“Fleet regulations will not allow the killing of prisoners,” Kel-ko-tal said defiantly. “And human officers always follow their silly little rules.”
Erik’s smile was genuine. “My own Fleet want to kill me. You think I care about their rules? Their rules said chah'nas can attack unarmed humans in human space. Fuck their rules, and fuck you if you won’t cooperate.” He glanced back at Private Carlson, hefting her weapon with menace.
Kel-ko-tal thought about it. It was always difficult to tell what went on behind that fearsome face. But Erik knew that for all their bravado, chah'nas did fear, just like humans, and had nearly as much difficulty reading human faces as vice-versa. There were few suicidal species in the Spiral, even the krim had been said to fear death, if only in the abstract sense that the species needed to live on to exterminate others. And Erik recalled the AI queen, before Trace had shot her. ‘I am ready’, she’d said. Had she feared, before the end? If not, why had she needed to be ‘ready’?
Kel-ko-tal shrugged. “The furry thing was acquired at Tellus. It is of no importance.”
Jokono leaned forward. “Then why was she on a Kulik Class warship?”
“A toy,” the chah'nas smirked.
“You’re lying,” said Jokono. “Sexual perversion among chah'nas is rare. Interspecies perversion even rarer.” He was right, thought Erik. Chah'nas could be brutal, but were rarely cruel. They liked the sport of a contest, and torture, including rape, was no contest if the victim could not fight back. “What are you hiding? Who is she?”
Kel-ko-tal said nothing. It was dangerous to think that humans were smarter or better at things than certain aliens, and yet chah'nas had a reputation among humans of lacking subtlety. And humans, chah'nas complained, were conniving and tricky. By chah'nas standards, perhaps that was true.
“Where was Tek-to-thi headed after Homeworld?” Erik pressed. “Our records show you were docked at Fajar Station, arriving from chah'nas space. You are a Kulik Class, chah'nas Fourth Fleet, First Squadron. It makes no sense that you were sent to chase after us, with all the human warships doing the job… unless you were heading in our direction already. Where were you going? Heuron? That’s where all the big commanders are right now.”
Kel-ko-tal made a show of looking bored. And with no intention of answering further questions. Jokono gave Erik a look that suggested they’d get little more from the chah'nas from here on. Erik nodded, got to his feet and left Jokono to the ongoing job. Jokono was tireless, finally given something on this crazy ship he could do well. He would be hours yet.
18
“Rooke says the damage isn’t so bad,” Erik said. “It’s just a minor system, he’s fixing it now.” He didn’t mention that that minor system had nearly gotten them all killed. Saying so was redundant — out here every minor system malfunction could get you killed, and they all knew it.
Erik, Trace, Kaspowitz and Shahaim were in the Captain’s quarters, taking the opportunity to down a meal. Visitors on warships sometimes wondered why everyone always ate in their quarters or at their post — the answer was of course that there was simply no room for a galley. Only a kitchen, from where hungry crew could pick up a meal and take it elsewhere.
“I think you’re right,” said Kaspowitz, eating his favourite stir fry from a plastic bowl. Phoenix kitchen wasn’t much on variety. “I checked the records — Tek-to-thi was just recently promoted to command group in chah'nas Fourth Fleet.”
“Yeah, I thought it was odd I hadn’t heard much about it before,” said Shahaim. Suli Shahaim was encyclopaedic about ships and captains. She was the latest of four generations of starship pilots, and had been given a head full of names and history from the tales her grandparents told her as a girl. “A new promotion from main fleet would do it.”
“You mean you can’t list all the ships in chah'nas main fleet?” Erik teased.
“No, not even me.” With a faint smile. “Who’s her Captain?”
“Can never remember chah'nas names,” Kaspowitz admitted. “Big dude though. Much competitive chah'nas fury.”
“Shit,” said Shahaim. “Think we killed him?” A silence as they thought about that for a moment.
“On the other hand,” Kaspowitz said, “who gives a fuck?”
Shahaim rolled her eyes a little. “It wasn’t a moral statement. Of course he was asking for it. It’s just getting… big.”
