Best Destiny

by Diane Carey

  “The wrong wall,” he sputtered. New rule . . . always, always, always keep a mental map of your ship. Three dimensions, jackass. Three of them.

  “Wait’ll I . . . tell Dad.”

  Jimmy laughed at himself as he lay there, fighting delirium. He laughed first at his mistake, then laughed again at the anticipation of telling his father, so they could laugh together.

  The ship whined beneath him. The ceiling creaked and sounded as if it wanted to cave in on him. He’d done it. He’d hurt them. The confusion was palpable right through the hard rubber deck, and announced itself in a dozen alarms, crackles of shattered machinery, warning whoops, and howls of life-forms in agony.

  All around him, the trumpet of destruction proclaimed his win—at least, for the moment.

  He’d bought this moment for himself and his shipmates. What could be done with it, he hadn’t the slightest clue. His plan hadn’t gone into the what-next part of the tourist map.

  And he was still flat on his back, gasping. He felt his own weight, so the backup gravity must have come on already. But the ship—he’d made a mess.

  Air raked in and out of his damaged innards, each breath a shudder. He felt the stretch of every muscle and the expansion of every rib, then each contraction. The heat here was like a closet in August. Stuffy, hot, moist. Feeling as though he were being cooked inside his survival suit, he began senselessly clawing at the straps and closures until the suit relaxed its grip on his chest. Without complete awareness of what he was doing, Jimmy clumsily peeled the suit off. He was on hands and knees in drenched off-duty clothes, his head sagging. Blood pushed into his head and rolled him toward blackout again.

  Consciousness surged, faded, surged. Jimmy fought to keep it when it surged, and to stay on his hands and knees until the waves passed and he thought he might be able to get up.

  The survival suit was puddled under him, a moist, shimmering white rag. In a fold, Veronica’s hand waved at him, fingers out and thumb folded in as though showing him the number four. It must have been crushed between his body and the corridor structure when he hit, he figured.

  Four . . . four seconds . . . four minutes . . . no, that didn’t make any sense. The hand wasn’t telling him anything. But did remind him that he was on borrowed time now. These outlaws would struggle to recover from the damage, fight to put themselves and their ship back together, and they would come looking for the saboteur.

  Jimmy Kirk, worm in the apple.

  He had to move. Get away from here. This was where they’d look first.

  Determined not to make the kind of mistakes he’d been making, Jimmy crawled to a crack in the corridor wall sections, dragging his survival suit with him, and stuffed the suit into the crack. He wished he’d had the presence of mind or the experience to have done the same with his helmet. If they found it, they’d know what to look for. He could only hope they wouldn’t be looking down in that unpressurized storage section until later. He hoped they wouldn’t have time.

  As he got to his feet, he recognized the sensation of weighing less than he was used to. That made sense—he’d blitzed their gravity system. Probably relying on partial power, or backups, if these morons had any backups.

  Supporting himself on the wall, fighting to ignore the pain in his chest and legs, Jimmy scooped up Veronica’s hand and tucked it into the elastic belt of his trousers. At least if they found him, they’d wonder for a minute what kind of mutant they’d picked up.

  What the hell . . . maybe it’d give him a moment’s advantage.

  Flushed with fever, limping, gasping, fighting blurred eyesight and a foggy, thunderous pain in his head, Jimmy struggled down the corridor. He had to get as far as he could from this section of the enemy ship.

  He had to hide.

  “Dad,” he gurgled, “we’ll laugh together about this . . . even if it kills me. . . . ”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “George, turn around.”

  “I’m serious! Don’t talk to me.”

  Gnawing dread crawled through the hold. The sense of backsliding offered an almost physical pressure.

  Not even hotheaded petulance could hide a father’s anguish under a commander’s responsibility, nor could it disguise the ruptures and fissures of simple human doubt.

