Best Destiny

by Diane Carey

  His father looked like a man about to have a heart attack.

  “Do something!”

  Tension broiled raw on the grill of the Mosses.

  Finally the son shifted his weight and asked, “Why should I?”

  TWENTY-NINE

  “Reading antimatter leakage!”

  “From inside the Blue Zone?”

  “Affirmative! Heavy waves!”

  “That’s what we’ve been waiting for, kids.”

  Lorna Simon tried to make her voice sound calm and reassuring for the young folks aboard, and especially for this Drake Reed, who had the look of a man watching his best friend walk up the guillotine ramp.

  She couldn’t help standing up. There were times when even the command chair of a ship like the Enterprise wasn’t enough.

  Not when antimatter leakage came out of a place where some of her children were lost. And she’d been thinking about retiring again . . . just couldn’t make herself do it. Times like this kept pulling her back.

  “Get your sensors cracking!” she snapped. “Pinpoint it! Reed, get down here and take the navigation chair! Let’s put our tractors into that mess and get our people out of there!”

  Nobody was moving. All sweating, but nobody moving. All stared at Roy.

  He let them sweat. His advantage reaching its strongest moment, and he used it to add friction. Not even his father knew what to do.

  “Fifteen! Fourteen! Thirteen! Twelve!” the Orion engineer shouted.

  Roy stepped down to his father’s level. “Get out of my way, you imbecile.”

  Big Rex Moss had no choice, and apparently he knew it.

  Hating the universe, he stepped aside.

  On the port side, the Orion’s voice cracked. “Eight! Seven! Six!”

  Roy stepped past Big Rex as though he were nothing.

  The effect was astonishing for Jimmy as he witnessed the other things that can happen between a father and son. His young captor, who just minutes ago had been so surprised at the idea of taking over, now seemed to figure that his father wasn’t worthy of respect or fear any more than these other low forms of life.

  With one hand—as though to make a point—Roy reached into a section of the open port side mechanical panels and worked some unexplained magic, then yanked on something.

  They had only two seconds to spare when the countdown stopped and the Orion choked on the phrase, “Port engine is ejected! Starboard engine is still stable!”

  An instant later the ship shifted under them and knocked them off their feet. Jimmy grabbed for balance and realized that the discarded engine had just blown up and knocked them with backwash. He struggled to keep himself up in spite of his hands being tied and curtailing his balance, and only when the ship settled again did he realize he’d missed a chance. He should have hit somebody or kicked something or jumped somewhere.

  Another little lesson to log away for the future.

  Roy enjoyed—as much as that hideous, spiteful expression could be called enjoyment—having gotten his father and the others out of a situation that would have killed them all if he hadn’t been here. He straightened, and faced Big Rex.

  “I’m going below,” he said. “I’m going to secure the shielding and do whatever else needs doing so that doesn’t happen again. You . . . just stay here and be the big man.”

  Rancor dripped from his tongue.

  He stepped aft, scooped up a utility tin marked CHEMICAL RINSE, and gestured for Jimmy to lead the way out.

  Below, once again in the corridor, Roy fell into a callous silence that Jimmy read with all but obvious glee. Finally Roy took one too many of his captive’s snotty glances and said, “You’re pretty cocky for a noxious runt with his hands tied up.”

  Jimmy cast him a glance of pure flint. “I’m not the one considering patricide.”

  “Oh, shut up! Where’d you even learn a word like that?”

  “Heard it in a play.”

  “Well, keep it to yourself. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, I do,” Jimmy insisted as Roy shoved him into one of the engine rooms and pushed him off to a safe distance.

  Roy grumbled something unintelligible, then crawled over a dangerously jagged pile of electrical parts and circuit boards that had fallen from the ceiling. He ended up on all fours to get over the pile, then crouched in a corner, opened the tin he’d brought from the bridge, and began selecting fine pieces of equipment and dipping them one by one into the chemical cleaner.

  Between them, the pile of shattered boards crackled and occasionally snapped with live electricity, as though laughing at the two human boys trying to keep their noses above the water in a very serious adult business.

