Gift, with little else to do, kept trying, in a friendly way, to gather information. "So, tell me something about this planet we're going to. Even if you can't tell me its real name."
Flower looked uncertain.
He asked her, "Have you been there before?"
"No, but… I know about it."
"How do you know?"
A pause. "Well, I really don't know much."
"What about Gavrilov? I assume he's actually been there?"
"Oh, yes."
"And he's told you all about it?"
"No. Actually… no."
Gift might as well have saved his breath.
Solarians over the centuries had established hundreds of colonies across their modest morsel of the Galaxy. Gift could not have named them all, and many were no more than names to him. But several had chronically strained relations with the Cradle World, and he thought he could come up with a couple of possibilities when he tried to guess Gavrilov's destination. That the ship was small for an interstellar craft meant nothing; no ship carried, or could carry, all the power that such a journey required. True interstellar drive units had to tap the resources of the Galaxy itself.
He persisted. "Any reason you can't tell me now?"
"Just that I promised the Teacher I wouldn't."
Gift had gradually become more and more drawn to, entranced by, the idea of getting to some planet, or some continent, or at least some island, where deserters could hide out, where the Space Force and all its allied military organizations weren't very well liked.
It got so he had to keep reminding himself to be a realist. No place was perfect, no matter what its enthusiasts might call it, and he would like a little advance notice regarding what the drawbacks of Paradise were likely to be. These loonies, or their even crazier Teacher and his sponsors, were willing to spend a modest fortune on space travel to get him there. But maybe Gavrilov had been ready to make the trip anyway.
With nothing else going on to catch Gift's interest, he gradually became more insistent about being told their destination. He couldn't see any reason why they shouldn't tell him now.
Traskeluk, somewhat to his own surprise, was beginning to be nagged by a wish that he had volunteered to give up his leave. In that case he might well have been placed aboard one of the carriers going into combat. Of course, the demands of honor had kept him from even thinking about doing such a thing.
Until now.
If he had been allowed to sacrifice his leave, assuming he would also have been judged medically fit, he could now be assigned to one of the jobs he had been trained for. He was qualified both as a gunner and a detection countermeasures operator. In DCM you used specialized equipment in an attempt to neutralize whatever fields the enemy sent out. As with every other livecrew position, you had to rely on your hardware for practical speed, while the organic brain, always a couple of steps slower, set strategy.
Damn Nifty Gift, for keeping him from honorable battle. Now Trask had yet another thing to blame the bastard for.
Traskeluk thought of sending his distant father and grandfather some kind of message, strongly hinting at what he intended, assuring them that he was going to do what must be done; but no, he didn't want to risk alerting security, or Gift. When Dad and Grandfather heard what he had done, after it was all over, that would be time enough for them to have their reassurance.
At first, it seemed important to Traskeluk not to say anything, not to accuse Gift, because it was necessary to be sure, to give the man a chance. A vow of vengeance against anyone was not to be lightly undertaken, not where there remained the least possibility of a misjudgment regarding guilt.
When he had realized the truth about Gift, what the man had really done to him and Ensign Terrin, he, Traskeluk, had been still a little groggy, still lying in his hospital bed, and no one was surprised by his failure to respond cogently when people started talking to him about his heroic shipmate.
"Gift reported your ship lost with all hands but himself."
Traskeluk's eyes had opened fully. But it was a little while before he spoke. "You're telling me that Nifty Gift survived."
"Oh yes. He's quite all right, was sent home on leave, I should imagine. He told us in debriefing how all three of you had abandoned the spy ship and were trying to reach the courier, and there was some kind of weapon blast, and he was the only one to make it. The two of you should have quite a reunion."
"Yes. We should."
The debriefers would certainly have taken notice if Traskeluk and Gift told them two substantially different stories. But maybe not. Different people had handled their respective debriefings, and like as not there had been some administrative foul-up—there usually was. The discrepancy might easily not be noticed until people at the next level up took a look at both stories.
The evidence, when someone finally got around to looking at it closely, suggested that Gift might have run out on his shipmates. But the other survivor had not accused him of anything.
Whenever anyone referred in any way to Gift's role in the disaster, Traskeluk fell back on saying that he had trouble remembering those last minutes of combat. Eventually this provoked a closer examination of his brain, and then a shrug. "Memory is tricky, and we're a long way from fully understanding it."
"Weapon blasts," he murmured. "Yes. There were a lot of those."
"Spacer Gift was certain that you'd been killed."
A thoughtful pause. "I suppose it must have looked that way to him. I guess you checked his brain out too."
"How did it look to you?"
"Oh. My memory of those last minutes is still a little vague. So, Nifty got away after all? That's good, that's real good."
"I shouldn't worry, if I were you. The memories will probably come back, sooner or later. We've given you some stuff that ought to help."
"That's good." Traskeluk closed his eyes, and appeared to be sleeping.
