Renegade

by Joel Shepherd

  “It’s a little late for me to do the peaceful ascent and become Kulina,” Lisbeth said shakily.

  “But it is not too late to gain self-knowledge on this,” said Trace. She hit the door. “Here, on this ship. Start today.”

  Leaving her quarters, Trace walked the back-quarter galley and got herself a half-decent sandwich from the selection window where the chefs would leave them when prepared. She ate it while strolling through Assembly, where rooms and corridors gave way to open steel gantry racks and stacks of armour suits and weapons, all tightly locked and secured in case of manoeuvres. Marines did maintenance on their armour, polished visors and cleaned weapons, often in singlets as the heat from all the running powercells caused Assembly to run ten degrees C hotter than the rest of the ship.

  Phoenix’s marine company had five platoons, forty-four in each, plus Trace’s own Command Squad for two hundred and twenty eight total. Officers and non-coms took her presence passing through as invitation to report, which it was, though in reality she was always on call and only common courtesy kept her from being interrupted all-shifts. All of what they told her was minor — a few mending injuries or illnesses, inventory updates, the usual routine. Mostly, she knew, they just wanted to touch base, and see her look them in the eyes and know they weren’t completely screwed.

  There was a lot of disbelief, and a lot of grief, barely covered. Most marines maintained some distance from most spacers, but the Captain had been different. Any who had served aboard this ship for long enough had come to learn that the stories about him were not just stories — they saw it, saw the rapid calculation, the unexpected manoeuvre, the sheer genius that saved friendly lives and took unfriendly ones. When you rode in a steel shell entrusting your next breath to the nerve and skill of a single man, you came to appreciate that man’s skill when, after so many missions, you were still breathing, and so many others were not.

  And the Captain had always come down here, strolled these echoing, rattling, steamy parts of back-quarter where most spacers rarely trod, and talked with the marines like they mattered to him as much as his spacer crew. And they’d seen him emotional at their funerals, and proud at their ceremonies, and they’d come to love him as a second father — or for some less blessed, as marines often were, a first father. And now he was gone, in disputed circumstances, and many of them just wanted to know what the hell had happened, and who was to blame, and why.

  Trace vouched for Erik’s version of events, and that was enough for nearly all of them. The responsibility somehow felt more daunting than usual. She wondered as she strolled, talked and ate, how that was possible. Her usual responsibility was life and death, commanding these men and women whom she loved into battles knowing that some, and perhaps many, would die or be horribly wounded. It didn’t seem reasonable that any responsibility could weigh more heavily than that. Yet somehow, this one did, like a gravitational mass from which no amount of thrust could provide escape.

  She supposed it was one thing when the karma all flowed the one way. All of these marines would still have been in battle if she were elsewhere, during the war. Their precarious fates had not been her doing, and in time she’d come to accept that her judgement in command would usually get somewhat fewer of them killed than most other commanders could manage. But this was something else. All the Fleet’s other marines were looking forward to a long period with no fighting. Perhaps even a permanent period, in this short-scale human view of things. But not Phoenix. These marines still hung in the balance, pushing upstream into the onrushing flow of karma heading the other way. And that was her responsibility in a way that their fates in the war itself had never been.

  After Assembly she went to the gym and punched a bag until her fists hurt. She did that until Kaspowitz arrived, ducking the overhead, then leaning on her bag as she hit it.

  “Your left’s a bit low,” he advised her.

  “What was that?” said Trace, continuing to strike between weaves.

  “Your left, it’s…”

  “What? My what?” Thud thud. “Stop mumbling.” Kaspowitz grinned. They were old friends — she’d been on Phoenix about a third of her life, yet that was only half of Kaspo’s time. He was an odd guy with no discernible ambition and an irreverent sense of humour, and from her first arrival here as a green Lieutenant, she’d preferred his company, of all spacers, to anyone but the Captain’s. Kaspo didn’t need, didn’t stress, didn’t bitch and didn’t covet. What he did, exceptionally well and with very little bullshit, was his job. “You know, if you’d occasionally do a bit of exercise, I might listen to you.”