Everyone knew what she meant. Previously their own Fleet HQ wanted to kill them. Now chah'nas fleet, and probably most of the chah'nas race, wanted to kill them also. Finding out exactly why had better provide some reasonable possibilities for survival, Erik thought grimly. Possibilities other than eternal exile or piracy.
“We can get to Merakis on our next jump,” said Erik. “If that was the place the Captain was talking about, the place where all the stories begin and end, maybe we’ll find some answers there.” He gazed at the wall screen. It was simple visual, angled up at Rozdenya system from their lower nadir plane. A great disk of bright dust, a protostar in formation with the rest of its system. The child-star was just now undergoing ignition, as gravitational mass accumulated more and more gasses, and compression made them burn with such force the hydrogen nuclei fused, an endless, roiling mass of thermo-nuclear explosions.
In his years away from home, he’d occasionally had time to stop and gaze in awe at the universe, and wonder if the rest of it was as unsettled as this little, violent sector of the galaxy that humans called the Milky Way. Life was rare, and sentient life rarer still, but the current ratio appeared to be one sentient, intelligent spacefaring species per ten million stars. There were a hundred billion stars in this galaxy alone. That made approximately a thousand spacefaring species in the galaxy. So far they’d found twenty-six of them. Surely, hopefully, there were other corners of the galaxy where species mingled who got along with each other far better than this bunch did.
“So how do we do this?” Shahaim said quietly. “I mean, what’s the end game?”
Erik exhaled hard. “I don’t know. I’ve no idea how to answer the question without more information. I’m hoping we’ll find more information on Merakis. Some clue that the Captain left us.”
“I’m just…” Shahaim wiped dark curls from her forehead, in obvious distress. She was in her seventies, from a Spacer family that had business ties to Debogande industries, among others. Like many women, she’d done her service in several parts — an early stint as a young officer in the merchant navy, then time off for kids, then a return, once the kids were grown, upon realising that this part of her life, the service part, was the only thing that could replace the void of purpose left by her children’s departure into adulthood. One of those kids was now a warship pilot herself, Erik knew. “There has to be some kind of future here. Some kind of purpose. Because even those in the crew who support you now, aren’t going to support you if they can’t see that this is all in service of something worthwhile, you know?”
“You don’t think finding out why the Captain was killed is worthwhile?” Erik said edgily.
“Wait,” said Trace, holding up a hand. “Suli, you said ‘support you’. That’s not right. This isn’t about supporting Erik. This isn’t just about him. This is about us. About Phoenix, and what the Captain made us.”
“You’re right,” Shahaim said tiredly. “You’re right, I misspoke. I mean, it’s not the danger, we’ve all faced danger. We knew we could get killed in the war, but the war meant something. Something grand about the future of humanity. So what’s this for? Phoenix means the world to me, but with all respect to you all, Phoenix is just a means to an end. Trace, you of all people know what I mean — the Kulina pledged their lives to the human cause. The Kulina themselves are not important — only the human cause is important. Without that cause, the Kulina are nothing, right?”
Trace thought about that. And did not have anything immediate to say.
“It’s the loneliness,” said Kaspowitz. Everyone looked at him. “Isn’t it?
I mean, we were out in situations like this in the war, lots of aliens trying to kill us, but we knew we weren’t alone. Now we don’t know that. And Suli’s right, if we’re just doing this alone for the greater glory of ourselves… well I’m not sure I see the point.”
“So what?” said Trace, with a hard edge to her voice. “Do we give up because it’s hard?”
“No I’m not saying that,” Kaspowitz began.
“We’re not alone,” Erik interrupted. “Captain Lubeck was talking to Abigail. He’ll have been instructed not to. He’ll have been instructed to watch for any Debogande-friendly vessels communicating with us, or helping to hide us in any way. He talked to Abigail instead. I’m not even sure he didn’t mean to get caught. He had to know he could be spotted, the risks were pretty big in a system crowded with that many high-tech sensor systems. I think Lubeck was making a statement, one way or the other, that he didn’t like what was going on. Actually finding anything out from Abigail was probably secondary — I mean, what could any insystem sub-lighter really know?
