Death of a Starship Read online

  There was no comm plate that he could find there. Menard patted the outer shell of the station, looking among the welded and hammered artwork of tortured faces and exploding suns for a control panel access. He had no success, but as he searched the lock slid open, four sections retracting at shallow angles to one another in a bright diamond of light.

  One very large man stood there anchored to the deck, backlit to an angular silhouette, carrying a very large weapon. Menard turned to look at the angel and its erstwhile combatants. The silver-bright ripples in the fog had thickened around them while his attention was focused on the hatch.

  All three were still.

  The very large man waved Menard into the lock. As he drifted inside, a group of hard-suited flyers appeared out of the junk cloud – they must have exited another lock nearby. His last sight of the battle scene was a net being fired toward the angel.

  The very large man snapped the Chor Episcopos’ helmet off as soon as there was sufficient ambient pressure in the lock chamber. His own followed a moment later, releasing a cloud of red hair which fuzzed out in the microgravity. The very large weapon remained poised at the ready though, he noticed. It was a ballspitter – personnel suppression at its finest, not intended to be fatal. Though this particular ballspitter was the biggest such device Menard had ever seen.

  “It is that you have one minute to be telling me what you are of doing here,” his captor said in a thick Franco-Minionese accent.

  She was a woman, Menard realized. Another tailored freak like the fighter outside. What God’s people did to their own bodies was both a sin and a tragedy. Right here, right now, his only leverage was to stand on his position. “I am the Honorable Reverend Chor Episcopos Jonah Menard. I am here to serve a Writ of Attainder against Micah Albrecht and Jenny’s Little Pearl.”

  “And it is for this reason your beast she jumped upon strangers? The forty five seconds, Chor Episcopos.”

  “I beg forgiveness. My, ah, beast, is an angel, a servant of the Patriarchy.” He could not bear false witness, sadly enough in this case where it might have been convenient. Menard felt a fleeting longing for McNally’s creative approach to ethics and regulations. “It judged danger to my person and my mission from the strangers. I am not certain why.”

  The very large woman cocked her head for a moment, listening. Then: “What is it the building number of the Security Directorate of the Personnel Bureau? My pardon, of the Personnel Bureau of the Directorate?”

  “Three seventeen,” blurted Menard, surprised at the question. That was Prime See detail, not common conversational fodder out here in the fields of Empire. Trivia, to be sure, and a clever way of checking his claim, but an odd thing for these people to know.

  Her head cocked a moment more. “To be congratulated. You are living. You word for bond on the others?”

  “Others? I don’t know the two who fought the angel.”

  “We judge the angel is to have won, so the others they are the prisoners of you.”

  “Who are they?”

  “How you say...hit team? Naval Oversight? We kill them now, or they are on your bond, yes?”

  Naval Oversight hit team? Menard’s head was whirling as he crossed himself. “I...I cannot...”

  The very large woman shook her head imperceptibly.

  “Yes,” he said, catching the hint. “They are on my...my bond.” How in Heaven’s name was he going to manage that?

  “Good answer, Chor Episcopos.” She leaned close. “Is it that you will be celebrating the Mass, Your Reverence? I am wanting of the confessional, myself, and perhaps others here also.”

  “Ah...of course my...my...child. A priest is always with God.” Maybe this was the guidance he had sought in prayer. “Ah...do you know of Jenny’s Little Pearl? Or Ser Albrecht?”

  She shrugged. “I am not hearing of them.” Then she handed him back his helmet. “If you are wishing to continue the breathing, to put this on.” Pressure alarms were already wailing as he clipped his helmet into place and turned to face his prisoners.

  Prisoners?

  Naval Oversight. Menard shuddered, a cold weight in his chest.

