Ghost Riders in the Sky

by Timothy Zahn

  Skoda swore silently to himself, feeling a fresh layer of sweat breaking out on his forehead and neck. Maybe if he took off his boots? But the noise of unfastening the sealing strips would be a hundred times louder than his footsteps. If His Grace was keying in on the sound, that would bring him in double-quick time.

  And then, one of the stargulls abruptly left the dog pile around His Grace and backed toward the cylinders. It paused there, shot quickly almost to Skoda, then back again.

  Much more quickly than they usually moved, Skoda noted. Was the stargull asking him to run?

  And then he got it. Of course. With the precise directions the stargulls could provide, Skoda could run right up to the nearest cylinder and then veer away while the blind Meerian slammed full tilt into it.

  Assuming, of course, Skoda could get the Meerian to chase him. That, unfortunately, shouldn’t be a problem.

  Bracing himself, Skoda ran.

  His Grace was on him in an instant, charging across his path in an effort to intercept his quarry before Skoda could get clear. He nearly made it, too, his slashing knife coming within centimeters of Skoda’s arm. Skoda raced on past him, his full attention on the stargull hovering in the distance in front of him, his back itching with the sensation of a blade ready to stab through cloth and skin. It was only an assumption that His Grace was genuinely as slow and awkward as he’d appeared. It could just as easily be that all the limping had been a deliberate misdirection for the confrontation the Meerian had known was coming.

  Four meters to go. Skoda’s legs were shaking with fear and effort and adrenaline. He reached the stargull and turned hard to the left, taking two more steps—

  He stopped cold, briefly fighting for balance with the sudden stop, and turned around.

  The cluster of stargulls was no more than five meters away and moving fast. Apparently, His Grace had indeed been faking the full extent of his injuries. The Meerian was nearly to the cylinders—

  And then, to Skoda’s horror, he trotted to a stop.

  His knife swiveling again to point at Skoda.

  “Your breathijng betrays you, human,” His Grace said softly, his own breathing showing no stress at all. “But do not have fear. Ij shall put a quick end to ijt.” The stargulls moved toward Skoda—

  As a sudden screech echoed across the chamber.

  The stargulls scattered. Something slammed heavily onto the floor, and there was the brief sound of a scuffle.

  And then, silence.

  The stargull who’d been leading Skoda had returned to the wall and was again circling the light switch. Skoda headed toward it, hurrying but no longer with the horrible sense that he was about to be knifed in the back. He was pretty sure he knew what he would find when the lights came back on.

  He was right. His Grace was lying on his belly on the floor in front of the first line of cylinders, the freshly awakened Oessitah lying spread-eagled across his back. Her torso was heaving as she gasped for breath, the limpness in her arms and legs making it abundantly clear that she’d used every bit of her slowly-returning strength in order to launch herself onto the Meerian’s back while he was focused on Skoda.

  His Grace hadn’t given up, of course. Even as Skoda hurried back the burdened Meerian was pulling himself slowly across the floor, millimeter by millimeter, toward the knife now no more than ten centimeters from his fingertips.

  It might as well have been a thousand light-years. Skoda got to the weapon well before the grasping hand could reach it and picked it up.

  “What do you wijsh?” His Grace asked.

  Skoda frowned. “Excuse me?”

  “What do you wijsh?” the Meerian repeated. “Do you wijsh wealth? Power? Ij can gijve ijt to you.”

  “Sure you can,” Skoda said, looking around. He had no idea where he could find any rope around the station, let alone any wrist restraints.

  But the Oessitah’s suspended animation cylinder had a bunch of power and data cables snaking between it and the cradle, cables she would hopefully never need again. A few of those should do the trick.

  “Ij am serijous,” His Grace insisted. “Ij have great authorijty among my people. Whatever you wijsh, Ij can grant ijt to you.”

  “Yeah, I heard you,” Skoda said, stepping over to the cylinder and running the cables between his fingers. They seemed strong enough. “Not sure you’ve got anything I want.”

  “Do you wijsh to be free of your ijndenture?”

  Skoda paused, the knife edge pressed against the end of one of the cables, and looked over his shoulder. “That indenture is with the Navigators Guild,” he said. “You’ve got nothing to do with it.”

