Death of a Starship Read online

  Then there was a massive bloom of paranoia and hatred, his head filled with generations of fear and terror of the unknown and the unGodly.

  “Xenics,” said Golliwog. “Xenics here.”

  Yes. Somehow, the angel communicated satisfaction

  “Did I tell you that you could choose not to kill? You are more than the sum of what you were made to be.” He wondered where Dr. Yee was.

  ‡

  Menard: Halfsummer Solar Space, Orbit of NSS Enver Hoxha

  “They’ve picked up a cold corpse,” said Dillon. “A Captain Yee. The Navy is very, very pissed. I think Dmitri Hinton’s going to come up our asses with guns blazing.”

  Menard sighed, crossed himself, promised prayers for the dead. Even the unpleasant dead. Both pastoral duty and personal obligation, in this case, though he had serious doubts that Yee had ever acknowledged God. “The last time I saw her she wasn’t very healthy, but she was alive.” His gut dropped. “And she was under my parole.”

  “You didn’t kill her, Chor Episcopos.”

  He did not want to weep for the woman, but he had failed her. “I didn’t kill Yee by my actions, but I did not protect her either. God forgive me.”

  “Well, she died to get you here.” Dillon rolled the rock hopper along its axis of travel and fired up a set of sun-bright external lights.

  There was an enormous hull out there, visible section by section as Dillon’s rock hopper moved alongside it. Nothing gave it scale except the number of features crowded onto it. The ship was mess, too, entire series of hull frames reduced to bent slag, armor and skin peeled away. Parts seemed bent out of true, rendered into shapes which nagged at the eye.

  It was staggeringly large, and staggeringly improbable. Menard could barely breathe for the sheer miracle of the thing, feeling once more that shiver of inspiration in his bones, conflicting with the dread lump of failure in his heart. Oh Lord, You give and You take away. Is this a trial to temper my joy of discovery? He would celebrate a Divine Liturgy of thanksgiving as soon as possible.

  It still wasn’t a confirmed xenic contact, but something very strange had to have happened to bring that ship here.

  “Poolyard wasn’t so crazy,” said Albrecht in a thoughtful voice. “It is...off. Like it got wrung out and twisted back close to true.”

  “What does that to a ship?” asked Menard, still marveling at what God had brought him to. Oh God, please spare me from pride, he prayed.

  “Xenics,” said Dillon.

  Albrecht glanced at his own console. “Where’s Pearl?”

  Dillon sighed. “Here. Relaying traffic even, but quiet. We’re probably lucky she’s unarmed.”

  “Yeah, well. Who’s flying her?”

  “According to Shorty’s Surprise, the Navy bione and the Chor Episcopos’ pet angel. They weren’t sure about that until Captain Yee turned up dead.”

  Menard considered that. “They just now told us about her?”

  “Much to my irritation,” said Dillon. “They had to have known it for the better part of two days. Things are still...unsettled...at home, and will be until we know the truth here.”

  “Or decided what the truth shall be.” Menard asked the question closest to his heart. “And where are the xenics? You say I’ve spoken to them, but I don’t see them here.”

  “Look for rockballs,” said Albrecht.

  “Midships,” Dillon answered. “Weird mass-energy distortions about the one point eight kilometer mark. That would be ‘weird’ in the technical sense of the term. We’re coming up on it now.”

  And there something shimmered in the glare of the rock hopper’s lights, a rocky body no different from the asteroids of a thousand solar systems, except that this one was firmly wedged in a hull section of a derelict battleship, limned in a faint red glow.

  “The rock ship,” Menard said, scarcely daring to breathe. “From 3-Freewall...the Ulan Ude recordings.” He slumped in his chair, eyes closing, and began to meditate on the welling lump of pride, joy, and fear in his heart.

  The xenics were real.

  Thank you, God. For showing me this, for allowing me this privilege. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

  “Civil war, here we come,” said Albrecht.

  Dillon squinted, began tapping up new telemetry feeds. “What’s that down there, walking on the hull?”

  ‡

  Golliwog: Halfsummer Solar Space, Orbit of NSS Enver Hoxha

  He woke up once more, seeing double. Well, seeing, but not with his own eyes. Golliwog was pretty sure he didn’t have eyes anymore.

