The Voyage of the Star Wolf

by David Gerrold

  “They could have followed anybody,” Korie argued. “There was no way any ship could have detected the Dragon Lord. She’s—an incredible thing.”

  “But it was your ship they followed. Somebody has to be blamed for the disaster. That’s the way these things work. I feel sorry for you, for what you’ve been through—and for what you still have to endure. But the LS-1187 and her crew are a political disaster area. No one is going to lift a finger for you.”

  Korie didn’t answer that. The impact of the vice-admiral’s words was still sinking in. He felt it in his knees, in his stomach, in his throat, and in the pit of fear at the bottom of his soul. Everything he’d ever lived for—he realized he now stood as a symbol of its betrayal. He felt as if he were teetering on the edge of a precipice. Did he have no chance to redeem himself?

  “So, um”—for the first time, Korie felt abashed—“what’s going to happen?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” said the vice-admiral. “Nobody wants to make the decision. I don’t either. You were handed to me and I was told to find a way to bury you. You know, you had a great future.” She met his gaze sadly. “I can tell you this. You can forget about getting a ship of your own. That’s not going to happen.”

  Korie felt as if he were falling, tumbling headlong into the abyss of damnation. His last chance had just been taken away from him. He couldn’t swallow. He couldn’t speak either. But somehow he managed to get the words out. “I understand. You’ll have my resignation on your desk tomorrow morning.”

  “Don’t bother. I won’t accept it.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Commander, we still need you.”

  “Ma’am, this isn’t fair.” Korie could feel his frustration rising. “First, you tell me that we’re the worst ship in the fleet, then you admit that nobody else could have done better, then you tell me that I’m not fit to be trusted with a ship, and now you say you won’t release me.”

  “Commander, I’m not interested in fair. If the universe were fair, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Now, listen to me. We need every qualified officer we have. And unfortunately, you more than demonstrated your competence when you brought back the LS-1187. I almost wish you hadn’t. I don’t know what to do with her—and I can’t afford to scrap her. The same for you and your crew. The best thing I can think of is to fix you up and send you out again, doing something that will keep you out of sight and out of mind; it’ll free another ship for something more important.”

  “But I can’t be captain—?”

  “How would it look to promote you now? That’s assuming I could find someone to sponsor you. No, you can’t be a captain.”

  “Well then, ma’am, with all due respect—I cannot continue to serve under these conditions. May I speak candidly?”

  “I thought you already were.” The vice-admiral sighed. “Go ahead.”

  “I earned this command. What my crew accomplished in surviving and bringing back the LS-1187 is nothing to be ashamed of. The political situation is irrelevant here. These men and women deserve better than this, and so do I. We did an exemplary job, we brought back intelligence that no one else has ever accomplished. It’s wrong to punish us. You not only deny us, but you deny the fleet the benefit of a crew that has proven itself under fire.”

  “How many kills did you make?”

  “That’s not the issue.”

  “It is now. How many torpedoes did you fire?”

  “That’s an unfair question.”

  “No, it isn’t. That’s the only question anymore.”

  Korie met her gaze directly. “You can’t believe that.”

  “Even if I were to grant the validity of your position—” The vice-admiral chose her words carefully. “Even if it were true that you were still qualified to command a starship, there isn’t a starship for you.”

  “The LS-1187 was to become mine when Captain Lowell retired.”

  “The point is moot. As soon as we can find a captain who will accept the LS-1187, she will be reassigned.”

  “In that case, Admiral, I must respectfully insist on the right to resign my commission.”

  “Denied.”

  “I won’t stop trying.”

  “And I won’t stop denying.”

  Korie shut up. He was trapped. He felt more alone than he had ever felt before in his life.

  The vice-admiral softened her tone then. She said quietly, “All right, off the record, I agree—it’s unfair. But don’t use the unfairness of it to be a spoiled child. The Alliance needs you, Commander. I need you to continue as the executive officer of the LS-1187.”

  “No, ma’am. My crew was expecting me to be their new captain before the disaster. They have been expecting it all the way home. If I were to continue aboard the ship now and not be promoted to captain, my ability to manage this crew would be severely impaired. Plus, if they were to perceive the unfairness of the situation, it would very likely create significant resentment toward any new captain.”

  “Then I trust that you will not allow them to perceive the situation as unfair—”

  “Ma’am, they’re not stupid. They’ll figure it out. You’ve got to know that you’re looking at a terrific morale problem aboard that ship. As soon as they begin to realize that the LS-1187 has been branded a Jonah, they’re going to start hurting.”

  “That’s one of the reasons we need you to stay on. That crew trusts you.”

  “No, ma’am. I told that crew they were heroes. I’m not going back there to take it away from them. You’re setting this ship up to fail. I’ve had enough failure for a while, thank you. Find someone else.”

  “There isn’t anyone else,” the vice-admiral said. “There isn’t a qualified executive officer who’s willing to transfer to the LS-1187. Not with her record.”

  “Uh-huh? And what about a captain? If you can’t find an executive officer—”

  “Commander Korie, that’s not your concern.”

