The New Space Opera 2 (38 page)

“Damn you, Kindred, wake up!”

He woke gripping the arms of his acceleration couch. Powerful forces were tugging him from side to side. Stars rolled and flared through the cockpit's transparent walls. Something bright that he had mistaken for a nearby sun exploded with a flash of blue light, sending the ship tumbling like a twig in a waterfall.

“What the hell—?”

“You didn't tell me there would be people waiting for us.” Bannerman was rigid beside him, all of her conscious mind focused on what was happening outside the ship, apart from the small segment talking to him. Her
hands twitched as she brought the ship back under control. “You dropped us right in the middle of an ambush!”

That couldn't be right. He thought desperately, trying to make sense of the situation. Oza was abandoned, bombed by the Decretians and left to lie fallow. The idiots didn't know what lay hidden below the surface levels of the mine. If they were attacking now, it had to be for another reason.

A second missile exploded nearby. The view blacked out for an instant as a blast of hard radiation struck the ship. He fought a wave of automatic fear. There had to be a way out of this. There had to be.

 

The prisoner reached out with his implants and found that she had revoked his small telemetry privileges.

“Don't be an idiot, Bannerman,” he said. “You woke me to see if I could do something. At least let me try.”

She relented. There were three short-range fighters on their tail, with a long-range raider of some sort bringing up the rear. She didn't recognize the design, but he nodded on seeing them.

“They're Decretians,” he told her. “Very nasty sorts. We have no contact with them, but there are Terminus agents stationed on Oza to keep an eye on them, ready to blow the shaft if they ever look too close. The Decretians must have left a monitoring station in the area, which spotted us when we powered in.”

She nodded. That theory matched her observations. “We can outrun them, but that won't help us get any closer to the Structure.”

“I know. Give me a minute.”

She wasn't certain they had a minute. On a 3-D grid, blue-gray Oza was receding behind them as the Decretian fighters drove them away. The drumming of the
razee
's reactionless thrusters was relentless and numbing.

“Are we armed?”

“Not for heavy or sustained combat.”

“I didn't think so. A ship like this, on the cutting edge of your technology, must be for covert surveillance, not attack-runs.”

She didn't grace that with a reply.

“Whatever. We'll work with what we've got.”

“You are suspiciously unconcerned,” she said. “You planned this.”

“I swear I had no idea what was waiting for us. The empire, yes, but I hoped to get in unnoticed. Whatever happens now, though, I do know we'll make it. Trust me.”

“You say this, but I have no reason to do it.”

“Your choices are limited, Bannerman.”

She fumed in silence for a second, and then gasped as another missile detonated dangerously close to the ship.

When the spinning starscape had stabilized, she found herself agreeing to at least hear his suggestion, if he had one.

 

“I think I do,” he said, hoping against hope that his wild plan would succeed. “Here's what you're going to do. This ship accelerates faster than anything I've ever seen. I presume it can decelerate just as quickly. When I give you the word, I want you to hang on the brakes as hard as you can. Drop us back level with those three fighters. Come in firing.”

“We can't defeat all three at once.”

“Not with conventional weapons. I know.” He studied the disposition of the fighters, wondering if he was insane to place so much trust in something over which he had so little control. He wasn't a space combat expert, and he certainly didn't know how the Structure did what it did. All he could do was take a chance. “Once we're in the midst of them, you're going to turn the ultralights on full.”

“Are you insane?”

“Maybe, but it's either that or abandon Oza and go somewhere else. What's the range of this thing, exactly? Fancy another hop across the galaxy with me in tow?”

She answered neither question, not with words. Furious—at him, he supposed, for getting her into this mess and at herself for letting him—she looked forward again, at the starscape ahead, and prepared the ultralights for activation.

“I don't know what this will do,” she confessed. “So close to a gravity well, the ultralights could explode, taking us with them.”

“If it makes you so nervous, why don't we try ramming instead?”

“Now you are testing my patience.”

He smiled, wishing he could banish the butterflies from his stomach. “It's a serious suggestion. Given the speed this thing flies at, its anti-impact shields have to be pretty effective. A collision or two could be survivable, especially if—”

The ship's thrusters hammered deafeningly, cutting him off in mid-sentence. Light blurred around him. His seat shook, throwing him from side to side. For a small eternity, it was all he could do simply to hang on.

 

Master Bannerman felt utterly disconnected from the actions of her body. She knew that Kindred's plan was madness of the highest magnitude. Activating experimental ultralights in the middle of a solar system was a recipe for instant annihilation. No sane Ship's Master would ever put a vessel at such risk. It couldn't, therefore, be her behind the commands that were even now dropping the battle-hungry
razee
back into the midst of the Decretian fighters. It couldn't be her laying down a pattern of covering fire intended to mislead the enemy. It couldn't possibly be her locating the optimum point to activate the ultralights, in the hope of taking out the heavy-raider as well. She felt as though there were two avatars in her head at once, wrestling for control of her fate.

The fighters flashed by, tumbling wildly as they recalibrated their weapon systems. Thrusters flashed and flared. The optimum point arrived.

One Master Bannerman activated the ultralights while another stared in fascinated horror, dying to see what happened.

The
razee
screamed, and both of her screamed with it, fused back into one as a bubble of energy radiated out from the heart of the ultralights, tearing space into ribbons as it went.

The cockpit walls went black. All the instruments and virtual feeds died in the same instant. Smoke filled the cockpit. She heard Kindred crying out—not in fear or alarm, but crying the same three words that had haunted her all the way to Oza.

Without questioning the impulse, she found herself praying for the first time that he might be right.

 

I can't die!

I can't die!

I can't die!