  ‡

  Ten minutes later Menard had been confined within an overtall, narrow storeroom. The guard had deposited him in here, then departed to leave the priest briefly alone with an array shipping containers stacked at odd angles, secured against the micro-gravity. He’d spent a few moments contemplating recent events and ignoring the ache in his knees, until the recent combatants arrived with another round of guards and a couple of too-casual medics. They hustled about, focusing mostly on the very small, very dark, very angry woman suffering from a severe crushing blow to the chest, vacuum burn across several puncture wounds, blood loss and two dislocated hips. She had been stripped to the skin and strapped to a board. Menard tried not to call attention to her shame by his glances, but suspected this woman knew no shame. Her overmuscled, sullen companion cradled his arm and refused assistance. No one wanted to go near the angel, which was sticky-netted to a shipping crate, where it was folded over emitting a strange whine, like a distressed power converter.

  The woman stared at Menard as if her eyes had cutting edges, but stayed silent ‘til the medics sprayed up her wounds, packed their crash bags and departed.

  “Who the hell are you?” she asked in a pained, wobbly voice as soon as the locals were out of the room.

  “I’m the reason you’re still alive,” he snapped, still rattled. “You may call me Chor Episcopos Menard.” He was immediately ashamed of his aggressiveness, but something in her attitude brought out the worst in Menard.

  “And that...abomination?” She tried to turn her head to look at the angel, but her neck muscles apparently weren’t cooperating. “One of the Patriarch’s finest?”

  “Not many people survive an argument with an angel.”

  “Golliwog took care of it,” she said with a sharp satisfaction.

  The sullen man nodded slowly.

  “And you...?” Menard asked. “I’ve saved your life twice in the past fifteen minutes. Surely I am entitled to know who it is I have gone to this trouble for.”

  “Captain Yee, Naval Oversight.” She took a deep, shuddering breath as pain flickered across her face. “I suspect we may not be working at cross-purposes, Chor Episcopos.”

  Of course. “Micah Albrecht.”

  She worked to control another wave of pain. Then: “What do you want him for?”

  “Ah,” said Menard. “I am free to walk away. You are under my recognizance. Answer me your own question first, then I will tell you.” This was sort of like budget meetings back at the Xenic Bureau, except with real blood.

  Yet more shudders, passing through her in waves. Golliwog pushed off from his crate, drifted toward Yee’s board with an odd light in his eyes. She tried to speak, “I...I...Golliwog...” Her eyes flickered, fighting for consciousness, then she slipped away into some private sea of distress.

  “She said anything that happened to her would happen to me first.” Golliwog’s voice was surprisingly high and thin for such a big man.

  Menard looked him over carefully, searching for details. Golliwog had very fleshy features, signs of severe hormone tuning in childhood, but there were also telltale straight lines in muscles of his neck. And he carried himself tightly, with an almost literally artificial stance. Close kin to the angel, in a sense.

  The Chor Episcopos knew what he faced – a test, of faith and reason both. “You’re a bione, aren’t you?” he asked, trying to keep the fear and horror from his voice.

  Cybernetically enhanced from human stock, biones were, if anything, a greater abomination than angels. They started out as human, after all, though the Prime See had never formally ruled on what became of their souls under the knives and drugs. Such as this miserable creature went against the nature of both God and man. God’s creation, tampered with for man’s imperfect purposes.

  At the same time, he felt ashamed once more. He had
traveled with an angel, after all, no more human than a cat. How could he find horror in this creature made from the flesh of man?

  Golliwog nodded. “And you’re a priest, aren’t you?” he said, in almost the same tone.

  “Yes.” Then, almost unwilling: “Do you need a priest, my son?”

  To Menard’s shock, a tear gathered in Golliwog’s eye, diamond-bright and no less cutting. “I am no one’s son.”

  A seeker, thought Menard. This one knows the absence of God in his heart. He reached out toward Golliwog’s tear, knowing he risked life itself in touching this killer. With his index finger, Menard traced a chrism on the monster’s forehead. His hand trembled, his back shivered.

  Perhaps this was why God had sent him to this place. To minister in this prison to this one man.

  For he knew that anyone who cried for salvation must be a man.

  The hatch opened and the red-headed woman looked in. “Please to speak to the priest. The freaks to be staying inside, yes? Everyone live longer that way.”

  Menard broke off his contact, reluctant to abandon a soul in such wretched need, but mindful of the realities of the situation. Caesar had come calling.

