Пауэрс Тим

Уайт Стив

Дюбуа Брендан

Хойт Сара

Дрейк Дэвид Аллен

Вебер Дэвид

Taylor Travis S

Matthews Susan R

Anderson Kevin Dzhey

Lawson Stephen

VonAllmen David

Massa Mike

Free Stories 2018

Travis S. Taylor

Pain is the Fuel

April 13, 2407 AD

Alien Megaship

Target Star #17

742 Light Years from Sol System

Friday 9:40 A.M. Expeditionary Fleet Standard Time

“Move your ass, Navy!” Deanna shouted as loud as she could. Granted at the moment that was probably not very loud, considering she was upside down with her FM-13X transfigurable fighter mecha pinned against a bulkhead of an alien megaship by a Chiata porcupine fighter, with the alien’s green glowing expanding tendrils speared through most of her fighter and her left thigh.

“Apple1, Ares squadron is several moments out!” the voice on the tac-net alerted her. “We are seeing much more resistance than expected.”

“Resistance, hell, this is suicide! We should flash out of here now!” another, younger, and much more frightened voice said. The icon in Deanna’s direct to mind, or DTM, display told her it was a fresh out Navy aviator that had yet to be inside a Chiata Horde’s megaship during a grab-and-go mission.

“Stow that shit, Ensign. Ares squadron keep pressing forward!!” their squadron leader ordered.

“Are you fucking kidding me!” Deanna realized that the Archangels’ backup wasn’t coming anytime soon. If she didn’t already know that the best pilot in the universe was Navy she’d be cursing the entire branch of the military. But her wingman had split off into Team A and left her to lead Team B. She had no idea what had happened to DeathRay since he flashed out with his half of the Archangels to the second target ship. Oh, she could see his icon in her Blue Force tracker on the mindview of the battlescape, but he was thousands of kilometers away on another alien ship.

“Shit, we’re on our own, Skippy,” she muttered to the little alien beetle bot that was holding on to her armored shoulder as though it required no effort at all. She thought her father had been a bit overzealous in attempting to take two Chiata megaships in one attack. But on the other hand, it blessed her with plenty of Chiata to kill. “Team B, looks like we’re alone in here. I hope DeathRay is doing a bit better.”

“Apple1, it is really thick down here. What are your plans?” Lieutenant Tina “FreeMason” Barkley, one of the newest Archangels, asked. Dee could tell from her mindview of the battlescape that the new pilot was holding her own, but was in some thick shit with her wingman “Monopoly,” who was a deck below and a few hundred meters back.

“We don’t let the fuck up!” Dee grunted as she used her left armored hand to partially extend the suit’s sword blade. She swiped the blade through the tendril in her leg and yanked it free. Green, glowing alien blood squirted from the armored mechanized alien appendage like a firehose spraying the cockpit. “Fuck that hurt!”

Deanna didn’t have time to watch her armored suit seal the wound or to bitch about the pain and blood loss. Her team was getting hammered and they had yet to complete their mission: to secure the bridge of the alien megaship. She felt the entire ship suddenly jerk as if it had been pounded by gluonium bombs. The bulkheads vibrated so hard that her teeth chattered against her mouthpiece. She accidentally bit down on the block that released stimulants and pure oxygen into her helmet. She probably needed the stims anyway.

“Shit! We have to move, Archangels!”

“Warning, multiple systems failures are imminent. Warning structural integrity fields are at nine percent and failing,” the Bitchin’ Betty chimed.

Dee, this mecha is toast. We should flash out to the Madira, her artificial intelligence counterpart—or AIC—Bree, who was embedded in her head just behind her left ear, told her in her direct-to-mind voice.

No goddamned way! I promised Davy I was killing ten of these alien bastards today and I’ve yet to kill but three!Dee’s mindvoice screamed at her AIC.

Major, we must abandon this mecha. It is reaching critical status, Bree warned her again.

You’re right about this mecha though, Bree. Dee toggled the canopy eject cycle and the explosive bolts fired the transparent metal into the porcupine mecha that was wrapping its tendrils around her upside-down bot mode fighter. The flying canopy bounded into the cockpit of the alien craft, knocking it backwards just enough to loosen its grip on her mecha’s torso. Dee pulled the ejection handle. This mecha is history. Blow it when I’m clear!

Holy shit, Dee!

The ejection seat fired, slamming Dee helpless against the couch from the extreme gee loading. As the seat rocketed away from the alien bulkhead and her crushed mecha, the tip of the headrest caught against the alien fighter. This induced a crazy, mad, spinning tumble, on her. Fortunately for Dee, the interior of the upper deck of the alien megaship was immense, and there was plenty of room to flail about.

The ejection had startled the one alien that had her, but the porcupine’s wingman was hot on her trail, firing green plasma bolts across her trajectory. Dee held on for dear life, hoping the gods of crazy assed U.S. Marines were smiling on her at the moment. She looked at targeting Xs about her in her mindview of the battlescape as she spun across the chasm that led to the final upwell to the bridge of the ship, hoping she could turn her misfortune into a plan. Just as the green plasma from the alien’s wingman looked like it was going to track into her path, Bree exploded her damaged mecha.

The quantum generators of the FM-13X her grandmother had made for her became a fireball of orange and white plasma and high velocity shrapnel that skittered across the vast alien room into several of the Chiata that were closing in on her. Two of the Chiata were knocked backward off their feet. The one that was octopus-hugging her mecha burst into glowing green and red liquids, liquid metal, and plasma across the deck plating.

That’s four, Davy! she thought.

The hardpoints of Dee’s armored suit disconnected from the spinning ejection chair allowing her to engage her jumpboots against the base of the chair flinging her free. As she somersaulted and rolled across the deck to bleed off the energy of her trajectory, she expanded the sword on her left arm and pulled the hypervelocity automatic rifle up with her right, firing it as one of the targeting Xs turned red. Dee brought herself to a control trajectory by sliding across the deck on both knees. The armored environment suit screeched against the alien metal on the floor with a deafening high pitch that only added to the cacophony of plasma fire, mecha pounding, and explosions all about her. As she slid through the momentum she had to lean backwards until the back of her head rubbed the floor and her knees almost snapped in order to limbo beneath the tendril of one of the now extremely pissed off aliens. Dee watched as the tendril passed within millimeters of her helmet’s visor.

She rose swiftly, using the momentum of her fall to add to the strength of her blade swing. The sword ripped through the alien mecha’s lower right leg, throwing sparks in every direction. Dee spun to face the mecha with her rifle and went full auto with the hypervelocity armor piercing rounds into it. The shields on the mecha flashed out and plasma vented from it. The mecha slumped on its severed leg and fell with a kachunk to the deck. Quickly she bounded to her feet and did a back tuck onto the top of the canopy firing the rifle into the alien pilot, splattering the glowing green alien blood all over her armor. As she let herself take pleasure in the death of the alien, another Chiata, this one in body armor and not mecha, slipped in behind her, attempting to get the drop on her. Dee caught a glimpse of the alien’s glowing eyes on the broken alien canopy glass just as the Red Force tracker alerted her. She managed to duck as one of the alien’s tendrils darted in and out at her head.

Dee rolled to the side grabbing the tendril with her left hand. Before she could raise her rifle. the little alien beetle jumped from its perch on her shoulder in a blur and penetrated the Chiata infantryman’s faceplate. The Chiata immediately began to flail at its helmet and writhe on the floor. It quickly went limp. In a blur, the beetle was back on Dee’s shoulder.

“Damn good boy, Skippy!”

That’s six, she thought.

Technically you have five. Skippy got the last one, Bree corrected.

Okay then, if that’s how you’re gonna play it. Dee rolled to her feet in full sprint toward the ladderwell, bringing the hypervelocity automatic rifle up and firing the hypersonic rounds in the direction of what she could only assume were porcupines put in place to guard the entrance that led up to the bridge of the ship.

“Team B, keep pressing and cover my backside. I’m pushing up to the bridge deck!” She bounced her jumpboots against the deck and covered the thirty meters across the chasm to the entrance. The last two ships they had taken had a freight elevator there. Dee wondered if this was an older model, or if the aliens just hadn’t gotten around to putting in the elevator yet. At any rate, there were stairs instead of an elevator.

“Apple1, you’re out of your mecha. You should wait for us!” Monopoly suggested.

“No time, Monopoly! The longer we wait to take the bridge the more pilots outside in the ball are getting hammered!” Dee looked at the rest of Team B in her mindview and realized that she was a good hundred meters laterally from them and more than a deck up. She’d have to get on them about dragging their asses later if they survived. “Move your asses and get up here!”

Dee! What are you doing? her father’s mindvoice rang in her head.

I’m taking this fucking ship, sir! she replied. Now’s not a good time for a father daughter chat.

You’re spread out too thin from your team. You should wait.

I owe Davy and Nancy five more dead Chiata.

You can get them another day. You are overrun and out of your mecha—now snap back to the ship!

With all due respect, sir, I don’t second guess you in the middle of a big battleship fight! And I’m kinda busy right now.

I could order you, Dee.

Then either do it or get out of my head. I’m in the thick of the shit right now!

Dee, I uh, damnit—then, that’s an order.

What’s that, Daddy? General? Did you say something? Something must have happened to the connection, ’cause I can’t hear you. Bree get him back…

You know short of a damping field, jamming the QM connection is impossible.

Daddy, are you there…?

For shit’s sake, Dee! General Moore said, sounding even more frustrated with her.

Dee dropped, rolled, and bounced up with her back slammed against a bulkhead as alien plasma fire pitted the metal above her throwing green and white hot sparks into her visor. She flinched slightly, but kept her calm. The two alien porcupines in the entrance had her pinned down and she couldn’t press further without a better plan.

They’ve got me pinned down, Bree. Suggestions?

Wait for backup.

Any other suggestions?

What would DeathRay or your father do? Bree asked rhetorically.

DeathRay would go in there and kill those motherfuckers.

And your father?

He’d break a bunch a shit, blow stuff up, and kill those motherfuckers.

Deanna Moore, Apple1-that-didn’t-fall-far-from-the-tree, what are you going to do?

Right!

“Okay Skippy, I could use a diversion.” She patted the little beetle bot on the back with her armored hand. Instantly the alien bug shot from her shoulder like a missile, but it moved so swiftly it was almost imperceptible. “Damn!”

The beetle bot slammed into the leg of the porcupine on the left, then came out the back side and crawled up the mecha toward the cockpit. The Chiata within it must have panicked. Tendrils darted out curved back inward and started jabbing at itself. The second porcupine turned as if it was expressing the Chiata version of “what the fuck?”

“Good boy!” She bounded from her cover position on full auto with her rifle. The armor-piercing railgun rounds vaporized into the alien’s shields causing them to flicker. She continued the charge until the shields fritzed out and the rounds started punching into the mecha’s armor plating.

The alien fired a tendril outward at Dee but she was expecting it. She slipped slightly sideways and grabbed the tendril in her right hand, then yanked with all her suit’s might. The mecha was far too heavy for an armored suit to pull down, but the pull sling-shotted Dee forward into the torso of the Chiata pilot. As she made contact, she extended the blade from her left hand—through the already weakened armor and into the alien creature inside. More of the green glowing blood sprayed onto her suit as the mecha slumped over backwards with her momentum. She rolled forward and back around firing her rifle into the already wrything alien next to it to finish it off. Skippy blurred back onto its perch on her armored shoulder.

“Great job, buddy,” she said affectionately to the alien robot.

I’m counting that one! That’s seven, Davy.

Bree didn’t respond.

Three bounces with her jumpboots and she was at the upper deck level just outside the topside dome that was the bridge of the alien ship. They had to know she was coming. But if past experience held true there shouldn’t be any mecha in the bridge. Dee had taken on multiple Chiata infantry by herself before and won. Well, kind of. She had killed all the aliens but had ended up paralyzed for a significant part of the day.

Dee pulled up the Red Force tracker screen in her mindview and could see three red dots on the other side of the bulkhead and through the hatch into the large transparent dome that was the Chiata megaship’s bridge.

“Just three of them. Not so bad.” She looked at the hatch controls and wasn’t exactly sure what her next play was going to be.

Bree, can you hack the door, or do I blow it? she thought.

I’m having no luck handshaking with it, Dee. I think this is an old school kind of entry.

So much for surprise, huh?

Yes.

“Skippy, you got any ideas?” she said jokingly and then was shocked when the beetle jumped from her shoulder and attached itself to the control panel for the doorway. “What the… ?”

The alien beetle bot’s multiple legs seemed to phase in and out of reality and passed through the control panel cover and into the innards of the circuitry underneath. A couple of seconds passed, and then suddenly Dee felt as if she had been told to get ready. A vision of the door sliding open popped into her mind.

“Got it, Skippy. Go!” She nodded as she opened the grenade launcher tubes on her back. The tubes rose over each shoulder and she brought her blade and rifle up to ready. The door slid open.

Thwoomp, thwoomp, thwoomp. The grenade tubes sounded as she let three of them go into the room. She ducked back behind the hatch and let them detonate. Immediately following the three explosions Dee dropped low and dove into the room in a roll. Green bolts of alien plasma fire zipped through the air just above her head—where her torso would have been had she been standing in the doorway.

The inside of the dome room was like being inside a small basketball arena. It was at least twenty meters across and again that high to the ceiling. There were alien consoles and screens spread about the room with multiple stations, but there were only three Chiata manning them. Outside Dee could see Colonel Delilah “Jawbone” Strong’s mecha squadron, the Maniacs, mixing it up with the alien porcupines in one hell of a furball.

Dee flinched as one of the Maniacs in bot mode was tossed by a Chiata porcupine against the wall of the dome. The mecha burst into a fireball almost as soon as it hit. She hoped the pilot managed to flash out in time.

No time for sightseeing, Marine! Bree shouted in her head.

Right! She stood and did a forward flip over the console. She looked for the three alien red dots to coincide with red targeting Xs in her mindview.

An alien tendril suddenly wrapped itself around her throat, catching her unaware, and yanked her hard backwards and up to the captain’s chair. Dee was stunned briefly, which was long enough for the Chiata to drop from the captain’s station that floated overhead and drag her down. It slammed her into the deck plating, hard.

“Motherfucker!” she shouted in pain. Quickly she bit on her mouthpiece to get a new shot of stimulants, pain killers, and oxygen. The immediate burst of energy and strength enabled her to pull herself up to all fours and then to her knees wrapping the tendril around her left forearm.

“Let… me… the fuck… go!” she shouted. Then as the alien pulled her closer, Dee managed to bring her blade down across the tendril, freeing her throat. But just as quickly, another set of tendrils darted at her. One wrapped up her left leg and the other darted through her armor on her left bicep and out the back side. The alien tossed her about, ripping her arm off just above the elbow. Dee screamed in pain and anger, and went full auto with her rifle whether it was targeting anything or not.

Skippy jumped free into the fray and Dee lost track of where he was as the Chiata tossed her about like a rag doll. The muzzle flashes from her rifle lit the room and the faint purple ion trails of the hypervelocity rounds left small sparks and explosions where they impacted against the dome or equipment or consoles. The next five or ten seconds was a mad whirlwind of Dee firing her rifle, cursing the aliens, and being shoved about. She also fought against the random flinging with her jumpboots but that was only somewhat effective. Had she been in her mecha this would have been a much easier fight.

“Shit!” she screamed. “Shit, shit, shit!”

Finally one of her rounds hit home on the alien’s midsection, knocking it backwards and off balance. Dee went to swing her blade and then saw the stump the suit had sealed off where her arm used to be. A tendril darted in at her faceplate and her pilot’s reflexes enabled her to catch it with her right hand just as it pushed into the transparent armor and into her cheek below her left eye. She squeezed at the tendril with all the strength in her suit and it burst, squirting the glowing alien blood into the wound and all over her face.

“Fuck this!” she said as she popped her grenade tubes.

Thwoomp, thwoomp, thwoomp!

“Your move, asshole!”

The Chiata realized what she had just done, and flung her across the room against the dome in the general direction the grenades had gone. The alien did its best to run in the opposite direction. And finally, Dee’s targeting Xs locked to the three Chiata in the room. She rolled up and released her rifle trigger filling the room with the spittapping of automatic rifle fire. It was quickly drowned out by three very loud and very close explosions.

Dee felt what must have been thirty scalding hot knives rip through her body and something slammed against her so hard it felt like she’d been slapped by a hovertank in botmode. The personal health status emergency screen popped up in her mindview and she could see before her the likeness of herself with no left arm, no legs, and several trauma spots across her torso. There was also a spot underneath her left eye that was marked as trauma.

“Warning, life signs are critical. Immunoboost and stimulants are being administered,” her suit told no one in particular.

Dee! Major Moore! You need to snap back to the Madira med bay! Bree told her.

Not till we have the ship!

Then out of her periphery she could see the tuning forks of the alien megaship that jutted out like giant snail antennae above the dome began to arc lightning bolts across from one to the other. The blue beam zig-zagged out into space and across to one of the alien ships tearing a hole in it. The targeted ship was so far in the distance that Dee could barely make it out even with the zoom of her busted suit at full.

She looked over at the command console and saw Skippy flickering in and out of reality space and attached to the weapon controls. Skippy had hacked the ship. The deck vibrated against her suit from mecha pounding in her direction. Company was coming and she was done. Maybe it was time to flash out.

“Boss! Apple1! You are a mess!” USMC Captain Jose “Monopoly” Rayes stood over her in his FM-13X in bot mode. “Madira! Apple1 is down. Initiating emergency snap-back routine.”

“Wait! Monopoly! Captain! Do we have the ship?”

“Yes, ma’am. The Buckley-Freeman superweapon is about to go online!” Monopoly told her. “We need to get you out of here, ma’am. I wish you would have waited on us.”

“I did. See, here you are.” She did her best to smile.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Skippy, you coming?” Dee could barely manage a whisper, but the little bot suddenly was crawling into place. Dee rolled her head to the right and could see the remnants of a Chiata’s tendril dripping onto the deck. With her remaining hand she clutched the severed appendage just as the sound of bacon frying filled her ears and there was a flash of light and then she was looking up at the inside of the U.S.S. Sienna Madira II’s med bay.

* * *

“What the hell is that?!”

“It’s an alien tendril, or at least it’s part of one.” Deanna told the young female tattoo artist as she sat back in the chair. It was Spring Break and Miracle Strip outside the window was covered with college kids in their minimalist beach attire and there was one hell of a party going on. Dee was enjoying being back on Earth, even if it was just for a weekend pass. Her father had her grounded until she had been cycled through post traumatic stress counseling. So, she had a couple weeks to get her shit straight. She looked down at her new toes sticking out of her flip-flops and approved of them.

I should paint them. Black. Fingernails too, she thought to her AIC. And maybe I’m gonna shave my head on the sides.

Your father would love that, Bree replied in her mindvoice.

I’m not going to ask him.

Like they say, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Stop that. I’ve had enough of that apple shit. Apple1 died with Davy Rackman and Nancy Penzington. It’s time for me to be reborn.

Dee looked over at her friend and fellow Armored E-suit Marine Rhondi Howser and smiled. “That hurt Gunny?”

“Can’t hurt as much as having your legs blown off, but it has to be close!” Rhondi was lying face down with her naked rear face up. The tattoo artist had her cheeks spread apart and was touching up or adding details—Dee wasn’t sure which, and was too drunk to care—to the snake that curled about her body. The needle was very near Rhondi’s very sensitive spots. Dee imagined it hurt like a mother. But Rhondi had insisted that the only painkillers they could use was tequila. Dee had accepted the challenge. And now both of them were shit-faced.

“Uh, ma’am, it’s really not optimal for me to tattoo you while you’re drunk.”

“But not illegal?”

“Well, no.”

“Thanks for your concern.”

The tattoo artist hesitated a moment, then nodded. “Ma’am, what do you want me to do with this alien thingy?”

“See how it still glows?” She shrugged, pointing at the Chiata tendril chunk.

“Uh huh.” The young lady acted as if she didn’t want to touch the disgusting looking thing.

“I want you to grind it up in some green and red ink. And I want you to put four vertical tick marks with a diagonal fifth—one like keeping score—just under my left eye here. Then I want another set of five just like that beside it,” Dee explained.

“I um, I see. You know this stuff might wear off some day. I can add some nano fluorescent spheres to the ink so it will glow forever if you’d like. You really don’t even need this nasty alien thing in there,” the tattoo artist told her.

“The alien thing goes in. Keep that ink set aside for me and me alone. I’ll pay you whatever you need to do that.” Dee said. “I plan to be back. Often.”

“Here.” Rhondi passed the bottle back over to her. “Don’t eat the worm. Its mine.”

“We can always get another bottle,” Dee accepted it and killed a significant portion of what was left in the liter container.

“Jesus, you Marines are fucking nuts. You know the ink doesn’t take as well when you’re drunk?” The man working on Rhondi’s sensitive areas laughed, as he went over them again.

“Ooh-fuckin’-rah,” Rhondi grunted through the pain. Dee could see tears running down her cheeks, but at the same time her friend was laughing.

“What are these tick marks keeping score of?” The girl getting ready to work on Dee asked.

“Those fucking glowing green motherfuckers killed the man I love and they killed my big sister.” Dee swigged from the bottle until it was empty, sucking the worm at the bottom into her mouth. She bit down on it, tasting the gooey slime as it squirted from it without hesitation. “Each mark is for an alien I killed. Keep that ink ready, ’cause, I’m gonna kill every goddamned one of them.”

“And there’s a lot of them,” Rhondi added. “You’ll have to beat me to some of them, Major!”

“You sure you don’t want some pain meds, ma’am? I mean, right under the eye right there is gonna hurt.”

“Not as much as a tat up the crack of your ass!” Rhondi snorted.

“No, thanks. Me and pain, well, that’s all I’ve got left.” Dee tried but couldn’t keep the tears from forming in the corner of her eyes. She choked them back as best she could but they were coming out. “The tank is empty, except for the pain. I’ll just have to run on that for now.”

“I, uh, I am sorry for your loss,” was all the girl could manage to say.

Dee just nodded and laid her head back against the headrest of the tattoo chair while she waited. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a poster of a young punk guy with blue glowing eyes. She forced herself to focus on the writing. It was an advertisement for eye lens implants.

“Hey, can you get those to look like fire?” Dee asked.

Brendan DuBois

An Eagle’s Flight

In the small windowless room, the only sound was the hiss of static coming from a nearby speaker. It was late July and although the air conditioning at the Center was working heroically to fight off the heat, Walt Sinclair’s sweat-soaked shirt was sticking against his back as he listened to the scratchy words coming out of the gray metal speaker box—complete with NASA meatball logo—near the desk’s edge. He was trying to sit still in an old government-issued metal chair next to the desk, but it was hard to do. His legs had fallen into a nervous jerking game of their own accord, rising up and down, up and down, as the mission proceeded, as procedures were followed, as items on the checklist got ticked off.

He was in a small, windowless room at the Center, and for Christ’s sake, he wished he was out in the trenches, getting the visuals and direct mission feeds second by second, but his job this Sunday afternoon was to baby-sit a VIP visitor sitting near him, in a battered wheelchair, eyes closed, dozing during one of the most exciting days of Walt’s life He was an old man, and wore a cheap black suit, white shirt and skinny black necktie. On one of the lapels of his worn suit was an American flag pin. Save for bushy white eyebrows, he was bald, and age spots and freckles dusted the top of his head. His jowls were full and saggy, like the tendons holding them up had dissolved over the years. His name was Oscar Morrow and the Center’s personnel held him awe, for in addition to his NASA work, he had also spent years with that agency’s predecessor, NACA, the National Advisory Council on Aeronautics. In his worn and wrinkled hands, he carried a black ebony cane, like being in a wheelchair was just a temporary setback, and that he was ready for that day when he could miraculously walk again.

Walt had done a quick check on the old man’s background before meeting up with him, and found out that despite the wheelchair, he still maintained his pilot’s license Walt couldn’t imagine what kind of chicanery kept that license up-to-date, so the guy still had pull, even though—as his aunt would like to say—he looked like he belonged in God’s Waiting Room. His lips were pink and moist, and with the man’s eyes closed, Walt kept close look at his chest, to make sure it was rising and falling regularly. A hell of a thing, to have this visitor die here, on this day of days!

From the speaker on the desk came a burst of static, and voices:

“Eagle, Houston. If you read, you’re go for powered descent. Over.”

A pause, and then another man’s voice, faint and hard to make out through the static.

“Eagle, this is Columbia. Houston just gave you a go for powered descent.”

Oscar’s eyes slowly opened up. “What’s going on?” he asked, his voice dry, raspy, weak.

Walt’s legs were still trembling. “They just gave Eagle a go for powered descent.”

The old man nodded, looked about the tiny room. Stained green carpeting, bare white walls—save for two framed photographs of the Moon—and not much else, save for the desk, Walt’s chair, Oscar and his wheelchair.

As he did in other moments of stress, Walt played with his class ring, spinning it around his right hand ring finger. It was a class ring from M.I.T., where he had gotten his degrees in aeronautical engineering, and the affectionately called “brass rat” had soothed him over the years after leaving school, every time he faced stress, like today.

As a child he had grown up on the Oregon coast, and the Moon had fascinated and entranced him, pulling him to a career in aviation and space. Service in the Air Force had never panned out—claustrophobia, he couldn’t stand being in enclosed spaces!—but he had done the next best thing: If he couldn’t fly in space, at least he could write the procedures and create the designs to support those who did.

Like the old man before him, who had flown in lots of aircraft over the years, but whose age had barred him from space travel. In that way, Walt guessed the two of them were alike, although on opposite ends of the age scale. In the hours since he was introduced to him by his department boss—who had said “Treat him nice and give him anything he wants… he doesn’t look it but under those wrinkles, he’s an honest to God steely-eyed missile man”—Walt had begun to like Oscar. Oh, he dozed in and out, he regularly passed gas—which in this small room was becoming quite pungent—but the stories he told…

If only the old man had asked to be out in the trenches!

Oscar shifted his cane about. “Keep an ear open, son, you bet things are gonna start moving fast.”

Walt managed to find his voice. “Thanks, I will.”

The old man stared straight at him, and his weak voice changed, becoming that of a teacher, an instructor, someone who had done and seen it all. “You getting excited?”

Walt just nodded.

“I can see why… but think of it… there’s nothing more you and anybody else can do in this building. The training… procedures… all been checked and re-checked, eh?”

“Damn right.”

He flopped a hand. “Then it’s up to the X factor… Eh? The one part of everything that can’t really be tested to the core…”

Walt was going to ask him what he meant, when the speaker came to life again. The second faint voice, still nearly buried in static: “Eagle, this is Columbia. You’re go for PDI and they recommend you yaw right 10 degrees and try the high gain again.”

A wait. “Eagle, you read Columbia?”

A third man’s voice: “Columbia, Roger, we read you.”

Walt realized his sweated-out shirt had to be shrinking, because it was oh so very tight against his chest. The old man gently tapped his cane up and down.

“Mr. Morrow, you know, we could—”

“Please, call me Oscar.”

“Oscar, you could be someplace else besides here, you know. You could see a lot of what’s going on.”

He shook his head. “With these eyes? Be a waste of time.”

“But we could hook you up with earpieces, so you could hear everything that’s going on, not just from the public comm.”

Oscar smiled, his teeth the glaring white of dentures. “Nope, just satisfied to be sitting with an eager young pup like you, hearing just the minimum, just enough to visualize what’s going on out there.” A pause. “But I do thank you and your bosses, for allowing me here, for you to escort me.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Ah, no, you’re not thinking that for real, are you. I know you, what you want… you’d rather be out there with your folks, the ones you worked twelve hour days with, six or seven days a week… instead of babysitting an old fart like me. Am I right?”

It was like he was back in school again. The glare of the eyes, the sharp voice, the confidence that came from knowing what was going through a student’s mind.

“Sorry, yes, I wish I was out there,” Walt admitted. “That’s where I belong.”

More voices were exchanged over the speaker, and Walt listened to the LM pilot rattling off items from the descent checklist: “DECA Gimbal AC, closed. Circuit breaker. Command override, off. Gimbal enable. Rate scale, 25.”

“True,” Oscar said. “And I admire you for it. Coming to work every day, dodging the war protesters, trying to ignore those that say the money’s being wasted… saying money spent here should go for housing and the poor and everything else… hell, most of your generation probably don’t even look up at the Moon any more, they’re too –--“

Walt twisted his M.I.T. ring even more. “They’re too stupid, that’s all. They don’t understand.”

The old man gently smiled. “Understand what, son?”

Walt hesitated, but went ahead, knowing he could trust revealing what he believed to Oscar. “We can’t stay earthbound forever. We’ve got to get out into space.”

“They say it’s too expensive just to go out and explore,” he said quietly, repeating the old arguments. “There’s other priorities. The poor, ending the war, civil rights…”

“I’m not talking about exploring!” Walt said, voice sharp, the ring moist in his fingers. “We’ve got to get out there, so we can survive. War, environmental collapse, even a passing asteroid… we could go the way of the dinosaurs, all in a blink of an eye. This is our one chance.”

Oscar moved the cane around, slowly nodded. “That’s the problem with chances. They’re like fog. One moment it’s before you, another moment, it’s gone…”

More crackling from the plain speaker.

A few moments later, the Eagle’s commander simply said: “Ignition.”

And the LM pilot quickly acknowledged: “Ignition. Thrust at 10 percent.”

Walt nodded to his guest. “They’re off.”

“So they are,” Oscar replied, shifting some in his wheelchair. “Godspeed, and then some.”

Walt leaned forward, feeling like his shirt was going to split apart at the seems, his legs still trembling, and he was glad the old man couldn’t see them shake. He said, “What did you mean back there, about the X factor? What factor is that?”

“The X factor…” The old man’s voice faltered, his breathing labored, rattling. “The X factor…”

The old man suddenly coughed, hacked loudly and sharply, his pale wrinkly face suddenly turning red. Walt panicked, sitting up straight, thinking Oscar was going to have a heart attack and die right here and now in front of him. Holy Christ… and with a flash of a hard decision, he knew that if the man croaked in the next few seconds, he wouldn’t call for help. Not until the Eagle had safely landed. If Oscar was dead, so be it. Walt wasn’t going to miss the next few minutes of his life, of history.

There was a series of deep, rattling breaths, and then Oscar settled back against his wheelchair, his chest rising up and down rapidly, like he had just finished a 100-meter sprint.

“That’s your X factor… the body… the pilot… always been the weak point, hasn’t it…” A line of drool started down the left side of his lip. “You and me… the engineers, right from the beginning, designed and tested and re-tested all the gear we shot up into space, even before we knew what kind of hostile environment existed up there. The testing… with the telemetry, you could see what piece of equipment worked, what other piece of equipment failed. So you re-worked that failed piece, tried and tested again.”

Oscar slapped at his gaunt chest. “But this… this has always been the weak point, eh?”

Walt just nodded, glum. “We sometimes call it the G Factor.”

“I’ve heard that,” and the old man cackled. “We engineers, we always have our special codes and words, eh?”

Walt didn’t reply.

On this historic day, he wasn’t an engineer.

He was just a goddamn babysitter.

What a story to tell his yet-to-be-born kids, years from now.

In his years of flying and testing after getting his degree from M.I.T., Walt had been in some tight scrapes before, had felt that bone-crunch of pressure on his shoulders, had gotten scared when a piece of equipment had unexpectedly failed or an engine on an aircraft he had been a passenger on had flamed-out, but nothing seemed to frighten him as much as what he was hearing over the speaker, with the old man staring calmly across from him, like he was visualizing himself being with the crew of the Eagle. Every now and then Walt shivered, and another phrase from his aunt came to him: “A goose walking across your grave.”

Pretty goddamn heavy and persistent goose.

“Eagle, this is Houston. We’ve got you now. It’s looking good. Over.”

The LM pilot crisply talked to the commander, voice a bit high pitched. “Okay, rate of descent looks good.”

Oscar’s eyes were closed. Had the old man fallen asleep? Even now?

Walt wondered what he should do. Oscar stirred, opened his eyes. “Sorry… drifted off there for a moment… did I miss anything?”

“Still descending. Still looks nominal.”

A nod from the old man. “Just minutes to go. Hard to believe. Just minutes.”

Walt was going to say something, but the speaker burst out again with static and voices: “Eagle, this is Houston. Roger. You are go. You are go to continue powered descent. You are go to continue powered descent.”

Oscar nodded with satisfaction. “So close. Maybe they’ll make it, eh?”

Then it all went wrong.

The voice of the Eagle’s commander was sharp with concern. “Houston, Eagle. We’ve got a Program Alarm.”

Houston quickly replied. “It’s looking good to us. Over.”

“It’s a 1202.” A pause, then with more urgency: “Give us a reading on the 1202 Program Alarm.”

“Roger. We got you… We’re go on that 1202 alarm.”

“Are you sure, Houston?”

“We’re still go, Eagle.”

Walt’s hands started quivering. He put them in his lap so the old man couldn’t see them. Just like his legs. Oscar sighed. “That was close. Very close, eh?”

“Yes. Very close.”

Oscar leaned to one side, like he wanted to hear better from the speaker. The static and voices continued.

“Okay, Houston. We’re at five thousand feet. One hundred feet per second descent rate is good. Going to check my attitude control. Attitude control is good.”

“Eagle, you’re looking great. Coming up nine minutes.”

A pause.

“Eagle, Houston. You’re go for landing. Over.”

“Roger,” the LM pilot replied “Understand. Go for landing. We’re at three thousand feet.”

“Copy that Eagle.”

Walt took a deep breath. His chest ached. He wondered what it was like, outside that door, with his fellow engineers and technicians, listening in and watching the telemetry. Imagine the excitement he was missing!

“How much longer?” Oscar asked.

“Just a few more minutes, that’s all.” He looked at the old man’s face, try to gauge what was going on behind those filmy eyes, what that ancient brain was thinking, seeing, remembering.

Walt said, “A few more minutes,” he repeated. “Can you believe it?

“You get to be my age, son, you can believe in almost anything.”

Then it was the LM pilot’s turn, voice high-pitched coming out of the speaker. “We’ve got a Program Alarm. It’s a 1201.”

“Roger, that Eagle. A 1201 alarm.” A long, long pause, then the CapCom’s voice, hesitant, shaky: “We’re go on that alarm. Same type. Same type. We’re go.”

“Houston, this is Eagle. What’s going on with those damn alarms?”

“Eagle, Houston, we’re still a go. Still a go.”

Oscar shook his head, the ebony cane trembling in his old hands. “Don’t like it. God, I don’t like it.”

Walt said the only thing that made sense. “Neither do I.”

And in the next few terrifying minutes, Walt recalled a high school history class, of seeing an old, old black and white movie newsreel, seeing the death of the Hindenburg, how the flames started so very small at the tip of the zeppelin, and then how it all went to ashes, in just a matter of seconds.

The LM pilot started narrating their descent: “Altitude is 700 feet, 21 feet per second down, 33 degrees.” And in reply from the commander, “Damn, that’s a pretty rocky area. Where the hell are we? How’s the fuel?”

“Eight percent.” A few seconds later, the LM pilot said, “One hundred feet, 3 1/2 down, 9 forward. Five percent of fuel remaining. Quantity light is on.”

Houston urgently interrupted. “Eagle, you’ve got 60 seconds of fuel left.”

A sharper hiss of static, then: “Houston, this is Eagle. Lots of boulders here. Lots. We must have overshot our landing area.”

“Eagle, we acknowledge,” Houston replied, voice nearing panic “Thirty seconds left for fuel.”

“Too many boulders. Too many! We’re going to abort.”

The LM pilot said: “No, you can do it, Neil, we can…”

“Too late… damn it too…”

A mix of voices, yells, another burst of static.

Silence.

Hissing continued from the speaker.

“Eagle, this is Houston. Over.”

“Eagle, this is Houston. Over.”

Walt’s mouth was dry. He had to work to talk. He finally said, “I… I can’t believe it… Oh my God…”

Oscar’s voice was suddenly sharp and crisp, like he was the engineer in charge of old. “Quiet, boy! Let’s hear what’s going on.”

“Ah… obviously a major malfunction of some sort. Eagle, this is Houston, over.”

No reply.

Walt’s eyes were filling with tears. All the planning, all the preparation, all the writing and testing of procedures, over and over again… and to come to this?

He looked to Oscar’s face.

The old man was silently weeping.

Walt wiped at his eyes, bent over, turned down the speaker’s volume. Long minutes passed in silence before the door to the tiny office slammed open. A man came in, followed by a woman. The man was short, plump, with closely-trimmed black hair. His face was sweaty, red, and he wore a zippered light green jumpsuit with Air Force flight patches, even though he was no longer active in the service. The woman next to him was also short and plump, and wore a similar jumpsuit.

Her nametag said P. O’HALLORAN. DataGlasses hung from a strand around her neck. His nametag said N. GIVENS. He swore and said, “That was a shitty sim, Walt.”

Walt said, “It was a perfect sim. You and Pam just couldn’t handle it.”

Givens strolled in further, standing right next to Oscar. He ignored the old man. “What kind of goddamn training program puts us in a simulator with technology more than a half century old? Tell me that!”

The woman slipped on a pair of DataGlasses, blinked a few times, cocked her head, and said, “That sim wasn’t fair! It was too old… Neil and I did our best!”

Walt felt Oscar staring at him and also felt the sudden, unexpected weight of history bear down on his shoulders. He felt a terrible urge to play with his M.I.T. ring and ignored it. “The sim had nothing to do with being fair or unfair.”

Before Neil could reply, Oscar spoke up, voice weak but strong. “Excuse me… excuse me… young man, can you tell me how many flying hours you have?”

For the first time Givens seemed to realize Oscar was there. Face still flushed with anger, arms crossed, he glanced down and said to Walt, “Who the hell is this fossil?”

“He’s a guest of the Director. He worked here years ago… before it became a museum, before the Director bought it.”

Givens grunted and Oscar pressed on. “Please… tell me… how many hours have you had flying?”

There was now pride in Givens’ voice. “Close to four thousand,” he said, voice smug. “More than anybody else out there who signed up for this mission.”

Walt interrupted. “Good for you,” he said. “Armstrong had three thousand, and he didn’t screw the pooch like you did, Neil.”

O’Halloran took off her DataGlasses. “If we had the right technology and support, that landing would have been simple!”

“But it wasn’t a simple landing, was it,” Walt said.

O’Halloran said, “You made us use ancient technology, what do you expect?”

“We expected you to land like the original Eagle,” Walt said. “Look, with all of your technology and support, where have you flown, Neil?”

“You name it,” he said, voice sharp. “Iraq. Iran. Afghanistan. Nigeria. And you know it.” The Air Force pilot took a breath, went on. “This is goddamn ridiculous. Asking us to prepare for a Moon flight by using a sim and gear from the first landing is like asking me to prep for a Nigerian air support mission by taking up a P-51 Mustang.”

Oscar whispered, “Have you ever done that? Take a Mustang or anything else up in the air? A Piper Cub? A T-6 trainer? Anything?”

“I did what was required,” Givens said. “I fulfilled my training. Finished third in my class.”

Walt couldn’t help it. He lost it. “That’s right! You completed your training… to be a goddamn gamer! You sit on your ass in a comfortable chair, cold Coke at your side, in a pilot cubicle on a base somewhere, and you play with your keyboard and joystick. I’ve gone over your records, Captain Givens. You’ve been shot down eleven times in your career… without getting a fingernail broken. Because it was your platforms that were hit, not you.”

Givens replied but Walt talked right over him “Neil and Buzz and Mike, they were real pilots, damn it. What was once called old stick and rudder men. If the systems failed, if the computers got backed up with too much data flow, they still had the instinct, the training, the capabilities to complete the mission, a quarter million miles from home. But now we have you… and we have to plan for the G factor. Gamers.”

Walt looked at the angry Givens, and his angrier co-pilot, O’Halloran, and he said, “You’re both skilled, capable, and good at what you do. Which isn’t being a pilot for a Moon mission.”

Givens said, “Well, we’re the best the Company has, and if they want new footprints on the Moon, they’re going to have to give us more realistic sims, and more realistic procedures.”

He left the office, followed by his LM pilot. They didn’t close the door behind them.

Walt looked to Oscar, whose cane was trembling in his shaking hands Walt felt so weary. “Well, that’s that. If those two get their way, the cost of going back is going to increase a lot… as well as the risk… one computer foul-up, one burnt chip, one programming hiccup, and they’ll drive their landing craft right into the regolith.”

But Oscar was somewhere else.

“Oh… that sim… brought back so many memories…” He smiled and another line of drool started down his face. “You young pup, you know your history don’t you… about the real pilots we had back then… and that was key…getting the right folks in place to take care of that X factor.”

Oscar coughed and wheezed, softly this time, not as harsh. “I remembered being here, in this very same building… watching the landing… seeing it succeed… and some of us… we were so proud… this was our first step… we had the heavy lift rockets… we had the infrastructure… soon… in just a couple of more decades… we’d be on Mars… we’d have a base on the Moon… oh, yes, we didn’t have the amazing technology of today… but we had the men and the women… but we didn’t have the political will… we didn’t have the grit…”

He took another, rattling breath. “Fifty years apart… you and me… and the others… fifty years apart, and that dream… what’s that they say? A dream deferred is a dream that dies?”

Walt wiped at his face, stood up and went to the wheelchair. “I thought today would be a celebration, to show you what we could do again, with the old sims, the old equipment,” he said, voice thick with emotion. “I’m sorry. We failed you.”

Oscar grabbed his wrist, with a surprisingly strong grip for an old man, lowered him down so his whisper could be heard.

“No, son, we failed you.”

The room was quiet again, except for the hiss of static and the sound of urgent, inaudible voices coming from the old NASA speaker.

Then Walt stepped around and in front of the old man, and then squatted down.

“Oscar?”

“Yeah?”

There was something in those old eyes, inquiring and skeptical but… hopeful?

Walt grabbed the man’s right hand and said, “We failed you today. But I’ll be goddamned if me or anybody else in the Center is giving up either. We’re going back. There’s been detours and setbacks—like today—but damn it to hell, we’re going back, and we’re going back to stay. Just you see.”

Oscar smiled. “I should live so long.”

“You better.”

David Drake

The Midshipman

"I can see he’s a good officer; but is he lucky?"

Attributed to Napoleon

"Woetjans!" Bosun’s Mate Runcie shouted as he came out the forward dorsal hatch of the battleship Renown. "Where the bloody hell is—oh! There you are, Woetjans. We got a new midshipman here, McKinnon. I want you to teach him the ropes."

Ellie Woetjans was within an hour of the end of her watch, but she wasn’t surprised that Runcie had just put her on a task that’d take her three hours to do right. The bosun’s mate didn’t like her, maybe because he knew that despite his rank and experience, Able Spacer Woetjans could’ve done Runcie’s job better than he could.

Woetjans stepped down onto the hull. She’d been inspecting the running rigging of Dorsal A while the antenna was extended here in Harbor Three on Cinnabar. She eyed her new charge without enthusiasm.

Mckinnon braced to attention as she looked at him, but he met her eyes squarely instead of keeping them straight ahead. He was five nine or so and probably 21—the usual age for graduation from the Academy. Though he wasn’t overweight, Woetjans thought he looked a bit soft.

Anyway, physical fitness was a good place to start. She opened one of the equipment lockers set around the base of the antenna and said, "Okay, kid. Pick a pair of gauntlets and lets see how quick you can skin up to the masthead."

"Yes, ma’am," Mckinnon said. He squatted to review the selection of rigging gloves in the locker, then picked a medium pair. Dorsal A had two sets of ratlines, aft and starboard. The kid put his hand on the aft set, but Woetjans said, "Take the others. I’m going up these to watch you."

The Mckinnon nodded, then started up the starboard lines, using his hands for balance but climbing with his legs. The rigging was woven beryllium monocrystal. Though strong and tough, individual strands frayed and broke. The gauntlets protected the kid’s hands, but if his arms or legs brushed a break standing proud, it would lay him open.

Woetjans could see that Mckinnon was being careful about how he moved. That was common sense, but this was a test of how he performed under stress. If she’d read the kid as a different sort of person, she’s have reached over and whacked him on the ass with a length of cable, but there was another way to deal with the likes of Mckinnon. Woetjans started climbing at speed.

Ellie Woetjans was six feet six and even stronger than she looked. She swung onto the inside of the shrouds so that she didn’t brush them, doing all the work with her arms. She’d reached the platform at the first antenna joint before Mckinnon knew what was happening.

There was a chance that the kid would try to do the same thing himself—and inevitably fall. Twenty feet to the steel hull would break bones, probably; but it wouldn’t kill him, probably. Woetjans was teaching him a lesson, after all.

Mckinnon hesitated a moment—Woetjans looked down past her dangling boots—but he stayed on the outside of the lines. His speed picked up considerably, though, which is what Woetjans had intended. She waited at the masthead, a hundred and thirty feet above the hull and waited for the kid to reach her.

Mckinnon’s face was red, and Woetjans could see tags of torn fabric hanging off the new utilities he’d put on for his first day on his first ship. He got onto the little platform and met Woetjans' eyes squarely, though he had to tilt his face up to do it.

"What next, ma’am?" Mckinnon said. He managed to control his breathing, but he couldn’t do anything about the rasp in his voice.

"Now we go back down," Woetjans said, grinning. "Go ahead—I’ll catch you up."

Mckinnon started down, feeling for the ratlines with his boots. He wasn’t good at it because he didn’t have enough experience to know where the line was. The spacing of the ratlines was always the same, no matter how big or small the vessel.

Grinning, Woetjans pushed off the platform, grabbed the first line ten feet below with her left hand, and pushed off again. She half-turned her body in the air so that she could catch the next line with her right hand instead. Woetjans was as fit as anybody, but this afternoon’s workout was going to have her aching in the morning and no mistake.

Two jumps later, she rotated her body again. She couldn’t afford to have a muscle cramp when she was high in the rigging.

Mckinnon watched with a desperate expression as Woetjans went past. He tried the same technique, kicking his body out from the shrouds and catching a ratline below. To Woetjans' surprise, the kid had the timing down already: twice, a third time—and then fifty feet above the hull, his hand cramped and didn’t hold. It tipped him over, though. He plunged head-first toward the thick steel.

Woetjans leaned out and grabbed him. She caught him around the upper arm and swung him free between the two sets of shrouds.

Mckinnon flailed and tried to reach the aft ratlines, but Woetjans kept him too far out. Any input Mckinnon had in his current physical condition would make things worse. They were dangerous enough as it was.

Woetjans resumed climbing down in ordinary fashion until she could set the kid on the hull and stand beside him. He tried to brace to attention, but the pain made him massage his left arm where Woetjans had gripped him. She’d thought she might’ve dislocated his shoulder, but apparently not.

"Ma’am, what next?" he said in a husky whisper. If she hadn’t been able to see his lips, she wouldn’t have known what he was saying.

Cheeky little bastard, Woetjans thought. She felt her lips smiling.

"Next…" she said. She glanced around. As she’d expected, the twenty odd spacers who’d been on the dorsal hull while this was going on were all staring at them.

If the kid had dropped on his head, every one of them would’ve sworn that it wasn’t Ellie Woetjans' fault; but they’d be wrong. She’d been showing off, and she’d already known that Mckinnon was the sort who wouldn’t quit.

"Next," Woetjans repeated, "you get to the sick bay and see that you haven’t torn anything, then you’re off for the rest of the watch. Rudolf and Dimitrovic—" two senior midshipmen, among the present spectators "—you help the kid, all right?"

