***
VIEW: MTR 3874 GAL INFO CAFETERIA EXT 318 02 04 0233 UNCLAS.
It was past 0230 hours, a still, clear night, when Tara came striding out of the dark toward the massive, shadowy bulk of the cafeteria bloc. It was cold and she was wearing a thick coldcoat over pajama pants and ship boots. Her hair was untidy and she was muttering under her breath. There was a little pool of light by the main entrance. Two figures stood there, hands in their pockets.
"This better be good, Lock," Tara said grimly as she neared them. Dr. Lock flashed her a brilliant grin, snapped his head to one side, then snapped it back. The security guard stood there, seemingly amused.
"He's finally flipped out," Dr. Lock said, still grinning.
"I hate it when you use that psych jargon," Tara replied. "Where is he?"
"He's in the cafeteria. Kind of tearing it apart. Isn't that right, Eight Four?"
"He's disassembling things," the guard said. "I can't figure out exactly what he's doing. He wasn't too communicative."
"I would have approached him, Tara, but I thought…well, you're a lot closer to him than I am. I thought he'd react more positively to you than to me."
"You thought he'd be less likely to disassemble me."
"Well, there's that, too." He grinned again. "Eight Four has got a vac gun, if he gets out of line. Want us to accompany you?"
"No, that's all right. Just stay here. I'll see what's troubling him."
"I like your outfit."
"Shut down!"
***
I had barely gotten started when Tara showed up in the galley. I was pretty much lost in dreams already, the steam from the hot water rising up all around me, my hands tingling and turning red, the dishes sparkling, hissing, almost smoking. I already had a nice collection on a rack off to one side. I put a freshly washed dish on the rack and picked up another from the bubbling sink. I slapped the scrub sponge on to it and wiped it clean under the faucet, taking my time. My whole body was warm, and my eyes were heavy. The idea was to sleep while you worked.
"Wester? What are you doing?"
"What does it look like I'm doing, Tara?" I replied impatiently. "I'm washing the dishes."
"But there's no need to wash these dishes, Wester. It's a fully automated system. The dishes wash themselves."
"It's not a good system, Tara. If you ate in the cafeteria more, you'd know that. If you want dishes to be really clean, you have to hand-wash them."
"What have you done to the dishwashing system?"
"I had to destroy it in order to save the dishes. You should thank me. My dishes are clean. My dishes are sterilized." I put the dish away and took another one. It felt good, but the idea was to think, or maybe not to think, and Tara was not allowing me to do either. "Can you go away, please, Tara? It's nothing personal. I just need a little time alone here."
"What's wrong, Wester? Why are you doing this?"
"I just want to think, Tara. Doing the dishes kind of helps me think. Killing bacteria. You know, a single bacterium can wipe out an entire civilization—if we let it. And a single bacterium can save millions of people from death—if we help it."
"What is it that's troubling you, Wester?"
"I think you know what's troubling me, Tara."
"Why don't you tell me, Wester? Maybe I can help."
"You can't help me, Tara. You're the source of all my troubles, but you can't help me. I've got to decide this one on my own."
"What is it you have to decide?"
"I have to decide to accept the happiness I have found—the only true happiness I've ever known—or to risk it, to risk it all, for what might be. To throw it away, maybe forever, for something that will probably never happen. For a lost dream. For the past, for the dead. Should I risk the living, for the dead? Wouldn't I be a coward, if I abandoned those I love, to fight the Gods? Anybody can fight the Gods and die. Even a coward can do that. But only a hero can stand by those he loves, despite all the obstacles, despite all temptation. Isn't that true?"
"I don't know, Wester. You're right—I can't help you."
"I'll let you know when I've decided, Tara. I don't know what I'm going to decide. What do you think? Am I a hero or a coward?"
"You're not a coward, Wester. We all have hard choices to make in this world. I pray to God you make the right decision, for your sake, and for those you love. I don't know what it is, Wester. I'll pray for you. Just let me know what it is, whatever it is. I'll stand by you, Wester—no matter what."
"Thanks, Tara. Now if you could just leave me alone for awhile? Please? Why don't you go back to sleep."
"Of course, Wester. I will. God bless you."