  Golliwog slipped backward but snagged the cuff of Menard’s skinsuit. “Military grade combat nano out there, priest,” he muttered in a low, squeaky tone. “The people here are more dangerous than you know, to be able to have that. Beware.”

  “Thank you, my son.” Menard nodded as he drifted toward the hatch. “And may the Lord bless you and keep you.”

  He found himself praying for...for...well, everything. And everyone.

  ‡

  Golliwog: Halfsummer Solar Space, The Necklace, Shorty’s Surprise

  Golliwog watched the priest leave. The little man had one last frightened, backward glance from the hatch before the musclegirl outside took him away. A priest, a real priest. Someone who had tried to tell him whether he had a soul, to help him understand if God cared about him. His forehead tingled with the drying salt of that single tear.

  What had that meant? For one single moment, there had been light in his head.

  Freedom, whispered the traitor voice within. Freedom to choose, to be.

  There was so much he didn’t know, yet.

  Golliwog shook off the thought and took a long look at Yee. Instead of small and tough, she just seemed to be small and dying. He was amazed she’d fought the pain and the drugs the medics had given her long enough to speak to the priest at all. Now she had left him alone.

  It was the first time in his life he’d been alone. Truly alone, out of command, with no controller.

  He wondered if the priest had truly cared for him, however briefly. Weren’t they supposed to act that way toward everyone? The Navy had chaplains, shiploads of them he supposed, but no chaplain had ever been the least bit interested in the state of Golliwog’s conscience. Assuming he had one. At least he knew what the word meant – inner moral judgment.

  Golliwog turned his back on Yee and kicked himself toward the angel. His right forearm was still dead in both of its aspects, meat and metal. That thing was too dangerous to be allowed to live. Nothing should have been able to trump him so thoroughly. He braced his good hand on the crate above the angel’s sticky-netting. Trapped in the fat, oozing strands, it continued to keen, bent over as if something had been snapped within.

  He damned well hoped something had been snapped within. Now he needed to finish the job.

  Something pulsed on the carrier frequency in his head. Was it trying to talk? Then the angel forced its head to move against the webbing, rotating that narrow white face slightly toward Golliwog. The red cross on its scalp seemed to throb. Red eyes blinked open, smearing tears of blood.

  Tears. This thing cried. Pain, sorrow, regret. He had no idea what or why, but this angel cried.

  In that moment, Golliwog could not kill it. Not tied down and crying. Not after what the priest had just shown him about himself. To be human was to choose not to kill.

  Kill it he would, if need be – facing the angel once more in open combat, for example. He would kill God himself if the Creator came after Golliwog with a knife in His hand and murder in His eye. But not now, he could not slay the angel while it existed as a wounded experiment strapped to a crate. He knew the horror of being a made thing. After all, he was terrified of Yee cutting him open to work out whatever it was that had happened during c-transit.

  “Soon,” he told the angel, though Golliwog was fairly certain he was lying even to himself. “Soon we will be free, and we will make good our pain upon the man who led us here.”

  The angel’s mouth opened, blood bubbles popping out, then it sighed and closed its face.

  ‡

  Albrecht: Halfsummer Solar Space, The Necklace, Shorty’s Surprise

  He stared in amazement, one of Dillon’s paws upon his arm, as the bar’s patrons stripped the wood away from three of the triangles comprising the dodecahedron. It was obviously designed to come apart. Underneath was a huge painting – a mural? – of a starship. The image was intended to represent something here in the Halfsummer system, given the bright silver braid that was The Necklace crossing the sky behind the ship.

  He found the details hard to assess. The painter had been no artist, but was obviously driven to render this image by some powerful inner fire. A better hand with the paint might have helped, though.

  “This was in the original Shorty’s Bar,” rumbled Dillon. “Been there seventy, eighty years. When we finally scrapped that module, we salvaged the art and brought the panels in here. Built this version of the bar around them.”