  Something big and stony rose in front of him. It glowed red, a strange, syrupy red that whispered to him of relativistic shifts and time distortions. He – he? – moved, working patiently at something on a pitted, twisted surface beneath feet that were too far away.

  The angel, Golliwog thought.

  Greetings.

  “What are you doing?”

  Choosing.

  “Choosing to kill?”

  Yes.

  “Kill whom? What?”

  Them.

  The angel looked down at its hands. It carried a power cell, configured for a Mark Seventeen or earlier torpedo. Golliwog knew three ways to make a perfectly good explosive out of one of those. Obviously the angel did, too.

  “Xenics again. Why do you hate xenics?”

  Wrong.

  The hands fitted the power cell next to five others already stacked very close to the red-syrup glow. The angel must have found an unexpended launch rack or magazine nearby.

  “You don’t hate them?”

  No.

  “Then why?”

  Again, the flood of paranoia, fear, dread. Image of planets burning, ships bursting their air and men into space like seeds lost from an unripe pod.

  “They will kill us?”

  Selves.

  “They will make us kill ourselves?”

  Yes. Once more, that air of satisfaction.

  Lacking any power but persuasion, and that ineffective at the moment, Golliwog watched the angel work.

  ‡

  Albrecht: Halfsummer Solar Space, Orbit of NSS Enver Hoxha

  “I’m going out there,” Albrecht said. “I started this, I can finish it.” He owed Dillon’s people that much. Damn it, if he was going to get whacked by the Navy or the Church or some avenging angel, he’d make it mean something.

  He’d always wondered what purpose felt like.

  Menard unbuckled from his couch. “The angel will kill you before it bothers to look at you. If you’re going to go, you have to take me with you.”

  “No one leaves my boat without my say-so,” said Dillon.

  “There’s a good plan,” Albrecht snapped. “I guess we’ll just sit here and watch. What, we wait for the heavies to show up, swat us and duke it out among themselves? I’m going down. I’m going to finish this. Besides, I want to touch that damned battleship, make sure it’s real.”

  “Then we land on the hull and do it together.”

  “Are you nuts?”

  Dillon laughed, nasty this time. “It’s a rock hopper. It’s made to close contact with large, uncontrolled masses. Latch those helmets down boys, I’m going to dump air to get us out fast once we’ve stopped moving.”

  ‡

  Albrecht cruised slowly on his hardsuit’s jets, armed with the ballspitter. Dillon had reluctantly surrendered his weapon of choice, given that like Menard, Dillon only wore a skinsuit and had no tolerance for return fire. The belter had brought a damn big rock probe from an outside rack on his hopper’s hull, though.

  The red-glowing rockship seemed to make its own horizon ahead of Albrecht. The angel – or whatever the hell it was – toiled before the eerie glowing curve, building something brick by brick. As far as Albrecht could tell, it was working in hard vacuum with no protection but its own skin.

  For some reason, that was deeply frightening.

  Dillon’s voice crackled in his ear
buds. “Those are power cells. It’s setting a trap. Or trying to blow that rock.”

  “Roger that.” He could see Pearl, slowly orbiting Hoxha at a thousand meters or so of standoff. Was that psychotic bione up there, directing the angel, plotting death?

  Albrecht wasn’t even sure what he wanted, but blowing everything up wasn’t the answer. He knew that. Dillon’s people needed to come out okay. And Hoxha was history, not the future – he knew that, too. He still figured he had an excellent chance of dying out here, but if so he wanted to die for a good reason. Not just to maintain a botched, century-old cover up. Looking at this weird lightshow, the angel dancing like a pin on the flank of a battleship, he was ready to believe in Menard’s damned xenics.

  But what did it mean?

  The angel turned and looked at him. Space around it shimmered as some sort of radiation field snapped into being, in the shape of...Albrecht had to laugh. The angel had spread its wings.

  He raised the ballspitter. Not that high velocity elastic spheres were going to do much to a vat-grown killer, but then, what use was a stick against a storm? People still screamed at lightning.

  This is H. Sap stepping into space, Albrecht thought. Biggest thing we’ve done as a species since we fell out of the trees and decided not to climb back up. But instead of living out here in the Deep Dark, making ourselves a species-home, we return to the branches every night to sleep. Sweet, sweet gravity, that keeps our bones strong and our air stuck down.

