Jill promised him. “They’re strictly for internal use. We need to be able to put trained personnel onto the warships, and we need them soonest. You can help greatly by cooperating.”
“I am already helping. The first encounter is fixed for 11:35 exactly, the second eight hours and ten minutes after that. I think you’ll be well satisfied.”
“That’s all for morale,” Jill pointed out. “Once you’ve raised their spirits, we need to channel them for maximum effectiveness.”
“Do not spout your military jargon at me,” Lyseo said, holding his head between his hands. He smoothed back his mane of white hair and straightened up, every move as graceful as if it had been preplanned. “All right, I will do it—but under one condition: I get complete creative control.”
“That’s reasonable, Jill,” Kem put in, seeing that his client was ready to give in. He put an arm around Lyseo’s shoulders. “Ari’s got a reputation to protect. He can’t be seen doing bit-bite dialogue.”
“Okay,” Jill replied, allowing herself to seem beaten. “Can we start today after your performance?”
“That would be acceptable,” Lyseo said grandly. He put a hand each on their shoulders and ushered them toward the door. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have my regular job to think about. Heavens around us, a regular job! Poor old Hambone.”
The dressing-room door slid shut behind them. Jill heard the lock engage.
“So much for the early lunch he invited me to,” she complained, looking at her chronometer. “Well, that’s all right. I have other things I can take care of.”
“He’s thinking about your videos,” Kem assured her. “You know how he gets when he’s got a new project to chew on.”
“I suppose I do,” Jill sighed. “At least we got him to agree. I thought it would be harder than that.”
“You applied the soap just right. Lieutenant McCaul owes you a raise, getting Hammy to agree without a week-long fuss.”
Jill shrugged. “He’s the best performer for the job. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be bothering him. With his support behind the training program, which otherwise could look like enforced conscription, my job will be a lot easier. It’s going to be tough enough to sell the idea to grocers and hairdressers that they need to learn how to run laser cannon. I refuse to give them ‘Your Starship Needs You’ pablum. These are all adults, and they deserve to know the truth about their situation, but I have to prepare them first.”
Thoreson sucked in his breath over his lower lip. “You’re right, sweetie. Sorry I made it sound like a video contract coup. There’d be riots if you don’t handle this right.”
“There may be riots anyhow, Kem,” Jill sighed. “I simply hope I’ve set enough backfires to keep from having to fight an internal battle while we’re engaging the Ichtons on the outside.” She squeezed Kem on the forearm and headed toward the lift.
“Lieutenant!” Jill’s office door slid open on a breathless woman she recognized as the day hostess of The Emerald, the fancy restaurant on Green deck. “Trouble!”
Jill was on her feet before she thought to ask. “What kind of trouble?”
The woman, about fifty standard years of age, wiped her round, pink face with her sateenoid sleeve. “Master Lyseo and a man are having a loud argument in the lounge. I tried to separate them, but they got around me. He told me not to interfere.” Jill didn’t have to ask which one “he” was. “They’re throwing things. Can you do something before one of them gets hurt?”
Jill grabbed the hostess’s arm and hustled her toward the lift. “What are they arguing about?”
“The other man—I don’t know him—made some kind of disparaging remark about the last battle, you know, that we’re losing by inches, and we’ll be eaten alive by the Ichtons. Master Lyseo was just about down his throat in a millisecond.”
Jill groaned. She pounded on the lift panel, as if hitting the buttons would make the transport come sooner. It wasn’t
like Lyseo to enter into an argument in public. If someone tried to drag him into a fight, he was more likely to zing his opponent and walk away.
The transit from Blue Fifteen to The Emerald took just a year and a half longer than forever. Jill was nearly bouncing up and down in impatience to get there and see what mischief Lyseo had managed to raise in the half hour since she had seen him.
To her relief, no one else had become involved in the altercation. Lyseo and a human male in an Indie’s flight suit faced off across ten meters of cleared space in the restaurant lounge. There were broken dishes on the floor against the wall behind Lyseo, and an upside-down plant half out of its pot not far from the trader’s feet.