  “There are punijshments for faijlure to complete an ijndenture,” His Grace said. “Ij can nulijfy them. There are severe monetary penaltijes. Ij can pay them.”

  The stargulls had gathered in a loose cloud around the Meerian and Oessitah, and Skoda had the uncomfortable feeling they were all looking straight at him. Whether they could hear the conversation or not, whether they knew English or not, they surely knew how the Meerians operated. There was a good chance they knew His Grace was bargaining for his freedom.

  Skoda snorted. He’d seen the result of Meerian bargains. Those negotiations had opened the universe to the human race.

  But at the cost of Skoda’s life, and the lives of a lot of other young men and women.

  “Can you give me back my life?” he countered. “Not just cancel my indenture, but give me back what it cost me?”

  “Ij can nulijfy the punijshments,” His Grace repeated.

  “Right,” Skoda murmured. Of course he didn’t understand. The Meerians weren’t navigators. None of them had ever had to endure the stress of disassociation, or had to pay the physical and psychological costs of that duty. They provided the equipment. Others provided the broken lives.

  He focused on the creature stretched limply across His Grace’s torso. The Meerians would never understand. But he would bet the Oessitahs did.

  Under the circumstances, it only seemed right that they be part of this conversation.

  “Tell you what,” he said. Turning back to the cable, he finished slicing through it and then freed the other end. “Let’s wait until everyone’s awake, and then we can discuss what you’re going to do. That seem fair?”

  His Grace didn’t answer. “No,” Skoda said, shifting his knife to the next cable. “I didn’t think it would.”

  #

  Eleven hours later, Chandra finally returned.

  And she wasn’t alone.

  “Who the hell are these guys?” Skoda asked, frowning at the dozen armed men and women in Marine Corps combat uniforms as they moved purposefully around the chamber with their weapons lifted high, clearly trying not to stare at the awakened Oessitah females.

  “They’re backup,” Chandra said. She was doing some staring of her own, but unlike the Marines she wasn’t trying to hide her fascination. “I figured the Meerians might guess we were pulling a fast one and that you were staying behind, and that we might need some muscle.” She nodded toward His Grace, sitting glowering by one of the empty cylinders. “Looks like I was right.”

  “Pretty much,” Skoda said. “So you went all the way to Sanfreed?”

  “Why not?” Chandra said. “I thought about what you’d said about them not knowing we were working with the stargulls. If they thought you’d jumped ship, then they’d also think the Pathfinder would be limited to ten-light-year jumps. So I looked for a spot where a couple of nearby stars were nestled up beside one where there was a human colony, figuring they’d ignore the colony and look for me at one of the other ones. I was just lucky that Sanfreed fit the bill.”

  “And you just happened on a bunch of Marines who were willing to take your word for what was going on?”

  “My word, no,” Chandra said. “But you remember the mysterious John Michael Smith? His Grace over there didn’t seem to know the name, but the commander of the Sanfreed garrison sure did. Turns out the Pat
hfinder’s registration has a hidden governmental underlayer that only Earth military can pull up, which includes specific orders to give us complete and instant cooperation. You said these were some kind of breeders?”

  “Females who can produce Oessitah navigators, yes,” Skoda confirmed. “I don’t know if it’s a natural talent, or if the Meerians bred or gene-tweaked them to be that way. Maybe a combination of both. The point is that without them there won’t be any more Oessitah navigators.”

  “And the stargulls are what’s left of that group?”

  “Part of what’s left,” Skoda said, eyeing the stargulls hovering close to some of the females. “It’s a little hard to tell—the translator doesn’t do well with Oessitah accents—but I think the stargulls are their husbands. Sounds like they’ve been searching for their wives for the past ten years.”

  Wives who were now fifty years younger than their husbands, the dark thought twisted through his stomach. The reunions when they got home were going to be decidedly bittersweet.

  “Meanwhile, we’ve got three hundred Oessitahs to get out of here before the Meerians get back, and not all of them are in good enough shape to walk,” he continued. “You think your new friends can help?”

  “Absolutely,” Chandra promised. “What about His Grace?”

  “What about it?” Skoda called to the Meerian. “You want to come with us, or hope your people aren’t mad enough at your screw-up to just toss you out an airlock?”

  “Ij wijll waijt,” His Grace said bitterly. “Ij wijsh no more of human hospijtalijty.”

