“Oh yes,” she said. “Baxter used to be controlled by rebels. Ithaca the Pretender's, I think.”
“Yeah, he wanted to depose the present Emperor's daddy and we ran his forces out of there.” His face twitched. “It was nasty. After we were through, the colonel in charge tortured a few of the men. Their women met another fate.”
She could imagine. “Is that why you gave up fighting and became a psyche-physician? Because of your association with that?”
George shook his head, and she saw him grip the side of her bed. “No. God help me, I knew I couldn't stop it. I had heard that such things went on.”
“Then why? I don't understand.”
A shudder passed through him. “Because I liked it,” he said. He closed his eyes. “Even worse, after a while I did it.”
She tried to think of something to say, but couldn't.
George released her bed and straightened. “What do you think of me now? Still think I'm so fine?” He snorted in self-disgust. “I warn you about Jason's indiscretions while my own past is excrement.”
Across the room, Dr. Wynn stood directly in front of Jason, hiding him from view. Her voice was so low Stella could barely hear it. “War makes us do terrible things, George,” Stella said. “You can't atone the rest of your life for what your superiors condoned.”
“Stella, war hasn't made you do terrible things,” George said. “Instead, it's only brought out the best.”
She closed her eyes, seeing Nick die as he ran, Gage erupt in blood. Thunderheart...
“Commander McMasters.”
Stella opened her eyes. Colonel Powers stood beside George, looking neat and handsome with his pencil-thin mustache.
“Hello, Colonel,” she said. “George tells me you've been a big help in getting the guards’ support.”
He nodded. “Most of them were accountable to me back on the base anyway, ser.”
Ser. He had called her ser. “How would you like a new job, Colonel?” she said.
“New job?”
“I know you're two ranks above me and technically in charge here, but we have a couple of crucial posts open. I thought you might do well at Myles Uxman's position.” She waited. It hurt to say Myles’ name.
“Internal Security?”
“The responsibilities are similar to those you had on the base.” She searched his expression. “Besides, I got the impression you liked him.”
“I did. Very much.” Powers removed his hat, and then carefully replaced it. “It's just that I didn't do a very good job in my last position.”
“Colonel,” she said, “you served a higher security.”
“I don't know.” He rubbed his brow. “It bothers me, goes against all my training, everything I've valued.”
“You could always talk to Lee,” George said, stirring briefly.
“Maybe I will.” His eyes shifted to Stella. “Could you trust me, Commander? What's to stop me from committing another act of betrayal?” He squared his shoulders. “If I decide you're a traitor, I might put a pistol to your head.”
“Colonel, I'll trust your judgment.” She raised her hand. “Come here and we'll seal the deal.”
Powers did so, gently pressing her hand. She read his nameplate. P. Powers.
“Most of my officers, including myself, are on a first-name basis,” she said. “I'll call you Colonel if you want.”
He smiled. “It's not necessary.”
“What does the ‘P’ stand for?”
He looked at his nameplate. “I don't really like my first name.”
Oh no. Not another Gage. Sensing her thought, he waved it off. “It's not that. I'm not paranoid about it like she was. Usually friends just call me Pierce.”
“Perce?” George said. “P-e-r-c-e?”
“Not quite.” Stella saw Powers actually blush. “It's P-i-e-r-c-e. I shortened it from uh, ‘Percival.'”
Oh shit. Percival Powers. With great effort, she kept her face straight.
George smiled and slapped him on the back. “Well, what's wrong with that? As a great bard once wrote, ‘What's in a name? that which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet.'”
Across the room, their conversation had finally caught Jason's attention. She saw him push Dr. Wynn aside and rush over with a huge smile, delighted that she was awake and all right.
* * * *
Four hours later, with the black maw of Scylla rapidly approaching, Stella walked down a corridor past the officers’ quarters. Beneath her uniform, the bandages felt thick as boilerplate. Her body itself had become stiff and clumsy, though there was no pain.
Why was she here? She could still see and hear George's indignation when she'd told him to send for her other uniform and help her to dress. For the first time ever, he'd called her ‘stupid.’ She couldn't blame him.
She stopped outside a door. Twenty-eight. That was, let's see, Carol Wayne's.
She tried the palm lock. The door was sealed tight and could only be conveniently opened by Carol. But Carol wouldn't be around to press it.
Gently, she placed her forehead against the door, feeling its hard finality. Goodbye, Carol, she thought. Now you won't ever have to fight with George again.
After a moment, she moved on.
A few steps later she heard a sound, a barely audible rustling. She moved to the nearest door and pressed her ear against it. It was coming from here.
One of her crew, a security guard, was just approaching. “Your name's Girault, isn't it?” Stella said, noticing her cheeks were wet.
“Yes, ser,” the woman said with a salute. “May I be of help?”
Stella returned her salute. “I hear a sound coming from these quarters. Do you hear it?”
They listened together. Stella picked it up immediately, a low, barely perceptible sound like leaves whispering in the wind. Or dreams being broken. She tried to stop the morbid flow of her thoughts but death seemed like a swollen river she was drowning in.
“No, I don't, Commander,” Girault said.