  Jimmy stayed aside. He didn’t have duking it out with Roy Moss in his plan—yet. He’d used his fists enough in his life, and this was a new adventure. He was going to see how far he could annoy this one.

  Tenacity kicked in again. He discovered he was pretty good at reading other people, but until today, until now, he hadn’t read himself very well. He determined to survive, not just sacrifice himself, but live through it, and let his father know.

  He erupted out of his private thoughts and glared at Roy.

  “I can’t figure you out,” he said. “You’re obviously brilliant, and your father thinks it’s some kind of parlor trick. When it gets him something, maybe then he’ll respect you. Until then, you’re nothing. If you don’t realize that, you’re stupid too.”

  Roy buried himself in his dipping and cleaning, mumbling incoherencies, not really conversing at all, but just growling out his frustrations.

  It was working, Jimmy knew. He could goad Roy by making him feel stupid, because that’s what he knew would work on himself. He felt the whole future was lying out before him in Roy Moss—the perfect example of what his father had been trying to avoid happening to Jimmy in two or three years. An angry young man who wasn’t sure about the rightness of what he was doing.

  “Stupidity . . . stupid people can make a living . . . undisciplined people can’t . . . ”

  Roy was muttering louder now, and Jimmy was catching some of the phrases.

  “Idiots claim part of it . . . never give it up . . . mine and all mine . . . scratching Faramond like lice . . . ”

  “Faramond?” Jimmy went so straight against the wall that he hit the back of his head. “What about Faramond?”

  Roy looked up, eyes wide. A tiny electrical chip dripping fluid from his fingers to the floor. He looked like a trapped squirrel.

  “What interest have you got in Faramond?” Jimmy badgered.

  “None of your business! Who do you think you are—Sherlock Holmes?”

  The look on Roy’s face said it all again: that he wasn’t used to having somebody around who could figure things out, smell traps, make deductions.

  He tried to go back to dipping and cleaning.

  Jimmy pushed off the wall and pointed his bound fingers. “You’ve got something on Faramond that you aren’t telling your father about!”

  “He’s still my father!” Roy bellowed. “Shut up!”

  The guilt came back to prick at Jimmy as he read the other boy’s face. Roy had shown him what it was like to have a really bad father, yet Roy was showing more loyalty to Big Rex than Jimmy had shown to his own father.

  “You know something nobody else does,” he kept on. “That’s right, isn’t it? Sure! Why else would you put up with this shipload of maggots? That’s why you keep your mouth shut, isn’t it?”

  Roy’s arms shook violently, his face turned red, and he visibly broke. “I don’t need them! I’m well on my way to taking over! I’ve been funneling off my own stash, stocking for my future! My future! Which isn’t going to include these cretins!”

  Jimmy edged along the wall, forcing Roy to turn away from the main corridor doorway. “What is it?” he teased. “Bet you’ve been dying to tell somebody. Why not me?”

  “I don’t need to tell anybody! It’s m
ine! When I get all I need, I’m going to take what these fools have stolen and blow them all out into space! They wouldn’t be alive anyway if not for me, so it won’t really change anything! I’ll get everything I want! And when I do, I’ll get rid of these people! They don’t mean anything to me, and I’m not going to feel bad after I do it! Darwin would understand!”

  “What about your father? That include him?”

  “Look, he’s my father! I’m stealing from him for his own good! Doesn’t mean I have to kill him! He’ll understand when the time is right for him to understand! He won’t have any choice! You saw what just happened on the bridge! I’m in charge now! I’ve got something on Faramond that’s worth a lifetime’s work, and it’s all mine! It’ll make me an emperor!”

  Jimmy didn’t say anything.

  He didn’t have to.

  The shadow being cast from the meager corridor light said everything. Roy spun around.

  Big Rex Moss stood in the anteroom doorway.

  And there was nothing fatherly left in his eyes.

  THIRTY

  Young Roy Moss transformed from a dominant bastion of the future to a shriveled victim in three seconds. He even got shorter. He shoved upward against the wall, an electrical piece in one hand and the tin of fluid in the other. The tin was heavy, and dropped the few inches to the floor, sloshing, but landing upright.

