We All Died at Breakaway Station

by Richard C. Meredith

  “Oh, very well,” she said. “Ah‌—‌an old fashioned, please.”

  “Coming right up, ma’am,” said the smiling voice of the crablike bartender as its long, telescoping claws reached down under the bar and began their work.

  What do we talk about now? Bracer asked himself, embarrassed at not knowing what to say, aware that there was something in the air between himself and Eday Cyanta, something that he had been unwilling, unable to bring into his own mind. And then he cursed himself for considering that something did exist, could even exist. Don’t you have enough misery?

  “How are things on the bridge?” he asked her at last since she had just completed her duty there and it was something to talk about.

  “Well enough when I left, sir,” she said. “Things are really going very well.”

  “That’s good,” Bracer said, taking a drag from his cigarette while Miss Cyanta sipped at the glass the bartender had sat before her.

  “Admiral,” she said hesitantly, then was silent.

  “Yes?” he asked.

  She turned up her glass and drank almost its full contents before she finally asked her question: “Admiral, will we really make it to Earth?”

  The question that everyone was asking now, Bracer thought, and what can I say in answer? Hypocrisy?

  “Yes,” he said, forcing a smile onto what there was of his face, “I think we will. I’m counting pretty strongly on it myself.”

  Eday Cyanta managed a smile in return, but she would not let her eyes meet his.

  “Do you doubt that we will?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir,” she said flatly, staring down into her glass. Then she lifted it, finished it, and asked for another.

  For an instant Bracer thought of cautioning her against drinking too much, too quickly, then told himself that he shouldn’t. It might be better for her to go on and get herself drunk, if that’s what she wanted. It just might help some. Oh, he knew the platitudes. How drinking never solved anything. Well, maybe it didn’t, but there were times when it helped to blow off tensions, to say and do things you’d be too inhibited to do cold sober, and for some people that helped a hell of a lot. Maybe she was one of them.

  But then, he asked himself suddenly, even if it did her good to blow it off‌—‌what about him? What was it going to do to him when she said‌—‌said what? What could she possibly say that could matter to him? But he knew, he knew.

  “Sit down,” he said at last, gesturing toward one of the bar stools.

  Eday smiled in his direction, vaguely, keeping her eyes averted from his mechanical ones, and did sit down and looked away.

  “Is something troubling you, Miss Cyanta?” he heard himself asking as if another person were speaking through his lips. He didn’t want to know.

  “No, sir,” she answered quietly.

  “Something is,” he said with the same remote feeling, “besides what you just asked me about.”

  Dammit, keep your mouth shut, Absolom, a part of his mind told him. This can’t help anybody.

  “Please, sir,” she said. “It’s not important.” And she returned her gaze to the glass.

  Funny, Bracer told himself, looking at her profile, she does look a lot like Donna.

  Donna, Donna, his mind said slowly. Oh, Donna, why did it have to happen to you?

  He tried not to think of Donna and of what had happened to her, what the Jillies had done to poor, lovely Donna on that cold and distant world‌—‌but his mind would not let him forget, as it would not let him forget so many things.

  Major Donna Britt had been in the Communications Corps and had contracted marriage with Commander Absolom Bracer shortly after his assignment to Valforth Garrison on Adrianopolis. She had been small and dark and lovely like Eday Cyanta, a communications officer like her. And then she had been assigned to the communications station on Port Abell, the outermost planet of the Adrianopolitan system, back in the days when men believed that the Jillies would not dare approach Adrianopolis. God, how wrong we were! Bracer thought.

  The Jillies were braver than men had thought, or perhaps more foolish, more lucky, for they had slipped into the planetary system of Adrianopolis, had made a sudden sneak attack against Port Abell, knocking down her guarding warships, blasting away her ground defenses, landed, and in hand-to-hand combat had overrun the soldiers and marines who guarded her. Killing most of the station’s defenders, the Jillies had captured the remainder, and most of the secret, sophisticated communications gear of the station, and then lifted starward with their captives.