  George’s hands dug hard into the edge of a crate lid. His cheeks were blotched and ruby with heat, his hair clawing his forehead in damp claret thorns. He didn’t look up as he felt Robert’s unwanted attention and responded with another snap.

  “Don’t look at me either.”

  But Robert April was a commander of souls as well as ships, and he wasn’t about to turn away from this. He did not, however, come any closer.

  Before him, George boiled like stew. His bandaged hands clenched hard and his knuckles went as white as the gauze. His shoulders and ribs constricted within the scarlet Starfleet tunic with such exaggeration that the tunic itself seemed alive and writhing.

  A wrong moment. Perhaps the moment would never come right for them, but Robert stepped off to the side, knelt beside Veronica, and consumed the moment by replacing the spent medical cartridges.

  The girl was unconscious, pale, and breathing very shallowly. Her face was clammy and cool, her eyebrows slightly raised as though dreaming. The survival suit in its medical-nurse mode struggled visibly to keep her alive, applying doses of whatever was needed to counter losses it read in her body, keeping dabs of silver nitrate on her slaughtered limbs to reduce bleeding. In spite of all that, the right side of the suit was beginning to turn cherry as blood defied effort and soaked slowly through.

  As he stood up again, Robert noted that Carlos was deep inside the mechanics again, applying himself to his purpose, only his legs showing as he attempted to follow an order that had them all by the throat.

  There would be no good time, so he turned again to the surging lava.

  “You’re not thinking, George.”

  “That’s a lie,” the crust shifted. George pushed off and paced the length of the hold.

  Robert watched him but made no attempt to close him in. Seconds ticked away. Both men were barbed with awareness of each other.

  “There’s only one way out of some things,” George finally said. “We’ve got a responsibility to people who come after us. If it were anybody else on that ship—”

  “It’s not anybody else,” Robert said forthrightly. “It’s your son. No one would ask you to do this.”

  “We’re not sure he’s alive.”

  “We’re fairly sure. Don’t ask more of yourself than anyone else would ask of you.”

  “I don’t have a choice.”

  Passively, Robert repeated, “No one expects you to kill your own son. It’s not part of the oath.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “No . . . it’s not. Now, listen to me.”

  “I can’t listen to you, goddammit! These people are dangerous! They’ve killed before and they’ll kill again if we don’t stop them now. If that gravity slam didn’t kill Jimmy, they’ve probably found him by now—how long do you think they’ll let him stay alive on their ship? I can’t make this decision based on . . . on a guess.”

  His throat almost twisted apart with the emotion surging through it. The words came out skinned and raw.

  Robert pushed his hands into his cardigan pockets as though to supplement the tension with a dose of calm. “You’re overcompensating, my friend. If he weren’t your son, you’d be clearer-headed. You’re trying too hard to go by the book—”

  George wrenched around, one hand out in a bitter plea, his brows knotted into a single copper pipe.

  “What do you want me to do? Let those bastards live because I hope Jimmy’s still alive? What if he is alive? You want me to leave him over there and ignore what they might do to him? Torture him? Murder him? We don’t know who or what’s driving that ship! They could be slave traders! They could be cannibals!”

  “George, stop that kind of talk!”

  “Why
are you making this hard on me? You know I’m right!” A bandaged fist slammed into the hold wall, and way down the deck made Carlos’s legs flinch. “If I could, I’d stand in front of them myself, and you know it!”

  “I do know it, yes.”

  “Then don’t get in my way. Carlos, what’ve you got?”

  From the wall, the answer was “Maybe one blast, maybe a third power, sir. This close . . . it’ll do the job.”

  Robert shook his head slowly, firmly, and moved closer. “George, you’ll have to pay attention. If it were me over there or if it were a stranger, you’d consider another option. You’re not allowing yourself that. Your judgment’s clouded. You’re not even giving Jimmy the consideration you would give a stranger.”

  “Don’t you get it?” George jammed a finger toward open space. “He’s probably dead! One of those”—he couldn’t say the words, but waved his hand frantically—“was probably him!”