Well, that was to be expected. It was her imagination, that's all. Then again, though inner-ear technology had lagged behind other areas, she had been assured her hearing would be at least fifty percent better than normal. She thought of asking Girault for her gun.
A fresh tear ran down Girault's cheek. She pulled out a handkerchief and honked loudly into it. Stella found she could smile at the sound.
“It's hit us all hard,” she said. “We're going to have to stand by each other in the days ahead.”
“Yes. Well. It's not just that.” Girault folded the handkerchief and put it in her pocket. “That's Lieutenant Uxman's room. He was my systems chief.”
“I'm terribly sorry.” Stella remembered what it had been like ten years before when her maintenance head had died. She smiled again. “Myles Uxman was a good comrade.”
“Yes, he was, ser. The very best.” With a crisp salute and a last glance at Myles’ door, Girault left.
Stella turned back to Myles’ door. Raising her hand, she checked the lock.
It was disengaged from the jamb. Myles had closed but not locked his door.
She pushed the door open and entered, closing it behind her. The lights automatically came on, not knowing or caring that Myles himself would never return.
On the floor near the back wall, she saw a cage. Snuffling sounds came from it. How could I forget Myles’ pets? she thought. Someone has to look after the poor things.
She sat down beside it and opened the small door. To her surprise, she didn't have to reach in because the scrunched-faced, furry creatures scampered eagerly out and ran over her body. Stella knew pyota goats were an unpredictable species and that these particular ones had even bitten their owner, but at the moment they seemed overjoyed to see her. They made high, squeaky sounds that sounded like yipt! and yawp! and licked her face with silken tongues. They flowed around and around her, pressing and molding her with their soft, warm bodies. If she hadn't known better,
Stella would have sworn she'd just made new friends for life.
She picked the larger one up and studied its homely face. After a few seconds, something broke inside and the hot tears came, raining down her cheeks. Sobbing, she pressed her face against the animal's fur.
Damn it, Jason had been right again. General Gage did look like a pyota goat. The spitting image.
* * * *
The swirling interior of Scylla waited just ahead. Stella sat in the command chair, wishing she had never reported to the base but had proceeded directly on to Loran himself.
“All systems go,” Lee said.
“Take us down, Lee,” she said. “Out.”
“Aye, aye, ser.”
The ship trembled, then leapt forward like a giant animal into the vortex. Stella noticed tiny, sparkling lights inside it that Imperial experts were unable to account for. As Gage would say, some things were just a mystery, as miraculous as life itself.
Down they went, and this singularity passage did not elicit old memories like Charybdis. Instead, Loran Base lived again in vivid reality. She re-experienced scenes, felt them with her body. Jason was there, his arms extended to show how he wanted to hold her. Gage handed her a glass of champagne, then died while protecting her. Thunderheart pulled her back into life from the body-cuff, kissing her for the first and last time before marching to battle. Nick promised he'd return soon, only to die.
Tessa Farron's hands were there, picking at each other as always. She felt Ulysses’ cheek press against her own. In the royal chamber, the Emperor asked if she would hurt him, smiling as he touched the suit that bound her.
And above, the smashed globe of Loran Base spun, glittered in the air as she slid down a chute with Jason's arms close around her. At the bottom George waited to catch them. Only it wasn't George, it was...
...Clear, open, star-flung reaches as they shot out of Scylla and coasted through space on autopilot, gradually slowing as reverse thrusters kicked in. Removing her seat belts, she rose and gazed out the plexiport.
Three weeks to rendezvous with Loran's forces, give or take a few days. She pressed her hands together, hoping there'd be no more trouble, just smooth sailing. And Jason, of course. Jason with his soft lips and gentle hands.
Greetings, Stella McMasters.
The All-Mother raged through her mind and drove her to her knees, not with the diluted force of a will sent from a remote realm, but from much closer. In shock, Stella realized the All-Mother lurked a mere light-week's distance away, where she waited to meet Loran's forces. Swaying, Stella stared blindly up at the ceiling, her neck straining as if caught in an unseen fist.
You have passed the test and escaped the base. The All-Mother laughed darkly. But how, oh how, Stella Singlethorne McMasters, will you ever resist me NOW?
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
There was no escape from her, no way to turn. Every exit was only an entrance back into her presence. The All-Mother filled the universe, God and Satan combined. Love, death, pride and honor were nothing before her, did not even exist.
And the most amazing thing of all was that the All-Mother wanted something from her besides revenge.
She glimpsed it in snatches, along with yet another revelation the All-Mother didn't want her to know. The knowledge instilled a tiny seed of hope in her, for if the All-Mother needed her for something, and also possessed yet another secret she didn't want her to know, then she was not all-powerful, not omniscient, and not all-seeing. Before her, a puny human, a cyborg human, stood some small chance.
Then desire for the All-Mother flooded her being, an unbearable, irresistible yearning to be with her ... for what? Her enemy did not permit her to see that. As if the All-Mother were regulating Stella's intense longing, she felt it subside. Still, it remained too great, would drive her mad if it continued.
The All-Mother knew and released her, sending a parting thought that pierced her mind with a new and different message.
When we meet, you will want only me. And then, frail human, we will spin your death song together.