  “I beg to differ. It most certainly is my concern. You’re telling me that you can’t find anyone else who wants the ship—but you won’t give her to me.”

  The vice-admiral didn’t respond.

  “That’s true, isn’t it?”

  “Commander, I’ve let you be candid and I’ve been candid with you because I need you to understand the difficulty of the situation—”

  “Admiral, whatever you do is going to be a difficult decision. So, choose the one that produces the best results for the war effort. Give the ship a new number or scrap her for parts; but if you’re not going to let her be a proud ship, don’t send her out to be a shamed ship. Don’t do that to her crew. Reassign them. Let them serve on other ships.”

  “We can’t do that either.”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “I don’t know if I can explain it to you. Let’s just focus on your situation for the moment. Maybe that’ll make it clearer. Personally, I would prefer to accept your resignation. I like it when problems go away by themselves. But I cannot; not without also ordering a court-martial for you, which I will not. That would be even more unfair. Neither can I order you back onto that ship if you are so adamantly opposed to it. But I can’t put you anywhere else, either. The problem is not just the ship. The problem is you. I doubt that there’s a captain in the fleet who will accept you as his executive officer now. You carry the stink of the LS-1187 with you. And the same is true for the rest of your crew. Keeping them together is the best thing I can do for them.”

  The words hit Korie hard. He lowered his head and looked at his hands in his lap for a moment.

  “I’m sorry,” said the vice-admiral.

  “I can’t quit. I can’t go on. I can’t go back.” Korie shook his head and looked up again. “Am I allowed an honorable suicide?”

  The vice-admiral allowed herself the tiniest of smiles. “I’m afraid that’s not a viable option, either.” She leaned forward, softening her tone. “Jon, I know this hurts. I know it’s very bad news. You
have to understand that it isn’t personal—”

  “It sure feels like it.”

  “This is a crisis situation. We’re scrambling like crazy to keep the Morthan Solidarity from finding out just how badly they damaged us. They don’t know. They think they hit mostly merchant shipping. They don’t know that they wiped out most of our heavy cruisers. If they do find that out . . . well, I don’t have to tell you what the Morthans have done to the planets they’ve taken over.

  “The only thing I can say to you that I hope will cause you to change your mind is to ask you to consider if the war effort is more important to you than your own personal or career concerns.”

  “You already know the answer to that question.” Korie was offended that he even had to say so. “Ma’am, everything you’ve said just reaffirms the correctness of my choice. I don’t have to be a starship officer to serve the war effort. Considering all that you’ve just told me, I’d probably be a lot more useful somewhere else. I can go back to Shaleen and work on the orbital assembly lines for liberty ships. I was a stardrive engineer, you now. It seems to me we’re going to be needing a lot more starships very soon. And I’m a good crew chief. I can do good and I can feel good about what I’m accomplishing. Let me go. It’ll solve your problem—and mine. And it’ll put me a lot closer to my family. I’ll even get to see them once in a while.”

  “My God—” The vice-admiral hesitated. “They didn’t tell you?”

  “Tell me what—?” Korie’s gut was already tightening.

  The vice-admiral was clearly distressed. “The Dragon Lord hit Shaleen three months ago. She scourged the planet. I’m sorry. There were no survivors. There’s nothing left.”

  Korie didn’t hear the rest.

  You cosmic son of a bitch! I trusted you! I didn’t know you put a price on your miracles!

  He stumbled to his feet—

  There is no God. There is only a malignant practical joker with the morals of a terrorist. I will never trust you again!

  Mail Call

  They gave him a month off.

  It wasn’t enough.

  If they had given him a year off, it wouldn’t have been enough.

  Everything blurred.

  Somewhere in the middle of the debriefing and the sedatives and the physical examinations and the library tapes of the smoldering surface of Shaleen and the mandatory therapeutic counseling, Jonathan Thomas Korie broke down and cried.

  He went down to recreation, checked into Rage Co., and pounded on the Morthan android with a club for a while—it grinned at him at first. Then it looked uncertain and finally worried. He beat at it over and over and over again until it fell to its knees and began begging for mercy. It wept and cried and shrieked and very convincingly soiled its underwear.

  It wasn’t enough.

  He took the club and continued pounding. He shattered bricks. He broke a lot of glass—he demolished a house. He raged. He shrieked as hard as he could, trying to force his mountain of grief and anger and madness out through the tiny insufficient funnels of his eyes and mouth. His body betrayed him with its inefficiency. The pressure of his frustration only fueled the volcanic insanity of his fury. He swung and smashed and battered at everything he could reach. He fell down a couple of times, picked himself up, bleeding from cuts, and continued swinging—around and around and around until he collapsed in a sodden heap against one wall, sinking slowly to the floor.

  It still wasn’t enough.

  He walked around in circles then, the tears running down his cheeks. He wept in helplessness. He couldn’t stop the sobs from choking up his throat like a painful vise. He didn’t have the strength to continue and at the same time he couldn’t stop. It just went on and on—until he was too weak even to die.

  He lay there on the floor of the chamber and sank into numbed horror. The images of the scoured world tortured his mind.