She didn’t really have any authority over the midshipmen, but she’d found that folks pretty much obeyed when Ellie Woetjans told them to do something. She’d have carried Mckinnon to the sick bay herself if there’d been any back-talk, but there wasn’t.

Woetjans watched the midshipmen stagger to the forward hatch. She hoped the kid had learned something. She bloody well had.

* * *

Woetjans was long off-watch, but she’d gone back to the running rigging of Dorsal A. It wouldn’t be past Runcie’s sneaky little mind to claim that she hadn’t completed the job the bosun—Marigny—had set her at the beginning of the watch, without mentioning that Runcie himself had taken her off it.

She’d just dropped down onto the hull when Rudolf came out of the forward hatch and strode over to her. He seemed concerned, so Woetjans said, "How’s the kid? I know he had a bit of a jolt there."

"Well, he says he’s coming right back out in a couple minutes," the midshipman said. "He doesn’t want anybody to think he can’t take it."

"Nobody bloody thinks that!" Woetjans said. "And if anybody does, send 'em to me and I guess I’ll convince 'em another way."

"Yeah, well, Woetjans…" Rudolf said, turning his head a bit aside. "Mckinnon’s kinda funny, I guess because of his grandfather. Which maybe you don’t know?"

"I don’t know a bloody thing!" Woetjans said. "So tell me, why don’t you?"

Has that bastard Runcie dropped me into something? Bloody hell!

"Well, you see, his grandfather’s Admiral Mckinnon, who was supposed to take over the Home Fleet—only Admiral Anston got Chairman of the Navy Board," Rudolf said. "They had a history. Mckinnon was posted Inspector of Supply and resigned instead. The thing is, Mckinnon wouldn’t be the first officer to make a comeback when an administration changes, and my uncle says Admiral Mack has a lot of friends still."

That bastard Runcie, Woetjans thought; not for the first time. She went back over the way she’d treated the kid. After a moment she barked a laugh.

"Ma’am?" Rudolf said. It wasn’t the reaction he’d expected.

"Look, kid," Woetjans said. "The only way I know to do a job is to just bloody do it. That’s training too, if that’s the job I got. So thanks for the warning, but I guess not much is going to change. Except I won’t push quite the same way on Mckinnon, now that I’m sure he’s going to give a hundred and ten percent."

Mckinnon with Dimitrovic behind him came out of the hatch. "So, kid," Woetjans called, strolling toward them. "The medic got you fixed up again?"

"The Medicomp checked me out and says I’m fit for duty, ma’am," Mckinnon said.

"Then let’s take a look at the Dorsal A lifting cables," Woetjans said. "And if I decide they’re worn, you and I are going to replace them. And I don’t mind telling you, that’s a bitch of a job—if you’re up for it."

"Yes, ma’am!" the kid said.

It was a bitch of a job for an untrained midshipman, even with a top rigger as the other half of the team. But they did it.

* * *

Woetjans was on boarding watch with Abnason, watching four spacers come across the extension catwalk from the quay. The huge bulk of the Sovereign loomed on the other side of Noyen Harbor. The Bulwark, third battleship of Force D, Admiral Vocaine commanding, orbited over Ciano. In two days the Renown would replace the Bulwark. The lesser ships of Force D, the Haywright District Protection Squadron, were either in smaller harbors or—two destroyers, and a miserable duty that must be—orbiting with the Bulwark.

"I recognize Mulcahy," said Abnason, a Tech Two, peering at the returning liberty party. "The other three’s riggers, aren’t they?"

"Balliol, Renzler, and I guess that’s Dowd," Woetjans said. "They’re aft-section crew, but I know 'em, sure."

You could tell the riggers easy enough by the fact that, though probably drunk out of their skulls, they strode along the catwalk without hesitation. Mulcahy, a Power Room tech, would’ve been in the harbor if his rigger friends hadn’t been helping him.

The liberty party paused for a breather when they reached the boarding ramp. It was the hatch itself, pivoted down to the starboard outrigger.

"Hey, who’s that?" Abnason said when he saw another spacer pounding along the catwalk behind the first four. The newcomer was shouting something.

"That’s Rudolf, one of the middies," Woetjans said. "What the hell happened to him? His tunic’s nigh tore off."

She picked up the length of pipe she kept handy and thrust it through her belt. "Come on, let’s take a look."

She started down the ramp. There were sub-machine guns and two stocked impellers in a locker behind them, but boarding watch in a friendly port didn’t require guns and Woetjans had never been able to hit anything she shot at anyway.

Abnason picked up his adjustable wrench and came with her. Something was up.

Rudolf stopped with the liberty party at the base of the ramp. They were chattering at him but he seemed to be too out of breath to answer. When he saw Woetjans loom up, he lifted his face to her and said, "Ma’am, we need the Shore Police! Some Sovereigns 've got Mack!"

The gabble from the little group picked up like so many chickens being fed, but Woetjans said, "Shut up, all of you! Rudolf, where they got him?"

"We were drinking in a little pool room just the other side of the Strip," Rudolf said, "and must be a dozen Sovereigns come in, pretty well oiled already. We tried to get out but they grabbed us."

He swallowed. "I broke away, but I guess they still got Mack. We gotta get him back cause they’re pretty mad."

"Right," Woetjans said. "Can you find this place again, Rudolf?"

"Yeah, sure," the midshipman said. "We didn’t know it was a Sovereign place, we were just playing pool and having a couple beers."

"Well, let’s go then," Woetjans said. "We don’t need the cops."

She started toward the quay, her arm around Rudolf’s shoulder just in case he needed support of one kind or the other. She couldn’t quarrel with not wanting a fight against that kinda odds, but she didn’t figure you left a shipmate behind to save yourself some bruises.

"Woetjans!" Abnason said. "We’re on bloody watch, we can’t just leave the ship open."

Woetjans turned. Abnason added, "I’m not afraid of a fight, but this is a job for the Shore Police."

Woetjans looked at the hesitating liberty party. She made a face but said, "All right, Abnason. Give your wrench to Balliol—" a black-bearded rigger with arms almost as long as Woetjans' own "—and take Mulcahy to fill the watch."

Relieving off the watch book was a bloody serious offense, but that didn’t count for much right now. And Mulcahy was legless, so he wouldn’t be much use in a dust-up.

"Balliol, you got the balls?"

"Sure, Ellie," he answered, taking Abnason’s wrench. "Come along, you guys. We can find something for you when we get there, but with just some pussies from the Sovereign to worry about, we may not need to."

Woetjans knew that the quicker they reached Mckinnon, the likelier it was that he’d be able to walk back under his own power. She also knew, though, that it wouldn’t do any good to push her people beyond what their bodies could do.

Come to think, Mckinnon himself had reminded her of that lesson. She grimaced. She really hoped they’d get there in time. She didn’t let herself dwell on what "in time" might mean. They half walked, half jogged, along the next street back from The Strip facing the water.

"They wanted us to sing while they recorded us," Rudolf said. He’d got his breath and seemed to stand taller now that he was backed by four veteran riggers. " 'We’re middies from Renown, and we love to bugger sheep.' "

"That was when you took off?" Woetjans said.

"Well, Mack yelled run for it and I did," Rudolf said. "Only he started laying about him with the butt of his pool cue instead of following like I figured. I decided I’d better get help."

Woetjans didn’t say anything. She might’ve done in a moment, but the midshipman pointed down a side-street and said, "It’s just along here. On the left side."

Several spacers stood on the pavement, facing a shop whose sign read FROSTY’S above a pair of crossed pool cues. The clothing store to the left was closed, and a pair of bouncers guarded the door to what was probably a knocking-shop to the right. The bouncers kept careful eyes on the rescue party, but they didn’t intervene when Woetjans led the rush.

A quick right and left from her baton laid out two of the Sovereigns, and Renzler and Dowd pitched the third through the pool hall window. One of the panes had already been broken from inside.

Balliol was a hair ahead of Woetjans going in the doorway, but there were plenty of targets left for her when she followed swinging. The spacers in the pool hall were taken completely by surprise. They’d clustered in front of the manager’s office on the opposite wall. When they turned, it was the spacer flying through the window who drew their attention rather than the Renowns coming in the door.

Balliol was mostly right about not needing weapons, though he didn’t drop the wrench. Woetjans kept laying about with her tubing as long as there was a head raised. Dowd and Renzler were used to working as a team in the rigging. They did the same thing here, hurling Sovereigns into whichever was the nearest wall. One human missile went halfway through the partition beside the door marked MANAGER.

"Where the hell is the kid!" Woetjans bellowed, looking around. She stooped to make sure he wasn’t lying under one of the three pool tables.

"Renown!" somebody shouted. The office door was sturdier than the wall it was set in; it flew open.

Mckinnon stood in the doorway, the butt of a pool cue in his hand. His tunic had been ripped off and there was blood on his scalp—but on the pool cue also.

When he saw Woetjans, he braced to attention, and said, "Ma’am! What next?"

"Next we get our arses back to the ship before the cops arrive!" Balliol said.

"That’s a bloody good idea," Woetjans said. She paused to wipe the business end of her tubing on the tunic of a fallen Sovereign.

* * *

Dashiell City on Mantanega wasn’t Woetjans' first dismount, but she sure wouldn’t be sorry if it was her last. They were guarding the headquarters of the Loyalty Party in the western suburbs, and the operation had been snakebit from the start.

Lieutenant Bowerby was supposed to be leading the detachment of twenty spacers, but she’d screwed her knee up boarding the ground truck that was supposed to carry them to the site. Instead of replacing her with another lieutenant, Captain Ogawa had assigned the detachment’s Number Two, Midshipman Dimitrovic, to command.

Dimitrovic wasn’t a bad kid but he didn’t give Woetjans the impression of being the guy she wanted in charge if it started to go tits-up. Now she stood on the roof in the sheltered doorway at the head of the stairs from the second floor, eyeing the three-story building across the street. Balliol stood at the edge of the roof, looking down over the six-inch parapet into the street. Woetjans didn’t hear any traffic.

"You know…" Balliol said as he walked back. Like Woetjans, he held a stocked impeller. "This district is supposed to be all Loyalty Party, but they sure-hell don’t seem very friendly to me."

A volley of shots came from the building opposite, through third-floor windows and from the roof. Balliol’s left leg went out from under him. He sprawled forward, then rolled onto his back and started shooting at the hostiles on the roof. He was likely to break his shoulder, using a full-sized impeller with a hard surface behind him, but Woetjans supposed Balliol didn’t have much choice.

She did, though. She stepped out onto the roof, pointed the impeller toward the opposite building, and shot off the entire magazine as fast as she could jerk the trigger. Huge clouds of beige stucco spewed up from every round. The wall must have been cinder block underneath because moments later a section you could walk through collapsed into rubble. Three or four slugs hitting pretty close together had crumbled it.

The shooting from across the way stopped. Woetjans didn’t figure she’d hit anything except the building, but the racket of the shots and then the slugs smashing blocks would make most folks drop their heads while it was going on.

She tossed her empty impeller through the doorway behind her, then took Balliol under the arms and dragged him back out of sight in the stairhead. He’d kept hold of his weapon but he’d only gotten off a couple shots before the pain really hit him. His face looked gray.

"Medic!" Woetjans bellowed down the staircase. The detachment hadn’t brought a Medicomp along, but there was a good chance that somebody knew more about first aid than she did. "Balliol’s got one in the leg!"

The upper thigh of Balliol’s trousers was sodden, but the blood wasn’t spurting. Bloody hell, whose idea had this dismount been? Nobody close enough to hear the shooting, that was for sure—or who’d figured to be that close.

The hostiles had started firing again, long bursts on full auto. Some slugs ripped high over the roof of the headquarters building. Woetjans guessed that the shooters were sticking their gunhands around corners or over walls and emptying the magazine. That way their heads were well under cover.

Dimitrovic and Tech Three Sapony came up the stairs. The midshipman was wearing a commo helmet linked to the base unit in the main hall. The tech bent over Balliol and opened a medical kit while Dimitrovic huddled beside Woetjans.

Rather than take the time to reload her own impeller, Woetjans took the one that’d finally slipped from Balliol’s hands. She hadn’t pulled the stairhead door fully closed, so she could see the building opposite while staying in shadow.

The barrel of the weapon she’d emptied still glowed. Dimitrovic glanced at it and said, "Bloody hell, Voyt. Did you run the whole magazine through rapid fire?"

"Yeah, I guess," Woetjans said. She rubbed her right shoulder with her left fingers; it hurt like hell. "I couldn’t hit anything even if I aimed so I just blasted away to keep their heads down. I could get Balliol back then."

She glared at the midshipman. "Say, what’s all this about? I thought we was on their side?"

Dimitrovic shrugged. "We aren’t on any side, Loyalist or Freedom Party either one," he said. "Two thirds of the RCN bulk supplies for the sector ship out of Dashiell Harbor, though, so Navy House sent Vocaine here to keep the lid on when the riots started. I guess Elder Foscara started out thinking we were going to help him mop up the Freedom Party, and he wasn’t best pleased when he found out we weren’t."

"Not a reason to start shooting at us," Woetjans muttered. In her heart she figured it was all you could expect from the locals once you got off Cinnabar.

There was a sustained burst of firing from an automatic impeller across the street. Metal rang as the osmium slugs tore through something out of Woetjans' sight. There was a dull boom! Their—the detachment’s—truck’s diesel fuel exploded.

Dimitrovic swore. "Renown," he said, keying the link on his commo helmet. "This is Unit Twelve, over."

Woetjans could hear the response as insect sounds, but she couldn’t make out words. She continued to scan her narrow angle of the building opposite.

"Sir," Dimitrovic said. "They’ve got an automatic impeller. I don’t think aircars to the roof are survivable. Isn’t there a way to get a company of Marines into the back side of the building the shooting’s coming from? Over."

Buzzing.

"Sir," Dimitrovic said, "I appreciate that the Marines have a lot of their plate now, but we need some help here and we need it bloody fast! We don’t have an hour, over!"

Buzzing.

"Unit Twelve out!" Dimitrovic snarled. He looked at Woetjans and took a deep breath. "They’re working on it!" the midshipman said, making the phrase a curse.

It’s gone tits-up for good and all, Woetjans realized. Oh, bloody hell!

"Look," she said. "This place has a back way out, don’t it? Maybe we can at least get into another building that they’re not looking down on the way they do this one."

A slug from the opposite roof came in through an angle to hit the inside of the door they were sheltering behind. It ricocheted off the steel with a whang! and a spray of white sparks. The main portion of the osmium projectile shrieked across the stairhead. It blew a hole through the back wall.

"They’re back there too," Dimitrovic said. "We tried the alley when the shooting started. Bevan got one in the chest. Now they’ve rolled a cart down to block the door and we can’t even push it open from the inside."

Bloody hell! The thing to’ve done was to charge on through right at the start before the hostiles set up. Sure, you’d have a couple people shot, but if you go in hard and fast the chances are that a bunch of untrained civilians are going to run. Most of them would throw away the guns they likely saw that morning for the first time.

Too late now. Oh, bloody hell! And if the rest of the detachment had gotten out by the alley, she and Balliol on the roof would’ve been well and truly screwed.

Which they were anyway, of course. The only chance Woetjans saw for them was that the hostiles were going to take hostages. Probably not: both sides in Dashiell had been burning prisoners alive before Force D landed, and no admiral who did a deal with wogs had a career left in the RCN.

Another slug hit the door, this time from the outside. Again it howled away, but the impact bumped the panel closed and on the inner surface left a glowing red dent the size of a soup plate. Woetjans pushed the panel part-open again.

Buzzing.

"Unit Twelve, over," Dimitrovic said.

Buzzing.

"Bloody hell! Can you? But there’s at least forty of them and a full-size automatic in the front. Over."

Buzzing.

"Roger that! We’ll be ready! Unit Twelve out!"

Dimitrovic looked at Woetjans and said, "That was Rudolf! He and Mckinnon are coming to take us off the roof in the Renown's pinnace! I’ll get things organized below!"

The midshipman disappeared down the stairs as another slug zipped through the stairhead from right to left, this time without touching the steel door. Grit and dust from the walls exploded around the spacers.

Sapony bent over Balliol to cover the wounded man’s face. He bent his left arm over his own nose and mouth. Balliol’s trousers were ripped open and the thigh was bandaged. Blood hadn’t seeped through the padding yet.

"Can a pinnace land on the roof here?" Sapony asked when Woetjans glanced back.

"It’ll light it on fire," Woetjans said. The roof was covered with a mixture of sand and tar.

She shrugged. "Guess we’ll have burns. It’s still the best idea I’ve heard yet."

The bigger question, which Woetjans didn’t mention aloud, was whether the roof trusses could support the weight of the pinnace. For herself, she wouldn’t bet on it—but like she’d said, it was the best idea she’d heard yet. The pinnace’s hull plates were over an inch thick; they’d turn even slugs from an automatic impeller.

"You gonna give me a hand with Balliol?" Sapony asked. "I give him a shot and he’s really out of it."

"Yeah, sure," Woetjans said. There were going to be more wounded—and maybe dead too, though Dimitrovic might decide to leave them behind. If the building burned, the locals wouldn’t find much to wave around for a trophy.

The locals kept shooting. Every once in a while somebody in the RCN detachment would shoot back, but when that happened a storm of shots replied. Dimitrovic had guessed more than forty hostiles, but it must be closer to a couple hundred. They could’ve brought the whole building down if they’d known what they were doing, but Woetjans figured you could usually trust wogs not to know what they were doing.

Spacers started up the staircase. They weren’t crowding or panicked: just ready to move when they got the word. Looking down, Woetjans saw two more wounded, each being supported by a buddy or two.

Clason moved up beside Sapony. Woetjans was afraid more would try to squeeze into the stairhead—and there wasn’t room. Clason said, "I’m supposed to help get Balliol aboard."

"I figured I’d do that," Woetjans said in surprise.

Clason shook his head. "Dimitrovic wants you at the end with him for clean-up, Voyt," he said.

Woetjans nodded understanding. That made sense. Dimitrovic was doing okay for a green midshipman.

"They’re about to splash!" Dimitrovic shouted up from invisibly below. "Hang on!"

Woetjans expected the pinnace to arrive from the left because the hatch was on the starboard side, but instead the boat roared up the street from the right. They’re moving too fast… As the boat approached the buildings, it rotated a quarter turn on its axis.

"He’s lost control!" Sapony shouted.

No. The helmsman had just bathed the front of the three story building with the plasma exhaust. Shots had been pinging and sparkling on the spaceship’s heavy plates. That stopped instantly and Woetjans thought she heard screams over the reflected roar.

The pinnace slanted upward as it pulled away and began to turn. Woetjans pushed the door most of the way open so that she could lean out and follow what was happening. Minutes before that would have gotten her head blown off, but now the hostile base was a three-story pyre. Fire puffed out of every window she could see.

The pinnace curved back around. Its hatch was lowering as it approached.

"Go! Go! Go!" somebody shouted behind Woetjans. She turned and saw Dimitrovic pushing up the stairs past the waiting spacers.

The midshipman came abreast of Clason and Sapony. "Move out!" he said.

"Are you nuts?" Woetjans said. "Even if he shuts down as soon as he lands, the exhaust 'll fry anybody on the roof before then!"

"It’s Mack flying her!" Dimitrovic said. "He’s going to hover over the street and we’ll jump through the open hatch!"

I’ll believe that when I see it! Woetjans thought, but she helped Sapony lift Balliol and then got out of the way when Clason took over. The three of them staggered onto the roof and the rest of the detachment followed.

The pinnace pulled into a hover alongside the building, well out in the street. Tilting slightly to starboard, the vessel slid inward until the end of the ramp crushed the low parapet like the blade of a bulldozer.

Balliol and the two spacers supporting him jumped onto the ramp, then started up into the empty bay. The rest of the detachment came by ones and twos. There was no pushing or panic; it made Woetjans proud to be RCN.

"They hijacked the pinnace," Dimitrovic said in Woetjans' ear, shouting over the thruster exhaust. "They couldn’t get clearance from Vocaine and Mack said, Screw it, let’s do it ourselves. I know I can hold her near enough the roof to get 'em all aboard. Rudolf went along with him, and by heaven they’ve done it!"

A burst of shots slanted up through the roof, coming from the back. One round clanged from the pinnace’s stern. The outriggers weren’t deployed, probably to fit better in the width of the street.

"Let’s go," Dimitrovic said, running forward as the last three spacers reached the ramp. Woetjans strode alongside him, still holding the borrowed impeller.

The roof spurted three slanting geysers of wood shreds, powdered cement, and tarpaper. Dimitrovic gave a startled yelp. His left leg kicked high overhead and he flipped onto his back. His left foot was gone.

The hostiles had an automatic in the back also. The gunner there seemed to have more on the ball than the fellow in front had.

Woetjans dropped the impeller and threw the midshipman over her shoulder. He needed something on the stump but that could wait till they were inside the boat’s steel hull.

Woetjans sprinted up the ramp. The hatch between the hold and the cockpit was open. Clason stood in it. When he saw Woetjans enter with her burden, he shouted to the helmsman. The exhaust note changed and the pinnace started to lift.

Two heavy slugs whanged into the hold while the ramp was still down. The re-echoing Clang-g-g! was deafening. Vivid pink, orange, and green flashes filled the compartment momentarily as projectiles ricocheted from the bulkheads. Clason yelped and pitched forward, but he was up almost instantly.

The pinnace staggered. Woetjans was afraid that the hostile burst had shattered one or more thruster nozzles, which would be fatal at this altitude. The thrusters continued to roar normally as the pinnace recovered and curved toward the Renown in harbor.

The boarding ramp slammed shut, making the hold quieter. From the vibration, the outriggers were deploying so that they could land.

Sapony crawled over with his kit. Woetjans clamped both hands above Dimitrovic’s shattered ankle so that Sapony could fit a proper tourniquet. Woetjans hoped that the midshipman hadn’t already lost too much blood, but you did what you can. There’d be a Medicomp in the Renown's hold.

The thrusters roared again. The pinnace bucked. They splashed stern-low into water and skidded onward, pitching and bobbing. It wasn’t a good landing but Woetjans wasn’t going to complain. The kid had gotten them out when she hadn’t seen any way to do that.

One of the rescued spacers used the override lever in the hold to lower the ramp. The pinnace’s four small thrusters put out too little energy to create enough steam and ions in the open harbor to be dangerous or even noticeably unpleasant for veteran spacers.

Woetjans went forward toward the cockpit. She met Clason sticking a self-adhesive pad over his left forearm.

"A ricochet from that last burst?" Woetjans asked.

Clason shrugged. "Spray from the bulkhead only," he said. "The slug itself missed, and a bloody good thing too."

"Yeah," said Woetjans. "You’d need a new arm if it’d done that."

Rudolf had just risen from the starboard station. For volume reasons, instead of a console the pinnace had side by side flat-plate displays for the helmsman and helmsman’s assistant.

"Hey, you guys did a bloody fine job," Woetjans said. She was still trying to accept that she was really alive. "The Alliance don’t have a prayer with officers like you coming up in the RCN."

"Mack did it all," Rudolf said. Tears were running down his cheeks. "All I did was take over when the hard part was done."

Rudolf turned to look toward the bow. That shifted his body enough that Woetjans could see past him to Mckinnon at the port station. The ricochet which missed Clason had struck Mckinnon in the back of the skull, continuing through to smash the display beyond. His blood and brains painted the forward bulkhead.

I’m glad it was quick, Woetjans thought. He’d have made a bloody good officer.

Kevin J. Anderson and Sarah A. Hoyt

Father Avenir and the Fire Demons of Yellowstone

The tall spare man walked across the wild, breathtaking landscape as though pursued, although the pursuit came mostly from within.

His name, given to him by water and the holy chrism in the rites of his father’s people, the name by which he would be called by the last rising, was Pierre de Toussaint D’Avenir. His other name, the one his long-dead mother had given him in the secret of the tent late at night, in the rites of the tribe from which she’d been stolen as a child, was Tatanka, which meant Bull. His mother had told him that meant he wouldn’t retreat from anything.

Born between worlds, sometimes he wondered if he’d ever done anything but retreat. Or advance. When you walked alone, it was difficult to know the direction you were going.

Since shortly after his father had dropped him off at school in St. Louis, at the age of six, he had cleaved to the Word of God, seeing the rites of the Catholic Church as an anchor in a madly shifting world. He had no other way to deal with the conflicting ideas and visions, a world in which the old tribal gods had come to life and manifested their chaotic ways, interfering with human existence and making people their playthings. Instead, he clung desperately to a God who had sent his only son to die for the world. That was his unshakeable truth.

And yet, in a world where the Pope—if there was still a Pope—and the rest of the Church had been broken off from the Americas in the Sundering, he was once more trapped between the worlds, a man who believed in rites and ceremonies disdained by most Protestant Christians in America.

That was why he’d become a priest of the holy mother church, Father Avenir, bringing the Word far into arcane America, beyond the Mississippi River and over the Continental Divide. He’d taken to the wild lands, carrying his faith where he need not question the wisdom of serving a Universal Church that was no longer universal.

He walked the rugged wilderness in buckskin pants and tunic, his wild waist-long black hair, increasingly streaked with white, blowing in the wind, his beard long and only intermittently trimmed by his own knife. He kept his tattered cassock with all his other possessions on his back, bringing it out only when he had to perform Catholic rites for those who requested them, a few Natives, but mostly mixed-breed men like himself, the product of Native and European.

As a priest of the mother church, Father Avenir knew he looked odd, and he also knew that he was inadequate to his task. But everyone was inadequate in these wild times, and many other priests had lost their way, turned their backs on the Church and embraced some other sect of Christianity, or worse, degenerated into idolatry and sorcery now that magic had returned.

Father Avenir could have retreated into the chaos of power and desire to control the future, or he could have joined the more powerful Protestant sects from the North. But it was not in him. Tatanka stood firm, steady, facing down threats with lowered head, ready to charge.

He ranged all over the unexplored arcane territories populated by scattered Native tribes, all of whom needed to hear the word of God. Now, more than ever, they must hear that in the world of spirits and supernatural creatures, there was a rock to cling to. For God so loved the world He sent it His only son.

Fifty years after the Sundering, when Mr. Halley’s comet had exploded over the Earth and forever separated America from the old world, Father Avenir’s beliefs had become even more potent and necessary. But all the unleashed magic had also made manifest the powerful Native gods as well.

He should have been preaching to scattered tribes, sitting around their campfires and sharing food with them, but now those encounters had become more than telling them of his faith, of the man who was God and who required nothing more than their belief in Him. Now his work had become fighting demons and visions, sometimes literally.

Father Avenir had wandered for the past fifteen years, embarking from St. Louis as a missionary, up the Missouri River, heading across the Great Plains, and up into the mountains. He trended ever northward where his father had once hunted, where his mother had carried him on her back. The landscape had been frightening twenty years after the Sundering, and it was terrifying now.

The younger generation of shamans didn’t rely only on the legends of their forefathers, but they had also personally visited the spirit worlds. They had spoken directly with Coyote and flown with Raven. They had seen river serpents and been attacked by Canotti with their magic arrows. He had heard of the land of the dead where the tribes believed their spirits went, but what place did he have there, halfbreed that he was? Father Avenir had to go to the God that claimed all peoples, or nowhere.

He spoke English, French, and a half-dozen or so Native tongues, and often the words got mixed up in his mind because he spent so much time wandering alone and talking to himself. Avenir believed that one needed miracles to convince people who were beguiled by shamans, but he refused to perform sorcery. He would not risk his connection to Him Who’d Redeemed the World, not even to achieve his holy purpose.

And now at last, he knew what that purpose was. He had heard stories from the tribes about a powerful wizard, an evil force that drained energy from the land, destroyed numerous tribes, brought back the dead, summoned monsters—all to strengthen the wild arcane territories and fight against the white men in the East. Father Avenir felt that he had at last come to his most important battle.

He trudged along on foot, crossing a ridge and working his way through sparse pine trees and larches, until he looked down at the wide and smoking valley below, where heat shimmered, where steam and spray wafted into the air, bringing with it a sulfurous taint. He could hear the hiss and grumble in the forest silence.

The Shoshone people had told him of this place and sent him here, a land where the rivers ran hot and cold within feet of where the stone was yellow, or mud bubbled up from the ground and geysers roared with hot steam like a dragon’s breath.

Father Avenir fumbled with his buckskin jacket and touched the hand-carved wooden cross that hung on a leather thong around his neck. It gave him strength and he would need it to face the demons ahead. Avenir had once intended to purge the demons from the land, to show the power of God and convince the tribes of the power of Jesus. Now, he just hoped he would survive this ordeal. He reached for the rosary strapped to his belt so he could count the beads as he walked.

“Ave Maria, gratia plena,

Dominus tecum.

Benedicta tu in mulieribus,

et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus.

Sancta Maria, Mater Dei,

ora pro nobis peccatoribus,

nunc et in hora mortis nostrae.

Ámen.”

Hora mortis nostrae, Father Avenir muttered to himself, and sighed. He hoped indeed that Mary and the Angels would be there to receive him at the hour of his death, but sometimes he worried. Maybe the things he’d done—small acts from his small magic to avert death or to convince a tottering believer, had damned him already. Or maybe Heaven itself had changed with the Sundering.

He could do nothing but continue. He’d been told the Mother of God was Grátia pléna, and he would have to trust in her Grace to intercede with her Son on his behalf.

He found his own trail toward the cursed valley, his feet carrying him along before he could let any doubts assail him. All his life Avenir had conquered his questions and survived persecution. From the Natives who considered him a stranger, from the whites who considered him a Native, from the pagans who considered him mad, from the Protestants who considered him evil. He remained strong, though.

Just because America had been severed from the rest of the world did not mean he was in any way cut off from Jesus, Mother Mary, or the Holy Spirit. Surely God was stronger than any magic he could imagine.

The air was chilly, the sky gray with clouds. The tall, feathery larches swayed back and forth whispering in a sound that was not a threat, but like a frightened child whispering a prayer.

Far ahead on the other side of the valley, a geyser gushed with a loud hiss, shooting a plume of steam and boiling water high into the air. The sound shattered the silence, and Avenir flinched, but he forced himself to continue, to face his test. He heard other gasping fumaroles, exhalations of poisonous gas belching from the ground. A slurry of mud and ash bubbled up like some witch’s cauldron.

He closed his eyes prayed more loudly and kept walking.

He had known of the valley of yellow stones, or at least his mother had told him of it. The ominous place had existed since before the Sundering, with its thermal turmoil and its natural wonders, but after the return of magic, it had become something else.

Near the edge of the valley, he paused to make his preparations. A shallow, half-hearted stream trickled down the hillside. He knelt on the soft bank, where a thin scum of chemical residue had collected. The wildlife in the forest around him had fallen into a hush.

Father Avenir removed his pack and opened it, withdrawing his empty bowl used for cooking and also for washing himself, even shaving when he felt so inclined. For now, it would serve as a basin to hold the water. He dipped the bowl in the stream and went through the motions of blessing it.

For a battle such as this against arcane demons and the minions of Satan himself, it would have been far better to use holy water blessed by the Pope himself, but no drop of that precious fluid remained any longer in all of the Americas. But every priest, who had been ordained by another priest in a line stretching back to the apostles, had been given the power to cast out demons.

Setting the holy water aside, he prepared himself. Wrapped in a clean handkerchief, he carried wafers purchased from a house in St. Louis, whose proprietor claimed to make the consecration bread in a way acceptable to the Church. Father Avenir doubted it. Over the years, whenever he went back to replenish his supplies, he found the wafers were yellower and contained more seeds, but they would have to do… as would the wine he poured from a small bottle to a willow bark cup.

Fifteen years ago, bright with the potential of his mission, he had set out with French wine and a silver cup, but neither had escaped the rapacity of the first Native tribe to whom he’d preached. Now Avenir used some kind of berry wine he obtained from the tribes in exchange for furs, and he had made the willow bark cup himself.

It didn’t matter. By the words of the consecration, they would become the body and blood of that most powerful act of sacrifice that had redeemed the world.

Continuing, he spread a clean piece of suede on top of a large lichen-covered rock, balanced the offerings on it, donned his cassock and started the holy service.

He didn’t need to open the Bible. He remembered the readings for the day, and as he boomed the holy words in Latin from memory at the wild land, it seemed that the hush deepened, as though the land itself listened. And why not? Hadn’t St. Francis preached to the fish? Not that Avenir was a saint, by any means. He performed the whole service and consumed the flesh and the blood of the Son of God, willing himself to become one with Him, possessed of His strength.

He returned his implements to the pack and folded up the clean suede piece. He pulled out the wooden cross and let it hang proudly on his chest. He ran his fingers through his beard and his tangled hair, as if to make himself presentable, but he was not going to a debutante’s ball. Moses himself wandering through the wilderness had looked no worse. When Jesus was tempted by the devil, he had not fretted over his appearance. What mattered were Father Avenir’s heart and soul.

With the newly blessed water in the bowl, he filled his battered but serviceable old aspergillum. He took his battered old copy of the Holy Bible and pressed it against the black tunic at his chest, then he raised himself to his feet from the bank of the sluggish stream. Prepared and with a strong heart, he looked ahead into the smoke and fumes as another angry geyser blasted not far away.

“I come to pray.” His voice was soft, but the challenge was clear. “Fire demons, you will bow before the word of God.”

He had no doubt the supernatural forces lurking in this raw wound on the landscape would hear him. If they bowed before his faith, he might let them live. Avenir could be generous. Even angels themselves could fall from heaven, and creatures such as these, which manifested the superstitious beliefs of the unconverted, were all part of the universe that God created. If they could be brought to heel and made to give their service to the Holy Word, perhaps they could be useful. Father Avenir had seen countless inexplicable things in these arcane territories. It was not his purpose to question the wonders of the Sundered world, and he didn’t dare question his faith.

Leaving his pack and his fur coat behind where he could retrieve them if he survived this confrontation, or where scavengers could find them if he didn’t, Father Avenir strode ahead, one man alone carrying the strength of God. He walked out into the blistering valley of fire and smoke. He could smell the bitter brimstone in the air and the fumes stung his eyes, but his tears were those of joy and determination. In defiance, he inhaled deeply of the sulphurous fumes, knowing he was about to enter Hell itself.

The tribe had called themselves the Snake People, or in their own language, the Shoshone. They had once been a large tribe with many villages and much trade throughout the mountains, but in recent years, with the growing evil force that had corrupted the magic in the land, many Shoshone had been possessed, their minds stolen away and placed in thrall of the dark controlling force. Many of their villages had been burned to the ground, destroyed by incomprehensibly evil attacks, fiery demons summoned by the black spirit himself.

Now, the Shoshone were scattered and desperate, packing up their possessions and moving from place to place as if hunted. Their strong warriors were forced to form raiding parties to seize food and supplies from settlements even weaker than their own.

Just a few weeks earlier in his wanderings in the wilderness, searching for other children of God, Father Avenir suddenly found himself confronted by two sturdy warriors with long black hair and fierce-looking spears. On horseback, they rode in out of the trees like bandits, confronting the priest. Father Avenir had found himself in many such perilous situations before, but he had his faith as a shield and a calm demeanor, as well as the fact that he had no possessions anyone would want to take, except for some dried meat and old acorns. Father Avenir had smiled a welcome at the dour-faced warriors and said a Latin prayer for them, offering greetings in English, French, and several local Native tongues.

The lead warrior straightened, cocked his chin. “You are a priest? A shaman of the White God?” He sniffed. “And how strong is your God?”

Father Avenir showed all the confidence he could summon. “My God is strong. He created the world and the whole universe.”

The warrior let out a gruff laugh. “All gods say that, but at least our god, Coyote, admits that he sometimes plays tricks on us.”

Father Avenir formed a stern expression as he clutched the cross at his chest. “My God does not play tricks.” Though, really, who but a God with an odd sense of humor would create a child half-white and half-Native, then give him a religion whose leader had been removed from this reality?

The Shoshone warrior gestured with his spear. “I am Cameahwait. Ride behind my companion. We want you to speak with our shaman. The Snake People need strength now. Perhaps you can succeed where our shaman failed.”

The two warriors rode as he walked, and they led him to a small and sparse new village. The people had cut down saplings and built new huts, covering them with tattered old skins. To Father Avenir it looked as if they had salvaged their possessions and moved often from place to place. They built up camp fires in the village and Cameahwait loudly introduced their guest, calling for the women to cook and share their food, which consisted of a few rabbits, squirrels, and trout from the streams.

Father Avenir accepted their hospitality, although the people looked at him with both fear and suspicion. When he made the sign of the cross, the Shoshone flinched as if he were summoning some great magic. But Avenir smiled at them and gestured his blessing. He sat on a log near the cookfire as they brought out food, still not certain why he was here, but as always he welcomed the chance to spread the Word. He had an acceptable familiarity with their language because his mother had been captive among the Shoshone as a young woman, and he knew enough similar words in other tribal tongues that he could patch together ways to explain even the more esoteric concepts.

But the women who served him were not his audience, and the few rambunctious children running among the trees avoided him. Cameahwait and several other warriors from a scattered raiding party also kept their distance.

Father Avenir ate alone until another man emerged from an isolated structure, a wiry man with a weighty presence about him, clumpy, scrabbly hair, and a feral demeanor. He prowled forward, hunched over as if he couldn’t decide whether he was a man or an animal. He wore a loincloth, stained moccasins up to his ankles, and the rich, silvery pelt of a coyote wrapped around his shoulders with the head still intact, lolling to the side. The shaman came forward, his eyes locked on Father Avenir’s, and took a seat immediately across the fire, staring at the priest.

Something about the shaman’s presence changed the movement in the air, and the acrid smoke from the campfire drifted about and burned Avenir’s nose and eyes. He blinked away and gestured, made the sign of the cross, and the smoke drifted off in a different direction.

The shaman grinned as if that had been a test of wills. “My name is Dosabite. You are a priest of the white men. You bring their bible from across the great water, long before the Sundering.”

“I am a priest,” Avenir admitted. “I follow the word of God, the traditions of the apostles, and the dictates of the Holy Father from Rome.” He held up his Bible, knowing that none of the Native tribes had any written language. “God’s word is preserved here forever in these pages. It is great magic.”

“So you say,” said Dosabite. “But if your God is so strong, why hasn’t he defeated the evil spirit that drains these lands, steals our warriors, and raises revenants from the dead as his minions?”

“Perhaps the fight is just beginning,” Avenir said.

“We shall see how strong your God is.” The shaman picked up the coyote head and placed it firmly on his own, tugging it down as if it were a helmet. The sharp teeth stood out across Dosabite’s face. The flaps of fur hung over his ears with pointed canine tufts of their own. The dead eyes of the coyote were like dark holes, but the priest stared at them, undaunted. The spirits of the world had no power over the eternal.

Father Avenir had been trained by other priests in St. Louis when he was just a young man. He had learned how to read and how to preach, and he had become passionately convinced in the truth of the Word. He had been born long after the comet came and after the magic shifted. He knew that many spells and folk magic worked, and that some people exhibited great powers, most prominent of whom was probably the great wizard, Benjamin Franklin.

Father Avenir had some small ability with magic himself, though he preferred not to learn spells, because learning spells was admitting there was a magic greater than God’s power, and he would not do that. Instead, he told them about Jesus, or David and Goliath, or how Jeremiah stopped the sun in the sky, or how Moses parted the Red Sea. These were stories greater than any Native myths, and they were true.

As he faced the shaman over the campfire, Father Avenir made his case, told his impassioned tales to Dosabite, who listened to them without sign of skepticism. When he was finished, the shaman reciprocated by telling of the trickster god Coyote, a powerful spirit whose works could be seen every day in the natural world, manifested in incomprehensible coincidences, unexpected problems, but also miracles.

“Only God creates miracles,” Avenir said. “The rest is just magic, which is lesser. My mother told me all those tales when I was little.”

“Only fools insist on one explanation,” retorted the shaman.

As they both ate and talked, Dosabite spoke of the tribulations of his people, how the Shoshone had been driven from place to place by the evil spirit abroad in the land, by fire demons who burned villages, of giant river serpents infesting the waters. Then he told Father Avenir of a place in the mountains to the north where the anger and evil bubbled forth from beneath the ground, where it cracked open the land of the yellow stone, where true evil could be confronted. “But go there only if your God is strong enough,” Dosabite warned.

Something about the shaman’s words intrigued Father Avenir. “I would see this for myself. My mother spoke of it, but she told me nothing of spirits dwelling there. My God is strong enough to purge them.”

“I do not doubt your stories or your God,” said Dosabite. “In these days with magic saturating the land, and the beliefs and fears of all tribes feeding it, one would be ill-advised to doubt any god.”

With a flare, sparks swirled up from the campfire, and Father Avenir reeled back as he crossed himself. The smoke drifted in front of his eyes again, and the sparks died away to a low glow of embers. He looked across at the shaman, shocked to see that the coyote skin covering Dosabite’s head had changed. The jaws were longer, settled into place. The eyes were fire with a golden glow.

He was Coyote, and the head had become part of him. The shaman’s tongue lolled out between long, sharp teeth and he made a chuffing, feral sound before he leaped up from the log and bounded away from the campfire, leaving Avenir alone and clutching his Bible.

Now, around the steamy, smoking basin, Father Avenir saw towering evergreens, rolling hills, mountain peaks. During his long trek from the village of the Snake People, following the directions Dosabite had given him, the priest had headed into the lush wilderness, far from where even the remaining bands would go.

Avenir feared the looming evil presence that supposedly was engulfing all of the uncharted lands beyond the Mississippi and the Missouri. He fought for strength within himself, knowing in his heart and soul that he himself might be the warrior to defeat that presence, and he was an inadequate warrior for such a great battle.

He’d fasted and prayed, and he sang the old hymns he’d learned in the church in St. Louis. Now, his voice echoed strong off the landscape and rang a strange susurrus from the local magic.

“Pange, lingua, gloriósi

Córporis mystérium,

Sanguinísque pretiósi,

Quem in mundi prétium

Fructus ventris generósi

Rex effúdit géntium.”

Let the spirits and magics hear of the king born of a virgin, who’d shed his blood for men. Let them tremble.

As he moved through the hellish landscape of curling steam and foul-smelling smoke, he could feel the power simmering within the earth, an angry strength that was fierce, independent. He slowly silenced his voice and continued forward, his right hand wrapped around the cross. The Bible was tucked snugly between his arm and his side, giving him comfort and strength. The brimstone stench swirled around his face, but he breathed deeply, showing no fear.

When the comet had exploded and sundered America from the rest of the world, that event could have swept the remnants of Eden along with it, but perhaps this land also held the gates of Hell. Hadn’t Jesus himself said they would not stand against the Church? Even if all that remained of the Church in this desolate place was Father Avenir, he had been ordained by men who were ordained by the apostles who had broken bread with Jesus. And Avenir had sanctified himself for this battle.

The hollow breathy roar of a fumarole broke open to his left, gushing fumes and hot gases, like the laughter of a monster. The priest could feel the pull of his enemy ahead, a strength that made the ground throb. Despite the surrounding tall pines in the hills, the chemical exhalations in the basin had bleached the ground, covered it in white powder, killed off many of the trees so that they stood bent and brown from the poison within the soil. Another geyser erupted, spouting hot steam and a jet of water high overhead.

Father Avenir would not be intimidated. He trudged onward, muttering the words under his breath,

“Verbum caro, panem verum

Verbo carnem éfficit:

Fitque sanguis Christi merum,

Et si sensus déficit,

Ad firmándum cor sincérum

Sola fides súfficit.”

He realized that mumbling was not good enough, so he sang the words, loud and defiant,

“TANTUM ERGO SACRAMÉNTUM

Venerémur cérnui:

Et antíquum documéntum

Novo cedat rítui:

Præstet fides suppleméntum

Sénsuum deféctui.

Genitóri, Genitóque

Laus et jubilátio,

Salus, honor, virtus quoque

Sit et benedíctio:

Procedénti ab utróque

Compar sit laudátio.”

Then he followed it with the twenty-third Psalm, his favorite: “Dominus reget me et nihil mihi deerit, In loco pascuae ibi me conlocavit super aquam refectionis educavit me, Animam meam convertit deduxit me super semitas iustitiae propter nomen suum, Nam et si ambulavero in medio umbrae mortis non timebo mala quoniam tu mecum es virga tua et baculus tuus ipsa me consolata sunt, Parasti in conspectu meo mensam adversus eos qui tribulant me inpinguasti in oleo caput meum et calix meus inebrians quam praeclarus est, Et misericordia tua subsequitur me omnibus diebus vitae meae et ut inhabitem in domo Domini in longitudinem dierum.”

He didn’t know enough Latin to catch the nuances of the words, but he knew them by heart. The priests had taught him Latin, but perhaps they hadn’t been very well taught themselves, since the great teachers and great books of learning had been lost in the Sundering. His own teachers admitted that sometimes they didn’t understand a particular word. But he knew the Psalm spoke of God walking with him, as he’d walked with David, and setting a table for him in the presence of his enemies.

How many times had Father Avenir been safe where he shouldn’t be? How had he survived in hostile territory these many years? How, but for the grace of God?

The geyser field seemed cowed, or was that just his imagination?

He took heart and trudged forward, shouting, “I bring the way, the truth, and the light. I feel your evil presence here. I smell the lake of fire and eternal damnation, and I am not afraid.”

He felt the well-smoothed wooden sides of the cross press into his calloused palm. “Face me!” he yelled. “Or are you afraid?” His lips were cracked, and his dry throat burned from the caustic fumes. Water welled up within his stinging eyes, but it only purified his vision.

Mud pots bubbled like lava on either side of him, but he did not waver in his forward journey. He had remained steadfast in his faith all his life.

Back in St. Louis, he had argued with the numerous Protestants, defended himself for being a papist, for still obeying the Holy Father in Rome even though no one knew who the Pope might be now. He had been mocked and ridiculed, shunned, robbed, beaten, but he had survived. Each such incident was a trial that God inflicted upon his missionary, and if Avenir had to die while serving his mission, his Lord, then that would only assure his passage into heaven. Martyrdom might, in fact, be the only way a man like him could get to paradise.

A geyser erupted close to him, startling him. He saw powdery white crystals piled around the crater that looked like a maw in the ground. Scalding water rocketed up and rained down to drench him in a hot downpour. He felt the water steam in his tangled hair, soak his tattered black tunic, but he pressed on, blinking away the distraction. A new hole cracked open in the barren ground in front of him, sending gouts of foul-smelling steam. It was like a thunderstorm of smoke, sulphur, and blisteringly hot vapors.

Father Avenir stopped, seeing shadowy shapes, twisted inhuman forms, damned wretches cast into hell itself. They lurched up, barely taking shape, looming closer as if to attack him. The priest cried out, but uttered his prayers again in Latin, knowing there was power in the old words. He crossed himself, and the shadows backed away, hiding within the folds of noxious steam that wafted upward.

But the hideous figures were not avoiding the priest, not cowed by his prayers. Rather, they backed away as if in deference to make way for something far worse.

The silhouette in the steam and smoke approached, a towering muscular figure that towered several feet above Father Avenir’s head. Even so, its back was hunched, as if the thing felt beaten.

The priest didn’t flinch, but faced the approaching figure that pushed aside the obscuring veils as if impatient to be seen. A coal black, cloven hoof stepped forward, improbably balanced on the rough ground. Its brick red skin was covered with knobs and scabs. The creature had a wide, bare chest, like a blacksmith who worked on a forge of souls. A long, barbed tail lashed from the base of its spine, a terrible weapon. The demon lurched forward to show a monstrous head with black horns, evil slitted eyes, a face that should have been beautiful, but was instead a sculpture of diamond-hard fury.