  Albrecht was fascinated by the sheer obsessiveness of the thing. The painting was about ten meters wide, rendered in a level of detail that spoke of years of effort. He wondered if he looked closely enough would he be able to count the explosive bolts on the hull segment joints. And the vessel in question was huge, inasmuch as scale could be judged in something as impressionistic as a painting. There were recognizable structures – radiator towers, for example – that implied the ship was impossibly large.

  It was all...wrong...though. Cocked into unrecognizability by a hundred mistaken visual and engineering cues. Like someone who’d been told about right angles but never personally experienced one had decided to illustrate a text on plane geometry.

  “What ship is it supposed to be?” he finally asked. “Is it real?”

  A sharp breath from Dillon. Then: “We thought you could tell us. It’s called the Poolyard, hereabouts.”

  “Poolyard’s the name of the ship?” Albrecht asked.

  “No. The painter.” Dillon rumbled through a snort which might have been a laugh at one time in its history. “Stumbled in to the old Shorty’s blind as a pulsed-out sensor array. Talked about colors a lot, for a blind guy. Screamed, too.”

  “In his sleep?”

  “No, just in general.”

  “Right.” Albrecht glanced at his companion. “May I look closer?”

  Dillon tightened his grip on Albrecht’s arm and kicked them both off to drift across the central core of the bar.

  He studied the picture with a careful eye to the details of size. “If those cooling towers are to any kind of scale, that thing’s several kilometers long. Nothing was ever built that big except stage-one colonial transports and those dictator-class pre-Imperial battle–” He suddenly stopped talking as Dillon’s grip tightened to a crush. “Oh...”

  “Yes,” said Dillon.

  Albrecht winced. “So why do people want to kill me?”

  “Because you know where it is.”

  “Like hell!” Then he thought about that a moment. “Jenny D. The...virus. What people live and die for.” And the ephemeris on Pearl.

  God damn it. He’d left the key to an entire pre-Imperial battlewagon parked out there, defended only by an angry newt.

  “Yes,” said Dillon. He nodded. The rest of the bar began re-assembling the floor panels. The big man then grabbed a bras
s stanchion and slingshotted the two of them back toward their original table.

  “It’s not really that big a secret, out here in The Necklace. That she exists, I mean. No one admits to knowing where. She’s cold-parked in some eccentric orbit, that’s obvious. It’s implied clearly enough in the painting, if you look at the angle of view on The Necklace. High up, out of the plane of the ecliptic. And if she was anywhere simple, that battlewagon would have been found long ago. There’s always some idiot thinks that bringing her back into the light might be a good idea.”

  Albrecht nodded. “I wouldn’t count on the painting for much in the way of useful perspective. It’s crude as a child’s work.”

  “Oh, Poolyard painted what he saw.”

  “I thought you said he was blind.”

  “Well, yes, there’s a problem, isn’t it?”

  Albrecht glared at Dillon. “Does this riddle have a valve-bleeding answer? Or are you just going to stay all cryptic on me until the bad guys shoot their way in?”

  “The bad guys have already gotten here,” Dillon said. “They’re otherwise engaged at this moment.”

  “But both ships are hours out!”

  “They each sent pathfinders. It’s been ugly outside.” Dillon grabbed Albrecht’s arm again. “Not your concern, not yet.”

  “Fine,” said Albrecht. “That’s the past. It’s cold, it’s dead, no one knows where it is except me, and whoever recorded the data I’ve gotten hold of. And whoever copied it out for backup. And whoever has maintained Pearl’s systems in the past decade. But that’s a secret. I get it.” He pried Dillon’s fingers off him, glaring again. “So you asked me about the future. What does a dead battleship mean to your future? You planning to crank up another Civil War?”

  “Not if its humanly possible to avoid it,” said Dillon sadly, with some trace of irony. “Don’t want one, don’t need one. Wouldn’t matter anyway. That thing gets found, put back together, she outslugs any twenty percent of the Imperial Navy all massed together. Won’t be a Civil War. No one could stop her fully armed and under way. Question is, what would follow. Making a new order would be damn near impossible, but anyone could smash the existing peace with that ship. They built them big, in the old days.”