  Commander Absolom Bracer had been in command of the patrol ship Koniev that had been a part of the squadron Adrianopolis sent after the fleeing Jillies, that had caught the Jillies a dozen light-hours out of Adrianopolis and destroyed them. Not a single ship escaped from the human avengers.

  Commander Bracer had been among the first to enter the wreck that had been the flagship of the small Jillie fleet that had raped Port Abell, had been among the first to discover the stolen communications equipment and what was left of the human captives.

  What was it about the Jillies that made them so desirous of disassembling human beings? Was it perhaps that by doing so they expected to learn to understand us? Did they think that by vivisecting us they could grasp our minds and learn how we thought, why we did the things we did? It would be so easy to chalk it up to malice, to unutterable evil, so easy, but probably so inaccurate. They probably had their reasons, reasons that made sense to them, though we could never expect to understand them.

  That is what Bracer and his crewmen found‌—‌captives now mercifully dead in the vacuum of the ruptured Jillie hulk, captives whom the Jillies had begun disassembling as a man might disassemble an engine to see how it worked. And he did not recognize Donna Britt at first. She lay naked on a table, her body open from breastbone to hip and her internal organs, still attached, laid neatly out around her.

  And when he did recognize her, he screamed, and he did not stop screaming until he was again inside the Kornev, the medical officer filling him with sedatives that mercifully dimmed the memory of what he had seen aboard the Jillie warship.

  And now, standing in the officer’s galley of the Iwo Jima, he felt like screaming again.

  “Admiral,” Eday Cyanta asked slowly, “why must it be like this?” There were tears streaming down her face.

  Absolom Bracer would have wept too, had he been able.

  “I don’t know,” he said slowly, and reached out with his real arm and placed it around her shoulder and drew her close to him. “God help me, I don’t know.”

  Finally she raised her eyes to peer into his mechanical ones. “Admiral, there is something I must say. I‌—‌I know I shouldn’t, but‌—‌but I don’t know whether I’ll ever get a chance to say it again.”

  There was a clamminess within Bracer’s chest, a tightening of his heart. No, don’t say it, he said to himself, though he could not say it aloud. Such things should not be spoken, not here, not now. No…

  “Admiral, I‌—‌I love you.” The words came out slowly, painfully, fearfully.

  “You can’t,” he said flatly. He did not remove his arm from her shoulder, though he knew that he should.

  “I do, sir.”

  She was not drunk, but the alcohol had lowered her inhibitions enough to let her say those words.

  “You can’t love a thing like me,” he said. “I can’t return your love.”

  And he remembered the last time he held Donna in his arms, how soft and warm she had been under him, how yielding and demanding she had been in their love-making, and he thought how he would never hold another woman as he had held her then.

  “Some day, sir,” Eday Cyanta was saying, “when we get back to Earth, when everything is made right, then‌—‌then, sir, could you?”

  How was such a question to be answered. What does a mechanical man, an electronic eunuch say to a lovely woman?

  “Someday, Miss Cyanta. Someday when we are back
on Earth, I will love you.”

  And he turned away from her and wished to all the gods in all the universes that he could cry.

  22

  There was much disaffection aboard the three starships. A minority, but apparently an extremely vocal and argumentative minority of the crew of the Iwo Jima was beginning to make plain its disagreement with the decision of its senior officers. The disgruntled crewmen of the Iwo were led, at least nominally, by the new first officer, Commander Cling Reddick, a once excellent combat officer who now lived only through the courtesy of an intricate series of artificial nerves that coordinated the involuntary actions of his body, replacing destroyed portions of his nervous system.