“Lucifer,” Father Avenir gasped. “Fallen angel.”

The devil laughed out loud, a sound like a crack of thunder. The ground rumbled and boiled, and more geysers erupted, belching steam and smoke like a regal fanfare for the king of the damned. “If that is what you wish to call me. I have appeared in this form to comfort you.”

Avenir was aghast. “To comfort me?” He held his Bible up. “I take no comfort in seeing you, Satan.”

The thing laughed again. “You take comfort in the affirmation of your beliefs. You see this valley as Hell, and so you expect the devil himself. I am here exactly as you wished.”

“I wish you to be gone!” Avenir said. “In the name of the Lord God Almighty, I banish you from this arcane world. These lands are not yours.”

The looming Satan twitched, but that seemed to be the extent of Father Avenir’s effectiveness. The demon boomed out, “But I am these lands. I am the spirit of the mountains, the forests, the rivers. There is also much anger at what has been done to this land, and it manifests here, boiling to the surface. You can see it all around you, priest! With the coming of the comet, the magic was reinforced and released. It made all this possible.”

Lucifer stretched out his hands, showing fingertips adorned with long, black claws. “The magic here belongs to the land and the people. As does your magic, too. I feel the strength within you—Tatanka, the bull man, he who will not be moved.” The devil leaned closer, and the priest could smell his breath as foul as a long-abandoned abattoir. “You are part of me as well,” Satan said.

“No!” the priest yelled back.

“Can you not feel it? The simmering power in this land makes all things possible. The gods of the Native tribes have regained their strength, become real and tangible. None of their shamans can deny what he sees with his own eyes, and neither can you.” His long, barbed tail thrashed with impatience.

Father Avenir choked. The brimstone smell was suffocating. “You have no power over me. You are subject to God’s power, as am I.”

The devil back-handed him across the face, striking hard with scaled knuckles that felt like stones. The priest tumbled to his knees, felt blood oozing from a gash in his cheek, but he maintained his grip on the Bible. “Yes, evil is real. I have never doubted it. But that does not mean you can’t be defeated.”

He pulled himself to his feet again, remaining defiant. He wondered what the Shoshone shaman would have seen if he’d come out to this geyser. Surely Dosabite would not view the devil like this. What would other tribes have seen?

“I will drive you from this place,” Avenir vowed.

Lucifer huffed. “I am this place.”

The priest pulled out his aspergillum and without warning he hurled the holy water at Satan’s chest, as he muttered a prayer in the back of his throat to enhance the blessing. With a bright flash, the steam erupted white and pure, driving away the mists and curtains of steam from the fumaroles, geysers, and exhalations from the mud pots.

The devil roared, looked down at his chest in shock, as a great smoking hole ate its way through his chest, devoured his heart, dissolved his stubbly, brick-red body. Satan himself broke apart, shattering into thousands of small dwindling pieces, like a sheet of ice that broke apart and melted under the hot sun.

Striking down the devil seemed to settle the ground around Father Avenir. The earth ceased its rumbling, the geysers faded, the hot water droplets pattered all around him, and the mists cleared. A breeze whipped away the strongest rotten-egg stench, and he saw a widening slice of blue sky overhead.

Laughing, Father Avenir clutched the Bible against the cross over his heart. And yet, he waited. The Great Deceiver was, after all, exactly as his name implied. He waited to feel an exhilaration in the earth itself, a lifting of the weight of evil, a cleansing of this great scarred valley.

Instead, the powerful force that throbbed inside of him remained just as strong—and it came from ahead. It tugged on his soul like a magnet, pulling him along. “I banished you!” he said in a hoarse voice, but he still felt the power, the insistent anger.

A voice resonated in his head, no longer the thunderous male voice of Satan himself, but a female voice that was at once benevolent and deadly, like all the protective mothers in the world speaking in unison. “You banished the part of me that was within yourself, but I am still here.”

The force tugged at him, and Avenir staggered forward between the now-quiescent geysers, walking along the valley floor. “I want to see you, and you need to see me. You have killed your Satan, and I applaud you. But I am not the same.”

The voice was tantalizing, and though he fought it, she seemed to put him in a trance. The aspergillum was empty, and he had no more blessed water… but he had his Bible and he had his cross. Father Avenir stopped resisting.

The smell of brimstone was thinner now and he did not feel as threatened, though the female voice that throbbed from the ground and came from somewhere ahead seemed more powerful than even the hulking Lucifer. This, he realized, was his real opponent. The spirit of this valley of fire demons, the vengeful fury of the arcane lands made manifest.

Up ahead, he saw the flat, circular bowl of a pond, like a shimmering irregular mirror. Exhalations of steam drifted up from the surface of the water, and as he approached, he saw that the waters were absolutely still, not stirred by any wind. This pool was a conduit, the source of the feminine voice, the entity that lived within this large and strange valley.

The waters were scalding hot—he could sense that even as he came closer. The ground was bleak and barren. The small lake itself was dead, yet full of colors as if someone had drowned a rainbow there. Chromatic rings of blue and copper, bright green with tendrils of yellow spread out beneath the surface.

“Come closer,” the voice said. “Look into me, so that I may see you.”

“I will show you the holy cross.” He stood on the shore feeling the heat. He held out his wooden cross and looked down to see his reflection in the perfectly still surface… yet the vision went deeper, changing him to a younger man, then an older man. His appearance shifted in the reflection, transforming from himself to Dosabite, then Cameahwait, then numerous other Natives he had seen, then his beloved priests back in St. Louis who had taught him Latin and the Word. He saw his mother, smiling at him and crying when she’d last seen him at the school in St. Louis… his father, with bleak blue eyes and firm expression when telling Avenir he was leaving him at the school so he could learn not to be a savage, and a beautiful Native woman he’d loved before he realized his calling was to the Church and celibacy. It was a blur of shapes, memories, figures.

“Why do you tempt me?” he cried.

“I remind you, that is all. I need you to understand that I am not evil, merely different… just as you are different from the ways and the beliefs here in the wilderness.”

“I bring my beliefs with me,” Avenir said in defiance. “I was baptized. I am a priest. I bring the word of God.”

“You were baptized in the civilized world, foolish man. Not here.”

A stir of ripples circled the chromatic pool. Steam drifted higher, but Avenir leaned over to peer closer, feeling the pull of the shimmering water, the iridescent colors.

“If you wish to serve in these wild lands, if you are truly a missionary, then you must be baptized here as well.” The heat of the water rippled up, nearly blistering the skin on his face.

“You would kill me,” he said. “You would trick me!”

“I have no need of tricks,” said the pulsing voice of the wild. “I know what I am, and I sense the goodness in you, the passion for truth and eternity.”

The voice echoed in his head and Avenir felt a warm honey drifting through him.

“I find it exhilarating,” the voice said.

“I have my mission. You will not sway me from it.”

“I am trying to help you. You cannot bring your civilized ways out here, and so you must adapt your ways to the spirit of the land. There is evil here, even I know it.” The voice thrummed as if in an undertone of fear. “Before this battle is over, there will be many strange alliances. Are you willing to take the risk, Tatanka? Father Avenir? Will you be strong enough and baptize yourself here as well?”

The priest shivered, despite the pounding heat all around him. “I cannot,” he said. “I will not forsake what I believe.”

“I did not ask that of you,” said the presence. “I asked you only to trust… as you ask the Natives to trust you, to believe your words. Now believe mine.” Her voice echoed louder. He cringed, but he couldn’t press the sound away. “I did not say that I’m a rival of your God, nor that I am the sole creator. I am a powerful part of creation, though, and you cannot deny me."

The colors in the chromatic pool were tantalizing. The water itself seemed perfect, pristine, inviting.

Father Avenir was sore and weary, his hair caked from the smoke, grit, and dust of countless days alone on the trail. “I will need the strength,” he whispered. “I come from the civilized world, but I am part of this one. I don’t ever intend to go back, any more than America can return to the rest of the world.”

Earlier, when he faced the manifestation of Satan, Father Avenir had felt fear, but this was not so simple or clear. This was dread and uncertainty, as well as longing. He was alien here in these arcane territories, and he knew there were things here that he could never explain.

But questions were only doubts until they were answered.

He was like those early apostles going out into the wild tribes. Unless the Bible was wrong—and that was impossible—then in those days, too, spirits and magic had walked the land. Had the Catholic missionaries not told defeated local gods that they were now something else and integrated them into their tales and beliefs? The spirits themselves converted, and a legend of Jupiter became a tale of Saint John, or a story of Diana became the most holy story of Saint Catherine.

Avenir was not a fool. He understood how that had happened, the Catholic belief encircling and purifying the pagan one. But could he accomplish that unless he accepted it and became part of it himself? His mother was Native. He was part of this land already. Surely he could touch the spirits and make them his own.

Before he could change his mind, the priest pulled off the tattered black tunic and set it on the ground beside the edge of the hot pool. He set down the Bible and aspergillum, removed his boots, his buckskin breeches, and stood there naked, alone in the wilderness, just as he had been in his first baptism. The only thing he kept was the wooden cross on the thong around his neck.

The female voice remained silent, but he could feel her presence there. And he looked down at the hot pool, knowing that the water was scalding, almost to the boiling point. It was deadly—yes, it would kill him, just like a martyr being boiled in oil back during the days of the Inquisition.

He would die, and his body would float here, unseen by the Shoshone or any white trappers. His flesh would be boiled off his bones, which would then sink to the bottom. Father Avenir would be forgotten.

But, he chose not to believe that. His own faith was strong, just as when he had destroyed the vision of Satan. Had not Daniel walked out of the furnace alive?

The female voice, the presence of the land of the yellow stone, throbbed up to enfold him, protect him. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. If his faith was too weak, he did not deserve to live anyway.

Father Avenir fell forward into the hot pool. The shock flashed around him. The water embraced his skin and his hair. He gasped, but fought back his terror. The wooden cross floated around him as he drifted in the hot pool, like a lifeline.

The water burned and tingled, enfolded him, scrubbed his skin, soaked his hair—but he lived. He drifted there, wrapped in the blanket of his own faith, and of the strength that this land’s magic added to his beliefs. Yes, he was strong enough to do this, and now he would be baptized in the ways of the wild as well as the ways of the white man. His terror lasted only a moment, and then he was cleansed. He was accepted.

After a long moment, the female voice in his mind spoke, “It is as I thought. I know you now, Tatanka, bull of heaven, rock of all Saints, father of the future. You may go, and you will be remembered.”

Father Avenir staggered out of the scalding water and stood with steam drifting from his reddened skin. He looked utterly clean as the water evaporated, his skin pink as a newborn’s, his hair fine and soft. He looked back at the rainbow colors beneath the pool.

He felt he had answers to the strongest mysteries in his heart, while other questions remained—just as powerful, but not quite so urgent. “Thank you,” he muttered, realizing that whatever that spirit was, she also understood the love of God, as he did.

With painstaking care, Father Avenir dressed himself again. Even his stiff and dirty clothes could not take away the new feeling of purity inside him.

With his pack and his furs, the priest trudged away from the valley of the steaming geysers. He needed several days just to think about what he had experienced, to accept it, and to assess the new understanding—the new powers?—that he had acquired. The epiphany made him different. He was not just a priest from the white man’s world, but he was also fundamentally a part of these arcane territories. He was now, as he’d been at birth, both Native and European, both wild and civilized. But for the first time, he accepted both. He was Pierre de Toussaint D’Avenir and he was Tatanka. He wanted to tell the shaman Dosabite everything that had happened. Perhaps Dosabite could only perceive part of it, but even that would help.

Father Avenir made his way through the mountains, camping each night, finding food for his supper or going hungry when he found none. One day in the long shadows of late afternoon, two riders came upon him in the forest. He recognized the long-haired warriors instantly as Cameahwait and his companion. The warrior chief looked strained and saddened, not at all the cocky raider who had first met him some weeks before.

“You are the Catholic priest,” Cameahwait said. “We have searched for you.”

“Yes, you know me. I am Father Avenir.” He paused, and then added, “I am Tatanka Pierre de Toussaint D’Avenir.”

The warrior nodded. “Sacagawea sent me to find you. Her husband has been struck down by the great wizard. His spirit is gone, and she has requested a priest for the last rites.”

Father Avenir brushed off the front of his furs. “I will accompany you. That is my duty as a priest. But, who is Sacagawea?”

“She is my sister,” said Cameahwait, “taken from us as a child by raiders. She is back now, though. She travels on an expedition with a group of white men, led by Captain Lewis and Captain Clark.”

“An expedition?” Avenir asked.

The second warrior was impatient. “There is no time for questions. Come with us. Make haste.”

Father Avenir agreed and mounted up behind the second warrior. “Take me to them, and I will do my duty as a priest.” He understood more, but he also had many questions. Maybe his own revelations could be shared not just with the Native tribes, but with others back in the east. “I look forward to speaking with these Captains Lewis, and Clark.”

Susan R. Matthews

Ghost Flotilla U-boats: Embarkation

Goond—for “Gunther,” Oberleutnant zur See Gunther Hols, First Officer on board the “Smoking Salmon”—leaned up against the railing of the gun platform aft of U-818’s bridge, enjoying the warm breeze in his face and smoking a rare cigarette. It was a beautiful day.

The watch on the bridge had their jackets open to air out whatever they wore next to their skins. Two men of the crew were re-painting the boat’s maeling on the sides of the conning tower, the Smoking Salmon itself, shown curved into a relaxed arc—as if sitting in an arm-chair—and smoking a pipe whose rising smoke was meant to indicate the plume of oily black plume a tanker sent up as it sank.

They’d sunk one off the Cape this cruise, but otherwise the pickings had been slim. They’d missed the latest Allied convoy from Freetown but Headquarters wanted them in place for the next one, so here they were, idling along, burning fuel if not at a very great rate and catching up on boat maintenance. They could afford it. U-818 was an IX-C/40, one of the longer-range boats, and they’d successfully refueled from U-459 south of St. Helena, and taken on torpedoes.

“Sail?” one of the watch said, suddenly, binoculars fixed on a point on the far horizon to the east—Africa. He didn’t sound at all certain. “Masthead, no steam, ZweiVo.”

It wasn’t Goond’s watch, but he was here. As Sclarvie—the second officer, “ZweiVo”—lifted his binoculars to search, Goond raised those without which an officer never climbed onto the bridge to see for himself. It took him a moment to bring the ship into focus: yes, sails. There were sailing vessels a-plenty in the coastal waters, though such things weren’t likely to be good wartime targets. Still—

“We’ll have a look,” Sclarvie said. “I’ll tell the captain. EinsVo?”

Their commander would be “Lieutenant,” in the British Navy. But on board a boat, any boat, there was only one captain, and theirs was Herr Kaleun Verricht Lachs—the “salmon” of their cheeky boat-icon. And Goond was “EinsVo, first officer.” Goond leaned over the open hatch of the conning tower to yell down into the control room.

“Ship,” Goond called. “Under sail, unidentified, bearing two sixty-five. We dive?” A dark-hulled U-boat riding just above the surface of the waves would be much more difficult to spot from a sailing ship than vice versa, and of course a U-boat could get away much faster. But there was a line between confidence and recklessness, and while Lachs had pushed the line on occasion he generally avoided irrational risks. It had taken more than solely good luck to make U-818 a “lucky” boat.

“Periscope depth.” That was their engineering officer—“Ellie,” for Leitender Ingenieur Vilsohn, who had been with U-818 since its construction training. “Close hatches.” No, not an emergency dive, and they wouldn’t go deep. But Goond and the watch cleared the bridge in expeditious haste anyway, in order to not get into a habit of dawdling. Goond was next-to-last man down, with Sclarvie securing the hatch behind him.

It took a moment for Goond’s eyes to adjust to the relative dimness of the boat’s interior. Lachs was there in the Zentral control room, navigation periscope coming up as the boat gently settled beneath the surface of the water to minimize their profile. “I can’t make it out,” Lachs said, frowning a little in his concentration. “Closer, Vilsohn. It’s probably nothing for us.”

The words were mild, calmly stated, unremarkable. And yet a sense of sudden dread and horror overtook Goond, for no reason at all. What was the matter? An attack of vertigo?

It was gone as soon as it had come. The lights, Goond decided, nothing more. There seemed to be a bit of a haze in the control room that made the familiar surroundings just a little strange in his eyes. He blinked, and things were clear and ordinary once again.

Time passed. Half an hour. Goond took over at the periscope, because he and Lachs had the most exposure to sailing ships between them. Navigator Rathke had their copy of Jane’s Fighting Ships out and ready for consultation, but it had little information on anything like the ship on scope; it seemed to have no smoke-stack at all. Completely unconverted. Remarkable.

The closer they got the less threatening the ship appeared, but also of less and less value as a military target. “It appears to be a merchant ship,” Goond said. “It isn’t any one of our cadet ships, nor does it seem to be British.” Could such a thing even carry war materials? Yet almost anything could be classified as war materials, that was true.

He felt an itch between his shoulder-blades, a little tension in his chest. There was no reason for alarm. They’d encountered British decoy ships—“Q” boats— before, but this one was nowhere near enticing enough a target to hope to lure a U-boat close enough to attack. Or was it? U-818 was approaching, wasn’t it? Goond shifted his feet irritably. He was only regretting the unfinished portion of his cigarette, he told himself. That was all.

Lachs took the periscope for another moment or five, and came to his decision. “Surface,” Lachs said, ducking his head to call through the hatchway toward the radio room. The radio closet. Where Bentzien was keeping his ear on the hydrophones for any chance British submarines, Goond supposed. “Bentzien, any traffic? Can you make contact?”

But Bentzien just shook his head. Why would there be radio contact? Goond asked himself. A ship of its apparent vintage might not even have a radio. A tramp. A relic. Perhaps it had a belly-full of grain, or perhaps it was even more useless than that, perhaps it was in ballast. There would be no torpedoes loosed on this one. If sinking was to be done the deck gun would do it, but Lachs didn’t seem to be anticipating any such action, because the gun crew had not been called for, nor the ammunition train.

By the time the hatch was opened and Goond clambered up onto the bridge they were close enough to see the ship without any need for binoculars, which was closer than Goond had expected. He didn’t recognize the flag the ship was flying, a private flag of some sort, no nationality identified; there was a boat in the water making for them, but going by the short distance it had put between it and its mother-ship they had only just started rowing.

Sclarvie put the signaling flags away. Clearly a face-to-face was anticipated, clearly there was no immediate danger of destruction. Get away. There was a voice in Goond’s mind, his own voice, speaking urgently, with increasing panic. Go away get away get away. He didn’t understand it. So he ignored it.

“Alle hagel schip,” the man in the forefront of the row-boat called. A niggling unease was worming around just outside of reach in the back of Goond’s mind: the clothing the speaker wore seemed archaic, somehow, the bloused trousers, the outdated pattern of that plain cloth coat. “Trensferlettrs let?”

Goond didn’t understand. All hail ship, yes, that would mean heil Schiffe, hello boat. Transferlettrs, can you take letters. There was a square bundle perhaps twelve inches square in the bottom of the row-boat, wrapped in leather and tied up with thick twine.

“Wait, we will bring a man up,” Sclarvie called back, because what the man in the boat was saying didn’t translate into good solid German. It sounded a little Dutch, to Goond. To the man nearest the hatch Sclarvie said “Call for Heimsat, yes?”

Heimsat was one of the machiner’s mates. His people were from the borderlands with Denmark, if Goond remembered; maybe he would communicate more effectively. Goond didn’t understand the sense of panic he was feeling: as though he knew that something horrible was going to happen, as though it had already happened, as though he had to stop it from happening while at the same time there was nothing he could do to prevent the disaster that was almost upon them.

“We zullen wachten,” the man in the boat said. We will wait. Goond could hear the meaning as clearly as though he actually spoke the dialect. There were plenty of cognate words. It was not a far stretch. Here was Heimsat on the bridge, calling down to the rowboat that was now bobbing in the water just beside the saddle tanks; “Hallo!” Heimsat said. “U letters? Geef hem aan ons door, wij zullen ze nemen voor zu.”

It was clearly the right thing to say, because the man in the boat smiled—almost too eagerly, but why would that be?—and picked up the parcel. “Hier zijn ze, veel dank,” the man in the boat said. But Heimsat had squinted off into the distance at the other ship’s flag and gone pale, pointing.

“Not right,” Heimsat had said, urgency and disbelief alike in his voice. “Dutch East Indies? Ancient history, Herr ZweiVo, impossible, we should get away from here—”

And the alarm bells went off in Goond’s mind. Something was catastrophically wrong. They should not touch that parcel of purported letters, they should not, there was something badly amiss, why would any antiquated sailing boat be handing letters over to a U-boat, wrong, danger, warning—

“Herr EinsVo!” Someone was shaking him by the shoulder, and Goond realized he’d been dreaming. He was not off the coast of Africa, three years ago. He was here in the safety of his own berth on U-818. They were in Arctic waters. They had left Hammerfest in Norway. But fast on his glad realization of his near escape from whatever he had feared from the encounter in his dreams came the memory of where he was here and now, and why it was a much more immediate peril. “We are ready. Herr Kahloin raises the boat.”

On convoy duty from Hammerfest in Norway, hunting Allied supply missions to the Soviets by way of Murmansk. Surprised by bombers from an Allied aircraft carrier not five days out, because where was their air support? The same place it had always been. Functionally nonexistant.

Sent down into the basement with damage to the diesels, damage to the ballast tanks, to the fuel tanks, to every gauge and meter on the boat. The electrics on emergency reserve. All nonessential personnel confined to lying down in their hammocks or their bunks breathing through the damned potash cartridges that were supposed to protect them from the inevitable build-up of carbon dioxide in the air as the available oxygen inevitably, unavoidably, deteriorated.

Goond tore the respirator away from his face with a convulsive movement and struggled up out of his berth, his head as sore and tender as a burn wound or a boil. “How long?” he asked, but whether he meant how long they’d been down or how long it would take them to reach the surface rather escaped him at this moment. It didn’t matter. The man who’d awakened him—one of the sailors on the second watch, Dekert—was obviously as impaired as he was, and did not answer either of those questions.

“You are requested in control room. With respect.” Goond was glad of the helping hand. He’d been dreaming. He remembered now.

He’d felt no presentiments of dread or fear or panic at the time. It had been only at the point at which the rowboat had regained its parent ship, the point at which the packet of letters Sclarvie had accepted had disappeared, the point at which the ship had turned abruptly and hove away toward Table Bay at an angle and a speed that was impossible given current weather conditions, only at that point had Goond realized that there was no ship. There were no letters. There’d been no rowboat.

Only then had Goond realized that they’d had intimate contact with a ghost ship, and were doomed.

“Thanks, I am coming directly.” The lights were still dim. The atmosphere was heavy, the potash cartridge breathing apparatus heavy and burdensome. He was lucky he’d managed to keep it in place for however long it had been that he’d remained unconscious.

He’d wanted to be awake, because his was the first watch: but it was the engineer who would save them, and up to a skeleton crew to stay out of the way and let the engine room and the technical people save their lives. Also Lachs had insisted. That had been unfair, perhaps. Lachs laid no such restriction on himself: but Lachs was their captain. So, Goond told himself, perhaps Lachs had a right.

Goond stumbled aft to the control room. Ellie—Joachim Vilsohn—was there, of course, standing behind his hydroplane operators; and Lachs leaning up against the chart chest with his characteristic sangfroid and nonchalance, aware of everything, surprised by nothing, always that beat of consideration before he reacted. The boat was nose-up and rising.

“Faster,” Lachs said. “Heinze?” This was called through to the radio operator, and Lachs apparently liked what he heard, because he nodded. “Yes, still good, all quiet upstairs, gentlemen. Just the way we like it.” So there was no sign of the enemy. That didn’t need to mean anything.

There could be a destroyer topside, sitting in the water, waiting them out. There could be a regular bomber patrol, like the one that had almost sunk them, scanning the seas for them. But there was nothing actively moving in the water above, and they were out of time, because it had been surely more than twenty-four hours now since they had been forced down.

Goond could hear Ellie issuing his instructions to the hydroplane operators, forward hydroplanes up fifteen, aft eight. The engines had started to hum a little more loudly: the boat was under active propulsion, not idling in place. They couldn’t have much battery power left, after this long. Lachs would be getting desperate, in his own laid-back fashion. Was it his imagination—Goond asked himself—or could he feel a change in the angle of inclination beneath his feet, as the boat climbed?

One hundred and fifty meters. That was what the depth gauge said. The last Goond could remember seeing that gauge, the covering had been cracked to the point of unreadability; but it was whole and entire now. He didn’t know how many replacements the boat still carried, not exactly, but he suspected that there weren’t many left.

The closer they got to the surface the less risk of the bends the crew would have if they had to make an emergency exit from the boat while it was still underwater: but what difference did it make? Anybody who had to leave the shelter of their U-boat was dead anyway, because the waters of the Arctic Ocean were cold, very cold, and would kill a man inside of half an hour as surely as any more active measures could.

One hundred meters. Eighty-five. Lachs pulled the speaking tube toward him and issued the warning order himself. “Prepare to surface,” he said, as though it was the most ordinary thing in the world, as though they had not been deep below and in fear of their lives for more than a day now. “First watch, crew to stations. Diesels, prepare to activate.”

Maybe that was technically up to Ellie. But Ellie was busy. Goond could hear activity starting to pick up, through the open doorways in the bulkheads; people rousing themselves and being roused. It was time to return to the land of the living or make their final peace with the lords of the dead. One or the other.

Forty meters. Thirty-five. Twenty-five meters.

“Up periscope,” Lachs said, straightening up and away from his casual perch on the chart chest to take the navigation periscope for his own. Twenty meters. Fifteen. Any moment now the bosun would call all hands forward to bring the nose of the boat back into trim as it breached the surface on the rise—

“Nothing,” Lachs said, but there was some hesitation there that Goond didn’t quite understand. Goond’s watch was assembling, struggling to fasten their anoraks and pull on their heavy fur-lined gloves. Fischer handed Goond his. Goond didn’t have to get into his thick boots and his two pairs of socks because he’d never taken them off. So they were ready. And the boat was on the surface. “First watch topside, gentlemen, and tell us what is what, up there.”

It was always a rush of adrenaline, climbing the ladder through the conning tower, opening the bridge hatch. Because they never knew quite what was waiting for them. Goond went first: it was his privilege, as well as his responsibility.

The onrush of stale contaminated air from the interior of the boat boosted him up and through onto the bridge so persuasively that he knocked his head against the hatch while still in the process of opening it. Bad air out. Good air in. Below they would be crowding around the air-well, and drinking that clean fresh sweet cold oxygenated air in greedily. Even from the bridge Goond could hear the interior ventilator fans that had been switched on, but his watch were the lucky ones. They got first crack at it all.

Goond hurried on up and out, his head spinning from the blow it had taken against the hatch, stumbling forward to fetch up against the high wall of the bridge and hang there, sucking the air into his lungs. His confusion started to clear. But not quickly enough.

There was something wrong. What was it? The seas were calm, the stars outside the halo of the full Moon’s gracious white-pearl light were bright and beautiful. Pushing the hood of his anorak back and away from his face Goond turned his face to the sky, guzzling the air. Visibility was excellent all around; no fog rose on the horizon to disguise a destroyer, no clouds gathered overhead to conceal the approach of a bomber until it was too late to avoid being spotted. What could be wrong about that? What did he smell that was so out of place?

The merciless wind did not whip the exposed portions of his face raw within an instant of its first exposure. His gloved hand did not freeze to the cowling of the bridge when he steadied himself against the bulwark. It was cold, but temperately so, cold like Christmas at home in Germany, not cold like northernmost Norway; barely freezing. The Moon was full. It had no business being any of those things. It was all wrong.

“Herr Kahloin,” Goond called down the narrow hatchway, forcing the words out past the knotted fist of perplexity in his throat. “Your presence requested on the bridge, please.”

Lachs clearly knew it, too, or at least part of it; that was what Goond had sensed in Lachs’ voice. Lachs had seen the light: that of the full Moon. Lachs knew as well as Goond did that they’d set out from Hammerfest in the dark of the Moon with only the Northern Lights to betray them on the cold black choppy sea, and even those obscured by fog and rain. The Arctic waters were never so warm as this, not in February, maybe not ever. Nor was that the whole of it.

Lachs came up the ladder with deliberation, as if reluctantly; perhaps he was afraid the moonlight he’d seen through the periscope had been a hallucination—but if it was, it was a shared delusion, because Goond and the men of his watch could see it too. Goond waited. Lachs tasted the air; then Lachs took off one glove and dipped his fingers into a little pool of water that had puddled in a dimple in the rim of the bridge cowling, bringing a few drops to his mouth, tasting of it, raising his eyes to meet Goond’s waiting gaze with wonder.

Yes. Goond nodded. The air was not salt. The water was not salt. That was the final thing that was wrong about this, they were not even at sea, they lay in fresh water. There were rivers in the world as wide as the many miles from horizon to horizon that stretched all around them, yes, that was so, but they were all in warmer places than this—the Amazon, the Indus, the Ganges, and all of them with current.

It was not a river. It was a lake. It was an immense lake. How they’d gotten here, where they were, when they were, these and so many other questions were too vast and numerous to be grasped in the moment; there was only one thing of which he could be absolutely, completely, categorically certain.

“Don’t say it,” Lachs warned. So Lachs knew, too. He and Goond had seen the same movie, after all, in 1939 at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in California with their hosts from the local German community, just before they’d had to hurry home to Germany, just before the declaration of war.

But Goond had to say it. The conviction grew in his mind into an imperative of Irresistable force. “I mean it,” Lachs said. “I’m not joking. Don’t.”

It was no good. Not all of his training, not all of his self-discipline, not all of his affection for Lachs as a friend and respect for Lachs as his commanding officer, not all of his conviction that Lachs was going to kill him if he said it could stop him now. He was cursed to say the words, and die.

Weren’t they all cursed? Was this the revenge of the ghost ship, was this the fate to which they had been condemned since the moment they had all seen that phantom off the west coast of Africa three years ago? Was this the curse of the Fliegende Höllander, the Flying Dutchman?

“Toto,” Goond said. Teeth clenched and eyes flashing Lachs snarled through clenched teeth don’t say it don’t say it don’t say it, but not even that could stop Goond now. It was his doom. There was no help for it. “I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

Lachs clenched his gloved and ungloved hand alike into fists and shook them at the sky in outraged protest, crying out “Alarm!” with impassioned determination. Dive.

They all fell down the hatch and through the conning tower to the decking of the command center below, but not without a thorough drenching before Goond could get the hatch secured. Because the water was calm but the boat sank that much more willingly and readily and quickly in fresh water. They were heavier here. Vilsohn had already noticed the difference, Vilsohn was the engineer, it was his business to notice such things.

Vilsohn would assume there was some undetected damage in the ballast tanks, taking on water prematurely, weighing them down. There might well be. But that was not the reason. “We say nothing as yet,” Goond told his watch, quietly, as the controlled chaos of an emergency dive exploded all around them. “We give Herr Kahloin time to chew on this, yes?”

And to sink down into the comfort of a familiar environment, a watery one, to give themselves time to process what they’d seen. But now Goond knew why he’d been dreaming of that evil day. They had seen the Flying Dutchman; they’d taken the cursed packet of letters offered them. But they hadn’t actually touched hands. Did that mean they were only partially cursed? Was that why they found themselves here in fresh water under the light of a full Moon, and not dead on the bottom of the Arctic ocean?

Goond fled from Zentral to the radio room to evade Lachs’ wrath and see whether Bentzien could find an answer to where, what, when, and why that did not bear the towering sails and cursed habilments of the Fliegende Höllander.

* * *

Verricht Lachs leaned up against the jamb of the doorway into the radio room, tiny as it was, listening as his radio-man—it was Zoller’s watch—tried to find the signal from the Goliath high-frequency transmitter, trying to make contact with U-boat Command. There should be a transmission. Goliath sent regular updates. Command sent a registry signal over VLF as well, a comfortingly familiar point of contact with their homeland.

They’d never replied—there was danger in that. The Allies were listening, and though the enemy could not cover the entire ocean, if you were the boat unfortunate enough to be caught on intercept you were found. But they should be able to hear Goliath. Shouldn’t they?

The Western Allies had landed in Europe in June, last year. It was February. The Soviets had been advancing from the east. Was Goliath overrun? Because if Goliath had been captured, by whose army? And what had become of Berlin itself?

Nothing. Zoller tracked slowly across the twelve-meter band, listening for anything. Even the English propaganda stations would be worth something, a point of reassuring contact with reality as they understood it, some solid evidence that they had not simply fallen somehow off the map of the world. Zoller had already scanned and scanned for weather reports, because there should be some explanation for how a wintery Arctic environment had resolved within less than two days to a so much milder temperature, cold, but calm, the Moon phase impossibly and inexplicably advanced.

No weather report could explain the turning of the entire ocean from salt to fresh. Lachs had only the wildest surmises to explain that. German scientists had been working on some astounding breakthroughs in weaponry; the Old Lion, Admiral Dönitz, assured them of that with increasing urgency and sincerity, even as the credibility of their beloved commander declined.

So the Allies logically been doing the same as well. Could the first deployment of some cataclysmic doomsday weapon have so altered the chemical balance of the arctic waters that they were as fresh? If that was the answer, could it not explain the silence of the radio equally as well, something had gone wrong, Goliath gone mute, radio traffic stunned into silence by an incomprehensible catastrophe?

“Twenty meter band,” Lachs suggested. Zoller switched to the main receiver; then suddenly Zoller found a channel. A crescendo of radio contacts piling up on either side of a control frequency like an avalanche that was relentless, almost terrible in its density. Code, in blinding speed. Data pairs. The operational shorthand he’d learned during his school days with the radio program offered through the Hitler Youth, British convention for hailing, CQ, CQ, CQ, all signs repeated in rapid bursts.

Lachs thought he knew what they were hearing: had the world not been at war it could be a contest, one of the great joys of the amateur radio service. Operators from all over Europe—from all over the world—would be reaching out to one another along one narrow band, trying to make as many far-flung contacts as they could within some limited period of time. CQ. CQ. CQ. Shorthand in Morse code.

The world was not ended. But apart from that, there was no information to be drawn out of the noise other than that there were people talking to one another, Jim in Milwaukee, Hans in Unterramingen, Toshi in Hitachinaka, Debreeze in Kent.

He was wrong, Lachs realized. It was information. He could hear operators identifying themselves from all over the world. They did not seem to be partitioned by politics: it was hard to imagine Japanese talking to Canadians, French with Russians, Germans with Egyptians without any apparent notice taken, if they were still at war.

Zoller glanced over his shoulder at Lachs, who nodded. Scan on. So intense was the range of signals all aimed for the same frequency that the dropping off of information came as a relief; but now that they’d found traffic, there was more. Much of it incomprehensible, welcome to the Fipps repeater, what was that? Some Allied piece of equipment?

And that was not all. As Zoller scanned further through the twenty-meter band, catching fragments of voice traffic in amongst the familiar music of Morse code, one message seemed to leap out of the transceiver with explosive force for all that Lachs was only listening to the sound from one ear-piece of Zoller’s head-set, that Zoller had left cocked to one side so that the sound could be shared.

U-818. U-818. U-818. Lachs.

Calling for them out of nowhere. U-818, Lachs. U-boats were frequently called by the names of their commanders. But how could they possibly respond? There was no secured traffic on this frequency, and the call was in the clear, so there was no sense in encoding a response.

They were still within the twenty-meter band, yes, but that covered a lot of territory, and they’d left all of that confusing traffic—the contact frequency—well behind them. The code-stream offered no additional information, no explanation for the call. Was this a trap?

If it was a trap, wouldn’t the enemy have taken care to conform more closely to a signal they would have responded to without thinking twice about it, suspecting nothing?

Straightening up Lachs turned his back to the doorway with his hands flattened to either side of his head, thinking. The ZweiVo and Ellie were both here, but they did not speak Morse code as Lachs and Zoller—and Goond Hols, for that matter—did. They wouldn’t know that U-818 was being hailed.

Lachs was not a reckless man, but he had the capacity for swift decision within reasonable parameters. And he knew how to take risks. Their situation defied all logic. They had to find some explanation.

Every man on this boat knew that things were not going according to plan: they were not returning to their base at Hammerfest. They were not traveling to intercept a convoy; they were making enough speed—on the surface, since it was dark night—to recharge the batteries; and apart from that there was no information shared because nobody had any. Everybody knew by now that the water was fresh and the Moon was full. He owed it to the crew to seek out a solution. It was time to take a chance.

He nodded to Zoller. “U-818,” he said. “Reply.” He was afraid that everyone within earshot was to be robbed of the sudden hope he could see in the expressions of his subordinate officers, because he had not taken time to lay out a rationale for his actions and they would not know what he and Zoller knew. He wished he had Goond beside him, because Goond could read Morse code as well as he did; but Goond was in the control room, and Lachs didn’t care to send for him, because it would create more strain in what was for now a calm if perplexed boat. He shook his head at Sclavie and Vilsohn. Sorry. Nothing to report. Stand by.

Zoller keyed the response. U-818 Lachs, U-818 Lachs, U-818 Lachs. Calling station identify. That would be innocuous enough, perhaps, if someone heard: standard format, someone calling themselves U-818 Lachs responding to someone not transmitting according to customary practice.

But there was silence. Were there technicians being placed on alert in some Allied operations room, retransmitting messages to listening stations, alerting remote observers to relay the information that would let them triangulate on U-818’s position and send bombers? Destroyers?

If that were so, would U-818 not at least find out where they were? Or did the enemy have as little knowledge of where U-818 had gone as they themselves did?

The code came back at a much slower speed, hesitant, surprised. Or perhaps playing for time. Zoller reached out for the controls of his locator apparatus, with a questioning glance. Lachs nodded emphatically. Two could play the game.

U-818. Okay. Who’s the joker? Lachs.

In English: another piece of potential evidence. Surely the Allies would have a German speaker to lure a German boat. The calling station was calling himself Lachs, then, not calling for U-818 Lachs by name. It was a point of clarification. “Ask him for German,” Lachs said, turning back to lean up again half-in, half-out of the radio room so that he could better hear the muted sound from Zoller’s headpiece. “No, but wait—” Lachs held out a warning hand as Zoller reached for his Morse set. He had to say something to his officers, even if it could not make very much sense.

“We have a radio contact. They ask for us, but in English. I don’t know if they’re enemy. I’m going to risk it.” More later. Dropping his hand away Lachs nodded to Zoller, whose hand betrayed a certain degree of hesitancy on his own part; something Lachs knew because he knew Zoller’s touch on the Morse transmitter key, something only two other people on board—Goond and Bentzien—and certainly no outside contact, was likely to be able to interpret, except by instinct. Lachs did not discount the instinct of a telegrapher. He had just made his own assumptions, after all.

I ask who is the joker. The calling station’s German was hesitant; German was not his first language, apparently. The German that the Allied propaganda stations spoke on their broadcasts was indistinguishable from that of a native speaker, right down to the reproduction of a recognizable dialect—because they were native speakers, though they were working with the enemy. If the calling station was an Allied double agent his German should be better. Name and call sign please.

You first, Lachs thought. But rudeness raised barriers to communication, and he wanted information out of whomever he was talking to. The calling station already apparently believed he was not in earnest: so Lachs decided to try an honest answer.

“This is U-818,” he said slowly, so that Zoller could keep up on the Morse key. “Believe me or not. My name is Verricht Lachs. And you?”

His officers reacted with predictable unease, but Lachs felt confident of their trust in him. Not as if any of them had much choice on the issue of trust. It was also a matter of military protocol, whether or not they had established a strong relationship over the course of so many shared war cruises. He and Goond went even further back.

U-818. Get real. If you’re U-818 you went down with all hands on the tenth of February. 1945. Lachs.

Zoller started in his seat, but kept his station. Lachs stared at the floor to process this information. Of course U-818 had gone down in February of 1945. And with all hands. But they’d come up again. The Allies could easily have deduced their identity; there were spies in Hammerfest as at every U-boat base, and the security of their transmissions to and from Headquarters were consistently being compromised for all the care in the world that they could take.

The calling station owed him information. Lachs waited. Here it came. And Verricht Lachs was my father. A break; and then in English, come on. Share the joke. George. It’s you, isn’t it? And then, as an afterthought, the customary declaration of call sign, this time with a name attached. This is Charlie. Lachs.

Then he was not Lachs’ son. Lachs’ son was named Pieter, Rudolph Zimmer Mattias Ulrich Pieter Lachs. Five years old. Lachs made it a practice to think seldom of his family while he was on war cruise, because there was no sense in dwelling on the fact that he might never see his wife and child again. During the dark hours past—not knowing whether they would return, this time—he had sent a silent parting prayer to God for them, but the circumstances had been exceptional.

Before he had time to puzzle out what he should say next he heard a new signal, weaker, English; not me, Charlie, what’s up? Just bringing the DPK repeater back up. WVREF George. It was slightly off frequency, then, but Zoller didn’t try to adjust, concentrating on his task. Acquiring a fix. Locating the original signal. The original caller had not moved off frequency to match.

Eh, somebody out there having a go at me, that’s all. I make the station out as offshore. Middle of Lake Superior somewhere, as if. Someone out on a boat, maybe.

You’ve been calling your daddy’s U-boat again. Zoller was frowning; but whether it was concentration or sheer perplexity Lachs couldn’t tell. The Smoking Salmon himself. How long has it been? WVREF George.

Zoller’s face was clearing of tension, his forehead smoothing out, his eyes untroubled as he turned his head to give Lachs a satisfied nod even as he wrote something down on his log. Transcribing something from his direction finder. A bearing. Was Zoller really listening to the conversation, any longer? Was it that Zoller’s English was not as good as “Charlie’s” German? It didn’t matter.

Well, I make it sixty years. Give or take. Somebody’s about three weeks late for April Fools, ain’t they? Anyway. On for net? I’ll hop onto the freq. This is Charlie, LACHS, clear.

Lachs waited; but there was nothing more. “Good work,” he said to Zoller. “Well done. Keep looking. Especially if you can pick up the same operator, by chance, we know his call sign.”

There was a heading, there, on Zoller’s log. There was at least a hint to a claimed location. Lake Superior. In North America, as Goond had claimed, shared between the United States and Canada, if Lachs remembered his geography. Equally confounding claims about when, as well as where, they were; and from a man who claimed that “Verricht Lachs” had been his father.

They had not come from sixty years ago. They had come from less than three days ago, and it had been February, and not April or May. U-818 down with all hands? Were they a ghost, then? They weren’t ghosts. They would be able to tell. Wouldn’t they? He’d eaten. He’d had some coffee. He’d used the head. He wasn’t a ghost.

But he had seen the Flying Dutchman, in October. Of 1942. And he’d studied all available—if fragmentary—information about other sightings, since then. There was consistent confirmation of Lachs’ own observation: that if that had been a ship crewed by the damned, the admittedly few crewmen he had seen working its rigging hadn’t seemed to feel themselves to be particularly diabolic.

Had it not been for the archaic presentation of the ship, for Heimsat’s horrified identification of its flag, the novelty of its appearance in an age as much of smoke and steel as sail, there would have been nothing remarkable about the ship at all. Until, of course, the ship’s sails had billowed out without a breath of wind, and the ship had turned away and disappeared.

He would call a council of war over dinner. Breakfast, lunch. Whichever meal it was. He saw three possibilities he wished to lay before his officers for consideration before proceeding.

One, he’d gone mad, and only was imagining this all; in which case no one would resist him, because they were all imaginary, and he could do as he pleased with his imaginary boat. Two, some wonder weapon had wrought such changes in the natural order that they seemed to have surfaced in fresh water sixty years and sixty days from the time they’d gone down under attack in the Arctic.

Or, three, they’d been displaced in space and time by a curse fallen on them because they’d seen the Flying Dutchman.

He would take the heading Zoller had derived and point U-818 toward the signal intercept. When he got there if it was an Allied trap he would fight. If it was anything else—if U-818 had been destroyed sixty years ago, if they were unmoored from their reality—

They would run on the surface until they found some harmless inanimate target to shoot at. And they’d find out whether ghost rounds could still blow up material objects. Perhaps they were ghosts; perhaps they were displaced in space and time, but they could still defend themselves. Because they had torpedoes. And they knew how to use them.

* * *

Ten hours of daylight, a balmy eleven degrees—practically tropical—and clear weather: another sign, if further proof was needed, that they weren’t in the Arctic any more. The preliminary bearing Zoller had taken on the radio signal intercepted yesterday called for a southwesterly course.

They’d been running on the surface for hours, seeing nothing, hearing nothing; but gradually a shoreline was coming up on the far horizon, and when they’d spotted the ship rocking ever-so-gently along like a boat whose anchorage wouldn’t be available for another few days they’d gone to periscope depth to try to figure it out.

It looked familiar.

U-818 Lachs been there for the “second happy time,” just after the declaration of war between the United States and Germany, before the U.S. Navy had begun to develop its increasingly effective U-boat hunting forces, before coastal shipping had come to realize that there was in fact a war on and that perhaps some blackout discipline was in order.

They’d been called away early for the coast of Africa, which had been fortunate as it turned out—they’d avoided the troubles—unless one factored in the fateful encounter with the Dutchman; and they’d only scored one tanker, but it had been a T2 model like the one in the periscope sights even now.

“It seems quiet enough,” Goond said dubiously, and stood away from the navigation periscope to give Ellie Vilsohn a chance. “Perhaps carrying diesel, do you think, Herr Kahloin?”

Lachs was leaning up against the chart-chest with his arms folded against his chest, one hand at beard-height with his index finger curled against his lower lip. He dropped his hand and sat down. “I’m more interested in charts,” he said. “If there’s fuel, well, all to the good. But we need more information on where we may be going.”

It was possible to navigate in foreign waters. They’d done it off the coast of Africa; there’d been very little available by way of soundings off the coast of Madagascar. At this point even a child’s map of Lake Superior would be more information than they had access to. There was the old joke about finding a coast to land at—go straight until you hit the beach, then back up five hundred meters or so—but it would be no joke to run aground in this completely unknown environment.

Goond shrugged. “It will be dark soon.” He remembered the other tanker, the one they’d found adrift off the Carolinas. There’d been damage aforeships, and the ship had been abandoned—no trace of a soul, so the lifeboats had gotten away. Unless they’d all foundered. Goond had been with the boarding party; there’d been plenty of fresh fruit and baked goods in the ship’s stores.

They’d sunk it just to be tidy, of course, because in those days they’d still had a deck gun; but that wasn’t the point so much as that he’d been on board of a T2 tanker that had certainly looked like the one they had in their sights now. “We could go have a closer look before the light goes.”

Lachs nodded. “Take us around, Rathke,” he said. “Nice and slow. Unless someone starts shouting.” Or shooting. Under other circumstances they wouldn’t risk their periscope being spotted on the surface by the light of day, but nothing they’d heard from the radio gave the slightest indication that there was a war on and that people were keeping a look-out for enemy U-boats.

All of the advertisements were for automobiles, politicians, movies—that was a comforting point of familiarity. There were still movies. And scandals. And political arguments. But no wars. Not anywhere near Lake Superior, though the Middle East was apparently a problem—still. Ever. Always.

If there was still a war in Europe, if there was a shipping war in the North Atlantic, then perhaps an old—seemingly dilapidated—T2 freighter idling on the surface of the waters without an escort or any apparent sense of urgency was a trap. Yes. But otherwise tankers didn’t fire torpedoes. Nor depth charges.