* * * *
She opened her eyes. George knelt over her with a hypospray, his face etched with concern.
“Are you all right?” he said. “You should take a jump better and recover quicker than any of us.” He touched her cheek. “You must have blacked out again. Your concussion.”
“It wasn't that,” she said. “The All-Mother. She came to me.”
George's heavy eyebrows rose. “She was that strong?”
She nodded her head weakly against the floor. “We're so much closer than before. She's just weeks away, where the big battle's going to be. She's been waiting there to meet Loran's fleet.” Stella swallowed. “The All-Mother was like ... God.”
He exhaled slowly. “Then we don't have much of a chance, do we? Even the rebel angels got cast out of heaven when they challenged the Almighty.”
“There may be a chance,” Stella said. “It seems God has not one secret but three.”
“Three?”
“Yes.” She gazed out the plexiport, toward their ultimate destination. “Two of them concern her nature, what she is. The third...”
“Yes, Stella,” he prompted. “What is it?”
She swallowed. “The third is what she wants and must have from me.”
* * * *
The next two weeks were uneventful only in that no one was shot or attacked, though Malek threatened reprisals and complained about his confinement. George's healants knit her wounds and his team installed the brain of Jason's replacement pilot.
The man, Peter, had an apparently insatiable craving for vid and mental games. It seemed strange to hear his high, synthesized voice fill the bridge with blithe comments on telemetry and the Ro-Two Gambit in tri-chess. Every time Stella looked at Jason's ‘place’ above the holovids, she found it difficult to believe he wasn't there.
Instead, he was right at her side whenever they had some free time. Not that there was much. The Spaceranger was desperately short in personnel, and Jason, like the others, helped wherever he could. It was good for him. Jump pilots who had been restored to their bodies during a mission often felt demoted and virtually useless, without anything to do.
One day, during a calm stretch when there were no pleas for assistance from Hydroponics, or endless reports from the enthusiastic weapons tech she had appointed to fill Carol's slot, she found herself heading for Jason's quarters. There was a warm yearning in the pit of her stomach and she had to keep herself from running. Though their love-making had deepened and she glimpsed vistas of what a more mature, profound relationship between them would mean, her body still overrode her mind. It was, in fact, as if it were only complete when she was with him.
She laughed when she reached his door in the officers’ quarters. Jason was forgetful like Myles and hadn't engaged the palm lock. With a mischievous grin, she pushed the door in, hoping Jason was there.
He was.
He lay on his back in bed with Dr. Wynn straddling his middle, her head tilted toward the ceiling as if in prayer. Stella saw at once she was adept and practiced at love-making, for her naked pelvis rolled smoothly in an endless flowing cycle. Also apparent was Jason's own active involvement. He held one arm extended, fingers lightly caressing Wynn's full breasts and erect nipples. His face looked mesmerized, and his breathing was loud.
She took a step into the room. Another.
Dr. Wynn was nearing a crisis, and Jason, she saw, was concerned about helping her reach it. Both were intent on each other. To both, she didn't exist.
She stood there as Dr. Wynn moaned and her skin broke out into a bright flush. Afterward she bent and whispered endearments to Jason as she kissed him. Through it all, their bodies continued to move.
How they became aware of her, Stella didn't know. One moment they were joined together; the next they sprang apart. Dr. Wynn stooped and snatched up her clothes, murmuring an apology.
Stella ignored her, staring at Jason as he sat up and gazed down at the floor. He remained that way as his partner, half-dressed, quickly left. Stella heard the door click shut but not locked behind her.
“Why?” she finally said.
Jason shook his head. “I don't know,” he said.
Stella kept her eyes on his face, not wanting to see his body. “Do you remember what you said to General Gage when she asked you to hold me going down the chute?”
He lifted his eyes to hers. “I said, ‘All the way.'”
One moment she wanted to kill him, the next she wanted to weep at the sheer sordid banality of it. It was so cheap, so tawdry. The worst of it all was that she should have known it was coming. After all, George had warned her.
She turned to leave.
“Please, wait!” Jason moved past her to the door. “Give me a chance,” he said. “Let me explain.”
“Explain?” She felt her control crumble. “What is there to explain, Jason? You saw a chance to get a little extra action behind my back and you took it. You don't have to explain that. It's perfectly obvious.”
“No, that's not it at all.” Jason pressed her hand in both of his. “I ... I love you, Stella. I'm sorry. I never meant to hurt you.”
She looked at his hands holding hers. She could break both of them, but all she could think of was the rapt look on his face as he caressed Dr. Wynn.
Pushing him aside as if he were made of straw, she left his cabin.
* * * *
George Darron came up to her a few days later as Lee was showing her some data on the bridge.
“Stella, may I see you?”
“Sure, George.” She handed a printout to Lee and went to George. “What is it?”
“Can we speak privately?”
She frowned. “Okay. Is it important?”
“I think so.” He indicated the bridge portal. “Perhaps in your quarters.”
On the way Stella informed him they were only seventy-two hours from the flagship Victory, which was General Loran's headquarters and command center. George murmured an indifferent response.
Beyond Those Distant Stars Page 25