 

Her acceleration couch eased its grip the very instant fresh air reached her nostrils. Sobbing with relief, Bannerman sagged forward, eyes blinking in the stroboscope light of the revived instrumentation panels. Her implants located several active streams among the dozens that had once issued from the
razee
, now filled with noise. A quick glance over the status indicators told her everything she needed to know. Red was the dominant shade. The
razee
would soar no more.

Of the fighters and the raider, there were no signs.

A hand groped for hers and she jerked out of the data, startled.

“We made it.” Kindred's voice was raw with relief. “I told you we would.”

She surprised herself by not immediately pulling away. “We got lucky,” she said, “and we'll need to get lucky again soon. The ultralights are dead, burned completely out. Thrusters are down to half a percent capacity. We'll be doing well to hit Oza, let alone land on it.”

He was unflappable. “That's all we need. Don't you see? No matter what the universe throws at us, we'll come through just fine.”

She withdrew her hand. “I don't share your confidence.”

“That's because you don't understand the Structure. You think you do, but you don't.”

“So explain it to me.” When he didn't answer, she dismissed the mystery with an irritated snort. “I thought not. You're as ignorant as I am.”

“No, wait. Give me a second. I'm thinking.” He tapped his right index finger on the side of the couch. “Yes, why not? You're caught up in this now. The only way back to your ship is through the Structure. You have a right to know what you're getting yourself into.”

He spoke so seriously, so earnestly, that she braced herself against the back of her chair, as though the revelation might convey a physical impact. When she noticed what she had unconsciously done, she cursed herself for being so gullible. This was what he wanted, to throw her off-balance even further than she already was. Striking when she was weak was a sensible tactic. She gave him credit for trying, even as she hardened herself to resist his web of lies.

 

He told her everything he knew. It didn't take long, and he could tell she didn't believe him. The story did sound crazy; he had once thought it impossible too, until it had happened to someone close to him.

Living in or near the Structure tangled people up in time, sometimes. No one knew why, or how. It just happened, and people lived with it. Some found a comfort in it, as he told himself to, now. Until the loop in which he had found himself unraveled—until he was back on Hakham, so he could read out the script and push the button that he had failed to push the first time around—he was untouchable. How could he die anywhere when he knew he would be alive later?

She said: “You are telling me that you did not, in fact, set those charges to detonate.”

“No. It
was
me. Must have been. I just haven't done it yet.”

“You're talking nonsense.”

“The Structure makes you do that. It's unavoidable.”

“Knots in time cannot exist. The laws of temporal entropy forbid such things.”

“Is that your best comeback?”

“I don't need another. What you are telling me is impossible.”

“So was FTL travel, once. Hell, so was flying! I don't think the word is in the universe's dictionary.”

The ship was nearing Oza's tenuous atmosphere. Soon, she would be too busy to argue. He guessed that she would keep pondering it, though. Maybe another near-death experience would convince her of his claims.

She seemed to be thinking along the same lines.

“If I did try to kill you now, what would happen?”

“The command would fail somehow. Or you'd die of an aneurism before you could issue it. I don't know. Do you want to try?”

“Not right now.”

“Good,” he said, “because at this moment, I might be the only thing protecting you from dying when we crash-land.”

Her brown eyes narrowed. They were so dark that in the dim light of the cockpit they looked completely black.

“Thanks for your concern,” she said, “but your faith would be better placed in my ability to pilot this ship.”

He smiled. “Either way, I'm looking forward to going home again.”

 

Home, she thought, even as she wrestled with the controls of the moribund
razee
. For all she had studied the Structure and its inhabitants from afar, she had never once thought that people might actually consider it such. Was that, perhaps, why they fought so vigorously to keep it to themselves? Not because of its military or scientific value, but out of love?

The Guild of the Great Ships was made of clones and avatars, but love was just as powerful a force to them as it had ever been to any human. For the first time, she began to wonder if the campaign to take control of the Structure might prove more difficult than even the Grand Masters had imagined—hypothetically unkillable Terminus agents notwithstanding.

SACRIFICE

They came down hard a kilometer from the ruins that had once been Oza topside. Kindred and Bannerman stumbled from the new crater they had
made, leaning on each other's shoulders and brushing themselves down as best they could. The walk to the apparently lifeless shaft wasn't a long one, but under a diamond-colored sky and with no liquid water anywhere on the planet, it wasn't one Kindred was looking forward to. He took only a small consolation from the fact that he was back under real gravity again.

“When we get there,” he said, “let me do the talking. My access codes should still work. Once we're in, it's just a matter of hopping from level to level until we get where we need to go.”

She glanced over her shoulder at the crumpled wreckage of the ship. Her expression was unreadable, but he thought he could guess what was going through her mind.

That guess was confirmed when she said just one word in reply.

“Hakham.”

“Back to your ship.” He nodded. “Also, if the shaft is open, you'll know I'm telling you the truth.”

“And then what?”

“Then you'll wonder if you're as good a pilot as you say you are.” He smiled. “You'll have to be if I'm wrong, because that's the only way you'll ever get back home.”

 

The Terminus agents stationed at Oza didn't once question her status. Master Bannerman watched closely for any sign of deception as Kindred walked up to the security cordon hidden deep in the ruins, braving a trio of upraised weapons without flinching and talking his way smoothly into their confidence. He showed no inclination to betray her just yet. She assumed he wanted to prove himself to her first, and that was perfectly in line with her own objectives. She had no doubt that before long his talk of time-loops would be revealed as the fantasy of a very lucky man.

They entered a dank, stuffy mine, traveling first by wheeled vehicle and then by elevator. The way was only intermittently lit, and they relied on infrared to pick their way when visible light was absent. Strange smells assailed her. Mud and dust soon coated her Guild uniform almost beyond its capacity to clean itself. Far behind her lay the antiseptic glamour of interstellar travel. To date, the Structure had proven disappointing and uncomfortable.