It was second watch, and Goond was the first watch officer. So he yielded the control center to ZweiVo Sclarvie and went forward to the wardroom, where he could snuggle up close to the bulkhead and keep an ear out for anything happening in the radio room. Lachs had told him all about the hail for “U-818 Lachs” and Goond had been sorry he’d missed it, but they hadn’t caught the same hail again since then, though the radio operators had been looking.

There was plenty of radio traffic, but of limited usefulness, someone’s casserole, someone’s new antenna or equipment, whether or not sporadic “e” was open for skywave propagation. It was exhausting, trying to make sense of it all.

He closed his eyes. Then he heard Lachs give the order to surface, and opened them again, sitting up with interest. The watch was called topside. They did not come tumbling down again immediately; so after a moment he went up to join Lachs on the bridge.

“There’s a small boat tethered to port,” Lachs told him. “With no lights. And very little evidence of any movement otherwise. I thought we might send a small boarding party, introduce ourselves. There’s a pumproom forward that will do the trick for us, do I remember that right?”

And the galley had been immediately below officer’s quarters which had been in turn below the bridge deck, with the store-rooms below that. Oh, the store-rooms. They’d been like Christmas morning, after weeks on a U-boat. “Just as you say, Herr Kahloin. A few men to secure the tethered boat in case there is an alarm, and seven or eight up the other side, I wonder?”

Lachs nodded, smiling, though his grin was but dimly glimpsed in the dark, half-masked as it was already by a week’s growth of beard. “I will await your gleanings, if there are any. Your action, EinsVo.”

No more needed to be said.

Within the hour their largest inflatable had been secured to the starboard side of the freighter where the anchor-point was in easy reach of the ladder going up, and Goond’s kommando were going up it. He’d brought a pistol; for the rest, they would rely on surprise and sheer body heft, because Goond had drawn some crew from the torpedo room and those men were accustomed to managing the heavy and ungainly “eels” in all manner of conditions. Men weighed much less, and required less careful handling; it was much less important if men were damaged.

There were some external lights along the wall of the bridge deck, but no sound; all doors, disappointingly, secured, except for the last one they checked—small, and possibly forgotten by people not particularly concerned to guard against intruders, and it was the last door they’d checked simply because of course once they’d found it they stopped checking and went in.

There was a narrow ladder-stair leading upwards, a feeble light in a metal cage, and all signs pointed to a disused passageway which was just as Goond liked it. He went up, and his kommando followed: so far, all reassuringly familiar. There was the galley, dark, silent, cold; that was odd, but since they hadn’t seen any crew thus far—the ship apparently running along with a skeleton crew—perhaps only cold meals were being taken?

Three of his men were in charge of taking stock of ship’s stores. Goond took five with him up the next flights to the bridge, because surely there was at least a night-watchman on the bridge as well as one making rounds, and he was hoping for the cooperation of reasonably-minded men to hurry the refueling mission along. If the ship had any diesel. Had it not, Goond supposed they could draw from ship’s own tanks, but that problem would wait its turn.

On the third level up it was warm and comparatively bright when they opened the door, so Goond knew at once that they were on the bridge deck. Through the narrow corridor, forward, and there was a door propped open at the end of the second stretch; Goond stepped to one side of the light spilling out of the bridge to take a cautious survey.

It was larger than he’d expected. He could recognize enough of the equipment consoles to confirm that this was the nerve center of the ship, but there was much that he didn’t recognize at all, and a great deal of information was apparently displayed on small screens no larger than the open-paged extent of a large atlas, like a tiny movie: but with no projectors that Goond could detect, at first sight. And quiet.

There was only one man there, and he was most comfortably disposed with his hands clasped behind his neck and his feet up on the desk or table in front of him. Goond cleared his voice, and the man nearly fell out of his chair in astonishment, stumbling to his feet to turn and face Goond.

“Good evening,” Goond said politely. His English was not so good as Lachs’, or that of several others on board, if it came to that. But he had done his advanced courses, and his training cruise as well: he was confident of his ability to get his message across. “We would like a drink from your diesel, please. If you’ve got any. Are you the watch officer?”

Goond himself had not changed for the occasion, so what rank he wore on his old jacket was not perhaps in such impressive condition if a person didn’t know how to interpret it. And they were sixty years into the future. And the war was over. There was no reason to assume that the tanker’s watch officer knew what Goond’s rank markers meant. Goond was relying on his unannounced appearance with a party of men to communicate a degree of gravitas in its own right.

“Uh,” the man said. He was as young as Feufel, who claimed to be nineteen but who was probably younger than that; and clean-shaven, but one could do that, on a tanker. There would be showers. Perhaps even a laundry, and almost certainly bake-ovens for fresh bread, but Goond focused his attention with a stern effort. Showers and laundry were not for them. “I, ah, yeah. Watch officer. Jonesie. I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow, change of plan? Where’s Kalf?”

Goond noted the young man’s quick glance toward a console once removed where an unholstered pistol lay on the angled desk before one of the movie-screens. So there was a Kalf, and possibly armed. That was a data point. Also there was a party of men expected: and Jonesie didn’t know them on sight. There was a chance of getting U-818’s business done and getting clear before their imposture was recognized, then, if they could act convincingly.

“We didn’t see him. So we came up on our own.” True things made the best deceptions. “Is there someone to help my men with the pumps?” Jonesie hadn’t said no to diesel. So there was diesel. “Or if you would just point them in the right direction, assuming we need no keys.”

U-818 was standing by. Ellie was on the bridge, waiting to supervise refueling. It was going to make adjusting the trim of the boat a little more complicated. They were heavy enough as it was, with the thinness of fresh water taken into account.

Now with a mixture of confusion and proud competence Jonesie turned toward one of the consoles. There was a keyboard. It ran the movie. “Ah, no alarms, no keys,” Jonesie said. Goond suddenly recognized the movie: it was the forward pumproom of a T2 tanker, with lights coming up as he watched.

It wasn’t a movie. It was live-broadcast television, “TV,” and the technology was clearly advanced further than he had extrapolated from the radio announcements he’d been hearing if a tanker as old as this could afford to broadcast to the bridge from multiple locations all over the ship. “Need any help?”

There was a clear note of “I hope not” in Jonesie’s voice that made Goond smile, inside. “We’ve done this before,” he said. “We’ll be fine.” From here he could drop back into German, for a moment at least.

“Obermachinist Oldorp. Report when action is complete. And there is one other aboard.” It needn’t take long, not with the seas quiet and the tanker a stable platform. They just needed a top-off, after all. “And update the others.” He glanced quickly at the pistol, in case Oldorp hadn’t seen it. Oldorp would know to put the word out.

He didn’t want to give Jonesie time to wonder what he was saying. “I would welcome a chance to consult your expertise, watch officer,” he said, switching back into English. If Jonesie was one of the ship’s officers Goond was a trapeze artist, but civilian ships in inland waters might reasonably run on relaxed rules, especially in peacetime. “I’m afraid our charts have been badly damaged. Have you any to share?”

Which he would simply take. The tanker would have communications. It could call for replacements. He had a strong suspicion that ships in this modern age didn’t even need printed charts: there were things called “apps” that one used on one’s “cell,” or one’s “eyepod.” Goond had no moral qualms about robbing this freighter blind, because it wouldn’t be staying that way for any significant period of time.

Again with the confused expression as Jonesie looked around him. So he didn’t know. Goond was beginning to seriously question whether Jonesie had any business on board ship at all. There came a sudden clearing, a wave of relief, on Jonesie’s face, however; it was as Jonesie’s eye fell on a long low steel chest-with-drawers that stood well back along the wall to Jonesie’s left. It looked like a chart-chest. So it was. There was that taken care of, then.

“It’s been years since I’ve been on a T2,” Goond said, and come forward now to put his hand to Jonesie’s shoulder, turning Jonesie around to cover Oldorp’s exit. “I’m sure the technology has changed, but I don’t know how much. I’d love a tour.” Again, all true.

He wanted a closer look at each of those television monitors right away to see if he could gather any information that might help him figure out what was going on and whether any Kalf, or any crew expected to arrive within hours, was going to pose a problem for U-818.

* * *

Jonesie Banks had his suspicions about this whole thing. The gang leader, Harris, had assured him that there was no risk involved in taking over the tanker, and it was for less than a day—just enough time to bring up the transfer vessel to off-load the contraband for delivery to the drop point on the Ontario side of the lake, and then out. Nobody was going to get hurt. He was just here to keep an eye on things, him and Kalf. So who were these people? Not the police. Not the Coast Guard. Who?

“A tour? Of course,” he said. When unsure of the situation the best thing to do was punt off of whatever the other guy had said last. They wanted diesel? They weren’t after the drugs over the forward tanks, then, and he could get rid of them before the rest of his brothers-in-street got back. For all Jonesie knew this sort of drop-in traffic was normal socializing for old tankers like this one, a little off-the-record income to line the crew’s pockets, maybe. “Happy to oblige. What’s your name?”

The clothing the man wore was unfamiliar, grey leather. Who wore grey leather? “Call me Ainsvo,” the man suggested, moving toward that low art-print-chest-looking-thing at the wall. Weird name, Ainsvo, but it had a hint of familiarity about it. Where had Jonesie heard that name before? “Let’s have a look at your charts.”

Jonesie was happy to let Ainsvo take charge. He didn’t know anything about the tanker, not really; he could drive a small cabin cruiser with the GPS to provide him instructions, but that was about his limit. “I have sent some people down into your galley stores for resupply,” Ainsvo said, pulling drawers out, checking chart titles one after another. “There will be no problem? I apologize for the inconvenience.”

Jonesie wasn’t sure he understood that, exactly, but he’d heard Ainsvo speak German—he was pretty sure it was German, he’d heard it in movies—so he made allowances for the translation of a non-native speaker.

“No problem,” he assured Ainsvo, who had started to extract charts from the chest, rolling them up into tubes. Jonesie could help. They weren’t his charts, but with luck Ainsvo wouldn’t guess that. Anything to get these people off the ship before the rest of his gang returned. Jonesie didn’t know whether he was supposed to have stopped them from getting on, so it was better all around if the issue didn’t come up.

It wasn’t as if he was in a position to resist Ainsvo, him with just a pistol. It had taken all ten-twelve of the boarding party to herd the tanker’s crew into the store-room to lock them up, before the others had left. “Here, let me—”

He knew where to find the rubber bands. He’d searched the bridge once he’d been left alone on it, looking for a bottle of booze or some pornographic media—print or digital, he didn’t care—to occupy his time while they were waiting, he and Kalf, for the yacht to come in the morning and retrieve the tanker’s smuggled cargo.

“You are very cooperative,” Ainsvo said, his eyes meeting Jonesie’s for just a moment longer than Jonesie was comfortable with. “We stack these here, to take away. I have an hour, I think.” Picking a seat near the front of the bridge Ainsvo moved Jonesie’s gun casually to one side and folded his arms. “I admit I recognize very little of this equipment. What can you tell me about all of this, yes?”

Jonesie had initially taken Ainsvo as someone from the gang that he hadn’t been told about, or as someone familiar with the tanker’s crew and out for a little free diesel. Maybe Ainsvo was something more than that. How had Ainsvo gotten here, exactly, with no radio traffic on the marine band transceiver, and nothing Jonesie had seen on approach from the bridge? Maybe Jonesie was accidentally in the middle of something much bigger than a small home-grown drug smuggling operation.

All right, Jonesie decided. He’d play along. Fortunately for Jonesie he’d been a quick study all of his life, and he’d been bored once the others had gone. He’d toggled all the toggles and switched all the switches. He could wing this, just so long as Ainsvo was telling the truth about lacking familiarity. He could open up the software binders for Ainsvo to read. If English wasn’t Ainsvo’s first language Jonesie could be reading ahead as they went, and cover for his ignorance that way.

“Well, you can see what condition some of this stuff is in,” Jonesie said, gesturing broadly with an air of regret. “But there’s your usual stuff, depth finder, navigation, environmental monitors. All of it strictly 1990, I’m afraid. Here. Course and steering. Password is ‘tankerbridge,’ all one word, no caps.”

He’d wondered, Jonesie had, when he’d threatened it out of one of the ship’s crew, whether that would turn out to be a warning signal, an alert of some sort. That would have been what he would have done. He thought. But he’d found it written down in the margins of more than one software documentation binder, and so he felt pretty sure of himself about that.

“Good, you’re in. Now. Top view. We’re here. Got that? Sorry, let me know if I’m talking down to you. Respect.”

Ainsvo shook his head, thoughtfully. “No, this is perfect,” he said. “Just as though I knew nothing. Walk me through this. I’d like to see as much as I can before we have to leave you in peace once again.”

Couldn’t come fast enough for Jonesie. “So you can see, here. We’re only making enough speed to stay in place, more or less. Treading water. Have a look at the specs on the engines.” If that was what they were. He didn’t care. They looked like engine specs to him.

If it was a test, Jonesie knew he could spin a line of bullshit with the best. And if it was anything else he didn’t even care, so long as Ainsvo was gone before Kalf turned up to demand what was going on, so long as the ship was all theirs again by the time Harris and the rest of the gang got back.

* * *

By the time Oldorp came up to let him know they could leave Goond’s brain was stuffed so full of new knowledge that he thought his skull would crack. All of this equipment. All of this information—much more than he was getting from Jonesie, because he could read English much better than he could speak it, and statistics were statistics in any European language. And what information—not just the quantity, but the quality, and Jonesie denigrating the equipment for being old at every opportunity. If only Jonesie knew.

Goond wasn’t going to tell him. He didn’t like the boy. Jonesie apparently thought they were something quite other than they actually were, although Goond wasn’t very sure of the details. Jonesie was young and stupid enough to be taken in by a bit of fancy footwork, though, so that was something Goond could be grateful for.

“And on this station, radio communications and satellite up-link with the Coast Guard,” Jonesie was saying. They’d moved on from where they’d started at least an hour ago, Goond making sure he absentmindedly tucked that pistol into his waistband as he rose to relocate. He’d checked the safety. The pistol was an unfamiliar make, but there were familiar elements, and fortunately the safety was one of them. “We’ve disabled it, of course. By the time they can get a signal out we’ll have been gone for hours. Clean get-away—”

“Herr EinsVo.” And there was Oldorp, thank God. There seemed to be a hidden message in his tone of voice; Goond sharpened his alertness. “Fueling operation is finished. I also report that stores are loaded, with assistance from a man named Kalf. The captain of this ship has asked for a word before we go.” In German. Goond didn’t know whether Jonesie could understand any of it: Oldorp had apparently spoken carefully.

And there was a lot of information there. It connected with the hints Goond had been collecting from Jonesie’s remarks; just now, for instance, with his indication that Jonesie’s “they” would be gone before the other “they” had restored their communications and called for help. That was why there’d been so few lights, why there’d been no crew. Jonesie was a pirate. Goond had thought they were going to have to deal with his misgivings on that issue prior to their departure, but perhaps the situation was dealt with, without him.

“We will take these charts,” Goond said in German. Though what he had learned from Jonesie confirmed that this ship was in no real need of them—except as back-up—Goond still felt a little awkward about annexing them. He switched to English to take his leave of this child-pirate. “Keep to your post until you are relieved, Jonesie. I have appreciated your company, thank you.”

He had Jonesie’s pistol. Helping Oldorp with the charts—there was an armload of them, even tightly rolled—gave him a natural cause to go to the door; he kicked the stop away from under the lower edge and swung it shut with decision and dispatch. The latch was also original issue. Goond knew how to secure it from the outside.

Then he hurried after Oldorp, through the corridor, down the ladder-stairs, toward the galley—where the ship’s crew waited. Six of them; and one prisoner, Kalf Goond presumed, but apart from that one everybody seemed relaxed and friendly. At least at first sight. Taking a quick scan of the group Goond made his nod to the one he took for the senior among them. He felt a little exposed: but he was closest to the door that would lead him to the deck, and they wouldn’t know whether people were waiting out there to cover him.

“There were maybe ten of them,” the captain said, without preamble. He was an older man in plain civilian clothes, but there was old worn tarnished braid along the shoulders of his jacket. “Locked us up in our own dry stores locker. We’re lucky your people heard us.”

At the same time Goond could see quite well that the captain had his thoughts about Goond and his people as well. It was a good time to get away, before anybody could get a clear view of the boat: Goond knew what he could use for a distraction. “There is a boy called Jonesie on the bridge. I have locked the door. He is expecting people to come back tomorrow, and it may be that he and Kalf were the only pirates left on board. Here is his pistol.”

Please do not shoot me with it. They wouldn’t know he was carrying his own side-arm and Goond saw no reason to mention that. He pulled the clip out of Jonesie’s weapon and checked for a chambered round before he put the pistol and the clip down on the floor beside him as a wordless way of making the request. “We have taken some diesel for our boat and helped ourselves to some of your ship’s stores, including some ice cream, I hope. And I have raided you for ship’s charts. Wishing you all the best, gentlemen, good-night.”

It would be dark. With luck the master control for the ship’s lights was on the bridge and the ship’s crew could not get to it in time to embarrass U-818. There would be little enough to see with the boat low in the water. They could tow the inflatable rafts until they were safely out of sight, when they’d have the time to stow them.

“God-speed,” the ship’s captain called to Goond’s now-turned back as Goond retreated. “Safe passage.”

Goond locked the last door behind him on his way out, for insurance. It wouldn’t stop the ship’s crew if they came in pursuit, but it might slow them down, and maybe they would take their time about it. And maybe there would be ice cream—that had not melted—when he got back to the boat with the charts, and the amazing story that went with them.

* * *

Charlie Montrose was still sitting in the kitchen of the house he shared with his old mother, enjoying his morning cup of coffee, when the tone from the general store sounded to alert him to the fact that someone had come in. Oh, well, he told himself. It was nearly May. The weather had already begun to moderate, though the boating season wouldn’t really start into full swing until Memorial Day.

Pushing himself to his feet he walked slowly down the corridor that separated his living quarters from the store and went through to the front counter. “Hello,” he called out. “How can I help you?”

He didn’t see anybody, not immediately; but he heard someone, rustling amongst the shelves where he stocked wine—stovetop meals—snacks for the benefit of the vacationers that would come to enjoy the bit of lake-front and the recreational opportunities that the Salmon Shore resort, established 1950, had to offer families during the summer season.

People did turn up before and after, attracted by the lower rates: but he’d seen nothing on his parking lot monitors that would indicate the arrival of a car or an RV. Maybe it was a hiker stopping in. That happened. Sometimes people who’d gone for a long walk in the woods found that they weren’t quite as prepared for the rain and wet and cold as they’d thought they were, and decided to check themselves in to one of his cabins for a warm dry night and a hot bath before returning to their communities with tales of their adventures as modern-day explorers.

Charlie was all in favor of that. It wasn’t just that they generated revenue for the little old-fashioned resort; it also cut down on the number of search-and-rescue efforts that had to be mounted, at taxpayer expense. One way or another a man got used to walk-ins. His cabins could be warm and ready to receive customers within ninety minutes. They all had in-line hot water heaters. Salmon Bay was an old-fashioned resort, perhaps, but they weren’t still living in the 1950s, even though their architecture was.

Then suddenly his guest appeared from between the shelves of packaged chips and sugary-salty grazing foods, a genial moon-faced bearded fellow in a double-breasted black leather coat with a ready smile and the proverbial piercing blue eyes and a cap pushed to the back of his head, black hair curling over his forehead. He wore what seemed to be a standard Army-surplus officer’s headgear, if lacking the horsehair ring that would stiffen it; and with a somewhat dirtied white cotton cover, as though he thought he was the commander of a U-boat. “Oh, sorry,” he said. “The door was open. Look, I found beer.”

And so he had. The man was carrying a six-pack canned, and had another tucked under his arm. First thing in the morning, but Charlie didn’t judge. For all he knew it was actually at the end of a long night. “That you have,” he said. “I keep the hard stuff behind the glass. If you’re in the market.”

He cocked his thumb back over his shoulder at his locked cabinet. It wasn’t that his prices were tempting: just that a pocket-flask of rye hid out in a man’s pocket that much more easily, and nobody could be faulted for having forgotten to pay, surely? Why, yes. Yes, they could. “Thank you, but no for now,” the man said. Charlie noticed his accent, slight but present. German. “Let me just put these on the counter. You have rooms? I have people.”

He unloaded his beers, and some packets of candied caramel corn as well. “And questions,” Charlie thought the man said, but under his voice, so that Charlie wasn’t really sure. His hearing was perfectly good for a man in his age: the doctor told him so every six months. Yet and still Charlie was sixty-five, and couldn’t be bothered to keep up on all the biological peripherals all of the time.

So, all right, things on the counter. “We have rooms, yeah,” Charlie said. “How many people, how many nights? We’re on winter rates for another ten days. And there are group discounts. Veteran’s discounts as well.”

This seemed to spark the man’s interest; he seemed to find it funny, in a mild way. Charlie hoped he wasn’t going to be one of those “veteran of the race wars” types: they’d been getting the white supremacists through the woods, in the past few years, perfectly law-abiding people by and large but Charlie didn’t like them. He’d been far too young for Korea and physically rejected for Viet Nam, but he knew how to respect a genuine soldier.

His father had been an officer, whether or not his mother had ever wanted to talk about it. Both of them, really, both of the men his mother had married, but Charlie’s genetic sire had been on the wrong side of the war.

Charlie’s widowed mother had married an American, and Charlie’s stepfather had been as good a dad as anyone could have asked for. Charlie had grown up hearing about other peoples’ fathers, so he knew. “We believe we may be veterans,” the man said. “But never mind that for now. There are fifty and some of us, but not all at once. And I understand there may be a family discount.”

Fifty-plus people? That was one heck of a family. A reunion of some sort, then, though why they’d elect to gather at a seen-better-days resort in the off season was anybody’s guess. “Big family,” he said, because surely that would be expected. “We can offer a ten percent additional credit for any booking of eight of our cabins or more. I’ll need a credit card. Your name?”

“I have no credit card.” And, strangely enough, the man didn’t seem to feel that was a problem. Charlie was starting to have his suspicions. He’d been taken for an Aryan sympathizer himself, more than once: just because he’d been blond, before he’d gotten grey. And blue eyes. His father’s eyes. “And I think you misunderstand about the family discount. My name is Lachs. Verricht Lachs. I spell—”

Wait, there had been that one peculiar contact, nearly a week ago now. Someone claiming to be U-818. There’d been people in high school who’d dug up his past, his mother’s past, and teased him about it. And the man was spelling out his name by tapping his finger on the counter, staccato bursts for the “dit,” finger pressed to the surface a little bit longer for the “dash,” as though the sealed wooden surface was a Morse code key. V-e-r-r-i-c-h-t L-a-c-h-s.

“You have my device up there, on your banner,” the man said, even while he continued to tap out Morse code against the counter-top. Verricht. Amherst. Heinrich. Stefan. Annamaria. Lachs. “You are not my son. But by tradition, you have declared yourself with our flag, and therefore we are your guests here, is it not so?”

What.

Charles fought to process the signals. Yes. There’d been the strange radio contact. Yes. He’d discounted it. Yes. That was his father’s name. Yes. He had the cartoon that had been painted on his father’s boat, his father’s personal artifice, his sigil, on the resort flag, flying on the dock along with the United States flag and that of the state of Michigan. No. This could not possibly in any rational sense be happening.

“Some joker made contact with me some days ago.” That much was not in question. “Claiming to be U-818. Which sank in 1945, with my father on it. You want to stay here, you give me a valid credit card. But I’m about thirty seconds from turning you away, credit card or no credit card.” He was getting angry. This went beyond pranking. His mother had mourned his father for all the days of her life; it had been only a part of her new life in America, but it had always been there.

“Some joker claimed he was the son of Verricht Lachs,” the man retorted, as though he were the one who was offended. “And that his name was Charlie. While I am in a position to know that the son of the Smoking Salmon was baptized Mattias Ulrich Pieter, among others. Pieter. What kind of a good German name is Charlie?”

Suddenly something had gone sideways. It was thinking of his mother, Charlie thought. His baby pictures were in her special box, tucked away; he’d only ever seen them once or twice, and never since he’d gone away to college. There was one of his mother sitting with him as a baby on her lap, and a man at her shoulder, dress uniform, proud happy smile. His natural father. His mother’s first husband. The man in front of him. Something about the eyes seemed suddenly, unfairly, provocatively familiar.

“So you’ve gone through the records. For some sick reasons of your own. Are you from the old country? Because I want nothing to do with any of those people, the way they treated my mother.”

That blow had struck home. It was what Charlie had said about his mother; that look of grief and sorrow was too real. But it went quickly—masked with deliberation and skill. “This is getting nowhere. I’m sorry about the beer.” Which meant nothing. And what the man said next, that should have put an end to this farce once and for all—it was certainly put to Charlie in what started out as a tone of considerable finality. “We will go elsewhere. But you may wish to reconsider whether you call yourself U-818 Lachs, does your mother know?”

“Why don’t we ask her?”

The words were out of his mouth before he realized what they were. And once they were said he could not un-say them. There was no questioning the sincerity of the emotion on the man’s face: and yet there was no explanation for it, either, absolutely none, no possible explanation, not within a rational world in which science ruled the physical universe and the stream of existence ran one way and cause led to effect in a chartable and reliable manner with logic and reason.

“My Papadum,” the man said. “My kaiserling. She is still alive?”

Charlie had no intention of letting this man anywhere near his mother. She was nearly eighty-five years old, no matter the health of her heart and her spirit. No manipulative schemer would be allowed to cross the threshold of her apartments: he would come up with some excuse why she could not take her turn around the garden, the daily exercise she insisted upon rain or shine. For as long as these people were here he would have to keep her closed away, somehow.

He would give them three days. Because there was a picture with an inscription on the back from his birth-father to his mother, with love from “Fergie” to his “Papadum,” his precious “kaiserling.” That was a mushroom. He’d looked it up when he’d been thirteen. He’d asked her about it. She’d just laughed.

“Her Fergie has been dead for sixty years.” Charlie said it deliberately, watching for the reaction. Only those people on the other side of the water could have known what his parents called each other, and that meant this man was his enemy. Or his father. Which was self-evidently impossible. He’d keep them for a few days and he’d be doing his research, too. “Shouldn’t he stay that way? Come on, I’ll give you the keys. Your people can stay through Saturday. You’ve got a bus?”

“In a manner of speaking. Yes. Come with me, I’ll show you.” All right. No more talk of credit cards, then. No offered identification. There was no law requiring him to demand any, though, and it was Charlie’s resort, it belonged to him and his mother free and clear. He could let them use his cabins if he pleased. Whether he was going to feed them he had yet to decide. “And oh, you’ll want your binoculars, if you have any,” the man said, as an afterthought, starting for the door.

Charlie swept the peg-board behind the service counter clear of the keys to all twenty cabins and dumped them into one of the bags he kept there for peoples’ purchases. He grabbed his field glasses. He followed the man out, locking the door behind him, since his mother would still be asleep at this early hour.

They weren’t going to the parking lot in front of his small restaurant, fine, closed for the season anyway. No bus, no RVs, the man—what was Charlie going to call him? Because “Lachs” was out of the question—headed off down toward the dock anyway, straight for the flagpoles. There wasn’t anything out there on the water. There was only an inflated rubber boat, and an old-fashioned one by the looks of it.

So there was a boat standing far enough out that it took binoculars to see it? If these people were smugglers, criminals, had Charlie just put his mother in jeopardy? He could call for help. He had more than one nook and corner where he had a radio, and could get a signal out.

The man shaded his eyes with the flat of his hand against the early morning light. Then he waved, with his arm high overhead, and took Charlie’s binoculars. Pointing with them at the flagpoles, at the Smoking Salmon banner—a sanitized version, of course, because Charlie had no intention of glorifying the war—the man stared into Charlie’s eyes with a certain degree of humor in his face.

“That is not U-818 Lachs,” the man said, emphatically. Taking a sight through the binoculars he nodded toward the water, waiting until he could tell that Charlie had seen something to aim at before holding the binoculars out for Charlie to take. “That is U-818 Lachs.”

Because there was something out there. Charlie hadn’t really noticed it at first, a stick bobbing in the water, except that it wasn’t bobbing, and it was getting taller. Quite tall. On top of something. On top of a structure of some sort, rising from the waves with a frothing of water from the sides of something long and low and grey. Suddenly sure of what he was going to see, horribly reluctant to see it, Charlie raised the binoculars to his eyes and focused.

There, on the side of the structure rising up inexorably out of the water. The original Smoking Salmon, a fish with a pipe in its mouth and a stream of black haze rising from a wrecked ship in the bowl, one lateral fin brought forward and enlarged as though it were a hand with its fingers splayed to show its blissful enjoyment of yet another enemy freighter going down, sending its billowing clouds of burning oil up to Heaven as if in an unspoken and unanswered prayer.

The utter and surreal insanity of it all was too much for Charlie, and he laughed. “All right,” he said. He understood it, now. “Come on ashore. Detail me one or two of your, er, crew, to prepare the cabins.”

World War Two Kriegsmarine re-enactors. That was the answer. Intense young nut-cases bent on recreating conflicts safely in the past, focused so completely on the technical challenges of building obsolete technology that the manifest tastelessness of what they were doing escaped them completely.

They weren’t dangerous. These weren’t neo-Nazis or white supremacists. Nobody with anything truly serious in mind would build a U-boat. Nobody who built a replica U-boat would have any money left over to buy beer, but who was to say whether the amusement value of their presence wasn’t return enough?

He felt much better about the whole thing: so long as he didn’t think too hard about the look on the man’s face when Charlie had suggested that they ask his mother about U-818.

* * *

Lowering his binoculars Herr Kaleun Raimond Dietsch shook his head, the corner of his mouth quirked toward the front of his mouth in a characteristic grimace of perplexity. “H’mm,” he said, although he knew how frustrated his men would be. “It’s not a tanker. It may be a troop ship. Let’s get closer.”

They’d been on their way back to Bordeaux, stopping near the Cape Verde Islands to refuel a sister U-boat outbound for the Indian Ocean. They’d been located, attacked, depth-charged in high style by the “hedgehog” depth charge bomb clusters that the enemy delighted in dropping on the heads of U-boats. When they had surfaced they had been safe from Allied attack, but much closer to South America than to Africa; of the coast of Brazil, in fact, which meant Allied territory.

The radio equipment had been too badly damaged during the depth-charge attacks to find a friendly voice at any frequency, or any voice at all. Dietsch had decided to run down to Mar del Plata, in Argentina. Yes, Argentina was technically neutral—they’d broken relations with Germany in January. But a small party might hope to slip ashore and gain some intelligence; and, with luck, a blind eye turned to refueling and refurbishment prior to setting course for France once again.

There had been no U-boats in the coastal waters of Brazil since 1943, no convoy traffic south of Bahia. He’d felt safe proceeding on the surface to sustain his crew, give them all some relief from the hellish heat that built up in the boat in these warm waters.

They’d had a chance to air the boat out, dry their clothing, touch up the ship’s seal on the conning tower—Moby Dick. Someone had told some of his crew that he, Dietsch, was as fixed on the hunt as Captain Ahab from that novel, and the white whale was what the crew had painted on the conning. They hadn’t asked him. He really didn’t object. It wasn’t his place.

They’d seen no traffic worth remarking, certainly no targets, but on the positive side no American destroyers or bombers looking for them to kill them for good and all this time. Nobody seemed to be looking for them. But he was always looking for something to eat, so it was wonderful to see the huge ship on the horizon. It was like no ship he’d ever imagined: a large box, as much as anything else, and so brightly painted that it might be taunting him.

Since he didn’t know what it was he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t a warship. He’d sent his engineer to consult Jane’s; now Englhardt was back, shaking his head in turn. “There is nothing like it in the book, Herr Kahloin,” he said. “It must be a new building program. Something from the Americans?”

Yes. That would make sense. They were a diabolically inventive people, but he would test them out all the same. “Periscope depth,” he told the watch officer. “Dive.”

The sun was blinding on the bright water. It was worth the risk that his periscope would escape observation, and the hydrophone operator didn’t hear more than one strong almost overwhelming noise of the single ship. The watch officer saw no escort ships as they ran closer in: just row upon row of what seemed to be windows rising in ranks into the heavens.

Troop ship. A repurposed pleasure craft, of monumental proportions. Dietsch climbed into his conning tower and gave the order to raise the attack periscope. He was the eyes of U-797. He was its Ahab. He had a full load of torpedoes for harpoons.

The target was so large there was no fear of misdirection; no need to finesse his course and speed, and the ship showed no signs of even the most basic of defensive maneuvers, but sailed in a straight line. He brought the boat into perfect position—nose on to broadside—and issued his command, three torpedoes to launch, in a fan; there, he said to himself, with satisfaction. That will serve you out for those depth charges.

Then he—and everybody else—waited, counting out the seconds either under their breath or, like Englhardt standing on the ladder half-way between Zentral and the conning tower where Dietsch sat at the attack periscope, on his stop-watch.

They were late. The size of the ship had confused him, Dietsch realized: it was farther away than he’d realized, the figures of the passengers he’d seen on one upper deck too indistinct to judge the distance by their height.

Late, but on target, and Dietsch rejoiced in the sweet sound from the hydrophones of the eels sinking their teeth into the hull of a juicy Allied transport. Once. Twice. Three times. Eye pressed to eyepiece of his periscope he scanned the ship to see what it would make of the gift that he had brought to their first meeting.

It didn’t seem to have made much of an impact. The ship had not slowed down. It didn’t seem to be taking on water. He knew his torpedoes had hit. All three of them. He knew a ship in ballast could eat up two, three torpedoes and still float, but that was a troop ship, it would logically be carrying people rather than ballast, why wasn’t it showing him that it was wounded? Hadn’t it noticed that it had been attacked?

He’d heard of that happening. When Prien had torpedoed the Royal Oak none of its crew had realized what had happened until it was far too late. This ship showed no sign of turning turtle. He needed more information than he could acquire from the conning tower. “Surface,” he told the watch officer. “Get a little nearer. And join me on the bridge.”

But it didn’t get any better when he climbed into the daylight to train his binoculars on the scene. Nobody was manning the ship’s boats, if that was what they were, those peculiar yellow objects like a cannoli or a tube-balloon. He could see some wisps of black smoke rising from the hull at the water-line, but when he looked up to the top of the boat he saw no signs of panic, or even alertness. And he was closer to the target than he’d been before. He could see things better.

What he saw made his heart sink. Those weren’t soldiers. There were men, yes, but there were at least as many women, and there were children there as well. This was a mistake. He’d made an error. He had to get away as quickly as possible, before he was seen, before he was identified, before the news of a U-boat attacking a defenseless passenger ship—a refugee ship, perhaps—could become a weapon in the propaganda war. He didn’t hesitate. He stooped over the hatch and yelled at the top of his lungs. “Alarm!”

Emergency dive. U-797 was a VII-F, they were the heaviest VII series made, they could dive like a cormorant. Hatch secured. Decking, already awash, now underwater. Conning tower slipping fast beneath the waves. Bridge flooded. Boat—disappeared. Had they been seen?

Should he go back and try again?

It was too late for that now. The word would spread throughout U-797 too quickly. No wise commander risked an order that would raise too many questions in men’s minds. Slumping against the chart table—his hands braced to either side of his rump to keep himself steady as the boat drove down into the deep—Dietsch listened to his engineer count off the meters. Twenty. Forty. Sixty. One hundred. He straightened up.

“That will do,” he said. Now he had to take control of his larger situation, define for his crew what their reality was going to be going forward. “I was misled by the unfamiliarity of the ship.” That was true. It cost him nothing in the eyes of the crew to admit to his mistake right away, and take any potential guilt on himself. “However, they do not appear to have been damaged very badly. We have avoided a grave error.”

Was there anything he could have done differently? Would any rational man have looked upon so large a target and risked an open hail, not knowing whether or not the ship was armed? That would have endangered the boat and its crew. No. No man would have gotten close enough to see women and children on so high an upper deck before launching his torpedoes, and by then it was too late.

They had been sent into the Indian Ocean with their load of torpedoes to replace ones whose batteries had degraded to uselessness in the damp heat of the tropics. Those of U-797 had clearly been affected as well. That would explain their failure to do significant damage, with three clearly heard detonations.

“We resume our course. We surface when we have some distance between us. Next stop Mar del Plata, gentlemen. That is all for now.”

A ship so much bigger than the Bismarck, one torpedoes did not sink, sailing blithely along on holiday as though there was no war on at all. Where was the shipyards in which such a monster could be built? Who was the national genius behind such an innovation? What nation in all the world was not at war?

And when, when would they find a true target against which to unleash their fury, and burn away the embarrassment and shame of having almost murdered a cruise ship full of women and children?

* * *

It was a beautiful day. Verricht Lachs stood on the low veranda of the command cabin—the one he shared with his senior officers, First Officer Goond Hols, Second Officer Theodor Sclarvie, Engineering Officer Joachim Vilsohn—facing the crew leaders, who stood on the lawn facing him. Out beyond his men Lachs could see the lake, glittering in the light of the Sun in a cloudless sky.

“We have considered the situation, Herr Kahloin.” Their navigator, Harald Rathke. “As you have asked. We can derive no explanation for how we got here. And in the absence of any other information our only suggestion is that we go out the same way we came in.”

They had to escape from the trap they were in if they were to hope to survive in the long term. Lake Superior was a very large body of water, and deep, four hundred meters in places; but it was less than half the extent of the Bay of Biscay, and it had been proven that a U-boat had to have luck on its side to traverse Biscay safely now that Allied air carried the new radar. The newer radar, Lachs reminded himself.

It had been difficult to hide in 1945. In 2005 it would be that much harder, if anybody started looking for them, which meant that Lake Superior offered no long-term sanctuary that could be safely relied upon, not even here at the Salmon Shore resort.

Sooner or later someone would happen upon their boat. They had to get out of here. A U-boat did not belong in Lake Superior, and there was a route from the lake out to the Atlantic Ocean, but to get there one had to traverse the complex system of locks that was called the Saint Lawrence seaway and there was no way to sneak a U-boat through those.

“I risk the lives of everybody in our crew,” Lachs pointed out. It was his decision, absolutely; any hint of collective action was entirely out of the question. Nobody wanted to invoke the shameful shadow of the Kiel mutiny. Nobody hated Communists more than a U-boat crew. “I risk the boat. Have we really no alternatives, in your view?”

Now there was a little uncomfortable stirring amongst the gathered officers, the chief diesel man, the top torpedo man, one of the radio operators. The navigator, of course. The warrant officers assigned. What?

“A point of interest, Herr Kahloin,” Heimsat—one of the machinists’ mates—said, diffidently, when Rathke didn’t speak. “There was U-728. Does Herr Kahloin remember? They also saw the Höllander. And when they were depth-charged their position was off Jan Mayen Island, but by the time they got their radio working they were near Gibraltar, and there was no explanation.”

That was not a completely accurate statement. There had been several explanations proposed. “I have heard of that,” Lachs said slowly, wondering how much was known amongst the crews of what was said amongst the officers. Also vice versa. “It was said there was an error in navigation. Milrauch insisted there had not been any such thing.”

Milrauch had been transferred away from his boat, condemned to shore duty. There had seemed little doubt that the boat had sustained severe damage in a massed Allied attack in the Arctic Ocean; Milrauch had lost his nerve, it was said, and fled the scene. Lachs had heard some perplexity as to how the boat had gotten from Jan Mayen to Gibraltar with its fuel tanks so little depleted, but since there had been a suspicious whiff of cowardice about the only possible explanation the matter was not much discussed.

Heimsat nodded, as did some of the others. “In fact no rational explanation, Herr Kahloin, so it was said that errors had crept in to the story as it was told. But now we consider that U-728 had descended to an unknown depth as a result of an attack, and when it surfaced it was someplace very much else. That is what we have heard. That is why we suspect that the only way out of Lake Superior is to descend as deeply as we dare, and see where we are, when we come up.”

Lachs took a deep breath. Then he let it out again. “Thank you for your report, men,” he said. “I will let you know when I have made a decision.”

They made their salutes. He returned them. Then he waited while everybody left, the men, his LI, his ZweiVo; it was just him and Goond, and Lachs leaned forward to lean his crossed forearms against the railing to disguise his involuntary slump of indecision. Yes, he was the commander. Yes, it was his decision, and he had accepted the responsibility years ago.

And still he was very glad to have Goond here to help him clarify his thinking, and would wait to see what Goond had to say about the problem that they faced.

* * *

Now that the crew had made their report and gone away Goond stood with Lachs on the lake-facing rail of the porch that surrounded their cabin, looking out across the water. It was a nice resort, and if it was not entirely up to modern standards—the old man had made a remark about that from time to time, in passing—that only meant it was closer to their own time, which reduced the psychic strain of their situation a little.

Closer to their own time, maybe, but still nowhere near to their own place. Goond felt farther and farther away from that with every reference article he read on the PC the old man had made available for their use—one in each cabin, some older, some newer, all technological marvels that had too much information on them to be grasped. Goond had done his best to stick to the essentials: it was 2005, “World War Two” had been over for sixty years, and U-818 hadn’t survived it.

Lachs was leaning over the railing with his folded arms braced to the weathered wooden cap-board, squinting into the westering sun. He hadn’t had much to say about the old man. The old man kept clear of Lachs as much as possible, while at the same time offering every apparent courtesy. There was an old woman about the place, though Goond didn’t think anybody had seen her. He’d decided he had better things to occupy his mind than that. How old would the captain’s lady be, in 2005?

“We can’t stay,” Goond said. “No matter how easy it might seem.” Yes, it was beautiful. Yes, it was pleasant, comfortable, safe, and they were alive. But they hadn’t any business being here. Goond wasn’t sure anybody wanted to go back—since that could well be going back to being dead—but what else were they to do? There was no role for a U-boat anywhere in this modern world. There were genuine submarines now, nuclear-powered. Goond had read up on the subject.

“We have hypotheses, but no understanding.” Lachs’ voice was contemplative, with a subtle undertone of unwillingness to accept Goond’s remark, of wishing to stay safe and warm and comfortable. Goond understood completely. He agreed. “There is only the one thing clear, above all others. I can think of no other way around it.”

Goond could think of several things that were clear. He waited. Lachs surprised him, time and again; they knew each other well enough to rely on each other’s decision processes, on each others’ actions, but not well enough to be able to guess each others’ innermost thoughts too readily. It kept the relationship from becoming boring, which was important, when men spent as much time together as they had in quarters as close as a U-boat. Friendships could be broken under such strains, as well as forged and strengthened.

“Look at this lake,” Lachs said. “We used to own the oceans of the world. And now the lake has become our prison. We can’t get out, Goond. We’re trapped. Unless we abandon U-818, which I will not do, not if I am the only man remaining.”

This was no Bay of Biscay. There were no enemy mine-layers between them and the Atlantic, no British bombers, no destroyers. There were only the locks. Gunther Prien—the first of Herr Hitler’s incomparables—had barely slid his U-47 into Scapa Flow and out again; there was no creeping through these locks from lake to lake, and there were how many, between them and their freedom? Did it even matter? One was enough.

The world might be at peace. But locks were attended by their very nature, their fill-and-flush cycles carefully controlled, every close and open documented, and every ship as well. There was no hope that any fifty men could break in to the dockmaster’s control station and sneak anything through in the middle of the night.

“I don’t think any of us really can leave U-818,” Goond admitted. “Though if someone wants to badly enough, I don’t know how we would stop them, short of tying them up in the torpedo room. Which could be bad for morale.”

Disappearing into the local population could be done—at least for the short term, to go by the news. But they all had experience in wading through propaganda for underlying facts. They were undocumented. They had no money with which to purchase documentation. The boat had no registry. Nobody was licensed to own or operate.

Lachs nodded. “We overstay our welcome, if we’re not careful. Then who knows what might happen.” An internment camp; one not likely to be as comfortable as the “Salmon Shore” resort. They could move the boat to Duluth, or any one of a number of smaller ports: but they’d just be postponing the inevitable. “The best escapes are made the closest to the point of capture. I personally see few better alternatives.”

When they’d seen the Flying Dutchman, they’d seen a ghost. To see a ghost was to share the same liminal space as a ghost, between the worlds of the living and of the dead. To share that space was to become contaminated. They were in that space now.

And the last thing that had happened to them before they had surfaced sixty years and four thousand miles from where they’d gone down was that they had been bombed into an emergency dive that had become an uncontrolled descent to an undetermined depth. At the time Goond had assumed that they were not at impossible depths, because the boat had not collapsed in on itself, because the water pressure forcing the water in through every minute crack or tiny fault did not have the force of a blow-torch cutting them into pieces.

Maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe the boat hadn’t collapsed in on itself because something in the deeps had taken them out of their time, out of their space, and brought them here. Maybe it was the pressure itself that flattened them into a mote upon the wings of time and carried them through dimensional channels yet unimagined all the way to Lake Superior. Maybe there were sub-oceanic ducts beneath all of the world’s great waters. Stranger things were attested in the science of this modern age, or if not stranger, at least very strange.

“Do I announce your decision, Herr Kahloin?” Goon asked. This was serious. It called for formal language. “Have you made one, and when do we leave?”

Lachs seemed to consider this question. Suddenly, however, Goond found himself with no time to wait upon the commander’s word. “Yes, I understand,” Goond said. “Meeting of officers, then all-crew muster. I’ll just go right away to get that organized. Immediately yes? I’d better get started—”

Because he saw something that Lachs had not yet spotted, lost in thought as Lachs was and staring at the lake. Goond was not staring at the lake. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the house up-slope at the head of the resort with its cabins and its little restaurant, where the store and the office was. The house where the old man lived, though the old man had gone on a drive today, to run some errands. The house where the old man lived with the older woman, about whom Lachs had said nothing at all, whom none of them had seen but at a distance.

There was a woman coming now. She was thin like the branches of a hawthorn tree well adorned with its wicked sharp slender thorns. She was wearing the sort of a dress that might be worn by any respectable European woman within living memory, to judge from the TV, something long and patterned blue and white, and she was striding with purpose and determination across the long lawn between the big house and the cabin at whose railing Goond stood with Lachs.

Goond did not want any part of it, but she called out, her voice startling Lachs into the sort of whiplash-spin that was almost never good for a man’s balance. “You too, Goond,” she called, clear and strong. “The both of you. I will have words. No time to spare.” In German. And, oh, Goond recognized that determination in her voice. He hadn’t wanted to.

Lachs had gone as green-white in the face as ever he’d been at the end of a long cruise, apparently stunned into paralysis. The woman climbed the two low steps up onto the porch. There was something in her hand. “You are not the only U-boat that has found itself in strange waters,” she said, holding the something out—papers, papers with notes. “There is traffic. Goond. You look well. Has my husband been eating his breakfast?”

She’d gotten old. Well, of course she had, “Charlie” was an old man, older even than he looked to Goond; and Emrys had been only two years younger than Fergie when they’d married. She was wearing her hair short, in iron-gray curls; without make-up her features were sterner than Goond remembered, but she had always had that hint of unfathomed strength in her eyes.

Fergie had turned away and put his hand to his forehead. The look Emrys gave his hunched shoulder blades was one of infinite compassion; Goond felt uncomfortably like he was peering through someone’s bedroom window. “He is my commander,” Goond said. “And nobody tells him to eat his breakfast. Except you. How did you know he was him?”