“Let’s face it, Fleet’s whole case against us is plain suspicious. It doesn’t make any sense that I would kill the Captain, the Captain was known to be friendly to at least some of my mother’s politics, and thus my family’s politics. My only possible motivation to kill him could have been my family’s scheming things behind the scenes to upset any future move into politics from him… but anyone who knows that situation knows that the only people frightened by the idea of the Captain going into politics were Fleet.
“The more people talk about it, the more they won’t buy it. Add to that, Trace is on my side, and Kulina are known to be incorruptible. Suspicion will grow. We need to tap into that suspicion, get some people on our side, and bring the people who planned this to justice. I’d guess there aren’t very many of them, it’s just a few very powerful folks at the very top of the command structure. Fleet Admiral Anjo for one.”
“You’re missing one big thing,” Kaspowitz replied sombrely. “You’re assuming that senior Fleet officers who hear our side of the story, and believe it, will automatically side with us. We all know this is about Worlders wanting more power. Most of Fleet’s senior officer corp are diehard Spacers. Hell, I’m a diehard Spacer. Before all of this, I’d have said we need greater Worlder say in human politics like a hole in the head. I reckon that’s a strong majority position on this ship even now.”
He glanced at Shahaim. She nodded reluctantly. Trace said nothing. She’d grown up on a planet, and so had been a Worlder by birth… which of course became null when she’d gained her Fleet commission, as all Fleet, officers or enlisted, gained automatic Spacer citizenship. But either way, no one had ever thought to ask Trace if she even voted. Kulina just didn’t get involved in that sort of thing, their cause was so much larger.
“So I’m guessing,” Kaspowitz continued, “that a lot of senior Fleet officers will figure out that we’re innocent, and that HQ murdered the Captain, and framed our LC, and all of that. But they won’t do anything about it. Very reluctantly, but given the larger stakes, what’s one ship?”
“Sure,” Erik said darkly. “And what’s a man’s honour, come to that?”
“We did no dishonourable things in the war?” Kaspowitz replied. “If the cause is big enough, people will justify dishonour. Most Fleet officers don’t want Worlders to have more power. The Captain was a strange fish in that respect, and from most captains’ perspective, he’s put us on the wrong side of that fight whether we like it or not. It’s the purpose of ships like Phoenix to die for the cause of human security. I reckon a lot of them will justify that it doesn’t matter if we die fighting the tavalai, or die fighting Fleet itself in Fleet’s effort to keep incompetent fools from running humanity’s wars. And you know… if the Worlders were running things? If we had genuine democracy? We’d all be fucked — and we all know it. Those fools would have us bankrupt within a generation, and then we’d get exterminated all over again because we wouldn’t have enough money to keep Fleet operating.”
Erik couldn’t argue with that. He’d heard the same over and over from his parents, his elder sisters, and everyone in the family whose entire business was business, and the handling of money. Worlders lived surrounded by plenty, and without the pressing awareness of finite resources that Spacers lived with, just wanted to spend. Those from the Spacer culture of frugality just wouldn’t tolerate it. And with the financial troubles many worlds had already created for themselves, the popular clamour to rescind the Fleet Tax on those struggling worlds had grown, to rolling eyes from Spacers who retorted that Fleet was the only reason those worlds were settled by humans in the first place, and they should have thought of those responsibilities before spending billions on credit they didn’t actually have.
“Captain said it would start a war,” Trace said quietly. Everyone looked at her. She didn’t talk about her conversations with the Captain often. “He said there were plans afoot, among the Worlders, to get power. One way or the other. I wasn’t interested at first, I told him that my cause was to help win humanity’s wars against aliens. Domestic squabbles weren’t my concern. He asked me to consider what I’d actually have won for humanity if we won the foreign war only to be destroyed by the domestic one. I didn’t have an answer.”
“Did he say what plans?” Erik asked.