In fact, the memory aid they'd given him worked better than he was willing to admit: It brought back the sequence of betrayal in startling, vivid detail.
He knew enough about Spacer Gift, had exchanged enough stories with him in a long tour of duty, to know where on Earth the man's family lived. Traskeluk thought he could even feel somewhat familiar with the place.
When it came time for a more serious and detailed debriefing, back at Port Diamond, Traskeluk pleaded that his memory of those last long minutes on the spy ship and outside it was still fragmentary and confused. There didn't seem any reason to adopt stronger measures to help him straighten it out; no vital information was at stake.
In his own mind he figured out a satisfactory version of what had really happened: He really did remember firing at the enemy with the shoulder weapon he'd picked up, and he supposed it was remotely possible that the berserker had succumbed to that fleabite counterattack. More likely, it had belatedly fallen victim to some kind of burrowing bomb that had managed to get in under its skin minutes earlier.
Later, when the debriefing sessions seemed safely over, Traskeluk began to try to develop a scenario in his mind, one in which he stood confronting Gift. Constructing the scenario was not a joyful business but a kind of work. It seemed important that he do as good a job of it as possible.
In this play of the imagination, Traskeluk, when the time finally came, would say to the rotten bastard: "All I had to do was look blank, and listen carefully to what the debriefers told me, what questions they asked. From that it wasn't hard to piece together the story the way you'd told it to them."
What kind of expression would Gift have on his stupid face at this point? Maybe they would be talking at long range, over some kind of communicator, and he, Trask, would have to try to read the look on the face of some tiny image.
"Traskeluk, listen. I know what it must look like to you, the way I just took off and got out of there. I—"
"No, easy, shipmate. You all take it easy now. Truth is, here I am, see? Hardly a scratch. Good as new. Certified for activ
e duty."
In this imaginary dialogue it was always Gift who finally brought up the name of their mutual shipmate, the woman who'd died screaming inside her helmet, so close to Trask that he could almost feel the vibration.
Traskeluk raised his eyebrows politely, as if he really hadn't thought about that aspect of the matter yet, but was ready now to be reminded just who she had been.
Gift, as seen in Traskeluk's imagination, looked around wildly, thinking, hoping, that the other person he had betrayed might have also come through alive.
"I thought—I thought that Terrin might be—"
"That she might have made it too? No, Nifty. You know where Terrin is. She's right where you left her."
Or, especially if there were other people present, Traskeluk would pretend to harbor no ill-will toward the man who almost killed him.
"Come, have a drink."
And Nifty would start to feel relieved, though still a little wary. But after the first drink, and some more talk, he would really let down his guard.
And then—
TWENTY-TWO
There were dead people everywhere on the atoll now, Jory supposed, though the one before her was the sole example she had actually seen. So far she had heard no report of casualties. Probably none had been compiled as yet; but such was the pocked, scorched, and blasted appearance of the atoll's surface, as far as she could see, that she assumed the numbers must be high.
The attack was still going on, but she couldn't let that stop her. Running to where she thought she might find spare parts, hoping to restore or replace her damaged equipment, she saw how antispacecraft weapons swiveled and spat fire and distortion from their blunt, solid-looking muzzles. Well underground the breathing, sweating gunners, their heads sheathed in opt-electronic helmets as if they played at being robots, manned the active defenses. One skilled human could, when necessary, meld with the optelectronic controller of a whole battery of guns. Meanwhile live humans—medics or members of repair crews Jory supposed—were visible here and there, trotting or walking or sometimes crawling across the surface.
The antispacecraft guns hammered away, unleashing their self-guiding lozenges of plasma, the shock waves of their passage coming almost in one continuous roar. But now even the guns were drowned out by the louder explosions of more missiles incoming.
Jory had almost reached the storage area that was her goal when something, a jolt of force, took her clean off her feet in midstride, sent her protected body rolling, until it was stopped by slamming into a revetment. A surge of heat built swiftly inside her armor, then was damped away by her suit's last inner defense, a fraction of a second before her skin began to burn. The landscape shook and seemed to spin around her armored head. Sometimes the full violence of even nuclear charges could be damped almost to nothing—but "almost" was, ultimately, not going to be quite good enough.
Several holostage flagpoles, and at least one traditionally crafted of real and solid wood, were spotted at various locations around the base. But for some reason no one had thought to raise a flag today—maybe someone on general intercom screamed this sudden discovery in Jory's hearing—and one officer communicated with the commander to ask whether this should be done.
She had her sound and pictures back, at least on some of the equipment, at least for now. Colonel Shanga was startled, and his face on Jory's little monitor looked momentarily dismayed. Then he snapped: "Hell yes! Get to it."
She had her own job to do. Her body was functioning; nothing seemed to be broken or bleeding. But somehow she could not tear herself away from watching the business about the flag.
And then there was some uncertainty as to which flag the officer, armored fingers poised over the controls at his console, would choose to raise.