  Maybe Dillon was right. Maybe the xenics were waiting for this. Or were they hoping for humans to destroy the evidence of First Contact? Factions. Factions within factions. Xenics were no more or less than human, on the evidence.

  He wished he’d stayed back in Shorty’s Surprise. Those were the most alive people he’d ever seen.

  As if answer to that thought strange voice crackled in his ear buds. The heads-up display said it was on Pearl’s assigned frequency. “Ca’ you he’ me?”

  “Who is this? The bione?”

  “‘Go’y’wo’. ‘o’y, ca’ say i’ igh...ight.”

  The bione sounded like it was in bad shape. Had the newt gotten the drop on the invader? Albrecht had to smile for the poor, stupid thing – like him, trapped far from home, doomed to death by disinterested strangers. Meanwhile, the angel loped toward Albrecht in an eerie, no-gee gait. Menard kept station next to him, crossing the outside of his skinsuit.

  Albrecht watched nervously. “Are you controlling it?”

  “‘is’en. ‘oms. Ange’ ‘lan’ing ‘oms.”

  “Bombs?”

  “Yes.” That last, strangely clear.

  “I know.” Albrecht shouldered the ballspitter into firing position. It had a control feed compatible with his hardsuit – both items were civilian gear, after all.

  “S’o’ i’. Don’ kill. Choose.”

  He had to agree with that sentiment, though he wondered what state the bione was in. The newt had done well, unless the angel had done this. Albrecht cut loose a stream of balls into the angel’s red-armored chest. It staggered back as Dillon charged past him with his long blade out, suit jets sputtering.

  Albrecht knew an opening when he saw one. He fired his suit jets to cut to his right up the curve of Hoxha’s hull, trying to clear the angel and get to the power cells, to unwire them. He was an engineer, by God, this was one thing he could do, while Dillon tangled with red vacuum-breathing death. Maybe more people would live with his help. He spared a thought for the people of Shorty’s Surprise.

  Someone shrieked. He couldn’t tell who, just a voice crackling in his earbuds while he was too busy to page through the heads-up. Albrecht made it to the power bricks, far too close to that glowing red. He wouldn’t put himself in that field for any amount of credits.

  Time to focus. Don’t look. Release the ballspitter, on a lanyard so it doesn’t drift off into cold orbit. Yank the cross-wires. Don’t look. How was the angel going to detonate this stuff anyway? Another shriek in his ears. Don’t look. Cross-wires gone.

  He was slammed down onto the hull, hard. Something scrabbled at his hardsuit for a moment, then pulled clear. He looked up to see the angel toss Dillon into the red field. Dillon slowed, stretched, stopped, impossibly long and molecule-thin, trapped at the boundary.

  Time distended, thought Albrecht, his engineer’s awareness suddenly working in overdrive. The ultimate crash restraint for a rockship in trouble.

  The angel stepped over him, then stopped.

  ‡

  Golliwog: Halfsummer Solar Space, Orbit of NSS Enver Hoxha

  “Choose,” he said. “You are more. I chose life for you. You owe life.”

  Enemy.

  The angel stood over the man who had been trying to disarm the power cells.

  “Only by choice!” Golliwog hated the sound of his voice, muddy and broken, but the angel understood him.

  Priest.

  Menard, the stocky Chor Episcopos, drifted in front of the angel. It turned to face its former master.

  “Choose.”

  The man in the hard suit lifted slightly from the hull, pulling away from the angel.

  “Live.”

  Life.

  The priest reached out slowly and traced the cross on the angel’s forehead. The gesture made Golliwog’s own forehead ache in a sort of joyous sympathy. Was this why the Godly tattooed their heads? To remind themselves and the rest of the world that they had been touched by the divine? The man in the hardsuit – it must be Albrecht, Golliwog realized, even in the fog of his doubled vision – picked up a power cell and tossed it into the red haze. It stretched and stopped, just as the other man had.

  Three more cells followed it, as the priest took the angel’s hands and knelt to pray. Golliwog’s ruined eyes somehow found more tears for his face.