  “I tried it once,” Kaspowitz admitted, leaning hard on the bag as she jolted him. “Did irreparable damage to my self-esteem. Doctor said it was too dangerous for a man of my sensitivity.”

  “You know,” Trace panted. “It’s almost as though some of us…” thudthudthud, “… think we’re fighting a war. While others…” thudthud “…are just here to laugh at the universe.”

  “You know, you’re far too smart to be a marine. That thing you do with your mouth.” He clicked his fingers. “Sentences, that’s it.” Trace grinned, and kept punching. “Were fighting a war, Trace. Were.”

  His eyes were suddenly serious. Trace stopped punching, and wiped her face. She leaned on the bag opposite him. There were others in the gym, punching bags, lifting weights, running on treadmills. But despite the noise, someone might overhear. “Captain didn’t tell me any specifics,” she said quietly by Kaspowitz’s shoulder. “But he said the Worlder-Spacer Congress divide would blow up and kill more people than the Triumvirate War if we weren’t careful. And that he’d said so openly, to anyone in High Command who’d listen, and a bunch who wouldn’t. I know he was thinking of a run for politics when the war ended. And I know that scared a lot of people, given his status.”

  Kaspowitz nodded slowly. “So this doesn’t surprise you?”

  Trace looked up at him, nose to nose. She didn’t allow herself much physical intimacy with men on Phoenix, having found it got in the way of just about everything. But in all these years Kaspo had shown no interest in her that way, outside of the odd playful remark. As she’d overheard one spacer putting it when he didn’t know she was there, you could only get so turned on by cold steel. “I think they were hoping he’d get killed in the last few years. But you know the Captain — they were never going to get that lucky.”

  “We sure got all the tough assignments,” Kaspowitz said darkly. “You tell the LC this?”

  Trace made a face. “Not in so many words. I don’t want him to just take my word for it. Some people look up to me too much, stop using their own brains. If we need anything from him right now, we need him to use his brain.”

  Kaspowitz considered her for a long moment. “You trust him?”

  “I think he’s as straight as a bulkhead. Which from me is a compliment. So yeah, if he says he didn’t do it, I trust him implicitly.”

  Kaspowitz rolled his eyes a little. “Yeah… but that’s not all I meant. Do you trust him? I mean, all our lives, in his hands?”

  “You’re bridge crew, I’m not. Do you trust him?”

  “Heck of a pilot. First class. Smart as hell, qualified, brave, principled, ticks all the boxes. I dunno. Something’s missing.”

  Trace nodded slowly. “Self belief. And that might be our fault.” With raised eyebrows at him, meaningfully.

  Kaspowitz thought about it. “Yeah. Yeah maybe. We didn’t give the kid the easiest run.”

  “And he said, that Fleet Admiral Anjo said, that the Captain picked him personally.”

  Kaspowitz blinked. “Seriously? You believe that?”

  “The LC or Anjo?”

  “Either.”

  “Captain was still alive when Anjo said it, LC could have asked the Captain himself, proven Anjo a liar. Anjo was trying to butter him up, offering him a big job, get him with the program. Too dangerous for Anjo to lie then. And you know the LC, he lies about as infrequently as I d
o. If he says Anjo said it, Anjo said it.”

  “You think the Captain saw this coming?” Kaspowitz’s eyes were wide in a manner rare for an old spacer who’d seen everything. “Picked the LC as some kind of cover? Get the Debogandes involved on purpose?”

  “Captain would never put the ship in danger by picking someone not qualified,” Trace said with certainty. “I think he got lucky that Family Debogande produced someone that good, and couldn’t resist the opportunity. Don’t suggest it to the LC. Kid struggles for confidence as it is.” ‘Kid’, she realised as she said it. He was three years older than her. Yet still it seemed like the right thing to say.

  “Yeah,” Kaspowitz said heavily. “Next question, you think we have any friends out here?”

  “Sure. Friends enough for a captain to refuse a direct order to fire? Doubt it.”