Trace shook her head. “He wouldn’t. He kept secrets. But he had friends among Worlders who told him things, he admitted as much. Powerful friends. He said the war was brewing, that it might take thirty years to get started, or it could start the very day the foreign war ended. It turns out, it was the latter. And its first shot was fired at him.”
She looked upset, holding it in with that stony-faced control. Erik leaned forward. “Trace. It wasn’t your fault.”
“You remember just after the parade?” she said to him. “He ordered Lieutenant Dale to accompany you to see your parents. He knew the threat even then. I still doubted. I should have insisted on his own security.”
“And what could you have done?” Erik retorted. “Trace, he was court-martialed and put in solitary. You had reason to go in shooting with me, because the penalty for murder is death, and it was obvious Fleet were killing us off one at a time. But when the Captain was court-martialed he wasn’t about to be charged with a capital offence, you had every reason to believe you could get him out by following procedure.”
“I should have pushed him to remain offworld.”
“He would have ignored you.”
“I could have convinced him, I know it.”
“You don’t know it,” Erik said gently. “You wish it. Listen, you’re having an attack of emotional subjectivity. Probably it’s quite alien to you, but the rest of us know it all too well. You loved him, and it clouds your recollection. The objective truth is that the Captain knew the risks, and purposely kept the rest of us in the dark to try and keep us safe. Or safer. He took the burden upon himself, as he always did. It was a very Kulina thing to do, probably the reason he and you always got along so well.”
“That sounds right,” Kaspowitz murmured. “Fleet could have arranged for us to mysteriously disappear in that last fight. All of us. Ships have accidents all the time, friendlies hit friendlies by mistake. He kept us out of it. He never seemed surprised that they charged him.”
Trace blinked hard, and gazed at the beautiful elliptic disk of star and planets in formation on the screen. “When I was a child, I attained the highest level of moksha in my meditation. I was praised on it, and held as an example to the other Kulina students. It helped me to overcome my fears and frailties. I was fastest on the climbs, and best at weapons. If ever I was troubled, or I found difficulty, I would meditate on it, and practise, and the solutions would come to me.
“But for the past few years, my meditation has suffered. The Captain spoke often of the growing corruption in Fleet HQ. He warned me never to repeat what he told me, or it could harm my career, and my safety. He said that Fleet w
as a tool to be held in the hand, and it needed a calm and wise mind to wield it. But if the hand came to rule the mind, then all the good that Fleet has done these past centuries could be destroyed. By our own hand.
“I meditate on it, and no solution comes. As Kulina, service to the Fleet, and service to the human cause, are one and the same. Only now I find that the one is coming to war with the other. For Kulina, this feels as though the right hand is attacking the left. These past years I’ve meditated more than ever before, but the old peace of my childhood is gone. I do not know that I shall ever find it again.”
“Trace,” Erik said gently. “That man the Captain spoke of. The one you’d talked about. Have you thought who that might be?”
“I’ve a few possibilities,” she said. And returned her attention to her food. “I’ll tell you if I come up with anyone.” Erik realised that he was getting to know her better. It was the first time she’d said anything that he was certain was a lie.
* * *
After several hours of watching repairs in the vain hope that someone would find a use for her, Lisbeth finally gave up and went to the galley. Ten minutes of pestering one of the three chefs got him to whip up a marinade sauce with yoghurt, fruit juice and spices, then quick fried his best meat slices in it. Then she went to Medbay Three with Carla, and almost managed to do it without any wrong turns. Phoenix, she was learning, wasn’t so hard on the directionless — getting lost just meant you wound up back where you started.
Medbay Three had marines in it now, she’d heard someone in Engineering talking about how Medbay One was crammed with living and Two with dead, while Three was just the kuhsi and her kid. Well no wonder she’d been scared, Lisbeth thought, looking around at the marines in the bunks. When this place was empty it looked like some scary science lab, the kind of place an alien prisoner might get dissected. Now it looked like a medical bay, and alien guests could see they weren’t about to be subjected to anything the humans didn’t do to themselves.
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