***
Priestess shrieked in agony, burning alive. I could see her eyes wide in shock through a faceplate suddenly rippling with black bubbles. Her A-suit was burning, flaming like a meteor, melting, spitting off globules of white-hot cenite. Starmass blazed like the heart of a sun, a raging holocaust, a river of destruction, all around us. She reached out both arms for me, flaming metal arms. I was running for her, I almost had her, but a blast of starmass caught her in the chest, blowing her away from me like a fleck of glowing ash. She screamed again as she saw I was not going to reach her.
"Thinker! Thinker! Help me! Help me! Help me!" The starmass overwhelmed us and I could see her no more. She was gone!
I awoke screaming, raging. I leaped out of bed, convulsed, and bounced off the opposite wall, still screaming. Valkyrie twitched on the bed, stunned.
"GOD DAMN YOU!" I put a fist through a wall screen—it popped off the wall and went ricocheting across the room. I yanked a comcenter off the desk and hurled it at the porch. The plex on the sliding door exploded, spraying shards of plastic around the room. I picked up the desk chair, screaming, and pounded it at the desk until the chair was only kindling. I ripped a clothes mod out of the closet and threw it at the wall. It burst open, strewing clothing. "GOD DAMN YOU! GOD DAMN YOU!" I was on my knees, pounding at the carpet with my fists. Valkyrie was off the bed, crying, hysterical, embracing me, trying to calm me down. I pushed her away and swept everything off the desk to the floor, snatching for the phone. The damned thing was still functional. I jabbed at a tab and glared at the little screen, breathing hard, covered with sweat, bleeding from the hands.
"WAKE UP, YOU BITCH!" I shouted. Tara came to life on the screen, blinking. She woke up quickly when she got an eyeful of me. Valkyrie landed beside me, still whimpering.
"Wester! What's wrong?"
"Shut down and listen! You've won! I'll come with you! I'll go on your damned suicide mission. Understand? But there's one condition. One! Do you hear me?"
"I hear you, Wester."
"When your mission is over—assuming we're still alive—we go on my mission. Mine! Do you hear me?"
"I hear you."
"And I'm in command! Not you!"
"You're bleeding, Wester."
"I don't give a good God-damn! I'm in command, do you hear! The second mission is mine! And you do everything you can to insure its success! You follow my orders! We do it or die, do you understand?"
"Please calm down, Wester. We'll discuss this in the morning."
"Calm? Calm? Are you crazy? How can you be so damned calm, when you're proposing to rocket blind into another universe? What are you, some kind of psycho? What does it take to get you excited anyway? A mass murder?" I cut the connection, still raging. "Psycho!" I shouted. "That woman is a psycho!"
"Please calm down, Thinker—please!" Valkyrie embraced me, shattered. I was slick with sweat, shaking with anger. I knew everything now—everything I had to know. It was like being shot in the brain with a diamond bullet. The future was crystal clear. All I had to do now was make it happen.
***
From that day on, I was perfectly calm. It had always been that way in the past for me. Once things were clear, once things were decided, a deadly calm would settle over my soul. It didn't matter what it was we were facing, we could be m
arching right into Hell, but once it was clear, my blood would turn to icewater and I would be as cold as a biogen.
I didn't know if I was doing the right thing or the wrong thing, but I knew, at last, what I was going to do. There were no more doubts. It didn't matter whether it was right or wrong, I thought, it's what I'm going to do. And all my phantoms were going to live with it. Live, or maybe die. And I was going to live with it, too. Live, or maybe die.
The dreams stopped. It was almost miraculous. It was almost as if she knew there was no need to call out any more. I was coming. We were coming.
I purged my mind of everything except the mission. I thought of nothing else. I lived for nothing else. Tara's mission, and mine. If Tara's mission failed, mine would never get started—we'd all be dead. So Tara's mission must not fail.
I told Valkyrie and Dragon and Redhawk. They were with me. They said it was crazy, but they were with me. It was just like the River of Doom, on Andrion 3. That had been my idea too, and everyone had said it was crazy. But they went. We would all be going on this mission—Tara and Gildron and Whit, Valkyrie and Dragon and Redhawk and I, and a whole lot of other people. Aliens, from U1—that's what we called our universe. And we were bound for the O's universe that we had named Plane Prime. The O's must not have liked it much, because they had been migrating into our universe for hundreds of years—and causing a lot of trouble. We had never known where they had come from—but we knew now.