A foolish question, really, and Goond wished he could call it back. “You and Charlie quarrelling in the store-front, when you came,” she said, to Fergie’s turned back. “Do you think I would ever forget your voice? My love. —But Charlie is not the only ham radio operator in our family. There has been an incident near Rio de Janeiro in Brazil that should concern you, because we may be the only people with any idea of what might be happening, and what could happen if something is not done.”

Goond scanned the papers she’d given him. Notes. A cruise ship, yes, he’d seen ads for cruise ships on TV and then he’d had to look them up on the computer and study them in sick fascination. There were three times as many people on some of those ships than had been lost when the Bismarck had gone down. The news Emrys brought said that there had been very few casualties; these things were built with phenomenal redundancies in their survival gear, and besides the ship had stayed afloat. That was a very great blessing: but it also wasn’t the point.

There were the official reports, and then there were the fringe elements. Some of its passengers insisted that someone had tried to sink them. There was gossip about torpedoes, a periscope, the conning tower and bridge of submarine. Someone claimed that someone had a photo, howsoever blurry, and was holding out for a fat enough offer from a tabloid magazine.

Someone had seen a cartoon on the conning tower of the supposed submarine that someone was supposed to have seen. According to Emrys’ notes the media discounted any such sightings, but gossip spoke of a big white fish. Moby Dick. The White Whale.

Which to anybody who knew anything pointed exclusively and immediately to U-797 Dietsch. Goond knew that ship, or at least he knew U-797 Dietsch. VII-F. A monsoon boat, one of possibly only four VII-Fs as far as Goond knew, tasked with bringing fresh torpedoes into the Indian Ocean; so they’d rounded the Cape of Good Hope: and could have seen the Dutchman.

This changed things. Over the past few days he’d realized, he thought they’d all truly realized, that the war was over. It would take a certain amount of willful blindness to look at one of those huge floating hotels and see a troop transport, even off Allied Rio de Janeiro. There hadn’t been a threat to commercial shipping since 1945, and a cruise ship had no conceivable protections. But Raimond Dietsch had never been quite right in the head.

“I’ll go speak to our officers,” Goond said. It was more than something that had to be put into motion right now. It was also a good exit line. Raimond Dietsch meant trouble. Someone needed to reach out to him, somehow, and put him straight.

Goond left Emrys Lachs to say what she had to say to her husband—her husband, to say to her—and went forth with concentration on the emergency that would impel them to their grand experiment sooner, rather than later.

* * *

By the time Charlie got back from his errands it was past dark. He came in through the back of the house, as he always did; that meant the kitchen door. So comfortably familiar was the sight of his mother sitting at the kitchen table with her old-fashioned drip coffee pot sitting on a trivet in the middle that he didn’t think twice about her being there, and started talking as he turned to secure the screen door behind him. He hadn’t taken it down for the winter, and it was too late now, because summer would be here soon.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “Bad traffic on the road past Benson. Need to put a light on some of those cross-streets, and soon.” He heard the clink of her mug against her saucer. Always a saucer, even with a mug. And always picking up her mug, taking a sip, and setting it back down again, even when it was only to pick it up again for a second sip immediately.

There was another chime of mug against saucer, and Charlie realized that she wasn’t alone.

He turned around. That man. He sat beside Charlie’s mother, not across from her, the chair drawn around to sit at the diagonal so that he’d been partially screened from view. He wasn’t looking at Charlie. He was wearing the jacket he’d had on the first time Charlie had seen him, and there was a pile of cabin-keys in front of him on the table.

“So you’re leaving, then,” Charlie said. If he’d been paying more attention the fact that the cabins were dark would have tipped him off; they’d been fully lit for three, four days now, he’d been getting used to it. Someone had noticed he’d had company. He’d claimed there was paint drying.

“It’s time,” the man said. “Your mother and I have just been going over our accounts.”

And that could be taken two ways. Each of them had an envelope on the table in front of them, inscribed; with their name across the front, Charlie realized, of course. Once upon a time he’d seen his mother’s stack tied up with a black ribbon, one for each time Charlie’s father had gone off on a war cruise. She’d told him. He’d never asked about them again. “All settled and satisfactory, I presume?” He hadn’t decided what he was going to call the man, yet. It had only been a few days.

The man looked up at the kitchen clock above the stove. “Eight o’clock,” he said. “Time to catch my ride back.” He stood up, tucking the envelope with his name on it away inside his jacket. Inside pocket, Charlie presumed. “Thank you for the use of the facilities, Charlie Montrose. It’s been of invaluable help to us.”

Charlie’s mother hadn’t moved. She turned her face up toward the man as he moved past; the man stooped and kissed her mouth with a sort of businesslike tenderness that erased the apparent difference in age between them. Suddenly Charlie was desperately worried: was his mother ever going to see this man again? She certainly took him for exactly who he claimed to be. Charlie couldn’t let this happen.

“Well, you’re welcome to come back and see us again,” he said, trying not to notice the startled hunger on his mother’s face that she turned to him as he spoke. “We get busy during the summer, but we’ll find some way to manage. Any time.” And Charlie stood aside, so that the man could leave through the kitchen door. The store would be locked up. It would be dark all the way down to the dock, and nobody to see what might be waiting for its captain out there on the water.

“Be good to your mother,” the man said, in German now, and held out his hand. “Until I can get back to you both. You’re a good boy, Pieter. I am so proud to have you as my son.”

Charlie couldn’t move.

Those were the words. And in that voice. And the hand-shake. He only barely managed to shake himself loose from his paralysis in time to get his own hand out, to clasp that of his father. “I will,” he promised, because those were the words, though he hadn’t thought of them for decades. “Safe journey, swift return, sir. We will await the day.”

Now, only now, he believed that the man was his father. Only now that the man was leaving. But his mother knew. And his father had known all along, after their first meeting. His father was gone, and Charlie remembered this emotion, the brave front for his mother’s sake, when all his nearly-six-year-old self had wanted to do was cry.

“Your coffee will get cold,” his mother said. He could hear the sound of a mug filling. “Sit down, Charlie. There’s nothing to be done.”

He wasn’t six years old. His heart had not been broken. His father was gone, but it was because Charlie Montrose senior had died of cardiac disease just seven years ago. Nothing to do with Verricht Lachs.

So as inexplicable events went, it was one. “I’ve got to get the groceries,” Charlie said. “Ice cream will melt.” But he sat down anyway and reached for his mug, because she’d told him to. The ice cream wouldn’t melt very quickly. He could take another ten minutes for his mother’s sake; and go see to the cabins in the morning.

* * *

Once Lachs was back on board they’d run on the surface for as long as it felt safe—the lookout finding no aircraft, no boats on the water. They kept underwater for the daylight hours, so it was near dawn on the second day after they’d left the Salmon Shore—thirty-six hours, more or less—that they reached their target position. Maybe nobody was up in the sky looking for a U-boat, specifically, and they were a small boat in the grand scheme of things. But U-boats didn’t survive by making assumptions.

They were making one assumption: that the vague reports—rumors—conspiracy theories, outlandish though they were, were founded on fact: another U-boat displaced in space and time; and a specific U-boat, whose commander had been gossiped about. The entire crew of U-818 Lachs were the only ones with certain knowledge that such a thing could happen.

If nobody got to U-797 in time to warn them that the war was over, a catastrophe might occur. One of the gigantic cruise ships torpedoed, with no time to evacuate all of the passengers and crew. The safety redundancies on those cruise ships were impressive: Goond had studied up on them. But nobody had prepared a cruise liner in 2005 to be attacked by a war machine from sixty years ago. U-797 was a torpedo resupply boat. Who knew how many torpedoes it might have on board?

How long would it take the world’s navies to realize that there was what amounted to a terrorist-by-default on the loose? How many torpedoes would it take the White Whale to sink a cruise liner, how many cruise liners would U-797 sink before it was tracked down and destroyed, how many thousands of people might be killed? What if U-797 fired on a British Navy ship, a United States Navy ship, a Russian war-ship, in the current political environment?

For the last hour and a half everybody on the boat got their chance to come up to the bridge for a few minutes, breathe the air, look at the horizon. Goond wanted to linger on, but it was getting lighter and there was no sense in drawing things out. There would be plenty of time to wonder whether they had made a terrible mistake once they started down.

One last look around at the night sky—at the stars—one last breath of the beautiful pure fresh air—and Goond climbed down into the conning tower to secure the bridge. Into your hands, oh Lord, do we commit our spirits, he said to himself. “Tower hatch closed, Herr Ellie!” Goond called down, firmly, decisively. Did they not commit themselves to God every time they closed the tower hatch? Was this really all so very different?

Yes. It was. There was no way to tell whether diving past three hundred meters would reproduce the physical displacement they’d experienced between the Arctic Ocean and the Salmon Shore resort, even for a boat that had been contaminated by contact with the Flying Dutchman. And if it did, what if they were displaced in time once again, as well? What then?

But U-797 had come up in 2005. U-818 had come up in 2005. Maybe they were called to the same year by accident, but maybe once they were here they would stay. They had to try something, and there was simply nothing else to try. They were fifty-three; a single passenger cruise line carried thousands. It had to be done.

Goond descended into the control room, where Lachs already stood—back to the periscope housing—watching the depth gauges past Vilsohn, over the shoulders of the men seated at the hydroplane stations. “Take us down,” Lachs said. “U-818 into the deeps.”

The diesels had fallen silent. Indicator lights went from red to green as air intake valves were closed and secured. The lights were already dimmed to conserve battery power, because even though they were fully charged, who knew how deep they would be able to go, how far they’d have to travel just to get to the surface again? Who knew how much power they would have to call upon, and for how long?

“Flood tanks forward,” Ellie said. Nobody spoke, except to repeat orders. They could do this in their sleep. That was a good thing. The air had been so thick, before they’d come up from the deeps that last time, that he had been all but sleep-walking.

The boat began to tilt, forward, driving down. Almost as quickly as an emergency dive, but it was just the weight of the boat that was giving them the extra impetus to sink. There was a delicate trade-off, Goond supposed, between the desire to get deep as soon as they could because only then would they know whether they would meet their doom there; and a natural reluctance to cling to the life they might be leaving, not so fast, take your time, there’s no hurry.

Nobody wanted to die. They wanted to live. That meant the risk of dying. Ellie Vilsohn floated his hands in the air, giving instructions for the hydroplanes, decreasing angle of dive, continuing to descend. Maintaining control of the boat as it went deeper. No steeply-sloping slides, no forgotten bits of crockery going flying; no.

Only the boat sinking, sinking, there was one hundred meters, there was the horrid creaking of the wood veneer panels over cabinet doors, there were the groanings and snappings which signified the reaction of the superficial elements of interior trim to changing air pressure—or the leaking, rupturing, fracturing of the pressure hull itself—or nothing.

Should he just go lie down on his bunk, and wrap the pillow around his head to cover his ears and muffle the sounds? It wasn’t as though there would be depth charges. He could have a nap, almost. No. He couldn’t go lie down. He had to watch, with fascination, as the boat continued its dive. One hundred and thirty. One hundred and forty-five.

He had heard the boasting stories in the officers’ mess between war cruises, who had not? But was all hearsay. The design specifications said that boat was meant to go to no more than two hundred and thirty meters with safety, but the boat could go to two hundred and fifty. The boat could go to two hundred and seventy-five meters.

Nobody had ever sat across from Goond and claimed to have been on the boat that had come up from two hundred and eighty-five meters. Goond had never been below two hundred and ten—that he could swear to—but how far down they’d been in the Arctic he did not know. “How deep do we go, Herr Kahloin?” Ellie asked, and Lachs stirred himself.

“We go down until everything breaks.” Perhaps not completely helpful, Goond thought, when “everything” could include the pressure hull itself. Clearly there was some sort of a guideline in Lachs’ mind; but nobody challenged him—because they trusted his judgment, not just because he was the commander. The Smoking Salmon was not that kind of boat. “Then we surface, and see what’s what. We don’t have to get all the way back to Norway. We only need to get out to the Gulf.”

So they went down. One hundred and thirty meters. One hundred and sixty. One hundred and eighty-five. Where would they be, when would they be, when they came up? Goond had a private suspicion, but it was too speculative, even with all of the unreality that surrounded them already.

Two hundred and thirty meters, maximum depth for the IX-C/40. Two hundred and forty meters, and continuing to dive. Why had U-818 surfaced in Lake Superior, of all places? Had nobody else wondered? Nobody had spoken of it if they had, not in Goond’s hearing. Lachs himself had confided no suspicions. Everybody knew, though. Everybody knew that Lachs had found his wife and child here.

His wife and his son would not have been foremost in Lachs’ mind when they’d gone down off Hammerfest: Lachs had had plenty of other things to think about. But Goond was certain that the issue had at least arisen in Lachs’ mind, as it did for many of them, during the long hours they’d lain in the depths of the ocean not knowing whether they would live or die.

Now Lachs had found his wife and child, although the boat had had to come to Lake Superior to bring them back together. Lachs had ways to keep in touch with his loved ones going forward, because Charlie Montrose himself had sat down with the radio-men to talk about things like amateur radio “repeater” stations, and “nodes,” and “inter-ties.” All of those ways were here and now, May, 2005.

And for that reason, if for no other reason than blind faith, Goond believed they would reach the Atlantic, and that it would still be May of 2005 when they did so. Because Lachs meant to find the White Whale. And what Lachs meant to do was what was going to happen.

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. They would surface. Or they wouldn’t. And all of the other questions would simply have to wait, perhaps forever.

* * *

On the night her husband had left, again, after all of those long decades of being dead, Emrys had propped the note he’d given her up against the mirror above the dresser in her bedroom, next to the picture of her other dead husband—Charlie Montrose, from whom her son Charlie had adopted his name—and gone to bed, leaving it unopened.

She had an idea of what the note contained. It had been a tradition, if one of few years’ duration; still, they’d been young, in those days, and the separation of months had been as painful as that of years. He would tell her that he loved her. He would tell her that he had to go, he’d sworn his oath, and that he would not be worthy of her love if he did not show himself honest and true in the eyes of the world.

He would tell her that he would be thinking of her, that he would be cherishing thoughts of her as his guide and armor against the challenges he faced, that he would do his best to come back to her loyal and true. And he would tell her again that he loved her.

Hers were of similar tenor, and also similarly repetitive. She loved him. She would always love him. She cherished their son and hoped to cherish their son’s younger brothers and sisters as much, in time. She would pray earnestly and every day for his return. She knew that he would do his duty with courage and honor, but she wanted him back, to her house, to her embrace, to her bed. And she loved him.

When he came home on leave he would bring her last note back with him, and put it in a cigar box that he’d inherited from his grandfather in a drawer with his handkerchiefs and his other odds and ends. Pipe stems with fractured mouth-pieces. Cracked bowls of briars. Stubs of railway tickets. They’d all been lost in the bombing.

Next morning it was waiting for her there, but she didn’t open it. It was too soon. They meant to reach Lake Superior’s deepest waters before they tried their theory out; thirty-six hours, more or less, on the surface and beneath it. It was still there on the morning after that, two days after the Smoking Salmon had departed.

She lay down for a nap after lunch-time because remembering, re-living, grappling with the fact of her husband come back to her from across space and time—only to leave her again—was exhausting. The unopened note had yellowed, the ink on the envelope faded to a rusty brown. She left it where it was. They’d both known there was a risk.

She overslept. It was dark outside by the time she opened her eyes and sat up to go and see about some dinner, near midnight; the quarter-moon was rising north-northeast. She saw the envelope gleaming in the darkness from the corner of the mirror above her dresser, next to the picture she kept there of Charlie Montrose.

Her name was as sharp and crisp as though it had been written yesterday across against the clean white paper. Smiling, she reached for it, and opened it up to read.

* * *

U-818 had sustained damage. Some of the leaks, some of the creaking and groaning of the boat, that had been sustained earlier; there’d been no U-boat pens at Salmon Shore. They were going to have to find a shipyards before they tried this trick again, Goond told himself. Maybe they would go to Brest and ask for some maintenance: the Internet said that the German World War Two submarine pens at Brest were still being used for the same purpose by the French navy.

“The boat is lighter, Herr Kahloin,” Ellie said. “I’d swear on it.” They were on their way up. The boat had gone deep and this time they’d been able to tell, because the gauges had not blown out over the depth reader. Not at two hundred and fifty meters. Not at two hundred and seventy-five. At two hundred and seventy-five, Lachs had stopped. It would work or it wouldn’t. They could always go down deeper, next time, and try again. “Can you feel it?”

Lachs shook his head. “I will only imagine it now, Joachim.” Goond had thought it was his imagination. Maybe it hadn’t been. Ellie was the one who would know. If Ellie said the boat was lighter relative to its medium—if Ellie said that the boat was no longer in fresh water—

One hundred and forty meters, and rising. They were not dead, and that was the most important thing. For Goond, at least, and for the rest of the crew; for Lachs? Because if not being dead were more important than escaping Lake Superior, for Lachs, how would Goond be able to test his hypothesis?

“Do you get a signal, Bentzien?” Goond called back, quietly, to the radio room. But Bentzien shook his head.

“We are still too deep, EinsVo. Not yet.” Goond waved a hand in apology. He was just anxious. He had a GPS in his pocket. He was still sure there was a risk of trace-back, but Charlie had almost convinced him that there was so much traffic that U-818 would be lost in the noise. It would have to wait until they surfaced, one way or another.

One hundred and ten meters. One hundred meters. Ellie gave the hydroplane operators a correction, low-voiced. The boat was lighter. They needed to be sure the boat did not breach on surfacing, to be mistaken perhaps for a whale by some vacationer in a small boat. That would be unfortunate, though it would continue the whale theme of their problem, their mission to locate U-797 before “Ahab” Dietsch found his Moby Dick, like an ocean-going Don Quixote torpedoing a wind-mill. There were no whales in Lake Superior, any more than there were U-boats.

One hundred. Ninety. “What are you thinking, Herr Kahloin?” Goond asked Lachs. He tried to make it lighthearted, to give no hint of the importance of the question in his mind. He would find out. Very soon now. He would find out.

“Dietsch has always been a good warrior,” Lachs said. “But not a man so suited for peacetime. He lives to fight. He will keep on fighting. Now we may have to fight him, U-boat to U-boat. I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

So Lachs was focused on his aim, and that was a data point. The boat was at seventy-five meters and rising ever more quickly as it neared the surface, and Ellie made some more adjustments to trim. Seventy meters. Sixty. Goond did his best not to hold his breath. All around him, in the relative quiet of the electrical motors, he could sense the crew doing the same in their own ways, pretending nonchalance, trying to maintain their calm in the face of their relief at being on the rise and at not being quite dead yet. Fifty meters. Thirty. Twenty.

They seemed to be rushing to the surface, the closer they got, no matter how careful everybody knew Ellie was. Fifteen meters. Ten meters. Five meters—“Up periscope,” Lachs said, calmly. Goond knew Lachs was not calm. That wasn’t the point. The point that everybody knew Lachs was being calm for them, to hearten and reassure them as best he could.

They had not breached the surface. Ellie was once more in his familiar element—salt water—and he was in complete command of his boat, of the mechanical creature, of the machine to which they owed their lives. U-818 was a good boat. Goond had not been on a better.

Periscope up. Lachs took a first scan, then started talking as he scanned again. “I see no traffic,” Lachs said. “It is a dark night.” As it should be, based on ship’s chronometers—since they had gone east. If they’d gone as they hoped to. “If that is the moon, it is low on the horizon, and half-full. I see no lights. Surface, Ellie.”

So far there was little information, except for Ellie’s sense of the relative weight of the boat. In the Gulf of Saint Lawrence they might see much the same as they had on Lake Superior: no coastline; no particular traffic.

Goond passed his GPS to Lachs as Lachs passed, and Lachs turned it on with a decisive gesture, climbing the ladder up through the conning tower to wait at the bridge hatch for Ellie to give him the signal. It had been designed for use on a boat, Charlie had said. Waterproof.

When Lachs opened the bridge hatch the second watch followed him up, Goond bringing up the rear. Goond did his best to judge the quality of the fresh air being drawn through the boat by its fans: salt? Fresh? Climbing to the top the ladder, his head barely clearing the hatch, Goond waited. Lachs bent down close, his expression unreadable against the clear dark sky. It was warm. They were not on Lake Superior any more.

“We made it,” Lachs said. “We’re off the coast of Barbados. East-southeast for Brazil, according to this instrument. And Argentina. The GPS finds a date-stamp, it has been only three days since we left Salmon Shore. Tell the crew.”

Every U-boat man knew how to do a controlled fall down from the bridge through the conning tower to the Zentral, using the uprights of the ladder to guide and brake them. Goond hopped down now. “We’re out!” he shouted. “Caribbean Sea. 2005. We’re out, we’re free, it’s worked!”

They would find U-797. They would find the White Whale. They would save Dietsch, and all he might encounter, from disaster. Goond knew they could do it. Because now he thought, he thought for almost certain, that whether or not Lachs himself understood what was going on, the ship—and the crew—would follow Lachs’ heart.

Fortunately for them all, Lachs’ heart was true.

Stephen Lawson

Homunculus

The yellow-orange tholin haze above Titan’s surface whirled around the chassis of a lighter-than-air research drone. A tiny carbon-fiber humanoid robot sat perched on its support structure, dangling his feet next to the drone’s camera as it took pictures of the rocky surface below. The dirigible, designed to carry sampling probes and communication equipment, barely registered the stowaway’s mass. Folded aramid-fiber wings fluttered on aluminum ribs on the bot’s back as the breeze swept over the drone’s chassis.

"Man, this place really does have atmosphere," Gavin whispered.

He snorted at his own bad joke.

It keeps out the cosmic radiation though. They have to live underground on Mars, like moles.

Gavin watched the haze roil beneath his tiny carbon-fiber feet. It wasn’t really him of course. Gavin and his wife Lori were hurtling through the space between Earth and Saturn in a Goshawk Heavy Transport. The winged avatars through which they interacted with Titan’s small colony would’ve only come up to his knee if they stood side-by-side. Nonetheless, six hour virtual reality workdays in the bubble box made the homunculus’s carbon-fiber shell feel very much like skin.

Steady development in smartphone battery capacity and size had paved the way for the tiny twelve to fourteen hour lithium-ion battery nested in his back. The same was true of the dual micro-cameras that gave the homunculus crisp depth perception and picture, even in Titan’s shrouded twilight.

Quantum entanglement communication—built on John Bell’s experiments and tested from a satellite to Earth by the Chinese in 2017—had brought the ansible into the real world. It made instantaneous control of the homunculus possible, though the true breakthrough in quantum manipulation hadn’t come until 2021 at CERN. That had earned two post-PhD researchers the title "Spin Doctors" in every major publication when they’d changed the spin of a pair of entangled electrons.

Gavin didn’t wait twelve minutes, as the MarsX contractors had, to get an image from his avatar, or to send it a command. He was present—now—through the virtual reality goggles, surround-sound speakers, and the nest of tiny inflatable bubbles that rapidly expanded and contracted to provide haptic feedback in zero gravity.

The green qMail icon blinked twice in his visor.

He held his right thumb and index finger together to activate voice commands.

"Open qMail," he said quietly, and a stream of text overlaid the bottom of his view of the Kraken Mare’s liquid methane.

Gavin, the message said, please come to Greenhouse 3 as soon as possible. We can’t find Jonah. We think he might be in a ventilation duct. Please hurry. —Hope

That didn’t sound good.

Gavin’s hand moved up through the plastic bubbles to his left, and he felt the homunculus’s hand grasp one of the airship’s support cables as he pulled his tiny avatar to its feet.

"Add overlay," Gavin whispered, "—colony hub. Add building numbers. Add thermal signatures for humans."

Translucent blue lines shimmered around the plastic igloos two thousand feet below him. White numbers identified the nuclear plant, electrolysis facility, greenhouses, and homes. To the north, on Mayda Insula, a pair of blue outlines showed him the tidal generators that supplemented the colony’s fast-breeder nuclear reactors.

Gavin turned his gaze back to the greenhouses. If he planned his glide right, he’d only have to put power to his wings for a few seconds before he touched down.

The tiny aluminum and carbon-fiber man leapt from the chassis that supported the lighter-than-air drone’s camera and over-the-horizon communication hardware. Gavin tapped his left thumb and forefinger together, and the homunculus’s wings opened.

He soared like a flying squirrel through the nitrogen-methane haze, S-turning left and right to match the shimmering blue optimal glide path in his visor. If he overshot too much, he’d have to swim out of the Kraken.

The flesh-and-blood colonists had tried flying when they’d first arrived. It was one of the great appeals of Titan—with a running start and some good hard flapping, a human could fly like an Earth-bird through the soupy atmosphere and low gravity.

The novelty wore off when they realized how many calories they had to eat after such workouts, and how few calories the greenhouses produced to supplement the monthly supply rockets.

There was, also, a limited amount of scenery to awe flying humans. Once they’d seen methane waves swelling under Saturn’s tidal pull and a few cryovolcanoes spewing blocks of ice, they uploaded some videos to the interplanetary net’s social media sites to impress people they’d never see at another high school reunion, and settled down to the hard work of colony growth.

It had grown—rapidly in fact—during Gavin’s first three years in transit. Hydrocarbons like ethane (C_2H_6) and methane (CH_4)—so plentiful in Titan’s surface and atmosphere—were easily transformed into hollow-core, vacuum-insulated polyethylene (C_2H_4) plastic building blocks which could be joined with resin to form domes. These plastic In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) igloos rapidly replaced Titan2070’s inflatable, less-insulated habitats.

The colonists had added two more greenhouses and had begun experimenting with gene-edited vegetables that wouldn’t have survived Earth’s cumbersome gravity. They’d bored a network of underground ventilation shafts as a contingency to the aboveground inflatable conduits, just in case the remnants of a micrometeor shower made it through the atmosphere.

Now, rather than flying humans, the fleet of semi-autonomous airships they’d built to map and study Titan circled the moon like zeppelin-Roombas, sometimes obscured in yellow-orange clouds, sometimes visible dropping tiny geo-samplers to the surface when the colonists found something that piqued their curiosity.

Gavin tapped his thumbs against his middle fingers to send battery power to his wings, which flapped on command. He decelerated rapidly before stepping onto the rocky surface outside the greenhouse.

In the ship’s bubble box, plastic balls flexed rapidly against his feet, providing the sensation that he’d landed.

Good thing aluminum doesn’t get brittle like steel or titanium in extreme cold, he thought. It’s lighter too—better for flying.

He tapped his fingers for voice-command again while simultaneously folding his wings.

"Voice channel," he said. "Open comms—Greenhouse 3."

A chirp in his ear told him he’d been connected to the building’s intercom.

"Hope," he said, "I’m outside."

The igloo’s outer airlock door—also made of plastic—whirred open on servo motors. A safety circuit between the two doors kept one door locked if the other was open. Only intentional tampering would violate the igloo’s climate control.

Air jets hissed in Gavin’s ear as the pressure, temperature, and gas mixture equalized around his carbon-fiber skin. He turned to see if the meth picture was still up, which it was. Someone had taken an anti-drug poster from 2016, and written "ane" in black Sharpie to add a bit of humor to the airlock. "Meth(ane): Not even once," it said, above an addict’s before and after pictures.

The inner door whirred open, and Gavin stepped into the greenhouse.

"Thanks for coming," Hope said. "I know you’re busy building your—"

"No worries," Gavin said, with a dismissive wave. "Lori and I have two more years to make our home inhabitable. Once you figure out the brick-oven, assembly’s pretty easy."

The homunculus leapt into the air and Gavin activated his wings to alight on a plastic workbench. Height disparities always made conversations awkward.

"Well, thanks just the same," Hope said. "The Earth-bound homunculus crew is on the far side of Titan still, researching a site for Hub 2. You’re the only wee man within a week’s travel."

"I don’t understand why they wouldn’t just build closer to Hub 1," Gavin said. "Resource pooling and all. You know how I feel about it. It makes rescue operations a bit easier too…"

"Yeah," Hope said. "Jonah’s taken to crawling in the ventilation ducts the last week or so. I’ve tried to get him to stop, but it’s hard to build decent child-proof gates out of polyethylene. Usually he comes out for meals, but I haven’t seen him since yesterday."

"He’s, what, six now?" Gavin asked.

Jonah had been the first "replacement colonist" allowed to be conceived onsite, after the death of the medical officer. Hope and her husband Scott had been overjoyed to be selected, even in the somber wake of Titan’s first funeral.

When the Hub had achieved sustainability with backup power and surplus food, Gavin and Lori had purchased tickets on the next Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) to orbit from corporate headquarters. They left Earth’s orbit in a robotically-assembled-in-orbit Goshawk Heavy Transport, with its counter-rotating toroid habitat sections and non-rotating, zero-G section.

Smaller, more frequent launches meant a steady operations schedule and supply chain for corporate, less risk in a single launch, and less resource strain per landing on Titan’s colony. A crew of two was, in fact, nearly perfect from Titan2070’s perspective.

"That’s right," Hope said. "He’s taller than any six-year-old on Earth, but way more curious. He gets into everything, and I can barely stop him reading to go to sleep at night. He’s got a notebook full of fairytale sketches too—he’s actually pretty good at drawing."

"Do you think he’s embarrassed by something?" Gavin asked. "Maybe he’s hiding. Has Scott—"

"We’ve looked everywhere for him, Gavin," she said. "Everywhere we can fit without tearing the ventilation apart. There are pry-marks on the floor hatch that goes underground, but I can’t tell how old they are. He’s either in the shafts, or he’s—"

She didn’t finish the sentence. Titan was more forgiving than Mars—its 1.5 bar surface pressure meant they didn’t need the Martians' bulky pressurized suits—but a child without electrically-heated coveralls and closed-circuit air would certainly be dead by now.

"Okay," Gavin said. "I’ll stay on this channel. Let me know if you find him while I’m inside, and I’ll do the same if I find him holed up down there."

Gavin dropped from the table, fanning his wings halfway to the floor. He stepped to the vent, which Hope had opened. He wondered how long she’d yelled into the vent, praying for a response—how many times she’d tried to squeeze herself through the ninety-degree joints before calling for help.

He fluttered his wings again as he dropped into the darkness of the shaft, and landed on its floor, six feet below the surface.

"LED," Gavin commanded, and four tiny lights above and below his camera-eyes illuminated the horizontal shaft.

"Add overlay: underground ventilation."

ErrorM512 blinked in his visor. Overlay not found.

Dammit. I’m going to have to take notes so I don’t get lost down here. Why wouldn’t they put a virtual grid on the server when they dug the tunnels?

"Can you see where I am, Hope?" he asked through the radio.

"Let me check," she said. "No, sorry. The only locators anyone has are GPS-based, and our satellite constellation here is Gen 3. The ones around Earth are actually newer. There’s no underground repeater system either."

Guess I’m on my own.

Gavin walked straight ahead in the dimly-lit tunnel, with its roof scant inches above his head. He found it hard to believe a kid would escape by crawling down here.

"Jonah?" he called, but there was a limit to how loud the homunculus would make his voice. The bots hadn’t been designed for speeches or rock concerts, after all.

"Jonah?"

"Gavin?"

It was a woman’s voice though, and not Hope’s.

It took Gavin a second to realize it was Lori, and that he was hearing her voice through his own ears and not his synthetic ones.

Given how little she’d spoken to him in the last month, he excused himself for not recognizing her voice immediately.

Most long-duration spaceflight test groups experienced it—the emotional shutdown after months of confinement and sameness—so Gavin had poured himself into exploring while he waited for her to snap out of it. He was sure he’d get into a funk too at some point.

The homunculus stopped moving in the ventilation shaft.

"Hey, Lori," he said. "I’m—"

"You’re not building," she said. "I know you love burning up battery power flying around or methane-surfing before shift, but we really, literally, won’t have anywhere to live if we don’t get this shelter built. I can’t even get a ping-back for your location on the map."

In the ventilation shaft, the homunculus reached up to pull a non-existent helmet from its head. The shaft disappeared from Gavin’s vision, replaced by the cramped interior of the Goshawk 7's command module. Communication and systems computer screens lined the four walls.

"Lori—"

"Gavin."

She stared at him, waiting for an answer.

"Jonah’s missing," he said. "Hope thinks he might be in the ventilation."

"If he is," Lori said, "he’ll come out when he gets hungry."

"What if he’s stuck or something?"

"Not really our problem," Lori said. "Just like building our house isn’t theirs. You know how this works—how it’s supposed to work."

* * *

It had been Hope’s idea, when Hub 1 was still in the draft stage. The problem of the sheer boredom and cabin fever of multi-year spaceflight had plagued scientists and science fiction writers for decades.

"So," Hope had said, "the current timeline goes: send robotic probes and workers, pilot them from Earth, then spend five years in boring transit, and start the rest of the work when we land. Right?"

Everyone else had nodded, not sure what she was getting at.

"What if we do the work while we’re flying? Quantum communication makes instantaneous control a possibility. Take the burden of robotic work off of mission control, and give it to the colonists during the long transit. It’ll save time and resources on arrival too, since we can tend a greenhouse before we even get there if we send bots with seeds. Once the main infrastructure is set up, every new crew will be responsible for building their own home before they arrive. We don’t know how much iron we’ll have—and we won’t have trees until we terraform—but the plastic bricks Ben designed are pretty easy to work with."

A few eyebrows had risen. Ben, the chief engineer, had been sitting across from her. His eyes had retained their hard skepticism.

"What kind of robotic vehicles?" he’d asked. "If you’re suggesting virtual reality, you’re also basically suggesting sending the same payload twice. Launching that much mass is a high-dollar proposition."

Hope had smiled.

"For one," she’d said, "robots in stasis don’t need to eat or breathe, so that’s half your payload gone. Since they’re inorganic, you don’t have to worry about lift-off force crushing them. You can launch the bots with a rail gun or whatever. They’d get there fast, and with renewable energy."

Ben’s head had wagged to the side, as he half-heartedly acknowledged her point.

"For two," she’d said, "we don’t have to make them full-size. Send homunculi, one for each—"

"Homunculi?"

"Tiny, little men," Hope had said. "I’m borrowing the term from psychology, and the shrinks borrowed it from alchemy. The sensory homunculus rides around in your brain experiencing the world. Maybe it’s just time to turn that inside out and let the homunculi do the walking."

"The thing that’s going to fry your motherboards—" another voice had said. All eyes had turned to Milton, the resident theoretical physicist. Milton had retired and come back from retirement so many times that at this point no one was certain whether he was getting paid to come to meetings, or just researching space for his own amusement. "Well, not your motherboards, perhaps, but your grandchildren’s—is when we build something a bit bigger than a Goshawk Heavy and push out for an interstellar transit at something approaching, say, fifty percent the speed of light.

"Perhaps we’ll have sent Hope’s homunculi ahead, as I hope we’ll agree to in this case, and they reach Betelgeuse before we do. With instantaneous communication and time dilation—since you’ll essentially be in two places at the same time—will you watch your tiny avatar move much faster than you, as you slog your way through the expanded time of a slower point of reference? Will it react to commands before you realize you’ve given them? What if we had an artificial neural processor in one plane, and humans in another? Could they think for a thousand years while their bodies only aged ten?"

Ben had laughed.

"Maybe we should worry about getting to Titan f—"

"Milton," Hope had said, "do you realize the next implication of what you’re suggesting?"

The old man had fixed her with an expression of patient curiosity, knowing she was prone to leaps of reason that took others hours to catch up to.

"Not yet," he’d said, "but I’m all ears."

"We can get information from the inside of a black hole," she’d said.

Milton had blinked several times behind his glasses before pulling them from his eyes. He’d polished the lenses with a microfiber cloth, stared at the floor, and after some moments, laughed softly.

"It looks like I’ll have my work cut out for me while you’re launching your homunculi, my dear," he’d said finally. "This is—well—it’s not a done deal, but the theory’s sound. Our probe would still be crushed as it neared the center of the gravity well, but we’d certainly get more data than we could with existing methods."

"I’ll admit that I don’t get it," Gavin had said. "Why can’t we study the inside of a black hole now?"

"Light can’t escape the gravity well," Hope had said. "So neither can radio, or post cards, or anything else we use to communicate. Quantum entanglement is instantaneous though, so the—"

"Oooooooooh," Gavin had said slowly. "Never mind. I get it. Spooky action at a distance, and across relative planes."

"Yep."

Lori had elbowed Gavin at that point.

"I know it’s easy to get excited," Lori had said, "and I really like the idea of being able to work while in flight versus, say, going into suspended animation or something, but—"

No one had asked, "but, what?"

Lori had a reputation for pragmatism and harsh reality, and Gavin guessed the others were half-scared to hear what she had to say.

"If we’re building our homes while we’re in transit," she’d said, "that means we’re literally on our own on a new world until we start selling services back to corporate or the other colonists or whatever. It’s like a straight-up frontier town, right? Rugged individualism and all that?"

"Well," Hope had said, "I mean in an emergency people are going to help each other. But yes, your log cabin is yours to build. Or plastic Lego-cabin. Whatever. The vent shafts, power connections, all that. You can rent greenhouse space in the mains or build your own."

"Okay," Lori had said. "I’m fine with that. It just seems like Ben and I are the only ones who realize this stuff costs our money and our sweat—that it’s not just cool televised rocket blast-offs on a taxpayer subsidy."

* * *

"I do know how it’s supposed to work," Gavin said. "Give me thirty minutes and I’ll be at our build site, okay? We’re ahead of schedule as it is."

"We’re ahead on the habitat, Gavin," she said. "What if we have hang-ups with the greenhouse? I don’t want to rent space to grow food. That wasn’t in our budget."

"Thirty minutes."

"Fine," Lori said. "I’m going to make tea before I start then."

She pushed off from the bulkhead, pulled herself through the hatch, and disappeared into the food prep area.

Gavin replaced the headset, and the dimly-lit ventilation shaft became his world once again.

"—still there?" Hope’s voice came through the speakers. "Gavin, can you hear—"

"Yeah," he said. "Sorry. I had to detach to talk to Lori."

"Oh," Hope said, her voice thick with maternal anxiety. "Okay."

Gavin moved his legs through the plastic bubbles that floated in the box, their limp, unflexed forms offering almost no force feedback. Beneath his feet, bubbles flexed each time the homunculus’s feet touched the floor.

The tiny bot speed-walked through the narrow ventilation shaft until he came to a crossroad. Gavin looked left, then right, but saw nothing.

He thought, for a moment, he heard shuffling, but it could’ve simply been a shift in the air pressure.

Or it could’ve been a child.

Gavin turned left, which he knew would take him toward the long shaft that led to the tidal power station.

"Jonah?"

Nothing.

He heard another shuffle, and this time he was certain that it was the sound of cloth on plastic. He sped up, and the shuffling abruptly stopped.

Gavin rounded the corner, and found himself looking into the wide blue eyes of a young boy. The boy seemed startled for only a moment before his face broke into a broad grin.

"I found you!" Jonah said. "Or you found me. I thought you’d left me alone."

"Hello Jonah," Gavin said. "My name is Gavin. Your mother is—"

"Mama told me not to come down here," Jonah said, "but I knew you lived in the labyrinth. I knew I’d find you if I searched all the tunnels."

"Jonah," Gavin asked, "who do you think I am?"

The boy cocked his head to the side.

"Fair folk never tell their real names," Jonah said. "Names have power—even I know that. I just thought I’d gotten too old to play with you, or—"

"Fair folk," Gavin said. "You think I’m a fairy?"

"Where are Mr. Pickles and Lady Twilight though? Are they further down?"

The techs on Earth have been entertaining this boy, without realizing the consequences of their departure to research Hub 2.

"Jonah, you mom is really worried about you," Gavin said. "We need to go back the way you came. You’re probably not going to see Mr. Pickles and Lady Twilight for a while because they’re working on a project. And truthfully—because I feel like their make-believe is getting dangerous for you—I’m just a guy in a box with a remote control. I’m not a fairy."

Jonah frowned and sat back.

"This is a trick," he said. "You don’t want me to find your secret underground kingdom. Wait—are you one of the bad fairies?"

"I’m not a—"

"You stay away from me," Jonah said. "I’m not big, but I’m bigger than you. I can smash you if I want to."

It was true, too. Durable as the carbon-fiber was on its aluminum frame, a few kicks would break Gavin’s circuitry, leaving him incapacitated in the tunnel.

"Okay, Jonah," he said. "I won’t try to come near you."

The plastic bubbles pulsed around Gavin, then pulsed again.

What was that? A malfunction in the bubble box?

Jonah’s eyes grew wide again, so Gavin assumed he’d felt something too.

Gavin tapped his fingers together.

"Hope," he said through the radio, "there’s something going on down here. The shaft just shook."

"I felt it too," she said. "Let me look at some things. I’ll call Scott."

Gavin’s homunculus took a step toward Jonah, but the boy scurried farther away.

"You can’t scare me that easily," Jonah said. "If you use earthquake magic, you’ll die too."

"Gavin," Hope said in his ear, "Scott says there’s a small cryovolcano just south of here discharging ice. We might be feeling some of the seismic effects of—"

"How sturdy is this plastic, Hope?" Gavin asked. "If the solids around this thing shift…"

"You’ve got to get Jonah out of there, Gavin," Hope said. "Those shafts definitely aren’t load-bearing. We have safety shut-offs at each end too, so if there’s a breach or a leak, they’ll automatically seal."

"He doesn’t want to come out," Gavin said. "Some of the techs from Earth have been pretending to be fairies from Jonah’s books. He thinks they’re down here somewhere and that I’m a bad fairy who’s trying to keep him out of their kingdom."

"Let me talk to him," Hope said.

Gavin tapped his fingers for voice command.

"Direct audio patch," he said, "Greenhouse 3 to external."

In the shaft, the homunculus’s voice changed from a man’s to a woman’s.

"Jonah," Hope said. "Jonah, sweetie, I need you to come out of the tunnel. I’m in the greenhouse, okay? It’s not safe down there and I need you to come out."

Jonah kicked out at the homunculus with a speed Gavin hadn’t expected. The boy’s foot hurled him into the corner where the shaft turned. Plastic bubbles flexed against Gavin’s chest and back almost simultaneously, and with a force that hurt. He moved to right the tiny avatar, and saw Jonah scrambling away from him in the shaft.

"You are a bad fairy," the boy said. "Good fairies don’t use the sorcerer’s voice."

Damn you, Arthur C. Clarke. "Any sufficiently advanced technology…"

Just then, the shaft shook more violently, and Gavin dove forward as he watched the polyethylene rupture under his feet. He heard the hiss of gas-driven emergency shut-off valves closing, and knew in an instant that the homunculus—and the boy—were trapped.

* * *

"This just got really bad," Gavin said. "The plastic’s a great insulator, but with a rupture, it’s going to get cold down there—quick. I don’t know if the gases are sealed inside either. Is there an emergency override to open the shutoff valve on your end?"

"We designed these before I had Jonah," Hope said. "We weren’t figuring anyone would be in them for any reason. The ceiling clearance was actually designed for the homunculi if we needed to do maintenance, and there are thin wires woven in to detect breaks. The locks don’t deactivate until the electrical connection is restored and/or the gas sensors don’t pick up anything but nitrogen, CO_2, and oxygen. Well, trace amounts of methane, obviously—we didn’t want a fart to shut down the ventilation."

"The problem is, the longer we’re sealed off, the more carbon dioxide we have—and less oxygen," Gavin said. "The rock that’s poking through and the gases won’t be as thermally conductive as, say, water, but it’s still going to get cold in here."

Gavin examined the rupture more closely. A liquid rivulet in the fissure outside the plastic seemed about to form a droplet, but as the rivulet approached the break in the plastic, it evaporated into a haze.

"I’ve got liquid methane or ethane evaporating down here," Gavin said. "It’s not a lot, but it’s definitely getting in. The evaporation’s making the air colder too."

"I radioed Scott," Hope said. "He’s closest to our heavy tools, but he’s still got to get into his suit and drag them over. The truck’s broken down right now."

I’m not sure we have that kind of time.

I could extract oxygen, maybe, if we had water or ice.

It’d drain my power pretty quickly, but I could use the battery to heat my carbon-fibers—which probably wouldn’t be enough to keep the kid alive anyway.

Gavin made his way back to the door and found a rupture worse than the one nearest Jonah. A gap in the rock had opened several feet below the opening, and he could see a liquid swirling and wisping into gas beneath the shaft’s plastic. He tapped his fingers together.

"Spectrometer," he said, and a pale blue circle with a sample area label appeared in the center of his view. Given the homunculi’s original expeditionary purpose, they’d been outfitted with an array of test equipment. Below him, he found ethane rather than methane evaporating in the cavity near the door. Gavin knew that ethane was heavier than air, and would remain trapped in the cavity. Methane would’ve floated up to fill the shaft, killing Jonah.

"How long until Scott gets here?" he asked.

"Thirty minutes, maybe," Hope said. "The suit, the airlocks—"

"It’ll take another ten to fifteen minutes to get through that hatch with hand-tools," Gavin said. "The temperature’s dropping by about a degree a minute, and I’ve got hydrocarbon gases evaporating in from several breaks in the shaft. Jonah didn’t bring his respirator on his adventure to find his friends, nor did he bring his electric coveralls."

"Gavin, you’ve got to—" Hope said, but a sob caught in her throat. It was easy to be a calm, collected astronaut when it was her own life at stake, or that of another rational adult—one who’d volunteered to accept the risks. Her child was a different story.

He looked down at his tiny hands and up at the 8-inch-thick plastic safety door.

"What can I use?" he whispered.

"Yourself."

It wasn’t Hope’s voice this time, but Lori’s, that came through the radio.

"Remember the early days of lithium-ion batteries?" she asked. "Cell phones, laptops—"

"I wasn’t born then, Lori," he said. "Neither were you."

"Well maybe it pays to be a history buff," she said. "They used lithium-ions with other metals in the anodes rather than straight lithium because they were more stable and could be recharged. They still had problems though, especially with cheap knock-off batteries with bad separators. Sometimes the batteries would catch fire or explode. They were prone to thermal runaway. Our batteries have a gel electrolyte now, but they’re pretty much the same design, Gavin."

"Good thing we have top-notch separators, right?"

"Lithium’s still unstable, and if you connect the cathode and anode directly—"

"It would catch fire, but I’d probably just burn up inside the—" Gavin said, then paused. He looked down at the hydrocarbon gas pool building under the break near the door. "Oh. I’m just the detonator."

"I can be there in one minute’s flight," Lori said. "I’ll have to go in and pull the kid out once the hatch is breached."

"Hope," Gavin said, "this is your call. We can wait for your husband, and risk gas filling up this shaft while the temperature drops. I don’t think Jonah will get hypothermia, but he may run out of air. We might get another tremor, too."

Gavin waited.

"What’s the worst thing that can happen if you blow the door?" she asked.

"The worst thing is that I don’t actually blow it, and maybe the tunnel around the opening collapses. As long as Jonah stays around the corner, there’s almost no risk of shrapnel."

"Shrapnel?"

"Well," Lori said, "if we wait too long, the methane and ethane concentrations mean you’ll get a fireball inside the shaft also. You pretty much have to do this now or not at all."

"No," Hope said. "No no no. Wait for Scott. He’ll get here, and we can get my baby in a respirator, and—"

She stopped talking, as though her attention had been taken by something on another channel. Gavin thought he might’ve lost his radio connection.

"Lori?"

"Yeah," Lori said, "I’m here, but you might only have me on the ship’s internal."

"Scott says there’s a fissure outside the toolshed," Hope said finally. "The frame on the airlock split and the inner door won’t open. The safety circuit won’t allow it."

"Can he pull the circuit and hotwire it?" Lori asked.