  “End a lot of careers, wouldn’t it?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think,” said Kaspowitz, “that they’d never fire on Captain Pantillo. But he’s dead, they’re saying the LC killed him, and lots of spacers never cut the LC an even break because of his family. There’ll be a lot who are confused and skeptical, but disobeying a direct order to fire on a ship commanded by the guy who HQ say killed Captain Pantillo?”

  “Honest answer,” Trace requested. “I vouch for the LC. Would that sway anyone?”

  “Marines, sure. Fleet captains, a little, but not enough to stop them pressing the button.”

  “That’s my reading,” Trace agreed. “Besides, Kulina council will excommunicate me now. To a combat officer that’s not just a disgrace, it’s a death sentence.”

  “Oh hell,” Kaspowitz muttered. “I’m sorry Trace.”

  Trace shrugged. “The Kulina shall want for nothing,” she said with a faint smile. “And shall regret nothing. What kind of hypocrite would I be if I started caring now?”

  Kaspowitz smiled at her. Put a hand in her sweaty hair. “You hang in there kid. I wouldn’t trade you for the whole fucking lot of them.” He kissed her on the forehead, and left. Trace hung on the bag for a while longer, thinking. And feeling that there were so many people she’d die for on this ship, it made survival seem unlikely.

  10

  Lisbeth woke to the sensation that she was falling. Because she was falling, or at least gravity was tossing her out toward the bed netting, and her heart hammered in panic as she grabbed at the net. And then lay there, staring at the bottom of Major Thakur’s bunk above. She wrestled with the unfamiliar uplink network for a moment before finally finding the time. It was 1649, she’d been asleep barely an hour, and didn’t feel very rested. It was hard to rest when your subconscious expected gravity to smack you into the ceiling at any moment. And the net wasn’t much comfort, because gravity really was that changeable out here, just a side-effect phenomenon of distance plus velocity plus occasional shifts in trajectory.

  She lay in her bunk trying to visualise what lay about her — the incredible distances, the speeds at which they were currently crossing them, tiny by what Phoenix was capable of with jump engines engaged but still astronomical enough. If Scan missed one of those rocks, she wondered, would they even feel the impact? Or would a strike at many tens of thousands of kilometres an hour destroy the ship so quickly that the nervous system would be incinerated before it had time to even register what had happened?

  How many men and women had that happened to, out here, over the decades? How many had been there one moment, living, talking, reading, laughing. Then the next second, gone, without even an explanation or warning? If you were going to die, surely you deserved some kind of explanation of what killed you? Some realisation that you were actually dead? She imagined souls, frozen out here in some dark limbo of perpetual astonishment.

  Gargh! She couldn’t lie in bed and think about such things, she’d go insane. She managed an uplink to the room display, and the wall above the small table lit with several options. She picked Scan, and it showed the nearest planetary system in relation to them — another half-hour’s light away, a massive gas giant with many moons and lots of insystem traffic. In between, lots and lots of rocks and ice… and that was just the tiny fraction Scan could actually see. Anything could be hidden in there. With a lot of the pursuing Fleet ships now scattering ahead and running silent, anything could be.

  “Attention all hands, this is the LC.” It was her brother’s voice on the intercom. “Attention all hands, this is the LC. Scan has spotted a nice big rock not too far off our path, it should make a decent hiding spot for us, it appears to have a good metallic signature, should confuse our signal, and isn’t tumbling so we can get real close. To rendezvous with it we’ll need to proceed with a one-G burn for the next two hours and seventeen minutes. We are currently at burn-minus-five minutes, I repeat, at burn-minus-five minutes. All hands prepare for a one-G burn. LC out.”

  An alarm sounded, high and wavering up and down, like some mournful animal’s howl, and the room lights began to flash in time. Lisbeth lay where she was, clutching her bednet with her heart thumping in rising panic. Her uplink visual flashed, an incoming call, and she opened it…

  “Lis, it’s me,” said Erik in her inner ear. “Where are you currently?”

  Before she could answer, another call overrode without her even inviting it… “Hi Lisbeth,” said Major Thakur. “LC you’re busy, you go do your job. I said I’d look out for Lisbeth and I will.”