  “I’ll share everything with you!” he whined as his father moved slowly into the anteroom. “You heard me tell him that! It was going to be for us! The two of us!”

  The offer came too late. The idea alone that Roy had been stealing from his own people kept scorching the air.

  But Big Rex Moss wasn’t in a mood for teamwork.

  “I shoulda killed you a long time ago,” he grated. “I’ll do it now. I’ll kill you just like I did your mother.”

  Rex Moss never took his small, hot eyes off his son. He started climbing over the hill of collapsed parts and conduit boards. The pile crunched and snapped as his feet pressed down, then his hands, one by one. Parts groaned under the weight as he crawled closer and closer, giving him a platform from which to lunge down upon Roy.

  Jimmy was ranked by the very presence of the enormous man, but he knew an opportunity when he saw one, and started sidling toward the doorway. If he could just clear it—

  A hand caught him at the throat. Or was it a catcher’s mitt? So big that the palm alone spread from his ear to his shoulder, the hand drove him deep into the room and slammed him into the side wall so hard, it left him dazed and numb.

  “Siddown!” Rex Moss roared. “You’re next!”

  The voice echoed like a kettledrum.

  Cut down to size, Jimmy Kirk realized he was being given a crash course in the anatomy of open murder, and there was nothing he could do about it. Big Rex Moss could reach the width of the anteroom to either side without even leaning. There would be no getting past him.

  Tyrannosaurus Rex was going after his own son again. He climbed right over the pile of trash and snapping parts in the center of the room and got Roy by the throat.

  “Where’s my stash?” the father demanded. “Where’ve you been putting it?”

  Rex was choking Roy to death. There was no doubt for any of them. But he was so enraged and choking Roy so hard that Roy couldn’t have answered if he’d wanted to.

  Terrorized into action that had never been raked up out of him before, Roy suddenly raised the electrical chip in his left hand and raked it across his father’s flabby cheek as though scraping paint.

  Rex bellowed in rage and pain, hoisted Roy clear into the air overhead, and pitched him across the room.

  Dizzy and tingling, Jimmy struggled to get to his knees and keep aware of what was going on, but he couldn’t muster enough dare to challenge the giant again. Not just a giant, but an enraged giant . . . one who had been personally betrayed.

  Rex came again over the pile of half-connected machinery, crunch by crunch, grab by grab, ignoring short circuits snapping right under his hands and knees.

  “Where’s my stash!” he demanded. “I want all of it!”

  Before him, Roy shook and moved his mouth, but no sound came out. Bruises were already forming on his neck.

  “Steal from me?” Rex went on, coming closer and closer.

  Roy tried to maneuver away, but there was nowhere to go other than along the wall back toward where he had been before. He edged sideways, confused and unable to think, eyes flashing from side to side, fixing on his father every second or two, for Rex was almost over the pile again, almost to him—

  His boot bumped against the tin of chemical cleaning fluid and almost knocked it over. The liquid splashed.

  Roy grabbed for it and, miraculously, he got it.

  Perhaps he meant only to discourage his father, perhaps to splash some of the fluid in the hideous face coming nearer and nearer, but the tin had other ideas. The top came off completely, and the entire contents of the tin, a half gallon of chemical fluid, fanned out across Rex Moss, and across the pile of parts under him.

  The pile of charged and connected parts, half of them still flowing with power.

  A funnel of sparks went up in a giant short circuit. Big Rex bellowed to a pitch no man his size should be able to hit, and he froze stiff, then started to shake.

  His eyes bugged out, then out farther. Electricity broke into jolts through his arms and legs and set his hair on fire.

  Sizzling like an ox on a spit, Rex Moss started to fry. His clothing burst into flames as though someone had cast a spell on him and was burning him in effigy somewhere. Locked by ugly science to the material under him, Rex grabbed convulsively with both hands at the mountain of metal, eyes still fixed on his son. Lightning surged through him and left scorch marks on his forehead as wave after wave permeated his enormous body, the soaked clothing and wet metal conducted electricity with nothing short of passion, and he started to cook.