"I think so," Hope said, "but it’s going to take time."

"Hope—" Lori said.

"Okay," Hope said. "Do it. I’ll put on my respirator and get Jonah’s. The air’s going to get pretty foul."

"I’m flying to Greenhouse 3 now," Lori said. "I’ll take the other respirator in with me."

Gavin walked back to where Jonah sat huddled in the shaft.

"Hey buddy," Gavin said. "Sorry about all the bad fairy tricks earlier. You passed the test. We’re going to let you into the fairy kingdom, okay?"

"I don’t feel good," Jonah said. "My head hurts."

"Yeah," Gavin said. "We can fix that in a minute. My friend Princess Lori is going to come show you where the gate to the fairy kingdom is."

"Really?"

"Really," Gavin said. "I just need one favor from you."

"What?" Jonah asked, eying him with renewed suspicion.

"I need you to pull my wings off. I don’t have the strength to do it at that angle."

"Why?"

"Honestly," Gavin said, "it’s so I can open a door for you. Don’t worry—they’ll grow back. It’s fairy magic."

Gavin turned. Either the kid would do it, or he wouldn’t.

After a moment, he felt a tug in the bubble box.

Error R999—came up in his display—catastrophic damage to—

"Yeah," Gavin whispered, "I know."

He turned, and picked up the folded wings from the floor of the shaft.

"Stay here kid," Gavin said. "Princess Lori won’t come if you see the magical gate open, okay? You should really cover your ears and close your eyes too. The overpressure can make your ears bleed."

"What’s overpressure?" Jonah asked.

"More fairy magic."

"Okay."

"How big’s this fireball going to be?" Gavin asked when he rounded the corner.

"Most of the pictures I’ve seen were about a twelve-inch radius," Lori said. "The electrolyte burns will hit the far walls though. I’m inside the airlock now."

Gavin stepped up to the break near the safety door and pulled up the corner of the ruptured plastic, widening the gap enough to wedge himself inside. The safety door was only about an inch from the homunculus’s face.

"Little man in a great big world," Gavin said. "Only way to make a difference is to tear your wings off and set yourself on fire."

"Don’t get too dramatic down there, Babe," Lori said. "It’s not your real body."

"It feels like it."

Gavin stripped the aramid-fiber cloth from one of his wings and separated a rib from the frame. He popped open the battery hatch on his back, and in one smooth motion, wedged the rib across the anode and cathode.

Error F451. Battery short—

Then nothing. Gavin’s goggles went black and the bubbles stopped bubbling.

* * *

Lori heard a WHUMP at the same instant the plastic safety door flew out into the ventilation duct. She took Jonah’s respirator from Hope and ignored the desperation in the mother’s eyes.

"Jonah?"

Nothing.

She stepped over the charred remains of Gavin’s homunculus, and traced the path to where he’d said Jonah was.

"Jonah?"

The boy looked at her, and she saw blood at the corner of his ear.

Ruptured eardrum. At least he’ll survive to figure out when to take good advice.

Jonah seemed to be in a state of shock from the explosion and resultant pain, which Lori was half-thankful for as he numbly accepted her fitting the respirator to his face and leading him through the cloud of toxic fumes.

* * *

Two months later, when Jonah’s eardrums had healed, he watched the two homunculi he’d known as Mr. Pickles and Lady Twilight wave and then dance while video of their controllers on Earth live-streamed behind them. He promised his mother he’d never venture into the shafts again.

Gavin and Lori put the finishing touches on their main habitat, and began work on their power and ventilation. Gavin had been given control of another homunculus, and corporate put a replacement unit on the next resupply rocket. They’d finished ahead of schedule, since Scott had taken time away from teaching online exobotany classes to help them build, and the other colonists had begun pitching in whenever they could.

"Thanks for saving my son when I couldn’t," Scott said, as they admired their day’s work.

"Thanks for helping us build," Gavin said. He hesitated before adding, "This may sound horrible, but I’m actually kind of glad it happened."

"Why’s that?" Scott asked.

"Lori had been in a funk for about a month," Gavin said. "There wasn’t a reason for it apart from the mental exhaustion of routine and confinement. She—well, after we rescued Jonah—she perked up. She actually told me that, seeing your charred little robot body turned me on. Can you believe that? No offense meant. Of course I wouldn’t want to see Jonah in danger again."

"No offense taken," Scott said. "If you were the sort of people who thrived in dull routine, you would’ve stayed on Earth, right?"

"I suppose. Lori wanted to be a pirate until she was fifteen."

"Hey, I got something from corporate you’re going to want to see," Scott said. "Milton sent it to Hope first, since they’d collaborated on it."

"What’s that?"

"The first data from the inside of a black hole," Scott said. "It’s not quite what anyone thought it was. Maybe that’s your next big adventure."

"If Lori lets me live long enough to reach Titan, you mean."

"Obviously."

Tim Powers

By Echo Light

“Have you seen Eddie?”

In the dappled sunlight that filtered through the boughs and yellow blossoms of the acacia, the face of the young woman who had spoken was in momentary shadow, and Sebastian Vickery closed the book he had been reading and squinted up at her.

Only a few yards behind her, past the flat gravel shoulder, were the rushing lanes of the Santa Monica freeway—known as Old Man 10 to the few fortune-tellers who still inhabited the overgrown borders and onramp-encircled islands of the Los Angeles freeways—and behind the carob tree at Vickery’s back was a short slope down to the parking lot of a row of apartment buildings.

Eddie might have been one of those freeway-side gypsies, though Vickery couldn’t recall one with that name. There was an Edgy, but Vickery hadn’t run across Edgy since the events of last May. Most of the furtive mediums had lost their livelihoods then, and Vickery himself had been left with what he thought of as an occasional and unwanted vision impairment.

“I haven’t seen anybody,” he told her.

“He was—so mean to me!”

Vickery tried to think of a response, and finally just shook his head and said, “Sorry to hear it.”

“You’re reading a book,” the woman said then, stepping into the little clearing. The diesel-scented breeze shaking the surrounding leaves was warm, but she was wearing a long khaki coat. “I’ve done that. I bet I’ve read… a hundred books.”

Vickery smiled wryly and laid the book aside to get to his feet, but the young woman lithely sat down cross-legged in front of him, and he settled back.

She ran the fingers of one hand through her short-cropped dark hair, leaving it standing up as if she were facing into a strong wind. “Have you read It’s A Sin to Kill A Mockingbird?”

“Uh,” said Vickery, blinking, “yes. Great book.”

“It’s my nickname. Anyway I tell people to call me that.”

“What, Mockingbird?”

“No—Scout. She was the girl in that book, remember?”

“Sure. Her father was Atticus Finch.” Gregory Peck, in the movie, he thought.

It occurred to Vickery that she looked a bit like the actress who had played Scout in the movie of To Kill A Mockingbird—thin, with freckles and narrow eyes and disordered bangs streaking her forehead.

She was holding out her hand, and he reached out and shook hands with her.

“Pleased to meet you, Scout,” he said. “I’m Sebastian.”

“Sebastian,” she said carefully. “I’m happy to make your acquaintance, Sebastian. Are you often to be found here?”

Vickery wondered whether to say no; and whether, even so, he might stop coming to this particular old freeway nest. The contra-natural current generated by free wills moving rapidly past in the freeway lanes hadn’t nearly returned to its pre-2017 levels, but he had made a practice of reading this book, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, in the flickers of enhanced possibility that the current still sometimes provided. There were other nests, all mostly abandoned these days, along the shoulders of many of the L.A. freeways, and he could read in any of those instead.

But he had shaken hands with Scout, and the plain fact of her having found her way here implied, at least, that they were both outliers from the clockwork world out in the surface streets.

“Yes,” he said, “I’m here most afternoons.”

“It’s very peaceful. Peaceful is what you feel in moments when nothing is going wrong, but peace sustains you even when everything’s gone wrong.”

Vickery hesitated, then asked, “Have things gone wrong?”

“Well, I never did get lunch,” she said brightly. “Would you join me, Sebastian? My treat. You can bring your book.”

Vickery cocked his head, wondering about her Eddie. He almost asked about him, then dismissed the idea. And in fact he had not had lunch, or even breakfast. “Sure,” he said, getting to his feet. “And my poor book doesn’t eat anything.”

Her eyes crinkled in a gamin grin as she straightened her legs and stood up. Then she caught his arm for balance and said, “Oh—and can we stop for some Neosporin and Band-Aids?”

“There’s a Rite-Aid on Vermont. Have you got a cut?”

“I wonder if I might even need a tetanus shot.” She let go of his arm and pulled open her coat, then looked up at him, her eyebrows raised questioningly.

Her blouse was white at the collar and in patches on the shoulders, but the rest of the fabric was glistening red, from her breasts down to her belt, and her black skirt gleamed wetly.

Vickery’s ears were ringing, the breath stopped in his throat, and his vision had narrowed down to focus on two—no, three, at least—holes punched in the front of her blood-soaked blouse.

He heard her say, “I wonder if I’m dead.”

She turned her back on him, then spun to face him again, and a moment later she was spinning rapidly, though her hair and coat didn’t extend outward at all, and finally she simply wasn’t there, and Vickery took an involuntary step forward as a soft thump shook the air.

He let his knees bend with the forward motion and turned to sit down heavily on the dirt. He was breathing rapidly now, and his face was chilly with sudden sweat. He quickly looked around at the trees, and the slope down to the parking lot behind him, just to be sure, but he already knew he was alone here.

A ghost, he told himself as he tried to organize his scattered thoughts. Just a ghost!—disappearing in a terminal Y-axis spin, as they often did. The enhanced possibility field cast by the freeway current must be uncharacteristically strong today. And even so, she must be a—have been a—very vivid person, and only recently dead.

Killed. Shot.

How far had her ghost walked, holding her coat closed? From what direction? East or west, she’d have had to stay within the enabling freeway current all the way.

Somewhere, somebody was probably trying to get rid of a gun right now. Vickery had once been a policeman, and he made himself bring back the memory of the moment she had opened her coat, and he tried to estimate the size of the holes he had seen in her blouse; and it seemed to him that they were bigger than .30 caliber, therefore the shots had probably come from a handgun rather than a rifle. Therefore probably up close.

Pleased to meet you, Scout. I’m happy to make your acquaintance, Sebastian.

And he had shaken her hand… and accepted her offer of hospitality.

Probably a handgun. Probably up close.

Vickery sighed and got to his feet; and after a moment’s hesitation he stepped to the parking lot side of the clearing. He had been drinking a dozen cups of coffee a day lately to try to suppress his vision impairment, but now he relaxed and let his vision blur as he faced the acacia and the oleander leaves and the cars that quickly came and went on the close freeway.

Often his out-of-phase vision was spontaneous—and inconvenient!—but he could cause it deliberately by unfocusing his eyes and then “looking past” the things in front of him, like seeing a picture behind the random-looking dots on a stereogram print.

And he did it now.

Soon the tree and leaves and cars seemed to lose their scale and relative distances, as if they were all projected on a flat screen a few yards ahead of him; he flexed his gaze past them—

And in spite of the coffee, his vision warped in the now-familiar way. He could focus on the individual trees and the cars again, but everything now appeared to be in a twilight of metallic sepia. The windy whisper of cars on the freeway was muted almost to inaudibility.

He shuffled carefully out of the clearing in the direction Scout had come from, and he was waving his hands in front of his face because real, tangible branches might not be in exactly the same location as the ones he was seeing. By touch, he slid his book into the pocket of his windbreaker beside his cell phone.

Out past the cluster of trees, he peered along the freeway shoulder, but he didn’t see the figure of Scout on her way to meet him and ask about Eddie and invite him to lunch. Vickery’s chronologically dislocated sight varied unpredictably—the events he saw by it might have happened as much as an hour ago, or just within the last couple of minutes. He turned and took a step back toward the clearing.

Through the leaves he saw himself sitting against the tree, alone, head bent over the book; as always in these glimpses of the past, living bodies glowed faintly with a color that he could only describe, inadequately, as silvery bronze. He suspected that it was infrared, perceived directly by the primary visual cortex rather than through his limited retinas.

It no longer disoriented him to see himself doing things he had recently done, and he simply noted—since he had only been reading there for about twenty minutes before Scout entered the clearing—that this particular fractal time-spike was no more than twenty minutes out of synch with the averaged macro Now.

He hoped there were no people in the ordinary present moment out on the freeway shoulder, for he wouldn’t see them.

Very carefully, again feeling in front of him for obstacles that hadn’t been there in this past segment of time, he shuffled down the slope to the parking lot pavement. No figures were visible, and a breezeway that led through the apartment building to the street beyond was empty.

Then all at once he was in bright afternoon sunlight, and he could see the colors of the parked cars around him and hear the surf-sound of the freeway behind him. He had moved out past the boundary of the time-spike, back into the common Now.

“You hear me?” came a yell from his left. He looked that way and saw a young man in a T-shirt and backward baseball cap standing a dozen yards away beside a blue pickup truck that hadn’t been visible to Vickery a few moments ago. The young man was staring at him.

“Uh… what?” called Vickery.

“You stoned? You come walking down from the freeway like a fuckin’ zombie, lucky I didn’t hit you when I drove in! Go smoke your crack somewhere else, shithead.”

Vickery gave him an embarrassed wave and hurried away through the breezeway toward the street. There was no way he could retrace his steps and hope to unfocus his way back into the time-spike now, even if it hadn’t already collapsed into the broadly equalized present moment, as they always did.

God knows what I looked like, he thought as he felt his face reddening, groping my way down that slope and onto that parking lot, seeing only what had been there ten or twenty minutes earlier! And it’s no use even trying to ask my pal in the T-shirt if he’d seen Scout—normal people couldn’t see ghosts, and he had looked depressingly normal.

Out on the sidewalk, Vickery looked back, but the young man by the pickup truck hadn’t followed him.

Where did you come from, Scout? he thought.

If he just stood still out here, for a few seconds, nobody would think it was odd.

He took a deep breath and let it out, then relaxed and let his eyes unfocus as he faced the palm trees and blocky pastel apartment buildings that receded away down the street to the west.

After a few moments the view once again lost its depth, becoming just a collage of colored shapes, and he focused his eyes past that; and then, in the familiar metallic sepia light, the buildings and trees regained their sizes and distances…

And he leaped back and nearly fell over, for a black silhouette had swept past him, in fact had moved partly through him.

It was the silhouette of a woman in a long, flapping coat—Scout, certainly, for while living people glowed with that silvery bronze color by this retro-sight, ghosts always appeared pure black.

He turned to watch her. The ghost shape was walking up the cement strip toward the apartment breezeway he had just emerged from, and he knew she was on the course that would lead her to meet him in the freeway-side clearing.

He quickly looked at his watch, squinting to see the second hand; and as he centered his attention on the little jerking black needle, color and sound flooded back around him.

He looked toward the apartment building’s empty breezeway and shivered. He knew that the ghost had not really shared volume with him—he had not physically been here when the ghost had passed this spot, twenty minutes or so ago—but the seeming intimacy had shaken him.

She had been coming east on Washington Boulevard. He walked down the sidewalk to the next intersection west, and then paused, leaning on a light pole. The traffic signal ahead of him had just switched to red, and there were no pedestrians nearby; he could surely afford a few seconds of being oblivious to the smoothed-out present.

He let his vision blur—but when he tried to look beyond the flat view of the street and the cars stopped at the crosswalk lines, nothing happened. This spot right now was evidently in synch with the averaged “now.” He was reminded of times when he’d tried to follow blood drops on pavement, and lost the tracks when they had passed over wide patches of bristling grass.

Try another spot, he thought.

The red light winked out and the green walk sign was lit, and he crossed the street, watching for a place where he could be immobile and inconspicuous for a few seconds.

An empty bus bench stood on the sidewalk in front of a corner pharmacy, and he peered down the street but didn’t see a bus in the sun-glare of approaching traffic. Time, at its finest scale, tended to be especially spiky in populated areas, and in a crowded city like Los Angeles it was unlikely that he would find two places that happened at any moment to be chronologically flat. He walked to the bench and sat down.

But I’ve surely lost her trail, he thought. She might have come from north or south to this intersection, instead of from directly west. And though I can expect to find other time-spikes, they’d be as likely to show me intervals in which she hadn’t yet arrived, or had already passed, as to include a glimpse of her black figure. And if I keep provoking these views into the past, they’ll start happening spontaneously again, in spite of all the coffee I drink.

And what, after all, can I do for her?

Peace sustains you when everything’s gone wrong. Is there anything I can do to help her rest in peace?

He sighed and sat back on the bench, and he wearily relaxed his eyes until all the movement and color in front of him seemed to be just shifting or stationary blobs in a vertical plane; and he willed his vision to step past that… and now he saw the street by the penumbral echo-light of the recent past.

He stood up—carefully, in case someone in the present might have sat down on the bench beside him—and he peered down the street to the west; but none of the pedestrian figures in that direction shone deep black. The view to the north was largely blocked by a bus stopped at the curb on the far side of Washington Boulevard, but there was no sign of her in the areas he could see.

He turned around to look down the cross-street—and felt his elbow bump a softness that was probably a person standing beside him. He would have to quickly stare at the second hand of his watch to resume seeing in flat time, and then apologize—but for a moment he had glimpsed a black silhouette a hundred feet away, on the other side of the street, moving this way behind two parked cars.

And the spike collapsed spontaneously. Vickery blinked in the sudden wash of color and sound—and, only a foot away, a heavy-set man with a moustache was staring at him angrily.

“Sorry, sorry!” said Vickery, backing away. “Uh lo siento!”

“I speak English,” the man growled.

“Fine,” said Vickery, staring past the man now. “Sorry in any language, okay?”

I’ve got to stop doing this, he thought.

He stepped around the bus-bench and hurried to the corner of the pharmacy and began walking quickly down the sidewalk, looking across the street toward the point where he had seen Scout’s ghost walking along in the recent past.

A freeway overpass bridge shadowed the lanes ahead of him, and in the sunlight beyond that he could now see the piercing blue-and-red lights of at least two police cars on the other side of the street.

As he trudged down the sidewalk, bleakly sure of what he would find at the crime scene ahead, he was resolved to drink still more coffee, live on the damn stuff, and never again deliberately provoke his useless vision impairment. What good was it to see things that had already happened, and not be able to participate, interfere, help?

With luck the chronological handicap would eventually wear off. Last year Vickery had been instrumental in closing the conduit between this world and a particularly malignant afterworld, and so ghosts no longer flitted freely back and forth, and the Los Angeles ghost-trafficking trades had pretty much collapsed—and he had been left with his occasional bouts of hyper-perception of time. He had learned, to his cost, that the generally perceived moment of “now” was actually just the blanket average of an infinity of tiny spikes that sprang up and disappeared at the interface of the future crystallizing into the past.

* * *

In the shade under the bridge he didn’t have to squint against sunlight reflecting from cars and apartment windows, and the breeze funneling through the underpass was cool on his sweating forehead. He could see ribbons of yellow police tape ahead now, on that side of the street, and a group of bystanders clustered on the sidewalk ahead of him.

They were all rocking their heads to see past the police cars and vans, and when Vickery had joined them he caught the eye of a gray-haired man in overalls.

“What’s up over there?” Vickery asked.

“Woman got shot,” the man answered. “I live right here, I heard five shots, or it might have been six. No telling how many hit her. Paramedics or somebody took her away a while ago.” He shook his head. “I hope she’ll be okay.”

She won’t, thought Vickery. She isn’t.

He shuffled to the back of the crowd and leaned against a bougainvillea-covered chain-link fence. One last time, he thought, and stared at the people in front of him and the apartment building beyond them; and in a few seconds his view lost all depth, and he cast his attention past it.

In the now brassy light, the onlookers and the police cars were gone, and Vickery was looking directly across the street at the windows of the downstairs apartment. He heard the rippling, overlapping drum beats of what must have been several gunshots, and then the apartment door opened and a light-haired man in a sport coat hurried down the walk to a pale-colored Saturn parked at the curb.

As the man opened the car door, Vickery reluctantly took a couple of steps forward across the empty-looking sidewalk—bumping the shoulders of several people he couldn’t see and who were no doubt protesting his rudeness—for he needed to see the license plate of the car; and though he felt an answering shove from one of the unseen bystanders, he had not moved out of the spike and the license plate was visible as the car swung in his direction to turn around on the street.

2HRC518.

Vickery memorized it. He was about to look at the second hand of his watch and begin apologizing to the people around him in average time, when he saw a figure emerge from the apartment’s open door.

It was the jet-black silhouette of Scout, and it began trudging away on the aimless course that would, in a few minutes of this interval of the past, lead her to the clearing in which Vickery then sat reading his book.

Vickery watched the woman-shape reach the sidewalk and start away north, and then he winced as voices and colors crashed in on him.

“-- my foot, asshole,” someone was yelling at him, and someone else punched his shoulder and said, “You got a problem, dickhead?”

“I’m sorry,” said Vickery as he backed out of the group, “I’ve got bad vision, didn’t see you, sorry.”

Several of the people turned to frown back at him as he retreated toward the fence, but the spectacle on the other side of the street soon reclaimed their attention, and Vickery hurried away north on the sidewalk.

He pulled his cell phone out of the inner pocket of his windbreaker. It was a burner phone, and if he called the police with it, he would have to throw it away, and a new one would cost fifty dollars; but he sighed and flipped it open and tapped in 911. It was little enough, but it was all he could do for her.

Soon a woman’s voice answered: “911, what is the location of your emergency?”

“An apartment building on Hoover, just south of the 10 overpass,” said Vickery, “a woman was shot there about twenty minutes ago, there’s cops there now. But I was across the street, and a guy ran out of that apartment right after the shots were fired, blond or white-haired, in a dark sport coat, and he got into a light-colored late-‘90s Saturn and drove away south, license plate 2HRC518. I—I think his name’s Eddie.”

“You know him? Do you know the woman?”

Vickery shut the phone. I never knew her, he thought, but we both liked the book she called It’s A Sin to Kill A Mockingbird.

He thought of hurrying back to the clearing beside the freeway, but he knew that her ghost was gone now, carried away in the current generated by the ever-moving free will charges in the rushing freeway lanes.

Rest, Scout, he thought, in that peace that sustains you when everything’s gone wrong.

He looked ahead at the many-colored signs already visible at the Washington and Hoover intersection, and he hoped he’d be able somewhere to get a big mug of coffee, bitter as wormwood and black as a ghost lost forever in the past.

Steve White

Out of the Vortex

At a distance of thirteen and a half astronomical units, Tau Ceti—a smaller star than Sol, with only a little more than half its luminosity—provided very little light. But that light was sufficient to enable Commander Ian Takeda, RSN, gazing at the viewcreen in HMSS Hawke’s bridge, to glimpse the shuttle that had departed the hollowed-out asteroid that was Washington Station.

“Here he comes, Captain,” said Lieutenant Commander Caitlin Malone, the first officer, unnecessarily.

“So I see, Number One,” said Takeda with a nod. He was a tall, slender, aquiline-featured man, the Japanese half of his ancestry manifested mostly in high cheekbones and dark eyes. He was also quite young for his rank, and Hawke was his first command. She wasn’t one of the mighty dreadnoughts of space—the first through third rate ships, in terms of the old rating system that the Royal Space Navy had resurrected from the age of sail to avoid confusion with modern wet-navy ship types—but rather a Benbow class fifth rater, suitable for cruiser-type duties. But Takeda hadn’t yet outgrown a thrill of pride whenever he saw her, with her sleek aerodynamic lines suitable for atmospheric transit, and the flag that adorned her flank—the Union flag of the Britannic Federal Empire.

At the moment, however, that pride was in abeyance, as was everything except disgruntlement with the mission he had been assigned.

Divining the skipper’s mood, Malone essayed a pleasantry. “Being a New American, I’ll wager he’s relieved to get off Washington Station. I mean, a name like that… ”

Takeda smiled briefly. “I’ve been assured that he isn’t one of the diehards.”

Malone turned thoughtful. “I suppose it wasn’t really the most tactful possible choice of a name for the Navy’s base in this system.”

Takeda said nothing. He himself was from the Viceroyalty of North America—specifically, from the Dominion of Oregon that occupied the Pacific coast between Spanish California and Russian Alaska. (His paternal grandparents had been among the refugees who had flooded Oregon when Japan had been bloodily incorporated in Greater China.) So he understood what the first officer meant. Where he came from, George Washington was revered for having accepted the rapprochement that had resolved the First American Rebellion five centuries earlier, and then having suppressed the rebel holdouts led by Benedict Arnold. But New America, the habitable lesser component of the binary planet system occupying Tau Ceti’s fifth orbital position, had been colonized by irreconcilable North American separatists. Arnold was their great historical hero, and they ranked Washington with Judas Iscariot.

And now, Takeda thought, instead of doing the kind of work my ship is intended to do, I’ve been ordered to chauffeur some New American scientist out to the middle of nowhere.

“Well,” he sighed, “he’s almost here. I’d better go down and meet him. You have the conn, Number One.”

* * *

Elijah Willett, Ph.D., was a slight, middle-aged man of no great stature, with a narrow face and mild, pale-blue eyes. A couple of assistants followed him out of the airlock, bearing luggage and crates of apparatus.

“Permission to come aboard, Captain?” asked Willett with a smile. “Is that the correct formula?”

“Close enough.” Someone, thought Takeda, must have told him that a ship’s commanding officer was addressed as “Captain” even if he was a mere commander in rank. They shook hands.

There was, Takeda reflected, always a certain awkwardness in dealing with New Americans, given their anomalous relationship with the Empire. Their ancestors had traveled to Tau Ceti in suspended animation, their fifty-year voyage humankind’s first and only slower-than-light interstellar colonizing expedition. They had arrived at their destination a little over a century ago, only to find that while they had slept their way to the stars the Bernheim Drive had been invented on Earth. The discovery that the Empire they had sought to escape was already established in their promised land was something from which they still had yet to recover. However, the Empire had been quite reasonable about it, allowing them to set up their colony and permitting it a unique semi-autonomy, with a standing offer (never accepted) of Dominion status. It was an arrangement the New Americans were able to live with, save for the Sons of Arnold, an organization which advocated full independence… and which, as had recently come to light, included an extremist faction prepared to go beyond mere advocacy.

“I’m under orders to afford you every possible assistance compatible with the safety of my ship and crew,” said Takeda. “But I must say I’m somewhat in the dark as to the purpose of this expedition of yours.”

Willett’s blue eyes sharpened. Takeda had never pretended to be a master at concealing his emotions, and he suspected the scientist had detected his lack of enthusiasm for this mission. But when he spoke, his voice was mild.

“Well, Captain, I’ll do my best to enlighten you. If we could go somewhere…”

“Certainly.” Takeda turned to a yeoman. “Take Dr. Willett’s assistants to their quarters. Doctor, let’s adjourn to my cabin.”

* * *

As soon as the door of Takeda’s cabin slid shut behind them and they sat down, Willett spoke in the same mild tone. “Captain, correct me if I’m wrong, but I can’t avoid the impression that you’re not altogether happy with your orders.”

Takeda didn’t bother with patently insincere denials. “It’s nothing personal, Doctor. But this ship is here as part of the Navy’s general buildup in the Tau Ceti system since the recent events that have brought to light the existence—and hostile intentions—of the Gharnakh’sha. Our job is to patrol this system against any further funny business on their part.”

“We’re not technically at war with the Gharnakh Unity,” Willett pointed out.

“We might as well be! We’ve learned that their aim is to undermine the Empire and build up the Islamic Caliphate, which they consider less of a threat to their precious fossilized social system. Before we destroyed it, they had a secret base here for the express purpose of working to our detriment in league with the Caliphate and,” Takeda added pointedly, “with the Sons of Arnold’s terrorist elements.”

Willett reddened slightly, for Takeda had touched a sore spot. “Captain,” he said evenly, “there are always extremists, who are an embarrassment to the majority. As I’m sure you are embarrassed by those in the Empire who, rumor has it, are willing to throw New America to the wolves—or, rather, to the Gharnakh’sha—in order to buy peace

“You said it yourself: that’s just rumor,” said Takeda stiffly. “My very presence here is an earnest of the Empire’s commitment to defend the Tau Ceti system.”

“And you’d like to get back to doing that job,” said Willett with a smile. “Well, to a certain extent you are going to be doing that job. It is precisely because of the possibility of inimical alien activity in this system that a warship, rather than some unarmed research vessel, has been assigned to my project.”

“But Doctor, I’m still not clear on just exactly what your project is.”

Willett leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. “Captain, have you ever heard of Jonas Yoder?”

“I can’t say I have.”

“Hardly surprising. He was a New American physicist of a generation ago, widely regarded as a genius but also as something of a crank.”

“What sort of crank?”

“Partly it was a matter of his politics. Though not an advocate of violence, he was an opponent of the Imperial connection, declaring often and loudly that the failure of the First American Rebellion was a tragedy.”

“I thought that was the general opinion on New America,” Takeda couldn’t help interjecting.

“Let’s just say he was more vociferous than most. In addition, his theories were unorthodox to say the least.” Willett hesitated. “He was interested in—no, obsessed with—the concept of alternate realities.”

Takeda blinked. “The concept of what?”

“It’s very difficult to explain.” Willett visibly organized his thoughts. “Without going into a lot of theoretical physics—”

“Please don’t,” said Takeda hastily. “My physics is strictly of the practical variety.”

“Very well. To put it as simply as possible: for every decision that can be made between two alternatives, both are made, and… well, the universe splits in two.” Willett looked pained. “Both states of reality are equally real.”

“As far as I can see, only one of them is,” said Takeda dubiously.

“Well, you see, upon the collapse of the wave function—”

“Uh… Doctor…”

“Sorry. What it means is, the observer only sees one such state of reality. But branching realities are basic to quantum mechanics.”

“So as I understand it, you’re saying that there’s a universe where the Persians won at Marathon and the present-day world is living with the consequences of that. And another where the Spanish Armada carried it off. And another…” Takeda’s skepticism-dripping voice trailed off as understanding dawned.

“I see you’ve grasped it,” said Willett with a smile. “Yoder was imagining a reality in which the First American Rebellion was not patched up, and the colonies won their independence. He was convinced that such an alternate universe must exist.”

“Sounds like the wish was father to the thought,” said Takeda drily. “And at any rate, it could never be anything but a theoretical possibility—a subject for daydreaming.”

“Ah, but that brings us to the most controversial of Yoder’s ideas. He believed it was possible to access alternate realities. And he was fanatically determined to do so, and make contact with a universe where, by his lights, things came out right in North America five hundred years ago.”

Takeda could only stare.

“The idea was dismissed by his colleagues as twaddle, and it destroyed his academic career,” Willett continued. “But he didn’t let that stop him. He had enormous inherited wealth, and he squandered all of it on a specially equipped spacecraft and a great deal of strange and seemingly useless equipment. Accompanied by a few disciples, he set out for the outer reaches of the Tau Ceti system. Captain, could you call up a system display?”

“Certainly.” Takeda activated his desk computer, spoke instructions, and a holographically projected image of the Tau Ceti system appeared in midair above the desk.

Takeda’s mind automatically superimposed over it the imaginary clock-face that was still used for bearings even though digital clocks had been universal for a couple of centuries. Tau Ceti was at the center, surrounded by the orbits of its close-in family of planets. Much farther out, Washington Station was at a bearing of about seven o’clock, lying within the extensive “debris disc” that circled Tau Ceti between the radii of ten and fifty-five astronomical units. The latter was about how far out the display extended.

Willett pointed outward from the center on a bearing of three o’clock—which, Takeda recalled, was where the Gharnakh base had orbited, at sixteen astronomical units from Tau Ceti. “According to Yoder’s theory, the alternate reality linkage device he intended to construct would work best outside any significant gravity field. So he proceeded outward along this bearing, intending to go well beyond the outermost limit of the debris disc. He remained incommunicado after declaring that his next report would silence his detractors. But nothing was ever heard from him again.”

“Was a search conducted?”

“Yes, after a time. But the volume of space involved was so vast that it was hopeless. Nothing was ever found. It was surmised that Yoder’s experiments had gone awry and destroyed his ship.”

Takeda shook his head, puzzled. “This is all very interesting, Doctor. But I still don’t understand its relevance to your expedition—and my orders.”

“New facts have emerged recently—facts sufficient to arouse the interest of even the Admiralty. Hence your orders. You see, one of our observatories recently detected what were believed to be indications of a hitherto unknown planet orbiting Tau Ceti out beyond the debris disc. A ship was sent to investigate. The supposed planet turned out to be a chimera. But, purely by accident, the vessel’s sensors detected a seemingly inexplicable flux of exotic energy still farther out—in this direction.” Willett again indicated the three o’clock bearing.

“Are you saying it’s thought that this may be linked to Yoder’s experiments? That he may actually have succeeded in creating some kind of… gateway, and that it may still be open?”

“That is precisely what I am going out there to determine.”

Takeda grew thoughtful. “You know, Doctor, it may surprise you to learn that history has always been an interest of mine. And nothing I’ve ever read has given me any cause to doubt what I, like all of us, was taught in school: that the First American Rebellion never stood a chance, and that the peaceful settlement on the basis of imperial federation was the best possible outcome. In fact, the more history I read, the more I’m convinced of that second part. Empires evaporate if they get too big relative to their power base. That would eventually have happened to the British Empire if its power base had remained limited to just one little island. As it was, North America and, later, other colonial countries were incorporated into a power base that grew to keep pace with the Empire’s expansion.”

“Much as Rome incorporated other city-states on a basis of dual citizenship.”

“Exactly.” Takeda felt the pleasure a history enthusiast always feels at discovering a kindred spirit—rather like a Mason encountering another Mason. “Now, if that peaceful settlement hadn’t happened, the only alternative I can see is that the war would have dragged on, with more bloodshed leading to more bitterness. So after the inevitable British victory, a harsh, repressive rule would have been imposed, with mass treason trials, wholesale hangings, no more local self-government, and the American colonists left as sullen, unhelpful subjects—a calamity for everyone concerned.”

“I think I understand what you’re saying, Captain. If Yoder did succeed, he probably found a universe he liked even less than this one.” Willett paused. “But are you certain the British victory was inevitable? What if, somehow, the Rebellion had succeeded?”

Takeda made a dismissive gesture. “Oh, come, Doctor! I know you’re a New American, but you’re also a rational man. Everyone knows the rebels couldn’t possibly have won—that’s the consensus of all reputable historians. A large portion of their own population wasn’t behind them. The British had total command of the sea and the most highly professional army on the planet. And even if by some miracle the rebels had won their independence, their ‘United States of America’ would never have lasted. They undoubtedly would have fragmented into a patchwork of squabbling little agricultural states, pawns in the geopolitical games of the European powers.”

“Well, Captain,” said Willett with a smile, “it’s just barely possible that we may resolve some of these questions.”

* * *

Washington Station orbited well outside Tau Ceti’s “Secondary Limit,” beyond which the Bernheim Drive could warp space around a ship, enclosing it in a space-time bubble not limited to the velocity of light. But going superluminal within Tau Ceti’s debris disc was frowned upon—the density of space detritus was low, but any collision with a substantial object could damage or even wreck the drive. And, at any rate, it took some very careful piloting to not overshoot one’s objective across mere interplanetary distances.

Thus it was that Hawke accelerated outward in slower-than-light mode, with the drive folding space and thereby reducing normal gravity in front of the ship. Still, at four hundred gravities of pseudo-acceleration (fortunately unfelt by the ship’s occupants, who would have been in a state of free fall had it not been for the artificial gravity generators) the voyage was not a long one.

Willett explained that Jonas Yoder’s ideas for an alternate-reality linkage device were related to the drive. “We don’t know the details,” he admitted. “Yoder was very secretive, and he took all his notes with him when he departed. But it seems to have something to do with the fact that the drive changes the shape of space around the ship by wrapping negative energy around it. Negative energy, like negative mass, is allowable only in the microcosm—the domain of quantum mechanics. But of course you know all this.”

“Yes,” Takeda nodded. “Tapping into that subspace for usable negative energy was the greatest problem Bernheim had to overcome.”

“Well, Yoder was convinced that there was at least one other exotic energy state—he never publicly discussed its exact nature—that could be utilized for his purposes. Possibly it was this that the survey ship detected. The instruments that I’ve asked you to have connected to this ship’s sensor suite are designed on the basis of the readings that ship recorded—and now we know the exact region of space in which to search.”

As it turned out, however, Hawke’s own sensors were the first to detect the phenomenon. Not long after they passed beyond the outermost limits of the debris disc, the gravitic scanners revealed an intense gravity field—evidently artificial gravity, since there was no large mass to account for it.

“The survey ship’s report mentioned nothing about this,” fidgeted Willett.

“They wouldn’t have had Navy grade long-range gravitic scanners,” Takeda reminded him. “They detected this ‘exotic energy flux’ by other means before they were close enough for their civilian gravscanners—if they had even those—to pick up this gravity field. Mr. Malone is doing a detailed analysis of the readings, and he should have some answers for us soon.”

After consultation with the ship’s sensor ratings and the technicians Willett had brought aboard, the first officer approached the captain’s chair, frowning. “Captain, we’ve now got readings on Dr. Willett’s equipment that match what was reported. But as for the G-field… we’re still not close enough to detect what’s generating it. But it’s a very intense one—an odd kind of gravitational vortex. And it’s… anomalous.”

“Explain, Number One.”

“As I said, sir, it’s very strong—but it somehow reverses itself.”

“What does that mean?” Willett wanted to know.

“It’s a matter of a ship’s vector. If you’re heading into it, it will suck you in toward the center. But if you were headed outward from the center, it would shove you out. Spit you out, really.”

Takeda felt he must be missing something. “How could that be? And how the devil would anybody be heading out of it?”

“Unknown, Captain. It’s a complete mystery to Dr. Willett’s people too.”

“You say you can’t detect a generator yet?” Asked Willett.

“No, Doctor. But I can tell you this much. Your people gave me the specifications for Jonas Yoder’s ship, and if it were that size we would be able to detect it. It’s simply not there.”

“Is there any sign of wreckage?”

“No, and even if there ever were any, I doubt if we’ll find it now. I imagine it would have long since been drawn in by the gravity field. But we won’t be able to do a real search for it until we get closer.”

“Which we are going to do with great caution,” Takeda stated firmly. “We won’t head straight down the gravity well, of course. We’ll go into a hyperbolic orbit of the… phenomenon, passing its center as closely as possible without getting within its Primary Limit.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said Malone. The “Primary Limit” was defined by a gravitational force of 0.1 Earth G; any stronger and the Bernheim Drive would not function even in slower-than-light mode. “I’ll instruct the helmsman. Of course, it goes without saying that this will bring us well within the Secondary Limit.”

“Of course,” Takeda echoed. “No matter. We’ll have no reason to want to go superluminal.” He turned to Willett. “Well, Doctor, maybe we’ll have your answers soon.”

* * *

As they drew closer, the first officer’s skepticism was confirmed. No trace of wreckage was found. At the same time, it became possible to detect a material object at the center of the gravity field. It wasn’t a naked-eye object, and wouldn’t have been even if it hadn’t been surrounded by a region of slight visual distortion, with the stars behind it seeming to wave and flicker. But it was definitely there.

“Perhaps it’s Yoder’s device,” Willett speculated.

“But how could anything that small be producing this field?” demanded Takeda. “Especially after all this time? You told me Yoder came out here a generation ago.”

“The effect must be largely self-sustaining, with minimal assistance from the generator. Perhaps the two-way gravitational action somehow produces energy in a manner analogous to the ‘tidal heating’ observed on many moons of massive planets.” Willett shook his head, dismissing the subject pending further observation. “Captain, are we going to get any closer to it?”

Takeda glanced at the nav plot. “Yes, we’re not quite at perigee yet. Soon we’ll—”

At that moment, a series of threat displays awoke, and a new icon appeared on the nav plot astern of them, about sixty degrees clockwise and moving rapidly out from the center of the vortex.

“Captain—” Malone began.

“I see it, Number One. Beat to quarters. And give me an ID of that ship as soon as you can get some sensor readings on it.”

As the alarms whooped through the ship, the artificial gravity field took hold of the mysterious newcomer while it was still within the Primary Limit and began to bend its course into a counterclockwise orbit that would more or less follow Hawke’s.

“Where did it come from?” demanded Willett, staring wide-eyed at the icon that had sprung so inexplicably into being.

“I was hoping you’d be able to give me some help with that, Doctor.” Takeda ordered himself to keep his voice level.

“Captain,” Malone called out, “the sensor readings are in, and the computer has run them against our database. They don’t exactly match any known ship.”

“Go for similarities, then.” Takeda swung toward the communications officer. “Mr. Chandra, raise that ship.”

“I can’t sir,” Lieutenant Chandra reported. “Whatever this exotic energy field is, it’s creating a lot of interference.”

“Well, keep trying. Any luck, Number One?”

“Yes, sir.” Malone’s voice was crisp and emotionless. “The closest match is the big Gharnakh warship that we have data on. But that one was equivalent to one of our fourth raters. This one is somewhat more massive and has a stronger energy signature.”

So it’s almost equivalent to one of our capital ships… “Mr. Davison,” Takeda snapped at the helmsman, “get us out to the Secondary Limit!”

Had they already been outside the Secondary Limit, Hawke could simply have ducked into the safety of its warp field. As it was, Davison thought a command into the neural-induction helmet that mind-linked him with the ship’s brain, and Hawke surged under sublight pseudo-acceleration. But at appreciably the same instant, the Gharnakh ship passed the Primary Limit and proceeded to do exactly the same thing. And it immediately became apparent that the Gharnakh’sha could pull at least as many Gs as they could… in fact, a few more.

“Captain—” a bewildered Willett began. Takeda shushed him with a peremptory gesture and thought furiously. As a fifth rater, Hawke was armed primarily with laser weapons. Her reaction-drive missiles were useful against planetary targets or immobile orbital installations, but their puny few Gs of acceleration made them laughable in a deep-space engagement against ships with Bernheim Drives. He allowed himself to hope the same would be true of the Gharnakh ship, which after all wasn’t quite of capital-ship size…

The hope died aborning as tiny red icons began separating from the large red one in the tactical plot. “Torpedoes,” said Malone in a flat voice.

“So I see,” said Takeda. “Torpedo” was a term of art for big missiles with overpowered Bernheim Drives of their own. In human space navies, only capital ships carried them. Evidently the Gharnakh’sha had slightly different ideas. He told himself that the ship he was up against couldn’t possibly mount many of the things. But four of them were streaking toward Hawke at what the computer said was almost nine hundred Gs. “Mr. Nichols, get a target lock on those torpedoes and fire at will as soon as they come within range.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” the weapons officer acknowledged. From all the turrets that could be brought to bear, gigawatt X-ray lasers stabbed invisibly out across space. They were longer-ranged than the savage bomb-pumped X-ray lasers the torpedoes would generate when they detonated, which provided a window of opportunity for destroying them—not a wide enough window to suit Takeda.

Still, Nichols accounted for one of them promptly, and the icon of another began to flicker as its force shields overloaded. Takeda looked back at the nav plot. Even at their prodigious pseudo-accelerations, Hawke and her pursuer were both struggling out of the gravity well.

“Number One, run a computer projection. Are we going to reach the Secondary Limit before the Gharnakh’sha catches us?”

“I just did, sir.”

“And the answer?”

“Almost.”

“I see. Thank you.” Takeda decided not to tell Willett what that meant. In what passed for a face-to-face duel in space warfare, Hawke wouldn’t stand a chance. He would try to close the distance even more so he could use his fusion guns—short-range ship smashers. But that wouldn’t save them. The Gharnakh ship undoubtedly mounted similar weapons; and even though the aliens’ versions were believed to be less powerful, a ship that size would have a lot more of them.

Maybe I’ll tell Willett after all. He has a right to know.

He was opening his mouth to speak when a new icon in the nav plot caught his eye.

This one, too, appeared out of nowhere, coming out from the center of the vortex, but it was only about thirty degrees astern of them. Thus, when the gravity field took hold and began to bend its course into a counterclockwise orbit, that projected orbit brought it between the Gharnakh’sha and Hawke.

Takeda became aware that Malone was looking over his shoulder. “Another Gharnakh ship, sir?” she asked, unable to keep despair out of her voice.

“Maybe. Run an ID check—” But even as Takeda gave the order, it became superfluous. The Gharnakh ship, as though forgetting Hawke’s existence, opened fire on the newcomer. That fire was returned, and the readouts jumped at the intensity of the energy being expended. At the same time, two secondary icons separated from that of the unidentified ship.

“Torpedoes?” Takeda demanded of the sensor officer.

“No, sir. They’re too big for that. More like manned spacecraft.”

“I see.” Neither the Royal Space Navy or any other known service favored the concept of fighters, or light assault craft. Evidently, somebody did.

“Captain,” Malone called out, “the ID check is completed. There is nothing in our database even remotely similar to this new ship. It’s a complete unknown.”

“Well, we know one thing about it: its doing us a bloody good turn by fighting the Gharnakh’sha.” Takeda reached a decision. “Mr. Davidson, reverse our acceleration and kill as much of our velocity as you can. We’re going to join this battle—or, rather let it catch up with us.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

The closing of the range enabled one of the Gharnakh torpedoes to detonate before they could destroy it, but their force shields held the damage to acceptable levels. In the meantime, the secondary craft launched by the Gharnakh ship’s new nemesis went in like dogs attacking a bear. One of them was vaporized and the other reeled away, clearly disintegrating; but they had inflicted damage, and had drawn off enough Gharnakh fire to allow their mother ship to inflict still more, even though the greater firepower of its larger enemy was clearly wearing it down.

Then Hawke came in range and began pouring in its own laser fire. For a sickening instant, Takeda thought they had been too late, for the new arrival could now no longer maneuver; gravity was taking control and drawing it inward. But it could still put out a certain volume of fire. Under that fire and Hawke’s, the enemy was visibly wilting. Then they were within fusion gun range, and blinding discharges of star-hot plasma blasted down the last of the Gharnakh ship’s defenses. All at once, its force shields went down and a rapid-fire series of secondary explosions consumed it.

A series of damage control reports were rolling in, But Takeda hardly heard them. He was watching the nav plot, staring at the icon of the ship that had rescued them, as gravity pulled it down toward the enigmatic center of the vortex. It had already passed within the Primary Limit. There was absolutely nothing they could do for it. Even if it had some form of escape pods for the crew, those would also be drawn in. “Mr. Chandra, hail that ship if you possibly can.”

“I’m trying, sir, but the interference—”

Takeda strode over to the comm officer’s station, nudged Chandra aside, and punched controls. A shriek of raw static answered. He spoke loudly. “Calling the unidentified ship in the Tau Ceti system: this is Her Majesty’s Space Ship Hawke, Captain Ian Takeda. Please acknowledge, and identify yourself.”

He repeated it several times. Occasionally there were snatches of what might have been speech. Then, for an instant, there was a brief break in the static, and a voice was heard. It was speaking in English, but in an undefinable way there was something odd about it. Only a few words could be heard.

“—and we’re fighting the Gharnakh’sha too. Who the hell are you? What’s—”

Then, abruptly, the voice ceased as the static closed in again. An instant later, the viewscreen went blindingly white as what looked like a small nova flared into existence deep in the vortex. Then it faded out, leaving their eyes dazzled.

“Their powerplant went critical,” Malone said quietly.

And even as he said it, various readouts ceased to register the findings of the sensor suite. The gravitational anomaly, with its accompanying field of unidentified exotic energy, was no longer there.

Willett sighed.