***
"Isn't this fun?" Tara asked. Her face was blue and her teeth were chattering. We were lying in an icy stream under a massive log that lay across our legs. The water was half ice. It wanted to freeze, but we kept interfering. I couldn't even feel my legs anymore. The stream ran sluggishly along the bottom of a steep, rocky gully. I tried to squeeze some feeling into my bare hands—no luck. I was too tired to even try to get out from under the log. We were taking a little break, but I knew it wouldn't last long.
"What the hell is this?" our tormentor bellowed, appearing suddenly at the top of the embankment. He had gone ahead, of course. That's easy to do when you're not carrying a tree. "Did I tell anybody to go to sleep? Get your fat pussies up and moving, ladies!" He was built like a brick wall, a short, squat Assidic tank, a flat face and fierce slit eyes, a massive chest and arms like an ape, solid muscle and brown as a berry. He always wore shorts and a sleeveless top and today was no exception even though it was below freezing and a light sleet was falling. How the hell did he do it?
I struggled to my feet, shifting the log with great difficulty to one shoulder. Tara was getting up too, and Dragon and Whit and Redhawk and Valkyrie behind us. It was one damned big awkward log, and even with six of us it wasn't easy to maneuver it. We were in camfax fatigues and boots, but had no gloves or hats.
"You're soft, ladies—soft! You're office weenies! Civs! Pussies! Move it! The enemy's on your ass!" We sloshed forward up the stream, breaking ice with every step, the massive log digging into my shoulder painfully. I was on point. I got to see where we were going. I got to break the ice. It wasn't a deep stream, not even knee-high, but it was a bitch, breaking that ice, and my legs were numb.
It had been Tara's idea, of course. She had said it too—we're soft. And we would need to be hard, very hard, where we were going. So here we were, in Basic again, with a brain-damaged Assidic gorilla torturing us and shrieking abuse. I remembered this nonsense from the first time, years ago. In my worst nightmares I had never thought I'd have to do it again.
"Stop!" he bellowed. "Up the bank! They know you're going down the creek! Up the bank and cross-country! Now!" We stopped, weaving there with the tree on our shoulders. He had stopped us at a place where the gully was almost vertical. It looked easier up ahead.
"Up ahead!" I said hoarsely.
"No!" the immediate answer came. "Soilsat! It's mined up there! This is your only chance!" He stood above us, glaring down.
"Roll it up!" I said. We slammed the log against the steep earthen embankment, and started forcing it up. It didn't roll, of course—we had to lift it.
"Keep going!" I said. The top of the bank was too damned high. We'd have to climb up, forcing the log ahead of us. The soil was a wet clay, and our boots sank into it, sliding downwards. No good!
"Look out!" We collapsed, the log falling heavily on top of us. I wound up on my back in the icewater, struggling to free myself. When I surfaced, the gorilla was still standing there, gazing down at us scornfully.
"Pitiful," he said.
"We stand it on end," I told the others. Whit looked like a perplexed little freezing puppy. She had never had to do this sort of stuff before. Dragon and Redhawk and Valkyrie were troopers, I knew they'd never quit. And I knew Tara was too proud to quit.
We maneuvered the cursed tree up and stood it on end against the cliff. I thought of it as a cliff by then. We stood there exhausted for a moment, our feet submerged in icewater, light sleet settling on our hair and tingling our exposed flesh. I noted my hands were bleeding.
"I'd like to stick this tree right up his ass," Dragon whispered grimly. Blood was pouring from a cut on his cheek.
"Four of us pushing," I said. "Two of us up there guiding the damned thing up and pulling, if they can."
"So who's the lucky two?"
"Tara and Whit—you're the weakest. Get up there and make sure it doesn't fall." They scrambled to obey.
We did our best, straining every fiber to get that damned log up and over the embankment. We could barely move it, even with all four of us grunting away at the bottom. It stood there, but wouldn't go over.
"Heave!" It moved, up, then slid back.
"Scut!"
"Heave!" Up and back again.
"It's not working."
"It's working!" Tara shouted. "You're wearing away the dirt up here. Keep it up, and we'll eventually do it!"
We did do it, eventually. We wore a slot right in the lip of the embankment, and were able to force the log up at an angle and get it over the top, at last.