  Reddick was aware of his responsibilities as first officer, Bracer knew, but still could not keep his mouth shut about his feelings concerning the decision to remain at Breakaway until the relief convoy arrived from Earth. His argument, and the arguments of those who followed him, was substantially the same as that Roger had used during his recent conversation with Bracer: What can we really do to help Breakaway Station? And the admiral was fully and uncomfortably aware of the logic of that argument. There really wasn’t a great deal he could say to counter it, but that wasn’t his job anyway. He had his hands full without wasting time arguing with the officers. That was Maxel’s job now, if anyone’s; let him worry about Reddick, and keep him and those who agreed with him in line.

  In actuality, Bracer wasn’t too worried about Reddick. He had an excellent record, and the Iwo’s medical officer testified that Reddick was as well balanced mentally as was anyone else aboard the starship. Reddick would gripe and bitch‌—‌and Maxel would reprimand him‌—‌but it would probably never come to anything more than that.

  Such was not the case board the Pharsalus, though Bracer did not know it until it was too late.

  23

  Hybeck watched the ships dwindling in the rearward tank until they were nothing more than three tiny specks no brighter than the stars, and then they were lost among those stars. Scanners, sensors, scopes could still detect them, would be able to follow them for some hours yet as the San Juan, the Hastings and the Chicago microjumped into and out of reality at pseudospeeds many times that of light. They were going home, and Lieutenant Commander Kamani Hybeck wasn’t. He was waiting. Just waiting.

  “Hy, I’m scared,” Naha said softly.

  “You and me both, baby,” he said, forcing a smile that he did not feel onto his face and turning to look at her as she sat in the co-pilot’s seat beside him.

  “What made me do a stupid thing like this?”

  “To be with me.”

  “Then what made you do a stupid thing like this?”

  “That, baby, is the question,” Hybeck said, forcing laughter. “And I don’t think there’s an answer to it.”

  “There probably isn’t,” Naha said, and turned to look at one of the screens that still showed the position of the three starships.

  “Are you hungry?” Hybeck asked. “I’ll dig something out if you are.”

  “No, I couldn’t eat anything.”

  “Mind if I do?”

  “No, go ahead.”

  Hybeck slipped out of his seat and went back to the scout ship’s small galley, dialed a couple of sandwiches and a glass of milk and carried them back to his seat.

  After sitting down and taking a bite out of the first of the sandwiches, he said around his food, “Look, baby, we’re probably just as safe as they are on the ships. I wouldn’t be surprised if we aren’t a damned sight safer. A little scout like this is a lot harder for the Jillies to locate than big ships like those. Anyhow, if and when we see Jillies, we’re going to run like hell. The admiral wants us to.”

  “I know,” Naha said, “but still…”

  “Take it easy. This is going to be a vacation. Just you and me out here in the middle of an empty universe. Could you have asked for anything more?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know! Come on, relax. We’re going to be together for a long time.”

  “Just give me a chance, Hy. I’ll be okay.”

  Hybeck returned to his sandwich, finished the first, washed it down with milk, and proceeded with the second.

  Really, he wasn’t too worried. Their job was a simple one. It could have been done with robots, if the San Juan had had any robot scouts left, which it hadn’t. So, Commander Hybeck and his lovely “co-pilot”‌—‌what a gas! When he had asked the admiral if he could take her with him, he had expected a flat refusal. But‌—‌the admiral had thought it over for a while, and finally told Hybeck that he supposed it was okay, if Miss Hengelo wanted to go with him. In this assignment it wasn’t really necessary that his co-pilot be a real co-pilot. And since he had volunteered, the admiral supposed that he could make a concession or two. Hybeck was going to have to spend a lot of time out there by himself‌—‌and a pretty woman might help a little. Maybe…

  “Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat?” he asked when he had finished his second sandwich and the milk.

  “Please, Hy, I’m just not hungry.”

  “Well, I know what you need then,” he told her.

  “What’s that?” she asked, looking out of the corner of her eye.

  “A little shot of k’peck,” he said.

  “No,” Naha answered hesitantly, “I don’t think I should.”

  “Come on. We could both use something like that.”

  “Where did you get any k’peck?”