The trader sneered at Lyseo, but did not close the distance between them. The impresario was looking uncommonly dangerous, and the Indie probably didn’t dare to see what the older man was capable of. Jill eyed the man. He looked slightly familiar, reminding her of someone with whom she’d had recent contact. She wondered if he was one of the paladins, one whom she didn’t know well; or one of her “problem children,” a discontented civilian who had passed the psych tests showing that he was fit to join the Hawking but who couldn’t resist stirring up trouble in a group. There was no time to check out her database; tension was escalating right in front of her.
“It’s a crock!” the man barked, his voice cracking with passionate fury. “The Fleet brass are feeding us a line of sewage that we can ever beat the Ichtons! We’ve lost too many ships, too many pilots. We might as well give up and go back—admit it!”
“Admit it?” Lyseo boomed, filling the room with his magnificent voice. “Never! The Fleet will not fail in its mission. Perhaps you’re too young to remember it, sonny, but the odds were just as great in the Family war, which they won rather handily.”
“Handily,” the man mocked, striking himself under the chin with the edge of his hand. It was a gesture of insult. Lyseo glared. “After fifty years of war, pops, in case you’ve forgotten. We’re finished. You people make me sick. I’m tired of being cooped up with people like you in this centimeter-square can prison. We’re too vulnerable. We have to draw back.”
“Retreat? In the name of all traditions, boy, how did you pass the psychological screening? Don’t think of the Hawking as a soap bubble that could pop on the suntides. Think of it more as a leukocyte in the bloodstream of the galaxy, here to wipe out an intruding organism.” The man snorted, and Lyseo raised his voice further. Jill stepped forward to intervene, but an upswept hand stayed her. “If you don’t think we have a chance, then throw your strength into our effort, boy,” Lyseo said. There was a ragged cheer of encouragement from the restaurant patrons at these words. He thrust out a hand toward them. “See? Your fellow prisoners agree. Stop telling us what can’t be done, and help with what can.”
His oration earned him a scattering of applause. Reddening, the young man realized that he was surrounded by an audience. Jill decided now was the perfect time to intervene and diffuse the situation, but she wasn’t quick enough to stop the Indie from reacting. He cast about for something else to use as a weapon. His eye fell upon a huge flowered vase sitting on a shelf on the wall. The hostess beside Jill moaned and clutched her hands together as the man seized it. He threw it at Lyseo, and she shrieked. Jill gasped.
With magnificent reflexes, Lyseo snagged the vase out of the air by its rim and tossed it to her. With her jaw agape, Jill caught the ceramic um and wrapped both arms around it for safety. To her amazement, she noted that it was a lot lighter than expected, and much sturdier. Surreptitiously, she tapped one side with a knuckle. It gave off a dull tank-tank sound. It was a fake, made of extruded plastic. Then she noticed the time. On the fancy chrono on the wall, it was just past 11:45. So this was the morale-raising exhibition. The confrontation was a setup, engineered by Lyseo.
She was so involved with her discovery that she missed most of the parting shot the artist fired at the retreating trader, in which he declared that the Fleet was stronger, more enduring, more intelligently run, more adaptable than its opponent, however great its numbers, “And we shall be victorious!”
There was a round of frenzied applause. Lyseo affected then to notice that he, too, had an audience, and bowed, a little sheepishly, to his public. The restaurant patrons and a crowd who had gathered from surrounding levels at the rumor of a fight in The Emerald gave him a standing ovation. He waved jauntily to them and strode to greet Jill with a kiss. Gallantly, he took the vase from her hands and restored it to its pedestal.
“Next performance at 1900 hours,” he whispered in her ear as the hostess hurried over to see that the expensive objet d’art was unharmed. “No autographs, please.”
“Why, you fraud,” Jill said admiringly. “Who was he?”
“One of your underrated and overworked theatrical company, my dear, only slightly disguised. He’ll be master of his own repertory guild one day. Does a splendid burn and dudgeon. Shall we sit down, my dear? Did I not promise you lunch in this overpriced beanery?”
“Yes, but do I dare eat it with you?” Jill asked, shaking her head doubtfully. “You have shocking manners in public.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “I promise you that all the crockery will remain on the table, and knives will be used for no other purpose than severing bites of food.”