We lay there in the mud, at the top, gasping. Our tormentor appeared, grinning. "Eight has just been wounded," he said. "He can't walk. He can't use his hands either. Let's get moving, girls! The enemy is on the way!" The bastard knew Dragon was the strongest among us.
"Put him on the tree," I said, as we struggled to our feet.
It didn't work. Dragon wasn't allowed to use his hands, so he kept falling off the log. "Sorry, guys," he said, looking up at us from the mud.
"All right, we'll rig up a trav," I said. "We need two long, strong branches. Let's get into that forest!"
It actually worked. They had let us keep our u-belts, although we didn't have much to carry on them. We rigged up the u-belts around a couple of tree branches and we had our trav. We had Whit pull him, while the rest of us did the tree. We staggered on. It was hard. My fingers and nose and feet were totally numb.
"Sure wish Gildron was here," Redhawk muttered.
"He's got more important things to do," Tara gasped.
"Move it, pussies! Faster! Once we get the log up that mountain, we're going to jump off a cliff!"
I didn't mind. I didn't mind at all. It was for a good cause.
***
"Ready on the firing line!" I snapped the E up to my shoulder, stealing a quick glance to one side. Dragon was beside me, then Valkyrie, Redhawk, Tara and Whit. We were all in camfax fatigues. It was raining lightly, a grey sky full of cold rain, peppering my skin. It felt wonderful.
"Individual fire—semiauto, x-min, individual targets, fire at will."
I concentrated down range—nothing. Dragon fired, then the others began firing, single shots muffled by my earbaffles. A cenite target popped up downrange and I fired. It slammed back down again, spraying shrapnel—got it! Another target popped up—I fired again and knocked it down. Another! I burst off two quick rounds and it disappeared in a hail of white phospho contrails. The range was rocking with firing now, a dull muffled roar in my ears, and downrange was smo
king and burning. I leaned into the E, anticipating, blasting away at the slightest movement, psyched and hyper.
"Cease fire!" Silence settled over the range. Our E's were smoking in the rain. We were getting soaked but I didn't mind. I looked over at the others. It was almost Beta—all dressed up and nowhere to go. We had all gone through Uldo together, just like this—all except Whit. Dragon and Redhawk and Valkyrie and Tara. Even Gildron had been with us. And the others, invisible companions, Snow Leopard and Merlin and Psycho and Priestess and Scrapper and Twister. We had left them behind on Uldo. There were other ghosts as well, from Mongera. Coolhand and Warhound and Ironman. Cut right from my heart. And that didn't even count Gamma, almost all of Gamma, cut down on Andrion 3 and Mongera.
"Individual fire—laser—minburst—individual targets—fire at will!" I snapped over to laser and shouldered the E again, ready for the slightest flicker of movement downrange. Almost Beta. We had made a good team on Uldo, a good squad. We had perished, as a squad, but we had accomplished the mission. Victory, over all odds. Victory—and death. A target popped up. I lasered it cleanly, the burst screeching wildly, the target slamming down again. Another target popped up to meet my laser instantly. It was pouring now, the rain hissing off my E, glittering laser bursts snapping on and off, Hell on tap, instant death for any foe.
Victory, I thought. But the dead outnumbered the living by now. And I thought of the Legion farewell to the dead. I could still hear Boudicca on Andrion 3, standing in a field of charred A-suits, counting off the numbers:
"Gamma Three, Gamma Four, Gamma Six, Gamma Eight, Gamma Nine,
You're four effectives short.
Remember your brothers-in-arms.
Missing in action,
We join you soon!"
My targets were exploding downrange. Boudicca was dead now, but she had been right. It was we the living who were missing in action. The dead were right where they belonged. And we'd certainly be joining them soon. One way or another.
***
"You've got to realize none of this may work," Seven Six Seven said, squatting gingerly before us. He was warmly dressed in a thick coldcoat, gloves, and a fur field hat I could have killed for. The six of us were gathered around him on the ground bareheaded, clad in boots and camfaxed fatigue pants and sleeveless tops. A new layer of snow covered everything, sparkling in the sunlight. It was cold, but we were only allowed sleeveless in camp. They didn't want to weaken us. We couldn't even sleep in tents. We slept in the rain and the snow, on the ground, huddled together for warmth. It was really miserable. Whit was barely with us, but we were all taking real good care of her.
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