  “From Robertson, quartermaster’s mate. Little fat guy. You know him.”

  “Oh, him,” Naha said. “I know the one you mean.”

  “Doesn’t matter where I got it. How ’bout it?”

  “Well,” Naha hesitated.

  Hybeck rose, went back to where his clothing and personal articles were stored and dug a small flask out of his toilet kit. For a moment he held the yellow-green bottle up to the light and peered into its contents.

  “Have you ever had any before?” Hybeck asked as he returned to the forward portion of the small craft.

  “Yes,” Naha answered. “We used to use it on weekends when I was a kid.”

  “I didn’t know they did things like that on Creon.”

  “Oh, you don’t know much about Creon, do you?” Naha asked.

  “No,” Hybeck admitted, sitting down. “Tell me about it.”

  “About what, Creon or the week-ends?”

  “Both.”

  Naha smiled, or at least tried to. “Oh, Creon’s a big place. A whole planet.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Don’t expect everything to be the same all over the planet,” Naha said, seeming to gain some confidence as she spoke. “I mean, much of what you’ve heard about Creon is from the big Marcher city-states, and they’re pretty straitlaced there, but down in the Backwoods we’re not like the Marchers at all.”

  “Backwoods?” Hybeck asked.

  “The lower part of the Chartre continent. It was settled later than the Marcher states and by an entirely different kind of people. I’m from Fingray and we were founded by a group of Perganites out of Graccus.”

  “Oh?” Hybeck asked.

  Naha nodded with a smile on her lips. “I mean, my people were a different kind of Perganite, a little more conservative than most of them on Graccus. That’s why they migrated to Creon.”

  “That’s interesting.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, I’m beginning to understand you a little better.”

  “Are you?”

  “Tell me about the week-ends,” Hybeck said.

  “You know something about Perganites, don’t you?”

  “A little.”

  “Well, I won’t give you a sermon,” Naha said, “because I don’t believe much of it myself, but the Tribalists on Cynthia are real puritans according to most Perganites.” Naha paused, apparently realizing that Hybeck wasn’t really interested in the fine points of Perganite beliefs. “Well,
” she said, “on the week-ends all the unmarried boys and girls between fourteen and twenty standard would pair off and ride out into the real Backwoods and find ourselves little shelters that people had built years ago and we’d spend the night there and sip k’peck and make love in every way we could find.”

  “That sounds like fun,” Hybeck said.

  “I guess it was,” Naha admitted. “But I was a lot younger then and, well, life was just for kicks then.”

  “What’s it for now?”

  “I don’t know,” Naha said slowly, “but more than just a lot of sex play and drugs and trying to think of different ways to produce orgasm. There’s got to be more to life than that.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “I hope there is.”

  There was silence for a long while before Hybeck spoke again. “Well, what about it now?”

  Naha looked back at him with a softness in her eyes. “Now it would be okay. I want it now.”

  “Good girl.”

  Hybeck filled two cups with water and then carefully portioned a drop of the yellow-green liquid into each. The mild hallucinogenic/aphrodisiac mixed instantly with the water.

  “Here you go, baby,” he said, handing her one of the cups, and then turning up his own and draining it.

  Almost at once he began to feel its effects. A glow began swelling within him, giving him a feeling of wellbeing, brightening the colors of things around him, adding to them an iridescent sparkle, and ethereal quality that they could not have possessed before. And when he turned to look at Naha she seemed to have increased in beauty and sexual desirability, become the ultimate object of desire. She was not just a woman now, but a brown Aphrodite come to demand all that a man could give her.

  Naha had emptied her cup, and now rose, a strange, exciting and excited smile on her face, and began unclasping her uniform blouse. “I love you, Hy,” she said, pulling off her blouse and attacking her slacks. “I want you, Hy.”

  And as he tore off his own clothing and stepped forward to meet her, he looked at the scout ship’s forward tank, saw all the endless stars, and decided that right now he didn’t give a damn what was out there.