  A small pause. “Okay Lis? Just listen to the Major, this is very basic, nothing to worry about.” His call disconnected.

  “Lisbeth?” said Thakur.

  “I’m here.”

  “Okay, all that this means is that the wall opposite the door is about to become the floor. Are you in bed?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, first you disengage the bednet, then you sit on the bed with your back to the wall. Once you’re out, put the bednet back on so the sheets don’t go everywhere. That’s it. You’ll notice that all the thrust-ward walls on the ship have green lines where they join the ceiling.” Lisbeth looked, and sure enough, a green stripe ran from wall to wall. She unhooked the bednet, fingers fumbling on the locks, and let it wind across on its own power. “That’s so you know which way gravity will go when we burn. Always remember which wall has the green stripe — we call it the G-wall.”

  As she scrambled to sit on the bed end, Lisbeth recalled a documentary she’d once watched where spacers had called it the ‘K-wall’, because it was the one that killed you. “Okay, I’m sitting with my back to the wall.” And remembered to pull the bednet back across, and climbed on it to hook it in.

  “Right, as soon as we thrust, the crew cylinder will stop rotating. You wait ten seconds, then the all-clear will sound, and you can move around. Obviously all the things that require cylinder rotation to work, won’t. So the toilets, showers, etcetera. Everything else, well, you’ll discover that spacers learn to improvise. Any questions?”

  “No.” Her heart was still pounding, but she felt a little better. “No, I’m fine. Thank you Major.”

  “If you need any help, hit your personal com call and someone close-by will come to you. See you soon.”

  It was slightly ridiculous to have one of the war’s greatest heroes personally waiting on her, Lisbeth thought. She didn’t think Major Thakur was the kind of person who’d respect the civilian notions of privilege that came with having a last name like Debogande. But then again, the Major was a marine, and however important, she didn’t have nearly as much to do on a ship as a spacer did. Being a Debogande didn’t make her unique on this ship — being a civilian did, and the marines would look out for any civilian the same way, Debogande or not. The fact that it was the Major looking out for her was probably due to the fact that she was the current ship commander’s sister, and letting her mix with lower-ranked crew could be a violation of the command hierarchy. If the Debogande family had had no money or big name, she’d have been treated the same by virtue of Erik’s rank.

&n
bsp; At one minute the com started a ten second countdown. At ten seconds the count was for every second. Then a thunder that rumbled through the walls, floor and bed, and a shove from behind. Blankets slid upon the bed, and the groan and squeal of various things shifting weight about the room. It felt as though the room were being tipped upon its end, like some giant had come along, grabbed the nose-end of the ship and pointed it to the sky.

  Now she was flat on her back. It was the oddest thing, but not quite as scary as she’d imagined. The wall, as Major Thakur had said, was now the floor, and she was lying on her back with her feet up in the air. The ship sounded different, the white noise of cylinder rotation that became so omnipresent that she’d gotten used to it, had now disappeared. In its place was a low, rumbling thunder, and the metallic rattle and squeal of separate parts vibrating against each other.

  Lisbeth sat up carefully, and the speakers announced the all-clear. It took a while to convince her brain that this new orientation was not about to violently revert, dropping her face-forward on the once-floor that was now the wall. Her bunk bed was now vertical before her, sheets fallen in a heap within the bednet. Carefully she stood up. If thrust suddenly stopped, she reminded herself, she wouldn’t fall — she’d be weightless. Even that previous ‘normal’ gravity had only been the function of the rotating crew cylinder. Without it, everything floated.

  The wall screen above the table was now at her feet. And the table rim, she saw, had a thick edge that now doubled as a seat, as the twin chairs were of course bolted to the ‘floor’, now beside her. She sat on the table rim, and contemplated the door. It was far above her. How odd, the room had seemed tiny when that wall had been the wall. Now that it was the ceiling, the door looked like the mouth of a well she’d fallen into, and was now trapped at the bottom of. And yet the Major had said that once thrust had begun, she’d be free to move around. How the hell?