People all across the settled Galaxy were given to argument about whether there was, or could be, a single Solarian symbol, one that all Earth-descended humans on all their planets might be willing to recognize as deserving of their loyalty. Just get something up there, dammit, Jory prayed, slowly dragging herself back to her feet. Ordinarily she had no feeling on the subject, but this was different. We need something.
What went flickering up the flagpole (the nearest to Jory was a virtual pole—in fact a holographic projection—that could be sliced again and again by blast and shrapnel, and never fall) moments later was the closest approximation: A round sun of red, with blue planet-dots arrayed in a double loop around it, making on a white background the horizontal figure eight of the mathematician's infinity symbol.
The flag and all its symbols appeared in three dimensions, and in several locations around the sphere of peculiar matter making up the atoll. The image was set at a brisk fluttering, as of real cloth in a spanking breeze.
The Templar banner was much different from that of Earth-born humanity that flew above it on the same pole. The former displayed the image of an ancient knight in handmade armor, and the red cross of the original Templars had been adopted as part of the design. Here, the emblem stood crushing a berserker that crouched on crablike legs.
Some anonymous voice, no doubt one of the fanatical Templar Raiders, was shouting, off-key, what Jory assumed must be an ancient battle chant:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored…
Jory Yokosuka could recognize that as a Templar song.
Moments later, the singing was swallowed up, with every other sound, in the renewed roar of the attack.
Jory, having done the best she could in the way of gathering replacement parts, headed back for her battle station, running from one shelter to another, bounding along in the servo-powered armor at a faster pace than she could have managed sprinting across a real beach while stripped for swimming.
All it took, she thought, was a little practice, and a lot of fear.
Here lay another casualty. She staggered, almost falling, to a stop.
The servo motors in her own suit lent her a power lifter's strength as she grappled the mass of a wounded man in armor, and dragged him into a shelter.
Then she had to get back to her own job.
When she got back to her station, there was Nash's face, on the intercom channel.
"What in hell's going on at your end?" he demanded. "Are you all right?" It sounded as if he would consider it the ultimate disloyalty if she got herself killed.
Some of her equipment had been hit, early in the raid, she explained in a breathless voice, and she had needed to obtain a spare part.
Nash's flat little image on the small screen showed one of his arms now splinted in some kind of cast or bandage. But he was still on his feet, barking orders and abuse.
"Shut up," she commented, and turned him off. She knew what job she had to do, so now for God's sake let her do it.
With all her gear up and running again, it struck her as amazing, the number of people who, like herself, were out of their shelters, not actively crewing weapons but simply running this way and that, for no good reason at all that she could see.
Of course it was impossible to take her helmet off, even momentarily, without risking a collapse from anoxia, because of the depleted air—not to mention deafness. One would have to slip into a pressurized chamber somewhere to make such a change.
In the last hours before the attack, another rumor had swept across the atoll, this one to the effect that there would be a goodlife man or woman riding with the raiders. Jory had considered that a perfect example of the type of wild speculation that some people's minds broke out with, like a rash, in time of stress.
Whamno! Whamma! Whammo! Space itself seemed to ring like a giant gong, mocking the strength of the defensive fields laboring to muffle the explosions.
Inhuman giants were at war here, one with another, and there were moments when it seemed mere humans could do no more than huddle down and pray.
And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the attack was over. The a
ttacking machines, except for the minority brought down on the atoll or vaporized in space, had retreated in the direction of their launching carriers. A ringing silence reigned. The surface of the atoll underfoot was still. People on the surface and in their shelters raised their heads and stared at one another like newborn children.
As abruptly as they had appeared, the raiders were gone, flickering away through a diminished opposition of defensive fields. Then an order to cease-fire, leaving a sudden, startling, aching silence in the unearthly sky. The perpetual, illusory overcast that hovered over Fifty Fifty was now empty of everything but clouds of particles, and the poisonous afterglow of blasts. The bright orbital rings of the defensive satellites—now notably fewer than before—relaxed their protective grip upon the miniature world and slowed once more to a mere blurring speed.
Jay Nash, in what was for him a stroke of good luck ("Good planning invites good fortune") had personally obtained a good recording, sound and sight, smells and vibrations, of the main repair facility going up in a cloud of flame and dust.
That stream of information was so good that it looked like something faked with computer graphics. But every bit of data in the picture was purely authentic.
When they took him away to the base hospital to have the dressing on his arm redone, he shouted and chortled his elation that he had been wounded in combat, that he had survived, that his raw recording was going to be beautiful.
The real flag had been riddled with holes; the real flagpole, of real wood, was badly splintered now. But splintered or not the pole was still standing, holding up the flag.
It crossed the mind of someone, monitoring pollution levels, that the atmosphere of Fifty Fifty was going to need more than a fresh supply of oxygen to set it right again. A complete rebuilding would be in order when the fight was over. The birds and other breathing life were dying off.
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