  Not like this. Oh, please—make it not so. They couldn’t have died in such horror. Not that way. Not alone.

  After a while, he got up, feeling empty and weak and even a little bit silly. He felt wobbly and he staggered slightly as he found his way to the shower. It helped a little, but it wasn’t enough.

  He went back to the room they’d assigned him and tried calling friends. But there weren’t a lot of ships at Stardock right now, and of the ones that were, there weren’t many officers who wanted to talk to him. After all, he was from the LS-1187.

  He slept. He slept for eighteen hours straight.

  It wasn’t enough. He woke up still tired. He looked in the mirror and his face was puffy and his eyes were red and all the parts of his body sagged as if he were melting away.

  There was a small package on the desk.

  His mail.

  He opened the box—and there was a birthday present from his wife. Written on the card was a simple message: “I love you so much.” He slipped the card into the reader, tears already welling in his eyes. He didn’t know if he could bear this.

  And then they were here in the room with him—Carol, Timmy and Robby—laughing and giggling. “Hi, Daddy! Hi!” He could see the warm pink sunlight of Shaleen streaming around them. “We miss you! Come home, please!”

  “Give your daddy a hug,” Carol urged the boys, and they ran forward to embrace him. Their arms wrapped around him. He bent low on one knee and wrapped his arms around them too. The holographic image passed invisibly through him. Dammit! He couldn’t feel them at all.

  Carol stepped forward then and lifted her chin for an unseen kiss. He couldn’t bring himself to kiss her back—he could barely see through the tears that were filling his eyes. “Here’s a little promise from me too. When you get back, I’ll give you a real homecoming.” She looked directly at him now. “Jon, we’re so proud of you, but I miss you so much and so do the boys. We wish you were here with us now.”

  “I wish I was too. If I had been—we’d be together now.”

  But she couldn’t hear him. All he had left of his family was this recorded message and his memories.

  It wasn’t enough.

  Nothing would ever be enough again.

  When he came back aboard the LS-1187, he was a changed man.

  There was a new tightness in his eyes and a dark ferocity in his posture. Even when he relaxed, there was a brooding sense of some inner resolve at work, something still unfocused but very dangerous.

  The crew sensed it immediately—and they distanced themselves accordingly. They bent their heads away from his and hurried quickly to their jobs. Something was different about Korie.

  Gone was the easygoing manner, the quick wit and flashing smile. In its place, Korie had become a darker presence. His compassion had been burned out. In the gap left behind, there was only a smoldering undirected ruthlessness. No one wanted to be the first target of his rage, if and when it finally erupted.

  The crew saw the madness in his eyes and shuddered.

  The Crew

  The work lights on the hull of the LS-1187 gave her a garish look. She glittered and blazed against the bottomless night. She was the brightest object in the Stardock.

  It was deliberate.

  If the Stardock were discovered and attacked, the first ship to be destroyed would be the LS-1187. She was bait—and everyone knew it.

  But if the Stardock were discovered and attacked, the destruction would be total. Nothing would be left. So it was irrelevant that the LS-1187 should be so brightly lit.

  Except it was also a deliberate insult.

  All four of the other ships in their work bays were dark. Work crews swarmed over them with portable lamps. The LS-1187 was bright—but if any crews worked on her, they came from her own complement.

  She was Jonah.

  Every ship had a number. Those ships that had tasted blood also had names.

  And those ships that had earned a reputation also had unofficial names.

  The LS-1187 was Jonah. The jinx.

  That was what the crews of the other ships at Stardo
ck called her. Judas had been considered. And for a while, it seemed as if Judas would be her nickname; but eventually the name was discarded because the LS-1187 wasn’t considered smart enough to be a Judas.

  She had no captain. And the rumor was that she wasn’t going to get a captain.

  They couldn’t decommission her. She was still classified as functional. But they couldn’t send her out again either. No one wanted to sail on her. Her old crew—well, they would; they didn’t have a lot of choice—but no one else would willingly accept a transfer to the Jonah ship.

  So, she waited.

  Her crew knew. They couldn’t not know. And it had an effect on them. There was work that needed to be done, but it went untended. There was a hole in her hull, and HARLIE was still traumatic, and her disruptors were fused. Her Systems Analysis network was fragmented, and everything else was out of alignment. But the repair work progressed haphazardly, without vision, without care. Chief Leen tried, but even he was shattered by the despair that pervaded Stardock.

  The ship had come home, but she was still adrift. Korie was a dark shadow, and the crew distrusted him now. He hadn’t been given the command he’d earned. That meant something, though nobody was quite sure what. There was speculation, but it was futile; everyone knew the real reason. It was the LS-1187. She was Jonah.

  Her crew waited and hoped for someone to arrive and take command. And wondered what was going to happen next . . .

  There were six of them, and they didn’t know.

  They were fresh out of training; they’d arrived on the latest transport. They were eager and fresh-faced and didn’t know what they were walking into.

  Their names were Bach, Stolchak, Jonesy, Armstrong, Haddad, and Nakahari.