“I was right. The effect wasn’t entirely self-sustaining. That explosion destroyed the physical object at the center—presumably Yoder’s device. Now the vortex is gone, permanently.”

It was true. Where it had been, the stars beyond now shone serenely, without the previous shimmering distortion of light-waves. Hawke lay all alone in an undistinguished region of what might as well have been interstellar space, with Tau Ceti no more than a superlatively bright star.

* * *

The damage control teams had contained all the ravages of combat, but some repair work still needed to be done. While it was in progress, Takeda ordered a search for any wreckage that might be adrift in the vicinity. A few chunks of the Gharnakh ship were found, but they yielded no useful information.

Then something more interesting turned up.

“Captain,” Malone reported, “remember those two light attack craft, or whatever they were, that the second ship launched?”

“Yes. One of them was a total loss, but the other merely broke up.”

“Well, we think we’ve found part of that second one’s tail section. The tractor-beam crew is hauling it aboard now.”

“All right,” said Takeda absently, not looking up from the report he was reading. “You’d better go down and check it out.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” The first officer departed. After a moment, Takeda turned to Willett.

“You know, Doctor, we still don’t know what happened to Yoder. And where did those two ships come from?”

Willett continued to stare at the empty viewscreen. He had been doing that a lot lately. “We’ll never know, will we?”

Silence reigned for a time. Then Takeda’s communicator chimed for attention. It was Malone. On the tiny screen, her face wore an odd expression.

“Captain, I’m down in the hold with the wreckage. I think you should come here and take a look at it. And… I definitely think Dr. Willett should too.”

Takeda and Willett exchanged a puzzled look. Then, without a word, they left the bridge.

Malone showed them a sheet of metal, its ragged edges carbonized from heat. “It seems to be part of a vertical stabilizer,” she explained. “Evidently the craft had aerodynamic flight capability.”

Takeda studied it. There was a meaningless alphanumeric designation printed on it. But what caught his eye was an obvious flag. A curious flag, though, mostly occupied by horizontal stripes—thirteen of them, alternating red and white—except for a blue rectangle in the upper left-hand corner with rows of white stars. Curious indeed… although it seemed to speak to something elusive in his memory.

“What kind of flag is that, Captain?” asked Malone.

“I don’t know. Although… it seems to have a vaguely familiar look.”

“It should,” said Willett in a flat voice that caused both officers to turn and look at him quizzically. His eyes were haunted. “After all, Captain, you mentioned your interest in history.”

All at once, it came to Takeda.

“The flag of the First American Rebellion’s ‘United States of America’ was something like this,” he said slowly. “Although, as I recall, the blue area had a circle of stars.”

“Thirteen, for the thirteen rebelling colonies,” Willett affirmed with a nod.

“This one has—” Takeda did a quick count “—fifty.”

He met Willet’s eyes. Neither of them spoke. A shudder ran through him.

Malone looked from one of them to the other. Her look was almost pleading “Sir, what can it mean?”

“That’s unknowable… and meaningless, really, because the vortex is lost forever. Whatever was beyond it doesn’t exist, as far as we’re concerned.” Takeda took a deep breath and drew himself up. “Let’s get back to the worlds we know.”

David VonAllmen

Dragon’s Hand

The Chained King. Flaming Goat. Moon of Day.

Jane pinched the squares of heavy paper hard enough to turn her fingertips white. She’d finally drawn the hand of cards that would end her years of searching.

Or she’d drawn the hand of cards that would damn her to a lifetime of sorrow. She couldn’t say which it’d be just yet.

“Make your play, Indian woman,” the graying soldier across the table grumbled, just loud enough to be heard above the string quartet playing in one corner of the saloon.

Jane studied the illustrations’ hard black lines and whirling brushstrokes of color. Her eye could barely make out all manner of stars and charms that promised fortune but never delivered. That was nothing new to Jane. Fate had dragged her along one dusty horse trail after the next for near on two years, always whispering that what remained of her tribe was just one more town away, always promising that her daughter was almost within reach.

She placed Moon of Day face down on the table but didn’t take her fingers off it just yet. The card was powerful, but mighty unpredictable.

Jane looked up, hoping to read something in the expressions of her opponents. The soldier wore a tattered cavalry jacket and a six-shooter on his hip. His dark eyes darted endlessly around the room and every time the batwing doors thumped open his hand jumped to his gun. To Jane’s left was an emaciated man whose slim suit hung loose, as if God forgot to add meat and fat before stretching skin over his bones. He sat still as a corpse. The woman to her right wore a schoolmarm’s buttoned-up navy blue dress, her hair in a tight bun. She dabbed tears from her eyes with a lace handkerchief, but smiled relentlessly, like a showgirl on stage. The players’ faces gave away nothing.

Jane started to pull back the Moon of Day card, but stopped herself. If she didn’t play it, she’d never get a chance this good again. The game was the last hope she had to find her six year-old… No. Her daughter would be seven by now, wouldn’t she?

Jane and her three opponents flipped their cards face up. The others eyed Jane with the flat look of practiced gamblers, surely surprised the quiet Indian woman in britches and shirtsleeves was crazy enough to lead with Moon of Day. What did they expect? None sat down for a hand of cards in Gideon’s Saloon unless desperation had driven them at least halfway down the road to madness.

The game was seven-card Sorte. The stakes were luck itself.

“You look like you’ve been on the trails for a long time, dearie,” the schoolmarm said, her tone so polite and friendly it was impossible to believe it was sincere. Jane reckoned the woman intended it that way. “What tribe are you?”

“Guachichil,” Jane lied with practiced ease. It was an instinct every member of her tribe grew up with. Fortune hunters were always on their tail, looking to cash in on the riches to be had from selling their blood to those who knew the ways of spells and conjuring.

The dealer flicked another card to each player. Their table sat in the middle of a crowded saloon furnished as if it was a betting parlor for European royalty. A score of oil lights shone from each of the chandeliers floating a dozen feet above their heads and plush green velvet cushioned their seats. The décor matched nothing else in the border town of El Perdido, its humble buildings painted burnt red by dust that hung so thick you could taste iron in the air.

Jane picked up her card. Black Flower. Her jaws tightened.

“Guachichil…” The emaciated man’s voice was never more than a whisper. “From dead in the center of Mexico, isn’t that right?”

Jane nodded. She tilted the brim of her gaucho hat to keep the light off her pupils. If you looked real close, they weren’t quite round, weren’t quite human. They pointed, ever so slightly, at the top and the bottom, as if she’d had a reptile for a grandmother. And that wasn’t too far from the truth.

“Well it is such an unexpected delight to have you join us,” the schoolmarm said. “Many saloons don’t allow your kind inside.” She plucked a card from her hand and placed it face down in front of her.

Jane pulled The Chained King from her hand and laid it face down. The four players flipped over their cards. As the last round was dealt, Jane struggled to sort out the ranks and realms and trumps her opponents might be working toward. Her head swam. There were too many possibilities.

She reached for her final card, praying the fates might smile on her just this once.

A voice like a cannon blast rang out across the saloon.

“You dumb sumbitch!”

Gideon himself, owner of the saloon and just about everything else in El Perdido, held some confused-looking sap by the lapels. A cigarillo bit between his teeth, he stood atop a dais three steps above the rest of the saloon and smashed a handful of cards over the fellow’s head. He wore a red silk shirt, busy with embroidery, over a hairy body thick with muscle and fat. He put Jane to mind of a costumed circus bear she’d seen once. No amount of dressing up would ever rid the beast of the killing instinct coursing through its veins.

Gideon pitched the man backwards, right off the edge of the dais. By all rights, the fellow should have tumbled feet-over-rear and cracked the back of his skull open on the hardwood below. Instead, the fellow’s heels caught each step, then his feet wheeled and danced him across the room, body titled too far to catch his balance. His clumsy jig took him to the far end of the saloon and out the batwing doors.

The dealer and the soldier chuckled in an easy sort of way that told Jane they’d seen this kind of thing before.

“Doesn’t much care for losing, does he?” the emaciated man said.

“Losing ain’t been a problem for him for, oh, going on six years now,” the soldier said. “It’s all the winning that’s made him so ornery.”

“He’d be the first I’ve ever met who grew tired of winning,” Jane said.

“He lived for the thrill of the wager,” the soldier said. “And then he trumped a Thirteenth rank Endeavor set. He won’t never lose another hand of cards so long as he lives. No thrill to be had in that.”

The luck of the Thirteenth rank was powerful and unending. The Endeavor realm ruled over any kind of effort or undertaking. If Jane had that kind of luck, whatever direction she picked to go searching for her daughter would turn out to be the right one, and before she knew it her little girl would all but fall out of the sky into her arms.

She picked up her final card. Dreamer in Mourning. The schoolmarm had played Three-Tailed Fox followed by Half Coin, and looked to be building a mid-rank set in the Opportunity realm. Jane would have to play her Dreamer in Mourning card to win.

In Sorte, the cards were both the game and the wager. If Jane’s set outranked the schoolmarm’s, she’d win that Opportunity luck, and the schoolmarm would lose it in equal measure. It was exactly the kind of luck Jane needed to provide a clue where her tribe had disappeared to. But she’d be laying down high-rank Coincidence set. If the schoolmarm’s third card trumped her, Jane would likely spend years narrowly missing her tribe at every turn.

Jane squeezed her right hand into a fist, trying to fight off the tremble that had overtaken it. She pulled Black Flower from her hand. It stood little chance of winning, but if she lost her bad luck wouldn’t be so terrible.

“You know, I heard a number of those poor reds down in Mexico were slaughtered two years back when blood hunters came through those parts,” the schoolmarm said, her smile beaming as she played her final card face down. “They were chasing rumors one of the tribes down there were dragons.”

Jane froze with Black Flower between her fingers. The woman had seen the shape of her pupils. She knew what Jane was.

The dealer, the soldier, and the emaciated man all studied Jane. Surely, they could hear her heart pounding like the gallop of unbroken horses. Surely, they realized what she was. She had to run, while she still could. The saloon was full of desperate men, and it wouldn’t be long until one of them tried to collect her blood.

But wasn’t the whole world full of desperate men? If she didn’t take this last chance to find her daughter, how long until one of them caught up to her child?

Are you okay, my precious girl? Are you still alive?

I’m okay, Momma. Grandpa’s taking care of me. I miss you.

Her daughter’s voice in her head was just imagination, nothing more than that. But hearing her daughter say she was alive and unhurt was the only thing that’d kept Jane from losing her mind to madness, even if it was only make believe.

Jane replaced Black Flower in her hand. She drew out Dreamer in Mourning and laid it face down on the table. The schoolmarm watched the change of cards and her tear-strained eye took on a gleam of satisfaction.

The four players flipped their final cards. The schoolmarm had played Cracked Lantern. Jane had her outranked. The schoolmarm’s smile twisted into something savage.

“Well…” the schoolmarm said, her voice hollow.

The ink burned off her cards, illustrations disappearing as wisps of colored smoke rose from them and faded into the air. The Opportunity luck Jane took was Fourth rank, which meant her luck would only last until sunrise, but that luck would be powerfully strong.

The schoolmarm stood abruptly, backing into a man walking past. The whiskey he’d been carrying splashed across the front of her dress, his glass clanked across the varnished floor.

“And there I had you figured for a lady who scares easy,” the schoolmarm said. She wiped at the whiskey stain with her handkerchief as she strode away. The schoolmarm hadn’t figured out what Jane was. She’d just been poking, trying to unnerve her.

“You really Guachichil?” the soldier asked.

“Yeah,” Jane said. “Hadn’t heard of that trouble the lady was talking about. Was she trying to play me?”

“Probably,” the soldier said. “Had other Guachichil come through here some months back.”

Every muscle in Jane’s body locked up. Her people had come through this very town. It had to have been them. Her newly-won Opportunity luck had struck already. She dug fingernails into her palms to keep tears from pooling in her eyes.

“Haven’t seen another Guachichil since I left home,” Jane said, fighting to keep her voice steady. “Happen to know which way they went?”

“Heh.” The man’s eyes landed on her for just a second, then bounded away again. “You just won the strongest set I’ve seen in a while, and you’re looking for a favor from me?”

“All right,” Jane said, in a way she hoped sounded friendly. “We’ll help each other out. What is it I can do for you?”

“Gimme some time to think it over while I try to win some luck of my own,” the man said.

Another gambler slid into the chair the schoolmarm had occupied. The dealer looked at the deck and frowned.

“Only fifteen cards,” he said. “Someone dropping out?”

“I’m done for the night,” Jane said, standing. She looked to the soldier. “I’ll be waiting out front when you’re ready to ask your favor.”

The man met her eyes just long enough to nod. Jane made for the door. She could only hope that whatever the soldier knew, it would finally put an end to her years of searching. She’d grown weary of lying, of stealing, of doing terrible things just to survive.

Pomogi mne.

The voice in Jane’s head wasn’t her daughter this time. It was the voice of a man she’d known two years back. A withered man, his limbs as thin and pale as the branches of a birch sapling in winter. A man she shared no language with, but had been forced to share a cage with. A man whose eyes had begged her for help. A man she had left to die.

She hadn’t had a choice. She had to keep moving until she found her daughter. She’d only done what she had to.

I will find you, my precious girl. I’ve won strong luck to help me. Just stay hid until I get there. Promise me you will.

Okay, Momma. I promise. I’ll hide where the hunters won’t ever find me.

* * *

Jane waited outside the saloon for hours, watching stars inch across the sky, too rigid with excitement and fear to sit. The night air returned the heat it had soaked up all day. Sweat and grit lined the cracks of her skin. It seemed nearly every patron stumbled down the saloon’s porch steps before the soldier in the battered cavalry jacket hurried past.

“I know a place we can talk,” he said, with barely a glance in her direction.

She rushed to catch him. “Hold up, now. Where are we going? Do you even know where those Guachichil went?”

The man turned down the alley between Gideon’s saloon and the next building over. As soon as she rounded the corner, Jane knew she was in trouble. The worst kind of trouble.

The soldier stood between two thugs, one holding a pistol, the other a length of iron. Jane faded back. A blow like the kick of a mule stuck her full in the back. She collapsed face down in the dirt, blood rising in the back of her throat. Head dizzy with pain and lungs refusing to draw breath, Jane’s only thought was for regaining her feet. She got no further than hands and knees before the toe of a boot cracked her ribs and she flopped belly down again.

“Stay down,” the soldier commanded. “Ain’t no point in fighting. Told Gideon what you was and he sent us to corral you, and you know Gideon’s endeavors can’t never fail.”

Eyes blurry from tears, Jane could see one thing plainly enough: the thugs coming for her with a rope, like she was runaway cattle. Her only chance was to shift shape.

She never truly felt her body grow, never felt the wings sprout from her shoulder blades or talons rip through the leather of her boots. Instead, it was as if the fangs and red-brown scales and all the rest were always there, only she’d forgotten about them, and now her senses were waking up to them once again. Feeling her weight was like standing up after a long sleep, feeling the power of her muscles was like suddenly waking from a dream.

If the thugs had been able to hold onto their bravado, they would’ve laid into her the second her first scale appeared. But Jane had yet to meet the man who didn’t cower back upon seeing a woman transform into a dragon. A moment later, she’d gained her full height—triple that of the largest quarter horse—and her wingtips scraped the alley walls.

The thug with the pistol fired a shot. It struck her neck, cracking a scale. She howled in pain and lunged forward, swiping at the man with her front claws. The fellow had been smart enough to stay out of reach, but couldn’t help jumping back. Just as he did, the man with the iron bar darted forward. But he didn’t have an iron bar anymore.

The man flung a handful of white powder, fine as flour, up into Jane’s face. She reared back, but not fast enough. Fine-ground salt bit into her eyes. To a human, it would have been irritating, painful even. To a dragon, it was like being splashed with acid. The salt stung her scales and worked its way between them, stabbing her skin. Each draw of breath sucked more of the salt into her lungs, where it tore at her insides like the bites of a thousand tiny spiders.

The salt wouldn’t kill her, but that wasn’t the point. All they were trying to do was get her to shift back to human form. No matter how much she fought the urge, she wouldn’t last but a few seconds until she did just that.

Blinded and panicking, Jane roared and flung her tail about, smashing the man who had snuck up behind her against the saloon wall. She tromped forward, hoping to feel one of the men crushed beneath her claws. Like the inhale of a man who’d been underwater too long, Jane could do nothing to stop her body from shifting and shrinking. With only a second or two left, she drew a lungful of air and exhaled an orange blaze of fire.

Flames crackled up the saloon wall as Jane lay face-down, naked in the dirt, her human body trying to cry the salt out of her eyes. When she managed to look up, all three thugs were closing on her. By the scowls on their faces, she figured they were going to give her some extra bruises before tying her up.

A rapid thumping of boots raced up behind her. Painful as it was, she managed to swing her head around to see a pale man running her way, hauling a bucketful of water. He was aiming to save Gideon’s saloon from going up in flame.

No. His eyes were fixed right on her. The water was meant for her.

Just as he skidded to a stop and reared back to heave that water, the bottom fell out of the bucket and every last drop splashed to the ground.

“Asher, you miserable ol’ loser…” the soldier growled. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

The man named Asher stood blinking, a look of shock on his face, as if he’d been sleepwalking and suddenly woke to find he’d stumbled into a wolf’s den. His distraction gave Jane the only chance she was likely to get. Biting her teeth against a cry of pain, she leapt to her feet and ran like the devil himself was just a step behind her.

A gunshot hammered her ears. One stride later, Jane reached the end of the alley and dodged behind the corner of the saloon.

Whatever Asher’s source of water, the trail of spills he’d left were big enough to be seen in the moonlight, she could follow along and find it herself. The thugs wouldn’t be but a few steps behind. As soon as they rounded the corner, they’d have a clear shot at her.

Just as another shot exploded, she saw it, and it was better than she could’ve hoped for. A watering trough. Jane didn’t slow one tick before diving in head-first. The warm water stank of horse hair. She snorted it up her nose, hoping to take in just enough to clear her nostrils. Jane gagged and choked, but the burn left her skin as the salt washed clear.

Bullets thunked into the side of the trough, one after another. It was too late. The trough shattered with a crack like thunder. Jane exploded up into dragon form, waves of water and shards of wood scattering a score of paces in every direction.

If the thugs had any salt left, they’d lost the nerve to give it another try. They turned tail and ran. Jane spit a burst of fire after them to make sure they knew what they’d get if they somehow found that nerve again.

Jane let her dragon body unform. The sensation of her tail whipping behind her faded into a ghost of itself, then disappeared completely. Bit by bit she lost any sense of touch in her wings and claws, until she dropped into a human body and her mind almost couldn’t imagine the feel of any other.

Dripping wet, she sagged with exhaustion. Only rage kept her on her feet.

Damn those bastards. That was supposed to have been her Opportunity. She’d won the luck, and Sorte cards never failed to deliver luck to the winner.

Pain stabbing her ribs with every movement, Jane pulled the duster off the thug she’d smashed against the wall and tugged it on. She had neither the time nor inclination to check if he was still breathing.

“Who are you?” she demanded, glaring at Asher. “Why’d you try to save me?”

Asher curled in on himself, shoulders hunched and head down, like a dog with a cruel master who expected another blow to come at any second.

“I’m nobody,” he said. He turned to walk away.

Jane caught his arm and spun him around.

“How come roping me didn’t work out for Gideon?” she asked.

“It weren’t him doing the deed,” Asher said. “His luck falls off sharply when it ain’t him actually doing the endeavoring.”

An alarm bell clanged and folks rushed from their homes to see the bright blaze crawling up the side of Gideon’s saloon. Jane slapped her gaucho hat back on her head. She stared at Asher, a deep frown pulling down her mouth.

“This weren’t no business of yours,” she said. “Why’d you go risking your life to help a stranger?”

Dancing firelight lit up one side of Asher’s trembling face. “What’s it matter?” he sputtered in a burst that was a bark of laughter and a cry of anguish both at the same time. “My life ain’t worth living. Only hope I got left is that Gideon’ll get angry enough to shoot me dead.”

Jane stared at him a moment longer while the gears in her mind clicked into place.

“You were on the losing side, weren’t you?” she said. “When Gideon won that Endeavor luck, he won it from you. Now anything you try to do fails. Even when all you’re trying to do is end your own life.”

Asher said nothing, just stood there fighting to hold back tears. And like everything else the man aspired to do, he failed.

For a flash, his eyes were those of another man. A man Jane had left to die in a cage.

Pomogi mne.

They’d been the only words he’d uttered, almost too weak to hear. Though she didn’t speak a word of Russian, there was no mistaking when a man was begging for his life.

Jane turned from Asher and set out walking with purpose. The voice of the Russian followed her.

Pomogi mne.

They’d shipped him across the Atlantic in an iron cage, to sell to the highest bidder. It had been darn near impossible to believe he could turn himself into one of those fearsome dragons they say terrorized the Ural Mountains so many years ago. Frail as a water reed and halfway starved to death, dragging him along would have slowed her down too much. She’d had to leave him behind. Her daughter needed her.

Why’d you leave him to die, Momma?

I only did what I had to, sweet girl. It won’t matter once we’re together again. You’ll never know the horrible things I had to do to get to you.

The townspeople all stood lined up on either side of the road, gawking like Jane was lead horse in a circus caravan parading itself through town. She met the stare of a tall fellow still dressed in his nightclothes.

“Gideon,” she growled.

The man pointed down the road to a castle of a house, so tall and wide it seemed to be pushing the neighboring buildings aside. Jane marched for it. She’d pull her Opportunity right out of Gideon’s hide if that’s what it took.

“Gideon!” she bellowed up at the balcony jutting out from the second floor of Gideon’s mansion. “Come face me yourself, you coward!”

A moment later, Gideon stormed out onto the balcony. He stared into the distance, where men ran in circles around his saloon, shouting and throwing water on the dwindling flames. Gideon’s eyes shifted, glaring down at her as if he couldn’t believe she had the nerve to still be alive.

“You want a real game of cards?” she called out. “I got some Opportunity luck I need to use up before sunrise. Come face me in a game of thirteen-card Sorte.” Jane turned, then shouted back over her shoulder. “That is, if your place ain’t burnt up, yet.”

* * *

It must have been the whole town that packed in Gideon’s saloon, crowded around the playing table, come to see the woman crazy enough to play Gideon in a hand of thirteen-card Sorte. The stakes were higher than seven-card by a mile. And then some. That was the point. Jane was going to use her Opportunity to win enough luck that she couldn’t help but find what remained of her tribe. She could only pray her daughter was still alive and with them.

Lingering smoke filled the room, the scent of charred wood thick enough to give Jane a headache. She sat wearing nothing save her hat and the oversized duster, dirt rubbing in the cracks between her bare toes. Gideon stared at her as he lit a cigarillo and blew a cloud of sweet tobacco smoke across the table. He didn’t smile, but his eyes shone, wild and alive. The soldier and the other thugs who attacked her stood behind Gideon like he was their shield. Asher hid among the crowd, where Jane wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t been looking for him.

The dealer fanned out twenty-six cards into two rows representing the thirteen realms of luck and the thirteen ranks of luck. They were simple, single-color icons, but once the dealer flipped them face down and started shuffling, they mixed like shades of paint. Hidden from every eye in the room, each became a unique combination of realm and rank, 169 different possibilities. Somewhere during the shuffling, it was impossible to watch close enough to say exactly when, the number of cards changed, so the deck wound up with exactly enough cards for everyone at the table.

The dealer flicked three cards to each of them and Jane scooped hers up. The Dancing Madman. Skeleton Knife. Candle of Memory. They didn’t add up to much. Skeleton Knife was easily the highest rank, so she played it face-down on the table in front of her. Gideon looked up at her and frowned. Annoyed by how fast she made her decision, she had to guess. What did he expect? She wasn’t going to beat him with strategic thinking. Her Opportunity luck was either strong enough to give his Endeavor luck a run for his money or it wasn’t.

Gideon laid down his card. They both turned over. He’d played Golden Fish. He had her outranked. But it was only the first card.

The dealer tossed another card to each of them, adding Liar’s River to the two cards she still held. What matched up strong with the Skeleton Knife she’d already laid down? It didn’t take but a second before the answer hit her.

Gideon had led with Golden Fish. That almost always built a set in the Endeavor realm. She already had a high trump for that realm in her hand. She just had to play Liar’s River next, then Candle of Memory the last round.

Was it possible Gideon might draw a combination to come back over the top? Hell, the man was playing with all the luck in the world in his pocket, the long odds against that didn’t make a whit of difference. But morning would break soon, and the luck she’d won promised to deliver by sunrise. This had to be her Opportunity. It had to be. Fate was laying it out clear as day right in front of her: he had the beginnings of a high-rank Endeavor set and she had the three best cards in the deck to win it from him.

Gideon laid down his card. Jane played Liar’s River face-down behind her Skeleton Knife card. They flipped.

Empty Mirror. He’d played Empty Mirror. It was exactly what she’d hoped for. He was building an Endeavor set and she had him trumped. There was only one card in the whole 169 that could save him now.

Jane’s hands shook. Gideon looked up at her with a smirk. He thought she was nervous about the cards. Years of perfect fortune had robbed him of his instincts. He couldn’t see she’d already all but won. She wasn’t shaking from nerves. She was…

Why exactly was she shaking?

When you come back to me, who will you be, Momma?

Who will I be?

You stole from them that had nothing to spare. You let a man die in his cage.

I only did what I had to. To find you. So I can protect you. When we’re together again I won’t have to do such things anymore. You’ll never have to know what I’ve done these past couple years.

Life ain’t gonna get any easier, Momma, not for us. A time’ll come that you’ll hurt someone and I’ll see it. I’ll know what you’ve become.

No. I…

You can’t return to me, Momma. Not like this.

But I have to. This luck will be gone by sunrise. This right here’s gotta be my Opportunity. It’s gotta be. ‘Cause if this ain’t it… what is?

The trembling in Jane’s hands threatened to shake her cards free. She slapped them face-down on the table and intertwined her fingers, squeezed as hard as she could. The shaking wouldn’t stop. She stood, knocking her chair over. The crowd whispered and snickered.

“This ain’t poker,” Gideon said. He lifted a snifter of whiskey to smiling lips. “Can’t fold and walk.”

She would play away from the trump. That’s what she’d do. Whatever card she drew next, she’d make the lowest set she could, take whatever bad luck was her punishment. She didn’t have another choice. She couldn’t face her daughter now. Not like she was.

Jane fought to smooth out her lungs’ jagged gasps. They stared at her, every last soul in the crowd. Some with amusement, the more kindly folks with sympathy or even horror, guessing from her expression she was about to get loaded down with a terrible affliction of bad luck.

Her eyes stopped when they met Asher’s. Though she would have sworn it was impossible, those eyes carried even more sorrow than when she first saw them. This time, the sorrow was not for his own plight. It was for hers.

Pomogi mne.

Fate was offering her an Opportunity all right. But it wasn’t the chance to win luck off Gideon.

Jane’s hands stopped shaking. The dealer tossed her last card to her, but she didn’t pick it up. Still standing, she lifted the Candle of Memory card off the table and held it out, back side facing Gideon.

“I’ve got the Candle of Memory,” she taunted, forcing her smile wide. “And you’re working on an Endeavor set. I have you trumped.”

Fury wasn’t the only emotion that duked it out for control of Gideon’s face, but it was the clear winner.

“You’re lying, red woman,” he said, voice tightly reined in. “Trying to fool me into playing away from the Endeavor realm ‘cause you ain’t got the cards to beat it.”

“Then lay it down if you got the guts. But I know you don’t.”

Gideon bared teeth bit together in anger.

“Even with more luck than any other man alive, you’re too cowardly to play at me. That’s why you sent thugs to ambush me, ‘cause you were too cowardly to try and rope me yourself.”

Gideon’s face burned red and his cheeks trembled. Whatever he was itching to say, his temper had boiled the words right out of his mouth.

Jane placed the Candle of Memory card face down on top of her other unplayed cards. She couldn’t play it, yet. Not if she wanted her trick to work.

Then she did something she’d never done before, something she’d have no faith in trying if luck weren’t on her side. She started a shape shift she had no intention of finishing. Just enough to get scales growing across her chest. Just enough so that her eyes burned bright orange and her pupils melted to black slits and bone fangs snapped inches from Gideon’s face when she leaned forward with a wicked smile and whispered, “Your move.”

Gideon threw himself back from the table, jumped to his feet, and fired a shot from his six-gun before anyone else in the room had a chance to so much as blink.

The bullet shattered a scale on Jane’s chest, a sharp point of pain exploding across her torso. Goading Gideon into firing on her had been Jane’s aim, but still the shock swept her legs out from under her. Forehead pressed against the hard varnish of the floor, she fell back into fully-human shape and coughed blood into her hand. Likely as not, she had a fractured rib.

After the screams and gasps faded away, the crowd closed in to see whether Jane was dead. The dealer knelt to speak to her.

“Are you alive?” he asked. “Can you continue?”

Jane groaned and gave a slow, slight shake of her head, made like she was trying to speak but couldn’t quite manage. “Asher…” she said.

“Asher?” the dealer asked. With that, every head in the crowd spun about until they locked on Asher. Startled as he was, the man’s usual hunched-shoulder posture momentarily disappeared.

“What the hell?” Gideon bellowed.

“A game of Sorte can’t be stopped before the final cards are played,” the dealer said. “If she can’t continue, she’s allowed to pick her replacement.”

Gideon’s face fought with itself again. This time, he wrestled a confident smile into place.

“What’s the point in letting him finish her hand?” Gideon laughed. “I can’t lose and he can’t win.”

Asher looked at Jane, unsure. Jane herself wasn’t so sure of her plan. She had to trust that this was the moment her Opportunity luck had brought her to.

Asher shambled forward, lowered himself into the seat, and picked up the cards. Jane had to stifle a whimper as a pair of men hooked their arms under hers and hefted her into a chair.

Asher didn’t hesitate. He plucked the Candle of Memory card and laid it face down behind the two Jane had already played. Gideon paused just long enough to scowl, caught himself, and smacked his final play card down with a tight-lipped smile. The two players flipped their cards face-up.

Gideon had played Orphan of Night. The overconfident fool had actually completed the Thirteenth rank Endeavor set. The color burned off his cards, turning them white. But not nearly so white as Gideon’s face.

The stunned crowd didn’t make a sound as Asher stood, plucked a cigarillo from Gideon’s shirt pocket, and bounced a match off the table. The match lit when it struck the wood surface and popped right up into Asher’s hand. The new king of El Perdido puffed his cigarillo to life.

Gideon yanked his six-gun from its holster and aimed the barrel at his temple. Asher slammed his fist on the table, bouncing the opposite side up and knocking the gun from Gideon’s hand.

“Fate ain’t gonna let you off that easy,” Asher said. “All you woulda done is hurt yourself bad enough to spend the rest of your life regretting the attempt. But thank your lucky cards I’m gonna be a damn sight kinder to you than you ever was to me.”

Jane stood, painfully, one hand over her ribs. She limped toward the door.

“Why’d you do that?” Asher called after her.

“Got my reasons,” she said without looking back.

Jane stepped out into the night. The first dim hints of dawn lightened the horizon. Asher followed, as did most of the crowd. He hustled to get in front of her.

“I owe you a debt, now,” Asher said. “A mighty big one. What is it you’re doing here? What is it you want?”

Jane struggled to hold back tears as she met his eyes.

“My people came through here a few months back, with my little girl. All I want is to find them.” She nodded toward the soldier. “I think that fella may know something about where they went.”

Asher turned his gaze to the soldier, who startled back.

“We gonna do this the hard way, or you gonna tell this lady everything you know?” Asher asked.

“They asked the way to Las Cruces, that’s all I know,” the soldier said in a rush. From the fear pulling his eyes wide, there was little doubt he was telling the truth.

Jane dropped her gaucho hat in the dirt and let the borrowed duster fall to the ground. She stood naked in the middle of the road, staring over the hilltops to the west, where bright stars sparkled against the indigo sky.

I’m so sorry, my beautiful girl.

It’s okay, Momma.

Can you hang on just a little longer?

Yes, Momma, I think I can.

Scales sprouted from Jane’s skin. Toenails grew into talons. The ground receded in her view, the crowd gasping and backing away as she gained her full height.

Jane leapt into the air and beat her wings, picking up speed until the ground below became a blur.

I will find you soon. I promise.

David Weber

Dark Fall

I

The Dark Fall Saga

Hear now my song and weep.

Hear of the blackness of Dark Fall,

Of death, dust, destruction of all.

Hear now of terror on night-black wings,

Of heartbreak and horror—the end of all things,

Of destruction below and death from the sky

On the day human history died.

Navigation Deck

Generation Ship Calvin’s Hope

March 552 Post Diaspora

“It’s confirmed,” the leaden voice said in Vincent Anderson’s headphones. “No way. The damage at ground level is even worse than we expected. We’d need three times the resources we’ve got to establish even a temporary foothold down here. And it’s still getting worse.”

“Understood,” Anderson said. He drew a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “Come on back up. Looks like we’re going to have to come up with something brilliant.”

“Lots of luck with that,” the voice said harshly. Then there was a pause, and Anderson visualized the owner of that voice drawing her own deep breath. “I’m calling in the survey parties now. We should be back aboard in a few hours.”

“Good.” Anderson’s voice was soft. “I need you, Trish.”

“I know, Babe. See you soon.”

Anderson killed the circuit and pushed off against the captain’s chair to send himself across the nav deck to the main visual display. The command section, like the engineering core, was outside the spin section, and he’d always loved the microgravity. It made him feel lighter than air, with a buoyancy that went beyond the merely physical as he floated here, watching the endless stars recede into infinity.

But not today, he thought. Not today.

It was late in Calvin’s Hope’s day, and he’d decided to take the watch by himself. It wasn’t as if the nav deck needed manning, and the truly critical parts of the huge ship’s infrastructure had always been managed from Engineering and Environmental. But there’d been someone here—usually only a single someone, admittedly, but someone—every day for the last three and a half centuries.

Well, he amended, hooking a toe through a safety loop, for the last four centuries, as the rest of the universe had told time. The time dilation affect at fifty percent of light-speed was significant, and Vincent Anderson had spent his entire forty-three years—subjective—tearing through the cosmos at that velocity. His parents had spent their entire lives doing precisely the same thing, and so had their parents. In fact, his great-great-grandparents had been only in their thirties when the shuttles delivered them to their new home in space. He was the eighth captain Calvin’s Hope had known since it departed the Sol System, 135 years after the Beowulf Expedition, on its own long, lonely voyage, and they were farther from Earth than any humans had ever traveled.

Angelique Calvin hadn’t lived to see the ship that bore her name depart. She’d driven the expedition with every gram of her steely will, though. She’d personally rammed it through the Earth Union’s committees and bureaus and petty tyrants, despite their bitter opposition to interstellar exploration. She’d personally designed the generation ship’s drive, but she’d known she wouldn’t be making the voyage aboard the project to which she’d devoted her entire adult life. There was no room for octogenarians aboard a starship. But on the day the transmission confirming the Beowulf Expedition’s safe landing in their destination star system, her son Angus had begun the countdown for Calvin’s Hope’s launch.

Now, four hundred and two years later, the great-great-grandchildren of that ship’s crew had reached their destination.

Vincent Anderson looked at the image of the world they’d come so far to reach and tried not to vomit.

Officers’ Lounge

Generation Ship Calvin’s Hope

March 552 Post Diaspora

“—and that’s it,” Shirley McKellen, Calvin’s Hope’s chief environmental engineer, said in a flat voice. “Our reserve will carry us another seventy-five years—maybe ninety, if we stretch it hard and start winding our population down pretty damned quickly—and that’s about it.” She smiled without any humor at all. “I’m sure three quarters of a century seemed like an ample safety margin to the mission planners.”

“And it should’ve been,” Seong Cho Mee, the ship’s logistics manager pointed out. She shook her head. “No one could have predicted this, Shirley!”

“I didn’t say they could have,” McKellen replied. “And, trust me, no one’s blaming you, Cho Mee.”

“Of course we aren’t,” Anderson said. “It does establish our parameters, though.”

“Would that give us enough time to convert the ship into a long-term orbital habitat?” Patricia Anderson asked.

“No,” Joe Vogel, the ship’s chief engineer, was a blunt-spoken man at the best of times. Today his voice was hard, almost harsh. The others looked at him, and he shrugged. “Like Shirley says, the mission planners provided what they thought would be plenty of margin, but they expected us to move dirtside. In theory, we’d have enough enviro margin to give us the time for something like that, Trish, but the ship’s too banged up and at least thirty percent of her systems—including the fusion plants—are within twenty, thirty years of their design lives. We don’t have the right tech base—or one that’s deep enough—to build new ones, either. We can probably baby the ones we have along, keep them up and running for quite a while, but when they’re gone, they’re gone.”

“But if that’s our only option…” Patricia said.

“If that’s our only option, we don’t have an option—not in the long-term,” her husband said quietly. “Joe’s right. When they built her, they did a hell of a job, but no one ever expected her to turn into an orbital habitat at the other end. She’s designed to get us to a planetary environment, not support us indefinitely in space.”

“Then we are well and truly screwed,” Leonidas Konstantopoulos, the ship’s chief medical officer growled, and heads nodded heavily around the table.

They shouldn’t have been screwed, Anderson thought bitterly. Angelique Calvin had taken the time to do it right, and KCR-126-04 had come up golden after her painstaking, exhaustive astronomical examination of possible destinations. The G4 star the expedition had renamed “Calvin” in her honor had multiple planets; one of them was squarely in the “Goldilocks zone”; its size and mass had promised a gravity almost identical to that of Earth; and spectroscopic analysis had confirmed an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere and an abundance of H2O. KCR-126-04 was a long way from Sol–just over 201 LY—and very few of the other stars in its vicinity were good candidates for habitable worlds, but that, too, had been fine with Calvin. Anderson sometimes thought that was because she’d known she wouldn’t be making the voyage. Perhaps she would have settled for a destination closer to Sol—like Beowulf, only fifty years’ travel from humanity’s homeworld—where her colonists were more likely to have close neighbors if she had been. But perhaps not, too. Given the inability to exceed the speed of light, even “close” interstellar neighbors were hardly right next door, so the likelihood of ongoing physical contact between them wasn’t all that great.

But Anderson was pretty sure she’d had other reasons, as well. He himself had never lived under the Earth Union’s authority. All he had to go by were the history books, the history vids and holos. His own life experience had been utterly different from anything they portrayed, and even if that hadn’t been so, the personal notes left by the original crew made it clear the official histories had been… filtered to suit the Earth Union’s view of the universe. He didn’t understand that, either. Not experientially. But he’d read Angus Calvin’s journal, and he knew Angelique had wanted a destination so far from Sol that the poisonous political ideologies she believed were choking her homeworld to death would never reach it.

Apparently, she’d figured 200 light-years was probably just about far enough.

Besides, Calvin III was such a perfect destination. Despite the distance, they’d known that.

They’d selected three alternate destinations just in case, though. They could have diverted to any one of them in the first thirty or forty years of the voyage if they’d discovered their chosen home was less desirable than they’d thought. But they’d used those decades for additional observation of Calvin III, refining their knowledge of it as they drew ever closer to KCR-126-04, and every one of those observations had only confirmed its suitability. Indeed, Maryellen Abramatsovna, the expedition’s original astronomer, had noted in her journal that Calvin III “could have been Earth’s twin… only better!”

So those alternates had been passed up and Calvin’s Hope had continued toward her destination.

And, as she came within only two light-years of journey’s end at last, everything had changed.

“Is there any hope at all of colonizing the surface?” Seong asked.

“No,” Patricia Anderson said gently. She’d inherited the position of chief astronomer as well as command of Calvin’s Hope’s survey shuttles. Now she shook her head, her expression grim. “We knew it was going to be bad from the moment the Hammers hit, Cho Mee. We just never let ourselves believe how bad.” She shook her head again. “I don’t have the library resources to nail down all the details to do an accurate comparison, but sixty-six million years ago, it was Earth’s turn to get hit. They called it the ‘dinosaur killer,’ and it left a crater over a hundred and eighty kilometers across. But Earth only got hit by one of the damned things, and it was only about fifteen kilometers in diameter. Hammer Alpha was two-thirds again that big, it was traveling faster… and it hit less than ten years ago.”

She paused, her expression haunted, and Anderson touched her fist as it clenched on the tabletop. They knew exactly when the massive asteroids had hit, and his wife still woke, weeping, from nightmares of that moment.

Angelique Calvin had seen to it that Calvin’s Hope’s telescopes were the finest technology could build. They were capable of awesome resolution… and Patricia had been visually observing their new home when the terrible glare of Hammer Alpha reached her. Calvin’s Hope was still four years from turnover and more than five and a half from Calvin III, and that sudden boil of light had two years to cross the Gulf between her and the planet. Patricia had known what she was witnessing had happened years before… and that hadn’t made it one bit less horrifying.

She hadn’t seen the asteroid before impact. The cameras had captured it, but it had taken significant enhancement to actually pick it out in the instant before it hit atmosphere. Such a tiny thing, compared to the scale of a planet. The computers said it had been no more than twenty-five kilometers across, but it had been traveling at over 50 KPS when it hit atmosphere at an angle of sixty-four degrees. And if she hadn’t seen it coming, she’d seen the horrific impact only too well.

She’d been mapping Calvin III’s continents, humming to herself as she evaluated probable landing sites, and the strike had been squarely in her field of vision. She’d seen the atmosphere splash away as the Hammer entered it. She’d seen the incredible fireball, seen the huge vapor plume hurl fiery ejecta clear into the thermosphere. She’d seen the atmosphere go dark and curdled, seen the planetary albedo change in a matter of hours. She’d watched the spectral analysis shifting and known—known—what that celestial desecration might mean for the survival of her friends and family.

And then, eight hours later, Hammer Beta landed.

She hadn’t seen that one. Alpha’s companion had come in on the far side of Calvin III… which had put it almost squarely in the middle of the Angelique Ocean. Beta was smaller than Alpha, but its ocean impact had made it even deadlier, in its own way.

“It’s a frigging nightmare down there,” she continued harshly, “and it’s still getting worse. The direct energy release was almost seven hundred yottajoules—that’s one-point-five trillion megatonnes—in a fraction of a second. If you’d been standing two thousand kilometers from the impact point, your clothes would’ve caught fire from the thermal pulse, and all of that heat was transferred to the planetary atmosphere. Alpha’s crater is over six hundred kilometers across, and everything that used to be in that hole had to go somewhere. Debris—rocks, dust, volcanic glasses—was blown as much as fifty kilometers from the surface, and when it reentered the lower atmosphere, it was so hot it set fires anywhere there was fuel. It was like putting the whole damned planet into an oven, but after the fires, came the cold. There was so much crap in the atmosphere that it was like throwing the switch on one of our freezers. What hadn’t burned froze, and it was a coastal strike. Two thirds of the crater are inland from what used to be the coastline, but Alpha vaporized something like five hundred and sixty million cubic kilometers of rock, a lot of it shallow sea bottom with heavy concentrations of limestone and gypsum. The sulfur content from that’s having a catastrophic impact on the atmosphere and pushing the albedo even farther.

“And then there was Beta.” Her face was like iron, her eyes full of ghosts and horror. “It was a deep-water strike, deep enough there was a lot less sea bottom involved, so it contributed less rock and sulfur to the mess. But it still sent tsunamis clear around the planet—at least three separate waves—and vaporized over two hundred thousand cubic kilometers of saltwater. That helped scrub some of the precipitates out of the atmosphere, but they came out in salt rains that poisoned everything they hit. We’re ten-plus years into the event now, and it’s still getting worse, not better.

“I knew from our orbital observations what it was going to be like down there, but it was only an intellectual awareness. It wasn’t real to me. I’d seen it through our telescopes. Now I’ve actually walked through it. For the first time in my life, I’ve stood on a real planet… and I wish to hell I never had.

“We’ve all seen the HDs of Earth—the sequoias, the savannas, the rain forests and plains. Well, there’s none of that on Calvin III. Not anymore. Oh, there are tiny pockets, but only tiny pockets, and with the entire atmosphere still in flux, God only knows if any of them can go on surviving. There’s evidence of high tectonic instability, too. We can’t be sure without longer to observe, but it seems to be increasing steadily, and it looks like the meteor strikes may have activated an area of volcanism bigger—and more destructive—than Earth’s Deccan Traps. In the end, that may release as much atmospheric contamination as both Hammers combined. It’ll be over a longer period of time, but that only means it will prolong the agony, delay any possible recovery time for hundreds—thousands—of years. We don’t have the data or the right software to model this with any degree of reliability, but the computers say that something like eighty percent of the planet’s animal life died within the first six or seven local months, and the process is still underway. The best models we can build suggest that nothing bigger than an Earth raccoon is likely to survive down there, and it probably won’t reach bottom and begin rebounding—if it ever does rebound—for a long, long time. This is a geological event, the kind of thing that takes millions of years to work through, and we don’t have millions of years.”

She closed her eyes and shook her head for a moment, then opened them again and faced the logistics manager squarely.

“It’s still getting worse, Cho Mee,” she repeated softly. “We’re past the catastrophic impact stage. Now we’re in the long, dragged out dying stage. I don’t see any way we could possibly build a settlement or a habitat down on the surface with a chance in hell of long-term survival.”

“But in that case… ?”

Seong’s voice trailed off, and Anderson looked at her.

“In that case we have to find another option. And if we can’t find one, then we’ll damned well make one. We didn’t come two hundred light-years just to give up at the end of the trip, by God!” His gaze circled the table, his eyes hard. “We’ve got those seventy-five years Shirley mentioned,” he reminded them. “That’s not long enough for us to make Beowulf, or even any of our original alternative destinations like Bryant, even assuming the ship systems had that much endurance left. But we’ve got time to think and plenty of time to re-tank from the gas giants, once we get the atmospheric distillation plant deployed. So we’re not going to run out of air or power tomorrow, and the last damned thing we’re going to do is to panic or let anyone else in Calvin’s Hope panic. Is that clear?”

The others glanced at one another, then looked back at him, and nodded. They were hesitant, almost timorous, those nods. But they grew stronger, more determined—even confident—and he nodded sharply back to them.

Now if he could only feel as confident as those nods.

II

The Dark Fall Saga

Midnight came midday with the curse of God.

Mountains took flame and valleys were clawed

By talons of fire and fountains of stone

As children died in the darkness alone

When light disappeared and Home was crushed

In floodtides of death and a torrent of dust.

Tumult, destruction, devastation, and fear.

And out of the darkness, silence.

PNS Pilgrim

J-156-18(L) System

September 1882 Post Diaspora

“Ready to proceed, Sir.”

“Very good.”

Captain Thoreau acknowledged Engineering’s report, sat back in his command chair, and gazed around his light cruiser’s orderly bridge. It was just as neat, its personnel just as intent and focused, as always, yet he could almost taste the suppressed excitement humming about him, and he hid a smile of his own. It wasn’t often that someone with no Legislaturalist connections landed a plum like this one.

“Dr. Rendova?” he said.

“Ready whenever you are, Captain,” Dr. Danielle Rendova replied.

The brown-haired hyper-physicist sat surrounded by the additional instrumentation which had been installed on Pilgrim’s bridge. The light cruiser’s sensor suite had already been excellent—the Pathfinder-class had been designed from the keel out for survey work—but it had been beefed up for her current mission, and those additional sensors reported to Rendova’s consoles.