  There was nothing for him to do but hang there, and fry . . . and fry . . . and fry.

  Jimmy dodged for cover, betrayed by his tied hands, and barely got under a broken chair as the sparks rained and splattered around him. He glimpsed Roy dodging for cover too, his face redefining astonishment.

  The stink of burning chemicals and blistering flesh was nauseating as the liquid soaked in and crackled viciously. The big man collapsed, his body poaching where it lay, flabby face bubbling as though it had been blow-torched, eyes wide with pure horror, but still fixed on his son as the life seeped out of them.

  Ultimately, the last grab fell from his fingers. He lay there, a sizzling heap on top of a sizzling heap, slowly being cauterized by electrical heat.

  Overcome by terror and scalded by splashed fluid and sparks, Roy lay almost on his back and stared through his knees at his father’s broiled body.

  Suddenly he cringed against the wall, slammed the wall with his fist so hard his fingers could have shattered, and he shouted bitterly.

  “Why did you make me do that? Why’d you make me kill him! That’s not supposed to happen! He was a big man! Now, look at him! Look at him!”

  Rex was still staring at his son, and neither of the boys could tell if he was even dead yet.

  Suddenly Roy jolted to his knees and closed the distance between himself and Jimmy with staggering speed and held the stunner at Jimmy’s head—the stunner that Jimmy didn’t even realize Roy still had.

  “You’ll pay for this! I’ll make you pay!” Roy spat, half sobbing and half enraged, unable to take the blame for his father’s death himself.

  The fried junk under Rex Moss shifted abruptly and the huge body shifted too, drawing Roy’s attention again.

  He turned away from Jimmy and spoke to his father’s gawking, blistered face.

  “Not my fault . . . not my fault . . . it’s not . . . ”

  Jimmy came out of his hiding place and looked, but not with the regret or compassion that Roy demanded. There was simply nothing left in him for these people, who had posses
sed chance after chance to mend their mistakes and hadn’t done it.

  “Now you can render him down into soap,” he droned. “Get some use out of him.”

  Shuddering, Roy leaned against the wall, both knees bent, breath coming in sucks and blows through his nostrils, his teeth gritted, lips closed tight. Every cell in his body was shaking with palsy, as though he were ninety instead of nineteen, and he couldn’t stand up without leaning.

  Expression after expression came and went, none of them particularly rational, but Jimmy could see that Roy was rallying his mind and trying to get it to override his emotions—of which he had plenty.

  An interesting process to watch. Insanity taking seed.

  “Destiny,” Roy said finally on one of those gasps. “Makes sense . . . ”

  Scooping his ever-present nerve stunner from where it had fallen beside him, he pushed himself off the wall and stood over his father’s body, shoulders tucked down and inward, feet out, knees in, trying to keep balance. He still looked old.

  “It knew,” he murmured. “Forced me to take over . . . grow up before I was ready . . . it knew maybe I am ready . . . I just didn’t believe it. Destiny . . . ”

  He straightened a little, seemed to be gathering his inner strength, almost against his own will. Being in charge was something he had thought about all his life but had never considered within reach.

  Unwilling to walk too near Big Rex’s body, he sidled along the wall until he could extend a long arm and get Jimmy by the collar.

  “I’ve got to get to the bridge. Get moving.”

  Veronica Hall let out a bone-shattering groan as her shipmates dragged her through a jarred door panel, then lay her down in the corridor as they gathered their wits and their options.

  George panted, sweated, and tried not to let his hands clench too tightly as he watched Robert and Carlos replace Veronica’s medical cartridges for the fifth time since coming aboard this vessel. A strange ritual, this lurking about, covert, dangerous, in danger, all the while hauling an injured girl who needed nursing as diligently as if she were lying in an infirmary.

  While watching this again and feeling the acid of responsibility and inadequacy peeling the paint off his heart, George made a decision that tasted bitter as he forced himself to speak up.