  “We don’t have those facts. We’re guessing. You’re so aware it’s your boy that you’re afraid of making a decision based on that fact. You’re afraid others might die in the future, but we’re not liable for the future at moments like this. You must make yourself understand, George. Some junctures have no precedent to call upon. We have to make one to fit—”

  “Fine! You invent how we’re going to get across the mile of vacuum between us and them! Out of all of outer space we’ve got this one little mile, and we can’t do anything about it except fire at them!”

  The subject was shifting, becoming confused, garbled. Science and physics were sneaking in where Robert didn’t want them. He lowered his voice to a tone that said he wasn’t going to argue.

  “No, George,” he said gravely. “Jimmy’s not only your son. He’s an underage civilian who swore no oaths of risk or enlisted with reasonable perspective. He’s not Starfleet. You can’t apply the same articles to him. As your commander, I’m not letting you sacrifice an innocent civilian, and as your friend . . . I’m not letting you kill your son.”

  “Carlos! Get the laser on line and bring us around to firing position!”

  The exhausted helm engineer crawled out of his hole, sat sweating on the deck, and looked with dismay at them both. He’d heard it all, of course. He looked from his captain to his commander, then back again.

  “Carlos,” Robert overruled, “get the laser on line, but there will be no firing yet.”

  George spun at him and whined, “Don’t put him in the middle! That’s not—what—what’re you doing? What kind of behavior is that?”

  “Mine, I s’pose.”

  “This isn’t a joke!”

  “Believe me, I am not joking.” True to his words, Robert was uncommonly grim as he lowered his chin to schoolmaster level and added, “It’s not up for debate.”

  Undeniable plangency gave weight to his tone, his years of experience rising as they rarely did even at such times. His eyes were utterly still.

  Astounded and speechless at what he was hearing, George gawked at him.

  Only after seconds of disbelief, he stammered. “Are you . . . are you pulling rank on me?”

  “That’s right. Sorry.”

  It seemed absurd, with Robert standing there on a cocked hip, hands pocketed in the much-beleaguered Irish sweater, the cream wool collar bunched up around the back of his neck and his brown hair just brushing it. His natural probity stood behind him like an army of trees that refused the storm. He might as well have been standing on a reedy shoreline holding a fishing pole, saying “sorry” for having put the wrong bait in his creel.

  Battling astonishment, eyes ringed and glaring, George shook with frustration.

  “You—you don’t have any right!” he breathed. “There’s no regulation that lets you take command at this point!”

  “I don’t care about that.”

  “I’m not injured, I’m not irrational, I’m not—”

  “Regardless,” Robert said. “You can keep command, but you simply may not make this decision. I won’t allow it.”

  George aimed a shoulder at him and mocked, “What’re you gonna do? Duke it out with me?”

  “We’re not doing it, George. Find another option.”

  The grist of their problem gurgled and broiled, and refused to be dismissed. The worst of all moral dilemmas crushed in on them from two directions. Not a right and a wrong, but two wrongs. Kill Jimmy, or leave him to these people to kill him and chance these criminals killing others in the future.

  Two terrible options, knocking up against each other, both relying on guesses and hopes.

  Now what?

  Soulsore, George cranked away from the others and found a corner. There were no rules to fit this situation. The rules that did exist were inadequate to the grave emotions and plagues on him now.

  “Captain!” Carlos called suddenly. “The energy readings—”

  He was squinting through the dimness at the monitors on the floor.

  “Yes?” Robert asked, turning. “What is it?”

  “The sensor screen, sir! Third from the right. I think their shields are starting to go back up!”

  A lead ball landed in the pit of every stomach. If those shields were going up—

  George plowed out of the shadows. “Fire! Fire, Carlos!”

  “No!” Robert challenged. “I told you, we’re not doing it.”

  Carlos had his arms inside the wall, hands on the connections to make a laser bolt happen for them, but he looked back and forth at them, baffled.