  “Suit yourself.” Skoda turned back to Chandra. “Good enough?”

  “More than good enough,” she assured him. “I wasn’t interested in any more of his company, either. So do you know how to get to the Oessitah world?”

  “We can find it,” Skoda said. “But we’re going to take a little side trip first.”

  “Back to Sanfreed, obviously, to drop off the Marines.”

  Skoda nodded. “And after that, I was thinking we should head for Earth.” He felt his stomach tighten. “I think the people back home should know exactly who it is we’ve been dealing with.”

  “I agree,” she said, shivering.

  “Good. Now, what was all that about John Michael Smith?”

  #

  The hearings were pretty nasty. The public reaction was even worse.

  In the end, the accusations flew to stratospheric heights, the excuses and outrage filled every corner of the news cycles, and everything from sanctions to open warfare was being threatened on both sides.

  When, at the height of the debate, the senior general who’d been spearheading the McDerrys’ project under the name John Michael Smith appeared to formally present the new twin-navigator system, the public hysteria reached record levels. When it finally abated, the Earth-Meerian contract system was in complete shambles.

  Skoda didn’t care. With the collapse of the Meerian navigator system, there were no longer any indenture contracts to fulfill.

  He was free.

  #

  He was packed and waiting for a transport from Geneva to anywhere that wasn’t Geneva when Chandra found him.

  “So that’s it?” she asked. “You’re just leaving? Without even saying good-bye?”

  “I was, until you showed up,” Skoda said. “I thought you of all people would understand.”

  “You’re burned out,” Chandra said, nodding. “I get that. So am I.”

  “So get on a transport and leave,” Skoda said. “A different transport. Not mine.”

  “I’m going to,” Chandra said. “But there’s still one last job we have to do.”

  “We?” He shook his head. “Forget it. I’ve already done my last job.”

  “One more,” Chandra pressed. “Geneva is finally finished talking to the Oessitahs. We’re ready to take them home, with a full diplomatic team aboard to start formal negotiations.”

  “I’m happy for all of them.”

  “They need someone to navigate the ship,” Chandra said. “They want it to be you and me.”

  Skoda stared. “You’re joking. Why in hell’s name would they want us? They don’t need us—the females can see disassociates just fine. They can watch while one of their husbands guides the ship.”

  “Oh, they’ll be doing that soon enough,” Chandra said. “That’s one of the things the diplomats want to talk to them about: hiring combos of Oessitah and human navigators to fly our ships.”

  “Good. Like I said, they can start with this one.”

  Chandra shook her head. “Not yet. First they need us and the Pathfinder to get them home.”

  “What, they want the Pathfinder, too? Why can’t Earth just put them aboard a diplomatic ship?”

  “They could,” Chandra agreed. “They wanted to. But the Oessitahs said the Pathfinder was the only ship they would let through their defenses, and only if we’re the ones flying it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’re the only ones they trust.”

  Skoda opened his mouth. Closed it again. “We didn’t do anything.”

  “We freed them,” Chandra said. “You freed them.” She waved a hand. “Fine. Don’t do it for them. Don’t even do it for you. Do it for all the navigators who now won’t have to get ground down by ten years of indenture to the Meerians.”

  “I don’t care about them,” Skoda said, turning his eyes away. Through the lounge’s floor-to-ceiling windows he could see his transport setting down on the landing pad. His escape from this hellish life.

  And yet…

  He’d seen Chandra when McDerry first brought him into this thing. She’d been as burned out as Skoda was, with maybe just a spark of belief that there was something more to her life than just watching it fade away. He’d heard her talk about not having friends or work or a future.

  Now, in contrast, there was new life in her voice, a new calmness in her face, and even some wary hope in her eyes. Maybe she’d found something meaningful to do, something that might even bring healing to her deadened soul.

  She was wrong, of course. There was no such hope, or healing, or meaning. Skoda had long since figured that out.

  But there was also that one other thing. That thing that had been nagging at him since their return. The thing no one had mentioned, but he was sure everyone was thinking. The fact that the Meerians’ Final Solution to the Oessitahs had been human navigators.

  Navigators like Skoda.

  “I don’t care about the Oessitahs, either,” he said, not looking at her. “But I suppose I could do with a change of scenery. But just this once.”

  “Of course,” Chandra said. “Just this once.”

  The End