“It was a great performance,” Jill admitted after they had ordered. “I was completely convinced. How do you do that so well? Your speech was perfect, it was so . . . so stirring.”
“I believe in what I said,” Lyseo replied simply, hands extended palms upward. “Otherwise I would not have risked my life, which I hold precious, in such a venture as this space station. You ought to know by now which things are the greasepaint and which things hold true throughout. Among those things that are true is that I love you, and you bring bright starlight to me in the midst of the void. There’s little enough I can do to return this sublime, matchless favor.”
He raised his glass to her, and Jill returned his toast. Even after nearly two years of daily contact, his words, his voice, had a way of making her quiver all over. While their love affair was hardly eternal bliss, Jill was happier than she had ever been. All her life, she had admired Lyseo’s work. In the Alliance, it was hard to find many higher up in the entertainment pantheon than he. She was amazed to find herself hopelessly crazy about the man behind the public image, the sensitive, flamboyant, easily moved personality that relied on her, trusted her for her honesty. He didn’t need fans; he had billions of them who loved everything he did, good or bad. Jill just loved the man himself.
Lyseo was in a good mood. The day’s performance was a humorous pantomime that involved the master entertainer transforming his lean frame into semblances of each of the allied races, one after another. Soon, a catlike Emry was chasing a fluttering, birdlike Nedge all over the stage. The Nedge fled, in spite of the Emry’s insistence that he was trying to be friendly, and that any suggestion of aggression was all a misunderstanding. Jill, sitting in the control room at Lyseo’s insistence, howled along with the technicians. She dashed tears out of her eyes at the little Emry pouncing after the terrified Nedge, trying to make friends.
“Damn, he’s good,” the Khalian director said. “My cheek muscles hurt from grinning. You’d think we had a stageful of actors. How can he do it, day after day?
“He never repeats himself,” Jill said, watching the Emry herd the birdman into a corner, where he rubbed up against him, kitten style. “I love it, but I wonder how much it will do for interspecies relations.”
“Are you joking, esteemed ma’am?” the director asked, hissing with laughter. “The Emry delegation already called asking for holocopies to use in their diplomatic training packets—for use in those very intersystem relations after we’ve saved their system.” Jill noticed that the Khalian meant when, not if, and approved his optimism. “When Master Lyseo showed up and asked to observe them, they thought they’d soon be featuring in a show. They thi
nk Lyseo has a point.”
Jill admitted that he did. With the appearance of new allies, members of the Alliance were having to adjust to the values and characteristics of each. Lyseo had found the one sure key to helping such diverse races understand one another: humor. Of all their new contacts, the Emry were the friendliest and least likely to need further exhortations to their emissaries to use tact. She wished the same could be said of others. In Jill’s opinion, the Saurians, whose ravaged home planet definitely justified their grief, also demanded significant concessions based on their status as galactic orphans, making it impossible to feel much sympathy for them.
Besides, those aboard the Hawking were beginning to wonder if they themselves would survive much longer. The classified message from Commander Brand ordering training of any qualified civilian in station defense continued to distract her from enjoying her favorite entertainment. How long could they continue to supply manpower to run the ships and guns? In worst case, what if the battlestation itself had to participate in an attack? There would be nowhere safe for damaged ships to run to, no hospital facility free of enemy fire. Helpless isolation, in the midst of the galactic center, terrified Jill as much as it did any of the nervous civvies or Indies on board. In the meantime, the Hawking made its way toward the Emry system with all speed. Brand must have liquid refrigerant in his veins.
The thought of a last stand with all resources committed had already occurred to someone who phoned in to Jill’s paladins, the audio jocks who kept the action going over the sixty broadcast channels circulating through the battle cruiser. It had been an uncomfortable rumor for the better part of the last month, undoubtedly since it became evident how difficult it was to wipe out an Ichton fleet. Independent traders plying the newly opened space lanes collected gossip and spread it among the civilian population of the Hawking. Jill had had to perform minor works of wonder to keep morale from plummeting each time more was discovered about the Ichton culture, or when the Ichtons staged surprise attacks on the Fleet. The fact that there hadn’t been suicides was a miracle.
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