  Then Marines landed. Armored and moving fast as angry vengeance, they shot the angel to a frozen spray of gray, white and red. Albrecht hurled a fourth cell into the haze. The Marines shot it, exploding to fireworks. The priest gestured frantically, trying to throw himself in front of the guns. Albrecht picked up a fifth cell and charged the Marines, who blew him to spray.

  “Pearl,” said Golliwog through his bloody lips. “Ram them all.”

  ‡

  Menard: Halfsummer Solar Space, Orbit of NSS Enver Hoxha

  Spinks, the man’s name was. Menard didn’t much care. This strange, intense officer bore a strong resemblance to the late Captain Yee.

  “Chor Episcopos, you must make a choice.” The Lieutenant spoke low and fast and hard. They were in a boat deck. The place reeked of sweat and hard-used equipment, and the strange metallic tang of air cycled too many times. Armed and angry Marines were a looming presence all too close by. They had left several of their number trapped in the red field, and more scattered across the hull of the battleship.

  Menard had seen what those men would do, but somehow the Lieutenant had bullied and bribed the two of them a short burst of privacy. “I cannot let this go,” he told Spinks.

  “You know too much. I would not slay a priest, but we must destroy Enver Hoxha and every record of her. She is a threat to the peace of the entire Empire. Even the memory of this ship’s being here would cause riot. My surgeon can be very selective in the trauma she induces. You need only lose the last day or two of your recollection.”

  Menard sank to the deck and looked up at Spinks in supplication. This couldn’t be why God had led him here, to find and lose everything in the same stroke. “We have been waiting all these millennia for this moment. And you will destroy it? Destroy me? And destroy our hope of knowing the xenics in this lifetime.”

  “You’re an idiot,” snarled Spinks. “Xenics have been among us for generations. Proof will come out some day, but not this day. The Empire would tear itself apart in witch hunts and crusades.”

  “How do you know?” Menard asked bitterly.

  “Yee was a xenic. Chor Episcopos, I am too.”

  Menard was suddenly certain
he would not be allowed to live out the hour, knowing this much, but he had to ask: “How?”

  Spinks sighed. “Once we were long and thin and pale, and lived in holes by the banks of rivers. We mimic, at the cellular level. With absolute fidelity. But only...intelligent...predators. All of which were extinct on our world by the time humans came.

  “Xenics have been among humans for generations. We have become human. Humans have become us. It is no different from being Alfazhi, now. Just another racial variant. We breed true with other humans and with each other. We’re tougher, heal faster, live longer, but not outside the edges of human norm.”

  It was eerily possible. And would explain so much. And that poor, doomed Micah Albrecht had thought he had a handle on an insurance scam. Despite himself, Menard followed the trail. At least he would know, before the end came to him. “And you run the Navy?”

  “Only parts of it.” Spinks grinned humorlessly. “Some of us stand outside, some work from within. The outsiders have...more technology, less understanding. They walk through c-transition, fly faster than any humans can. The insiders fight them off, defend the status quo. Your Patriarch is terrified of us. He does not know or care about the difference between our factions. His fear is different. If we can become human, what does that say of your place in creation, your souls?”

  “It says...” Menard stopped. Spinks stood before him, panicked, angry, breathing hard. A man with a soul. Right?

  Who was human in God’s eyes?

  Oh, Lord, such a challenge You have set Your followers. How shall we know who is deserving of Your grace?

  Menard could have lived a thousand years to mediate and pray upon that question. In that moment, he would have given almost anything for the chance to do so.

  Spinks rushed on, with the look of a man battling time. “The Patriarch knows, some of his advisors do. The angels...are xenic hunters. That’s who they protect against, at the Prime See. Me and mine.”

  “You and yours.” The Patriarch knew. He didn’t doubt those words, not here and now, though it was betrayal of Ekumen Orthodoxy. To know a thing about God’s creation, and then deny it...that bordered on sin. But they knew. He could have wept.

  Bitterness flooded back into Menard’s soul, God suddenly too far away. What was Russe about? Why did the Xenic Bureau exist then, he wondered. To let the hierarchy know when the truth had drawn too near. No wonder they’d sent the angel with him. They’d been afraid Menard might actually stumble onto the truth.