  “I said fire!” George called.

  Robert was damningly calm. “Absolutely not.”

  “Sirs, their shields are activating!” Carlos cried. “I’ve got to know for sure what to do! We’ve got just a second!”

  “It’s not for you to decide!” George bellowed down at him. “This isn’t gonna happen to anyone else! You’re under my command here!”

  “No, Carlos,” Robert said, “you’re not.”

  “Oh, God,” Carlos moaned. “Please . . . I . . . I can’t—”

  George rounded on the captain. “I told you I don’t want him in the middle! You don’t put your crew in the middle of something like this!”

  “There is no middle,” Robert reminded sternly. “We’re not firing to destroy a ship where an innocent child has been captured. I’m not doing it. Nor are you.”

  Sweat pouring down his face from the effort of the decision itself, George panted out a savage frustration. It had to be now—now or—

  “That’s it,” Carlos said, crawling to the row of monitors and tampering until he was sure of what he saw. “Yeah, that’s it,” he sighed. “They’ve got a higher level of screening back on line than we’ve got laser power. Wouldn’t do any good to fire on them now, even with full torches. We just . . . waited too long.” He looked up at them both. “Sorry, sirs.”

  Lips pressed like two parts of an iron pot, George glowered at him, then at Robert. His eyes could have lit matches.

  Hounded by the loss of a chance, he gestured at Carlos, glared at Robert, flopped his arms in anger, and stormed farther away from them, all the way to the other end of the hold again.

  No matter how many simulations Starfleet gave its trainees, they never had to kill more than numbers going up and down on a chart. Training told what to do, but never could say whether a person had the mettle to actually do it.

  Robert saw that unfortunate kink in the noble armor right before his eyes today. Here with him was a man who had the mettle, and whom fate would test if allowed. Now they had lost their chance to know which was the better answer.

  To prevent fate from getting its way, Robert had stepped in, and now they might never know. He had learned a long time ago that he could turn comets if he stepped at the proper moment. Even if the comet was about to self-immolate.

  He glanced back and tactfully said, “Carlos, see what you can do about rerouting what you had there and gathering us a little maneuverability, as long as we’ve found some power in the system.�
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  Uneasy, Carlos hesitated, and grumbled, “Aye, sir.”

  He drew a couple of weak breaths, then disappeared inside the wall again.

  That element taken care of, authority in place for the moment, Robert strolled across the deck to where he was trying to mix oil and water in a very hot caldron.

  With that truepenny candidness glowing in his eyes, he leaned one elbow on a crate, hands still balled in his pockets, and hoped the subservient position would give him a tad of an edge as he gazed at the man he had just shot down.

  “George . . . please try to understand. We’re not merely commentators to how life and law will be in space,” he said. “There are no precedents, because we’re the ones out here first, making them.” A humane pause gave a lift to his condolence before he softly added, “That’s why you don’t know what to do.”

  Seconds broiled past in silence.

  Anxiety chewed at them both, each feeling at some distance the soldierly stoutheartedness of the other, yet neither able to give in, until George found it in himself to speak the most bitter sentence he had ever tasted in his own mouth.

  “I did know what to do,” he ground out. “I managed to make the hardest decision of my life . . . and you stopped me.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  He pressed his cheek to the quivering metal and wept with joy. The metal moaned and shuddered as though responding to his nearness and his touch.

  Beneath his outstretched body, the ship was staggering, limping, dazed, but his part was right again. They had come back to him and were ready to give again. Joy came back, because his personhood was knitted to these coils and conductors.

  “Oh, my shields . . . my shields . . . ”

  Tears broke from Roy’s closed eyes and dripped the few inches to the deck he lay upon, and he murmured senseless blessings to his machines for their coming back to life. He had suckled and cooed them back, in spite of the invertebrates around him and their weak-minded shilly-shallying, in spite of the victims fighting back this time and the worm in the ship.