She’d done quite a lot of that beefing herself. Well, she and her graduate-student assistants. It was unfortunately true that the Peoples Navy wasn’t oversupplied with hyper-physicists. For that matter the People’s Republic as a whole wasn’t oversupplied with any sort of trained scientists. Its educational system didn’t produce a lot of those. Rendova—thank God—was the exception that proved the rule, and she knew it. She came from a powerful Legislaturalist family, but her frustration with the schools which had produced her almost despite themselves was apparent.

“You heard the Doctor, Lieutenant Zagorski,” Thoreau told his astrogator. “Are the transit vectors locked in?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“In that case,” Thoreau waggled his fingers at the maneuvering plot, “I believe we might want to get a move on.”

“Yes, Sir!” the lieutenant said with a huge smile and turned to his helmsman.

“Eight gravities, Chief.”

“Eight gravities on Astro’s programmed heading, aye, Sir,” Chief Coxswain Clouseau acknowledged, and Thoreau looked at the quadrant of his com display dedicated to Engineering.

“Prepare to rig foresail for transit on my mark, Ms. Glaston.”

“Standing by, Sir,” Commander Sarah Glaston replied formally.

“Threshold in one-five seconds,” Zagorski reported.

“On your toes, Chief,” Thoreau said quietly.

“Yes, Sir.”

Clouseau never took her eyes from her own displays as Pilgrim slid gently across the threshold of the unexplored hyper terminus. The survey ship tracked directly down the path Zagorski had programmed, based on Rendova’s painstaking survey of the torrent of gravitic energy cascading through the wormhole. If everything went as planned, Clouseau should have nothing to do until Pilgrim emerged on the far side of the terminus… wherever that might be. If things didn’t go as planned, she was about to find herself extraordinarily busy.

Briefly, at least.

“Threshold!” Zagorski’s tone was calm but more than a little crisper than usual.

“Rig foresail for transit,” Thoreau said.

“Rigging foresail,” Glaston responded instantly, and half Pilgrim’s impeller wedge vanished as her forward Beta nodes shut down. Her forward Alpha nodes reconfigured in the same instant, dropping their own share of the cruiser’s impeller wedge to project a Warshawski sail—a circular disk of focused gravitational energy, three hundred kilometers in diameter—instead.

“Stand by after hypersail.” Thoreau watched the flickering numerals in the Engineering window of his plot as the cruiser continued to creep forward under her after impellers alone, inserting the foresail gently—gently—into the gravitational vortex.

“Standing by after hypersail,” Glaston said, and Thoreau knew she was watching the same numbers climb on her own displays as the sail moved deeper into the terminus. The rate of increase was slow, given the absurdly low speed of any first-transit through an uncharted terminus, but catching it at the right moment was still—

The numbers stopped flickering. The values kept climbing, but the digital display’s steady glow indicated the foresail was drawing enough power from the grav waves twisting eternally through the terminus to provide movement.

“Rig aftersail,” Thoreau said crisply.

“Rigging aftersail,” Glaston acknowledged, and Pilgrim shivered as her impeller wedge disappeared entirely and her after hypersail blossomed at the far end of her hull.

Chief Clouseau’s hands were calm and steady, but Thoreau’s stomach still twisted itself into a brief knot as the cruiser slid into the terminus’ interface. The queasiness always associated with crossing the hyper wall was substantially more intense in a wormhole transit. It was also briefer, however, and he ignored it, never looking away from his plot. The waterfall display along its right side rose sharply, climbing towards the transit point. It took longer than any wormhole transit Thoreau had ever before made, which wasn’t a good thing where the nausea quotient was concerned. On the other hand, it seemed to be tracking exactly along Dr. Rendova’s projected vector, and he could stand quite a bit of tummy upset as long as—

The universe hiccuped.

No one had ever been able to measure a wormhole transit’s duration, and this one was no different. One instant, PNS Pilgrim was just over five light-hours from the thoroughly useless red dwarf listed solely as J-156-18(L). The next instant she was… somewhere else.

“I have a G4 star at three-niner-point-seven-five light-minutes!” one of Rendova’s assistants sang out.

Thoreau exhaled the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, but he never looked away from his plot as the numbers began spiraling downward once again.

“Prepare to reconfigure to wedge, Commander Glaston,” he said, then glanced at Zagorski. “And while we’re doing that, Astro, why don’t you start your observations. I think we should find out where we are, don’t you?”

The Octagon

City of Nouveau Paris

Haven System

People’s Republic of Haven

December 1882 Post Diaspora

“You’re kidding me, right?” Vice Admiral Amos Parnell said.

“I wish I was.” Admiral Adelaide Laforge grimaced sourly. “Unfortunately, Rousseau ‘s serious, and Harris has signed off on it.” She shrugged. “End of story.”

“But it’s frigging ridiculous!” Parnell scowled. He was due to replace Laforge as Chief of Naval Operations in less than a T-year, and he wondered how much of his irritation stemmed from the fact that when he did, it would be his ineffable joy to deal firsthand with their political masters.

“I didn’t express myself quite that… concisely,” Laforge said dryly. She was his aunt by marriage, as well as his superior officer. As such, she habitually addressed him with a greater degree of frankness than she would have shown others. “Rousseau’s an idiot, but she’s got too much clout for that. I did suggest that any results would be… problematic. But I think she and the rest of her crowd just can’t accept that we can’t find some way to use it, now that we’ve got our very own hyper-bridge.”

Parnell snorted, but stubborn self-honesty made him admit he felt much the same way. No one had ever expected to discover a wormhole terminus barely seventy light-years from the Haven System. In fact, the discovery had come as a distinct shock to the survey crew which detected it literally by accident. Their ship hadn’t even been supposed to visit the unprepossessing, planetless star with which it was associated. Indeed, her skipper had stopped off at the M3 dwarf en route to the far more promising J-193-18(L) system to let his crew train on a star about which everything was already known… only to discover that not quite “everything” had been known after all.

J-156-18(L) was useless as a home for mankind, but there’d been vast excitement in Nouveau Paris when the wormhole was reported. It had been very quiet excitement, however. Wormholes were rare and precious commodities, and the government of Hereditary President Harris had no intention of letting the rest of the galaxy learn about this one until it had decided how best to utilize it. Dr. Rendova, the PRH’s leading hyper-physicist, had been dispatched aboard Pilgrim, under the tightest possible security, within T-months. She’d completed her survey more rapidly than anyone had expected, and Pilgrim had discovered that J-156-18(L) was one terminus of a 653.17-LY hyper-bridge, twenty percent longer even than the fabled Manticore-Beowulf bridge.

And that its other terminus was the KCR-126-04 System.

KCR-126-04.

Parnell’s mouth tightened, because that was one of the bleakest bad jokes in the entire universe. That star system—also known as the Calvin System—lay at the heart of one of the tragedies of pre-Warshawski sail history, and a more useless piece of real estate would have been impossible to imagine.

Parnell had often wondered about the courage—or insanity—required to set out for the stars aboard the original sublight, multi-generation starships. He spent too much time aboard modern starships to contemplate an entire lifetime bounded by a ship’s hull with any sort of equanimity. Calvin’s Hope, though, had set forth on a longer journey than any which had gone before her, and the record made it clear that the colonists had invested not just money but intelligence and imagination in providing against their voyage’s risks.

Unfortunately, no one’s imagination had included a dinosaur killer fit to dwarf the impact which had put a punctuation point to Old Terra’s Cretaceous period. From the available evidence, the monster which hit Calvin III—some experts theorized there might actually have been two of them in a short window, although the second crater (if it existed) had never been found—had struck less than fifty years before the colony ship should have reached its destination.

No one knew if she actually had. What they did know was that even today, thirteen standard centuries later, Calvin III was a bleak, barren place whose shattered ecosystem had scarcely begun to heal. In fact, most climatologists and biologists leaned towards the theory that what they were observing wasn’t a recovery at all, simply the final throes and death rattle of an entire planet’s slow, lingering murder.

In 402 PD, no colony could possibly have survived upon its surface.

No trace had ever been found—in the KCR-126-04 System, or anywhere else—of Calvin’s Hope and her doomed passengers. The “slow-boat” colony ships had been designed for one-way trips, without the endurance and capacity to return to their destinations. The colonists who’d settled the planet Grayson had discovered the downsides of that, and Calvin’s Hope had departed the Sol System almost a century and a half earlier than Austin Grayson and his followers. Her design had been less capable to begin with, and she would have exhausted virtually all her planned endurance just reaching the Calvin System. There was no way she could possibly have taken her passengers home again, and no message had ever been received from her across the two light-centuries between Calvin and Old Terra. Perhaps she’d sent one which had never been detected, but none of her shipboard transmitters had ever been intended to reach across so vast a distance.

Nor had there been any reason they should have been, for there’d been absolutely no point in sending out a cry for help seven hundred years before Adrienne Warshawski made hyper-space safe for colony ship-sized transports.

Still, the colony ought to have been able to build the capacity to at least tell the rest of the human race it was there. It hadn’t, and when a survey ship with a hyper generator and proper Warshawski sails was finally sent in 1306 to see what had become of the expedition, it found no evidence Calvin’s Hope had ever even reached KCR-126-04. And so she had vanished into history, There were all too many interstellar “Flying Dutchmen,” like the Agnes Celeste, but Calvin’s Hope had the distinction of being the earliest of that long, long list of legendary shipwrecks and mysteries.

For Bradley Thoreau and his crew, it had been like setting out for an exciting day in the galaxy’s biggest amusement park only to arrive in a bleak, desolate tomb. But the Cabinet, immune to the poignancy of the long-ago tragedy, had immediately started laying ambitious plans to utilize the warp point. After all, it lay only two hundred light-years from Old Earth and only a hundred and fifty from Beowulf. Surely that had to be useful!

Unfortunately, it wasn’t.

The nearest inhabited star system, Bryant, was little more than fifty light years from Calvin. It also had absolutely nothing to offer the People’s Republic in trade. The same was pretty much true of Conestoga and Yasotaro—the latter a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Office of Frontier Security—the next two closest star systems. And there weren’t any other candidates for human settlement in the vicinity. While KCR-126-04 might be only two hundred light-years from the Sol System, J-156-18(L) was most inconveniently placed from a lot of perspectives. Astronomers had given the area a close look long ago, but with universally negative results. Many of the stars and its vicinity were in complex multi-star systems, where planetary orbits were unlikely to be stable long enough for complex life to evolve on their surfaces even if they happened to be in a liquid water zone. There were several singletons or extremely distant components of multiple-star systems, but most of them were cool red dwarfs or orange dwarfs edging towards the bottom of their classification. Most of their planetary satellites were either tide-locked to them or frozen over. None of them had showed the spectrographs the presence of oxygen-nitrogen atmospheres, at any rate.

And the problem wasn’t just at the KCR-126-04 end of the bridge, either. J-156-18(L) was seventy-two light-years from the Haven System, which meant ninety percent of the People’s Republic was closer to Trevor’s Star than to the PRH’s end of the new bridge. And the trip to Sol was a hundred and fifty light years shorter from Trevor’s Star via the Manticoran Wormhole Junction than it would have been from J-156-18(L) by way of Calvin.

Of course, the People’s Republic and the Star Kingdom of Manticore weren’t on what one might call the best of terms. Roger III was not one of Haven’s great admirers. In fact, as crown prince, he’d been the driving force behind the Star Kingdom’s naval buildup for over a decade even before taking the throne twenty-five T-years ago. Which, Parnell admitted, indicated quite a bit of foresight on his part. The People’s Republic’s sights had been set on the eventual… acquisition of the Manticore Binary System—and its massive wormhole Junction—ever since it had first begun planning its expansion under the DuQuesne Plan over a T-century ago.

At the moment, however, everyone on both sides was careful to smile politely in public and the Manticore Junction remained open to the PRH’s trade and even Haven-flagged merchantmen. That made the Trevor’s Star-Manticore route far more economically and logistically valuable than the Calvin System could ever be. And although very few people knew it, within the next year—two years, at the outside—Trevor’s Star would be an obedient member of the People’s Republic, which would simplify matters ever further.

All of which meant KCR-126-04 was something of a white elephant. No doubt the hyper-bridge had a great deal of potential value, somewhere down the road. At the present, it offered very little.

Now if only Ingeborg Rousseau would accept that minor point…

“She genuinely thinks we should be using Calvin as a staging base against the Manties?” he asked, and Laforge shrugged.

“Like I say, I think at least part of this is just that she can’t accept that our shiny new toy isn’t somehow of immense value. She thinks we should be building up a new base in Calvin, rather than plowing funds into Barnett. As nearly as I can understand her logic—I’m hampered, you know, because my brain actually works—she thinks it would let us set up a ‘strategic pincer’ when the centicred finally drops. It would let us attack Manticore from an ‘unexpected direction,’ you know.”

“‘Unexpected direction’?” Parnell stared at her in disbelief.

“That’s what she said.” Laforge raised both hands shoulder high, palms uppermost. “I did explain to her that approach vectors aren’t really a factor in assaults through hyper-space. Unfortunately, she seems to think a lookout in the crow’s nest will see us coming before we cross the alpha wall.”

Parnell shook his head, then drew a deep breath.

“Do you think we could find someone else to take over your job when you retire?”

“No such luck,” his aunt told him. “Trust me, this is one job we want to keep in the family. And that means you’re going to have to deal with people like Rousseau for a long time. Get used to it now.”

Parnell nodded glumly. The good news was that there weren’t very many Ingeborg Rousseaus. One was too many, of course, but most of Hereditary President Sidney Harris’ senior advisers had at least a vague notion of how hyper-space and simple physics worked. Rousseau, unhappily, did not. What she did have was an amazing amount of clout through her political alliances and family connections.

“So what the hell do we do?” he asked finally.

“What do you think we should do?” Laforge countered. “Think of that as a Socratic question.”

“Wonderful.” Parnell sat back in his chair, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

“Look busy,” he said finally. Laforge raised an eyebrow, and he shrugged. “The last thing we need is to start diverting funding and resources from Barnett to pursue one of Rousseau’s boondoggles. So it seems to me what we need to do is nod gravely, take her suggestion seriously, promise to explore all the possibilities, and then send a half dozen or so survey ships through to do that exploring. Let me pick the right person to run the operation, and I’ll guarantee reports that keep us looking until even Rousseau gets tired and finds something else to amuse her.”

III

The Dark Fall Saga

In blackness and terror hands clawed through the dust,

Seeking in vain for the living

As the lonely wail of a terrified child

Called to ears that could no longer hear.

And hearts turned to stone in the night of the soul

As they cursed Death that he’d left them behind.

RHNS Tourbillon

Sanctuary Orbit

Refuge System

March 1916 Post Diaspora

“I can’t believe even Pierre and Saint-Just would have done something like this,” President Eloise Pritchart told Admiral Thomas Theisman. She thought about what she’d just said for a moment, then snorted harshly. “I suppose what I really mean is that I don’t want to believe it.”

The two of them stood on the admiral’s bridge of Theisman’s temporary flagship, gazing at the main visual display as RHNS Tourbillon decelerated into Sanctuary orbit. Sanctuary was a gorgeous blue, green, and tan marble ahead of the battlecruiser and the feeble sunlight of the K8 star its inhabitants called Refuge gleamed from the vast sprawl of its orbital shipyards. The steadily growing skeletons of capital ships seemed to be everywhere, long chains of in-system freighters trekked steadily towards them from the orbital smelters, the tiny dots of hard-suited construction workers glowed like twice a thousand fireflies, and she had to admit it was a tremendously impressive sight.

“To be fair, although it feels distinctly unnatural to even try to be fair to the two of them, they didn’t start it, Madame President,” Theisman said. “We can thank President Harris and the Legislaturalists for that.”

“And for so many other things, as well.” Pritchart’s magnificent topaz eyes darkened with memory and old pain. “But Pierre could damned well have done things differently once he took over. And what he should have done was go public, even if he didn’t want to give up the system’s exact coordinates! Damn it, these people deserved better than this! They should’ve at least had the rights he was prepared to let our own people have, and they didn’t get even that much!”

“I can’t be sure, but I suspect from some of the file copies of memos between him and Saint-Just that he seriously considered going public immediately after the coup,” Theisman said. “That was before he realized they had to continue the war against the Manties if they were going to stay in power, of course. I think Saint-Just accepted that they would before Pierre did and that that’s why he argued against the idea of telling anyone who didn’t absolutely need to know that the place even existed, much less how it had come to exist.”

“You’re not making it any better, Admiral,” Pritchart said, turning to look at him coldly.

She still didn’t know Theisman very well. For that matter, she still wasn’t positive he’d meant it when he insisted the head of the provisionally restored Republic of Haven had to be a civilian. To be fair, he hadn’t showed a single sign that he didn’t mean it, and Javier and Lester Tourville both spoke of him in glowing terms. So did Kevin Usher, which counted—counted for a lot—with Eloise Pritchart, and he certainly seemed sincere. But she’d seen too much “sincerity” over the years, and it was her job to be suspicious. Haven had staggered from façade democracy, to totalitarianism, to a dictatorship that was still worse for far too long. She’d lost a beloved sister, more friends than she could count, and too many pieces of her own soul fighting that process.

It would end. It would end now, with her. With Thomas Theisman, too, if he was serious, but it would end, whatever it cost and whatever it took.

“I’m not trying to make it ‘better,’ Madame President,” the Chief of Naval Operations and Pritchart’s Secretary of War replied, meeting her cold eyes. “I’m trying to explain it.”

“And to justify going right on doing it.”

Pritchart’s voice was even colder than her eyes, and Theisman’s nostrils flared ever so slightly. He started a quick reply, but stopped himself. Then he nodded.

“For certain values of ‘going on doing it,’ that’s exactly what I’m suggesting, Madame President,” he said very levelly. “I fully agree that the way in which Harris and Public Safety went about doing it was reprehensible. Unfortunately, I can’t shoot Saint-Just all over again for it.” Something that could have been anger flashed in Pritchart’s eyes as he reminded her who’d actually accomplished the Committee of Public Safety’s overthrow ten T-months before. “Nor does the fact that their decision about these people’s fundamental rights was as immoral as everything else they did mean we don’t need the star system’s capabilities. Or that we don’t need to keep its very existence as dark as we possibly can for as long as we possibly can. I don’t like it, either, Madame President, but it’s part of my job to tell you things like that.”

It was Pritchart’s turn to pause before she fired back. She gazed up into the face of the taller Theisman for a long, taut moment, then gave him the grudging nod his honesty and forthrightness deserved. One thing she had discovered about Theisman was his total lack of patience with the carefully phrased, easily disavowed, cover-your-ass sort of policy recommendations which had become the norm under the Committee of Public Safety. When he sent her a memo, she could at least be certain it said what he truly thought, set forth in clear and logical progression, without obfuscation. She might not agree with it, but she never had to wonder if he’d told her the truth as he saw it and given her his very best advice based upon it.

“Believe me, Admiral,” she said finally, “I understand the basis for your argument. And if Wilhelm and Kevin are right about High Ridge, your points are even stronger… from a military and pragmatic perspective. It’s the morality that bothers me. Expediency is a slippery slope. Rob Pierre discovered that.”

She sighed and looked back at the visual display.

“I knew him before the coup,” she went on in a softer tone, almost as if she were speaking only to herself. “I know the Committee of Public Safety turned into something he’d never envisioned, never wanted, when he started, and he changed in the process, too. I don’t want to go down that same slope. I won’t.”

“With all due respect, Madame President, you’re not Rob Pierre and I’m not Oscar Saint-Just.” Her eyes came back to him, and he shrugged. “Well, you’re not Pierre, and I’m pretty sure I’m not Saint-Just. The fact that my proposal disturbs you so deeply pretty much proves that in your case. The fact that I’ve made it does seem to indicate the jury may still be out in mine, I suppose. But while I don’t think I’m another Saint-Just waiting to happen, there is one thing I have in common with him.”

“And what might that be, Admiral?” Pritchart asked warily, and he smiled ever so slightly.

“Oscar Saint-Just was a sociopath, which I don’t think I am,” he told her. “But he was a very loyal sociopath. Rob Pierre was Chairman of the Committee of Public Safety, and even when Saint-Just disagreed with him, he never forgot who was Chairman and who wasn’t. I may disagree with you upon occasion, but I’ve got a pretty good memory, too.” He shrugged again. “Madame President, you’re President of the Republic of Haven… and I’m not.”

She looked at him for another long moment, then nodded slightly.

“Point taken, Admiral,” she said. “Point taken.”

IV

The Dark Fall Saga

So darkness fell.

So safety died.

So ruin came,

And Refuge set

In blood above Despair

Landing Valley

Planet Sanctuary

Refuge System

March 1916 Post Diaspora

The shuttle banked gracefully, standing on its port wing tip, and Eloise Pritchart gazed down at a mountain valley. It was a shallow valley, except where the river had cut a path down its center. There the almost flat valley floor plunged for over thirty meters, suddenly and steeply, to the level of the stream.

Thin plumes of steam rose from the jagged, truncated summits of two mountains at the northern end of the valley. A lake filled the bottom of the yawning caldera where a third, even larger mountain had once stood on its eastern rim, and she shivered inside as her eyes traced the tortured, frozen lava field stretching down from it into the valley’s heart. The volcanologists the PRH had exported to the planet all agreed no fresh eruption was imminent, but they also agreed there’d been at least six of them over the past twelve or thirteen centuries.

As the shuttle swept lower, she saw the shadows of the excavations along the eastern bank of the Despair River, between the stream and the caldera, and that inner shiver turned into an arctic chill. The archaeologists working the site didn’t even look up as her shuttle passed overhead. Their attention was on something that had happened long, long ago.

On the reason that river was called Despair.

“God, what must it have been like?” she wondered out loud.

“I doubt anyone who wasn’t here could even imagine,” Theisman said softly from the seat beside hers. “And, frankly, I’m glad I can’t.”

“I think I agree with you.” Pritchart leaned her forehead against the viewport, gazing aft to keep the excavations in sight as the shuttle’s flight path straightened and it began to climb once more. They were still a thirty-minute flight from Mountain Fort, the planetary capital. Or administrative center, at least. But as sobering as she’d found the overflight, she’d insisted on making it before they landed.

“I think I agree,” she repeated, sitting back in her seat. “Especially if Baranav was right when he dated Anderson.” She shook her head. “How could anyone find the will to go on after two disasters like that?”

“We’ll never know,” Theisman replied. “Not for sure. But I think Anderson probably got it pretty close to right. Parents don’t lie down and die when their kids’ lives are on the line. And most of the people with any quit in them were probably dead even before it happened, given everything they’d already been through. They had to’ve been tougher than nails to get as far as Sanctuary in the first place.”

Pritchart nodded soberly as her mind ran back over the incredible cascade of coincidences, unlikelihoods, and outright impossible accomplishments that had brought her and Theisman to this planet at this moment.

From their perspective, that cascade began only forty T-years ago, when Admiral Laforge had handed the assignment to find a use for the Calvin Terminus off to one of her underlings with instructions to Do Something and keep the damned politicians off her back.

The “something” turned out to be a follow-up expedition charged with evaluating the system’s possible military utility and what it would take to capitalize upon it. Everyone involved had understood it was basically make work to keep the politicians happy, but they’d been told to spend long enough to make it look good and to produce a comprehensive report demonstrating how earnestly the Navy had complied with its orders. In the event, Captain Braun the expedition’s commander had decided that since the Calvin itself was obviously unsuitable as a site for any planetary installations, to survey the closest half-dozen or so neighboring star systems for possible alternate bases.

One of those star systems had been KCR-126-06, a multiple-star system consisting of KCR-125-06-A, an A-class giant with no less than three companions: two red dwarfs—KCR-125-06-B and KCR-125-06-C—in relatively tight orbits and a distant, almost equally dim K8, which had apparently been captured only a few hundred million years ago. The likelihood of a habitable world in a system like that was minute, given what was likely to happen to any planetary orbits. For that matter, A-class stars didn’t produce many planets in the first place, and they usually didn’t last long enough for any planets they did form to evolve into something suitable to maintain complex life forms. Even if that hadn’t been true, the red dwarfs were close enough to have precluded any planet formation in KCR-125-06-A’s liquid-water zone.

Not only that, KCR-126-06 had actually been looked at—sort of—by astronomers over a thousand T-years ago. There wasn’t much to see—the giant and its red dwarf companions had no planets at all, and KCR-125-06-D was so close to a red dwarf itself that the chance of a planet in its liquid-water zone not being tide-locked to it was unlikely in the extreme. In addition, the K8 star was surrounded by an extraordinarily dense interplanetary dust cloud. That cloud had precluded any close look at the inner system, and coupled with the rest of the entire KCR-125-06 System’s unprepossessing astrography and the general lack of worthwhile real estate in the region, no one had seen any reason to look any closer. The chance that there might, possibly, be a marginally habitable planet hidden inside all that dust did, however exist—theoretically, at least—and looking for one should certainly convince the Navy’s political masters of how thoroughly it had applied itself to carrying out its vital mission.

What Braun had never even imagined he might discover in the process was the answer to what had become of Calvin’s Hope.

No one knew how she’d come to her final resting place, 9.7 LY from her original destination, in the L5 Lagrange point between the second planet of KCR-126-06-D and its very large, solitary moon, but they did know it must have been the stuff of legends.

It was amazing enough that Calvin’s Hope still existed, but she was only a bare hull, stripped to the bone by her passengers and crew before they’d left her forever for the planet they’d named Sanctuary. Not even the Legislaturalists had been prepared to disturb—desecrate—her after all these centuries, and the subsequent development of Sanctuary’s orbital industry had been kept scrupulously clear of her final resting place.

How she’d crossed the almost ten light-years from her original destination to the feeble warmth of the K8v star her passengers had renamed Refuge was one of the things no one would ever know, however. Simply finding Sanctuary in Refuge’s narrow habitable zone in a system where interplanetary dust was so dense even ships with military-great particle screening dared not attain velocities much in excess of 0.5 cee must have been a monumental task—after all, no one else had found it since, although, to be fair, no one had looked all that closely with so much other, more desirable stellar real estate available to anyone with a hyper-generator. But the KCR-126-06 System had been the only haven the Calvin Expedition could possibly have reached before their vessel’s internal systems failed.

Calvin’s Hope’s specifications were readily available, given that it was one of the most famous Dutchmen in galactic history. And from those specifications, she couldn’t possibly have had more than a century or so of reserve endurance. With that limitation, she couldn’t have accelerated to her designed cruising velocity and stayed there long enough for her scoop field to replenish her reaction mass. That limited her to a maximum velocity of no more than ten percent of light-speed, if she meant to decelerate at the end of her voyage.

And KCR-126-0 6 was the only star system which lay within less than a century’s travel—at 0.1 cee—of Calvin’s Star.

That meant they’d had no choice but to look at it far more closely than any less desperate astronomer ever had since. And then—somehow—they’d had to actually make the ninety-eight-year voyage. The story of how they’d done that must have been in Calvin’s Hope’s computers once upon a time, but her computer cores had been stripped along with everything else that could possibly be taken down to Sanctuary, and so no one would ever be able to celebrate her epic achievement as it properly deserved.

Yet she’d done her job. Somehow, she’d gotten her people to a new home after all. She delivered her cargo of fragile human beings to a habitable planet—quite a lovely one, actually—despite the fact that it really shouldn’t have existed and that she’d never been intended for the additional voyage, and the colonists must have heaved an enormous sigh of relief.

But the universe hadn’t been finished with the Calvin Expedition just yet.

There was no written history of the colony’s earliest days, either. None of the official histories other colonies maintained. Not even a single diary.

What there was was only a heroic saga, Dark Fall, attributed to the semi-mythical bard Anderson, the Sanctuarian Homer. Sanctuarian historians believed Dark Fall had probably been composed within a hundred local years after landing, because its earliest known manuscript version was in still recognizable Standard English, and Standard English had been a dead language on Sanctuary for over a thousand T-years. Later written versions had also been found, in at least three of Sanctuary’s indigenous ancient languages, although with significant variations. Clearly it had been passed on in a purely oral tradition during the colonists’ long, desperate struggle to survive after the events it described.

Sanctuary had lost its entire pre-colonization history during that struggle. It had lost even basic literacy and evolved its own mythic interpretations of how humankind had come to exist. When literacy reemerged, it was in entirely different languages, and in the wake of their own belated Scientific Revolution, Sanctuarian scholars had put Dark Fall into the same category as all the other obviously fanciful creation myths.

Until the Standard English manuscript was discovered. It wasn’t complete—at least a dozen stanzas were missing—but the Sanctuarian languages retained enough loan words from Standard English for those scholars to make at least a partial translation of it and realize what it purported to be. Despite its obvious antiquity, the majority of those scholars had continued to consider the entire saga and all the nightmare events it described a pure work of fiction. But not all of them had concurred, and the historian Baranav had become the Sanctuarian Schliemann when he decided to take Anderson at his word, despite the mockery that evoked from the majority of his colleagues.

The mockery which had ended abruptly when his research and excavations located the mythological city of Home on the banks of the Despair River and confirmed the saga’s fundamental accuracy. And confirmed the reason why, according to Anderson, that river had been renamed.

According to Dark Fall, the colonists’ chosen site for the enclave they’d named simply Home had been in a fertile, sheltered mountain valley well-watered by the glacier-fed river they’d named Hope. After the ordeal of finding a habitable planet in the first place, Landing Valley had seemed a paradise. But no one had suspected how tectonically active the mountains around Home were. Not until sometime shortly after the last shuttle had made its final trip into space and returned, when a mountain above Landing Valley had exploded in an eruption that had dwarfed that of Old Terra’s Vesuvius in 2024 PD. It had been followed by a series of seismic shocks which had gone on for days or weeks—or even months. Dark Fall claimed they’d lasted for an entire year, but surely that had to be an exaggeration!

Or possibly not.

Baranav’s excavations had conclusively demonstrated that there’d been multiple eruptions over the centuries since the one Sanctuary’s geologists had labeled the Dark Fall Eruption, but the one which had overwhelmed Home had apparently been both the first and the worst. However long it had lasted, the disaster had been more than sufficient to bury the enclave under forty meters of pyroclastic flow and mud.

Anderson claimed that well over half of Home’s inhabitants had died in that dreadful eruption, and the remainder had been left with only scraps of technology as they faced the task of somehow surviving on their alien homeworld.

Eloise Pritchart had no idea how they’d done it, but they had. Yet if humanity had survived on Sanctuary, it had done so only after a struggle at least as terrible as that of any planet its species had ever settled. Unlike a planet like Grayson, Sanctuary didn’t try to kill them every single day. Indeed, aside from the Dark Fall Eruption, it had hardly tried to kill them at all. But Dark Fall had almost been enough by itself. Though the Sanctuarians might have survived it, they’d lost not only all advanced technology but all true memory of who they were or how they’d come to the world upon which they lived.

By the time the People’s Republic discovered the KCR-126-04 Terminus, Sanctuary had just finished reinventing the telegraph, discovered the germ theory of disease, and begun the transition from waterpower to steam. The planetary population had increased to almost two billion, because aside from its volcanism—which was, admittedly, more pronounced than on all but a handful of other inhabited worlds—Sanctuary’s environment was extraordinarily benign. The planet was a bit on the cool side, but it had very little axial tilt, which gave it extremely mild seasons, and even they were moderated by the fact that eighty-three percent of its surface was water. The original colonists had been selected in no small part to provide as diverse a genetic cross section as possible, which must have given it some cushion against disease, despite how savagely it had been winnowed, and human biochemistry was resistant to almost all of Sanctuary’s native diseases and parasites.

But Sanctuary’s steadily growing population had remained trapped at the bottom of its gravity well, which was particularly ironic, given Refuge’s deep-space industrial potential. Had they retained access to the technology with which they’d arrived, Refuge would inevitably have become one of the most populous, heavily industrialized star systems in the known galaxy. It possessed not one asteroid belt, or even the three belts of a star like Manticore-B. It had five of them, including the Epsilon Belt fifteen light-minutes beyond the system hyper-limit. Once upon a time, the Epsilon Belt had been Refuge’s fourth planet, until the star was captured by the far more massive KCR-126-06-A and lost its outer planets. It had hung on to Refuge IV—or its bits and pieces, at least—but only after the planet was torn apart into an incredibly dense 62,000,000-kilometer wide asteroid belt. Indeed, subsequent comparison of meteoric residue from the Calvin III Crater with the Epsilon Belt suggested that the dinosaur killer which had devastated the colonists’ original destination had been a stray from Epsilon.

And that didn’t even count the six additional asteroid belts of Refuge’s stellar companions, all within fifteen light-hours of Sanctuary.

Anyone but the People’s Republic of Haven would have immediately announced the discovery of the lost Calvin Expedition’s descendents. The Legislaturalists, however, had seen an enormous opportunity. Not only was Refuge incredibly rich in raw materials, but it offered a labor force almost two billion strong. A labor force without a single clue about what lay beyond the bounds of their own planetary atmosphere… or of the staggering wealth their system’s astrography represented.

A labor force which ought to be eager to repay its deliverers for the wonders of the modern technology—the almost magical technology—they brought with them.

It was the sort of situation a bureaucrat in the Solarian League’s Office of Frontier Security could only dream of.

Of course, there’d been a certain amount of startup expense, but once the Sanctuarians had been given the tools, they’d dug in just as enthusiastically as the Manties’ Graysons. And the Legislaturalists—and, later, the Committee of Public Safety—had been able to send thousands upon thousands of teachers, doctors, supervisors, and engineers from places like Cerberus and the other prisons in which they had stowed away so many “dangerous recidivists.”

Which was how, thirty-four T-years later, the Refuge System had come to be home to the Bolthole Complex, the biggest and most modern shipyard and industrial nexus of the entire Republic of Haven. Indeed, despite its still small population (by Core World standards), Bolthole’s capacity was superior to that of any Fringe World and at least a quarter of the League’s Core systems, and it was still growing.

An industrial complex, she thought now, which rightfully belongs to the people of Sanctuary, not to us! And what possible right—what excuse—can we have for keeping those same people penned up inside their own star system? Hasn’t the galaxy done enough to these people without us taking advantage of their tragedy?

No doubt it had, but Theisman was obviously right about at least two things.

At the moment, he and his fleet commanders—especially Javier Giscard and Lester Tourville—were engaged in a bitter five-way civil war which would ultimately decide the future of the Republic of Haven. If Theisman’s Navy won, Eloise Pritchart might actually be allowed to restore the Péricard Constitution, the goal for which she’d fought for over forty T-years. If it lost, God only knew what would become of the Republic. The momentum had been shifting steadily in Theisman’s favor for the last several months, but that was always subject to change, especially if they suffered heavy losses. Little wonder the Secretary of War thought a secret shipyard, hidden away in his back pocket in case he needed it, would make a splendid insurance policy.

As the last commanding officer of the Capital Fleet under Oscar Saint-Just, he’d been thoroughly briefed on Bolthole’s capabilities, although they’d only just begun actually delivering ships—all of them to State Security, at that point. He’d also been able to discover its location, and the fact that Saint-Just had personally selected People’s Commissioner Jacqueline Hammond, one of his most senior and trusted StateSec commissioners, to oversee Bolthole and ensure its reliability.

And Thomas Theisman had been only too well aware of the consequences if a shipbuilding complex of that capacity remained in the hands of StateSec loyalists.

Which was why he’d dispatched PNS Cordelia Ransom to carry his own people’s commissioner, Dennis LePic, to visit Hammond with a personal dispatch from Saint-Just… who’d happened to be dead at the time. As a fellow people’s commissioner, LePic had been able to get close enough to personally deliver his actual message—from Theisman, not Saint-Just. As it happened, he was an excellent shot, and his “administrative assistants” had delivered the same message simultaneously to Citizen Commissioner Hammond’s entire staff. At which point the “StateSec” superdreadnought which had transported them to Refuge brought up her sidewalls, identified herself as a regular Navy ship (which was no longer named for Citizen Ransom, for some strange reason), and suggested it would be a very good idea to listen to the new System Administrator.

There’d been some scattered resistance by State Security personnel. But no one had been that foolish within range of RHNS Péricard’s energy batteries, and what little resistance there had been, in more distant parts of the system, had ended quickly. Hammond and her staff had been dead, the “supply ship” which had accompanied Péricard to Refuge had disgorged two entire brigades of Marines loyal to Theisman, and the Navy personnel assigned to Bolthole all knew the new Secretary of War’s reputation. Ninety percent of them had rallied to LePic, and that had been that.

Yet Theisman had refused to use any of the superdreadnoughts being built in Refuge against his opponents, and that was because of his second—and, Pritchart thought, far more important argument—for maintaining the Bolthole status quo.

She’d seen enough of Thomas Theisman by now to realize Javier had been right. None of the warlords contending for Rob Pierre’s mantle were remotely his equal as a strategist or as a leader, and not one of them could match his ability to inspire the men and women under his command. Those men and women truly believed they could end the long nightmare which had enveloped their star nation for so long, and they believed he was the commander who could make that possible, and they would follow him to the heart of Hell itself to make that happen. Eventually, he was going to win, with or without the Bolthole ships, and, in the process, allow Pritchart to restore not just the Péricard Constitution but also a Republic worthy of that constitution.

And when she did, what happened next?

Neither Theisman nor Pritchart had any desire to continue the People’s Republic’s conquering ways, but they had a moral obligation to liberate any Havenite star systems currently under occupation by the Manticoran Alliance. Pritchart was realist enough to accept that not all those star systems wanted to be liberated, and it was hard to blame them, given the contrast between their experiences under foreign occupation and what they’d endured under the “benevolence” of their legal prewar government. Assuming the Manties and their allies were prepared to agree to genuine plebiscites to determine those systems’ future, she had no objection to their declaring their independence of the Republic which had acquired so many of them through conquest.

Unfortunately, it was becoming increasingly obvious the Manties had no intention of agreeing to anything of the sort.

Neither Pritchart nor her foreign policy experts—including Kevin Usher, one of the canniest analysts she’d ever met… and the only one she trusted without qualification—were sure exactly why the High Ridge Government refused to negotiate in good faith, but it was obvious that it did. And not just about future plebiscites. Elaine Descroix, the Manticoran Foreign Secretary, might keep blathering away about the need to be certain the Pritchart Administration was likely to survive before Manticore “legitimized” it by negotiating with it. Her correspondence might include all sorts of dangled carrots for the wonderful day when Pritchart had demonstrated—to Manticoran satisfaction, of course—that her government was going to survive. But in the meantime, Descroix had no intention of beginning even preliminary discussion of a single one of the points in contention between Landing and Nouveau Paris.

Not one.

And that meant that, for whatever reason, Prime Minister High Ridge had decided against negotiating an actual peace treaty. And, far worse, the current balance of military power justified his arrogant refusal far too completely for him to be likely to change his mind anytime soon. The Republic of Haven Navy had none of the pod-laying superdreadnoughts armed with the multidrive missiles which had driven Oscar Saint-Just to the brink of surrender before the last-second Cromarty Assassination put High Ridge into the premiership. The Havenite Civil War, for all its bloodshed and carnage, was being fought by obsolete ships armed with obsolescent weapons, and only the fact that none of the adversaries had access to modern weapons had permitted it to go on so long.

Just as any imaginable confrontation between those obsolete ships and the massive firepower of the Royal Manticoran Navy could end only in one-sided massacre.

Without some effective countermeasure to the Manty wall of battle and the Star Kingdom’s new-model LACs, there was no way to force High Ridge to come to the negotiating table in good faith. He was one of the very few interstellar politicians who, in Pritchart’s considered opinion, was at least as bad as the Legislaturalists had been, and he believed—with reason—that he held the whip hand. As long as he did, he would continue his current policies, and it was entirely possible—likely—that if he suspected even for a moment that the Republic was in the process of acquiring that sort of countermeasure, he would order the RMN to resume the offensive immediately to force Haven’s unconditional surrender before it did.

Which was Theisman’s entire point, because exactly “that sort of countermeasure” was what was being built right here in Refuge.

How do I resolve this? she thought bitterly. I’m the President of the Republic of Haven. Obviously, my first and highest responsibility is to my citizens, not the Sanctuarians or anyone else in the damned galaxy! And over and above that, what about my responsibility to the men and women like Javier and Lester—and Theisman—who’ve already fought and died for the Constitution we’re trying to restore? But morally, how do I justify continuing to treat Refuge and everyone living here the same way Frontier Security treats its “clients”… only more so. At least the rest of the galaxy knows the Protectorates exist! That puts some limits on what OFS and its cronies can get away with where they’re concerned. But Refuge…

She leaned back against her seat’s head rest as the shuttle raced onward toward Mountain Fort and closed her eyes.

V

The Dark Fall Saga

Long grass blows on the banks of Despair,

Guarding the graves of the dead.

Mountain storms weep for the sleeping,

And the God of the vanished

Walks through the hills

Calling the names of the gone.

“Madame President.”

The tall, silver-haired man stood and walked around his desk to offer Eloise Pritchart his hand. Like most Sanctuarians, he was dark-skinned and that silver hair had once been dark brown, but his eyes were a light, startling blue. And like far too many Sanctuarians, he’d been too old for Prolong when the People’s Republic discovered Refuge.

At least that’s one damned thing the Legislaturalists got right, Pritchart thought as she crossed the spacious office to meet him. They even offered it universally, not restricted solely to people working for them, the way they did the advanced degree programs.

“Shirkahna Ambart,” she responded taking his hand in the three-fingered grip that was the Sanctuarian version of a handshake.

Shirkahna was her host’s title, which the protocolists told her translated literally as “shepherd” but could also be translated as both “warlord” or “sentinel.” Apparently, Sanctuarian was a… flexible language. But however it translated, Shirkahna Ambart VIII was the hereditary ruler of Ankhassar, Sanctuary’s most ancient and powerful pre-rediscovery empire. That had simplified things when the Legislaturalists went looking for someone to run the native side of the planet for them.

Like all Sanctuarians, the shirkahna used only one name publicly. Legally, Sanctuary usage attached both a patronymic and a matronymic, so technically, he was Ambart Ambartson-Melynyson, although no one would ever address him as such.

“Please, be seated,” he invited, escorting her across the sunny chamber towards a conversational nook below the windows overlooking the paved courtyard below. Sheila Thiessen, the head of Pritchart’s personal security detail, drifted silently and unobtrusively along behind. Aside from bodyguards and high ranking military officers, no armed Sanctuarian was ever allowed in the shirkahana’s presence, yet Ambart took no notice at all of Thiessen’s presence.

He waved Pritchart into a comfortable armchair, looking out through the tower window at a deep blue sky. Anvil-headed cumulonimbus clouds swept towards Mountain Fort, crowned in the flicker of distant lightning, and the temperature had been dropping steadily when she arrived. In fact, her shuttle flight crew had clearly been relieved to get her safely on the ground before the looming thunderstorms arrived.

She hoped the weather wasn’t some sort of metaphor for her visit.

Below the fourth-floor window, the city of Mountain Fort sprawled out about the looming castle which had given its name to the entire city. Mountain Fort had been Ankhassa’s imperial city for the past six hundred local years. Its population would scarcely have qualified as a moderate-sized town on Nouveau Paris, but its quarter-million people made it the largest city on Sanctuary and the low-lying architecture of a pre-counter-grav civilization made it look even larger.

“Thank you for making an opportunity for me to meet with you,” she said as Thiessen settled behind her shoulder.

“Under the circumstances, it seemed the thing to do.” Ambart’s Standard English carried remarkably little in the way of an accent, given that he’d been in his early thirties before he’d learned to speak it. There was some, of course, but she’d heard a lot worse from the Dolist slums, and the edge of dry amusement came through clearly as he tilted his head to one side.

“In fact,” he continued, “I was rather surprised that you requested a meeting. I believe the highest ranking member of Haven’s government ever to visit Refuge—civilian member, I mean—was Foreign Secretary Bergen when he signed our initial treaty with my father. And I fear the People’s Republic’s—I mean, the Republic’s—representatives’ contacts since have been a bit more, ah, peremptory, shall we say?”

“I don’t doubt it.” Pritchart shook her own head. “My… predecessors weren’t noted for ‘wasting’ courtesy when they didn’t need to.”

“I’m afraid that’s been my own observation,” the shirkahna said. “Which, I trust you’ll forgive me for pointing out, seemed to just a bit… ironic for such an egalitarian regime.”

Pritchart hid a wince, although his point was well taken. Especially coming from a man whose family had ruled almost a third of his homeworld for the last several centuries.

“You’re right,” she said. “In fact, having waded through the last thirty or forty T-years of reports, memos, and correspondence, I’d have to say I detect a certain… imperious note in all of the previous regime’s conversations with you.”

“I’m sure you do. Although, to be fair, I doubt many Sanctuarians would find that out of place. The average lifespan here on Sanctuary, even for those without Prolong, has increased by thirty percent since the Republic discovered us. The standard of living has probably risen by no more than, oh, ten or twenty thousand percent, and it’s continued to follow a steadily rising trajectory for over half my lifetime.” He smiled almost whimsically. “Against that backdrop, a certain degree of what I suppose one might call proprietary authority is probably understandable.”

“Understandable but not exactly commendable,” Pritchart said. He arched an eyebrow at her, and she shrugged with less than complete happiness.

“Shirkahna Ambart,” she said then, “I’ve come to see you not simply because some sort of courtesy visit from the Republic’s chief executive is so long overdue, but also because I find myself in a quandary. A deep and, to be honest, very difficult one.”

He raised his eyebrows politely, and she sighed.

“I’m not my ‘predecessors,’” she said, “and it’s important to me to prove that. Not simply to myself, but to the galaxy at large. For over a century, the People’s Republic of Haven was like a cancer, consuming its interstellar neighbors, twisting interstellar law to suit its own purposes… when it didn’t simply ignore it completely. Lying on a galactic scale whenever that suited its diplomatic ends. What it did to its own citizens, including those in Nouveau Paris, not just in the conquered star systems, was unforgivable. Reprehensible. Criminal.”

Her expression was grim, her tone harsh.

“My colleagues and I have started repairing the worst of those criminal acts, but it will be decades—possibly lifetimes, in some cases—before even our own citizens fully accept that. There’s nothing I can do to hasten that process except to ensure that the rule of law is followed for everyone, not just the current regime’s friends and supporters, and not just when my administration finds it convenient. If I do that long enough, if I use a big enough hammer when anyone else doesn’t do that, perhaps eventually I’ll be able to earn back the trust of my own citizens.

“But in addition to those internal problems, I have a star nation’s interstellar reputation to restore. To be perfectly blunt about it, there isn’t a single star system in the galaxy which has any reason to accept the honesty or integrity of any statement originating in the Republic. The Legislaturalists and the Committee of Public Safety have spent the last hundred and thirty T-years making certain no one did. That’s an even deeper hole to dig our way out of and, to be honest, it damned well ought to be.

“Which is what brings me here today.”

She paused, and Ambart leaned back in his own chair, elbows propped on the armrests while he steepled his fingers under his chin. He regarded her thoughtfully for several seconds.

“Why?” he asked simply.

“Because just as with our own citizens, no other star nation is going to believe what I say,” she told him levelly. “They’re going to judge me, and my Republic, and the Constitution I’ve sworn to restore, by what I do. And that means I can’t simply do what’s expedient. There’s an ancient phrase from Old Terra: ‘Purer than Caesar’s wife.’ If the Republic means to earn back any sort of interstellar legitimacy, then its actions—my actions, my decisions and policies—have to demonstrate that I’m ‘purer than Caesar’s wife’ when it comes to interstellar relations. I can’t afford ambiguity, can’t afford anything that even looks like a continuation of Legislaturalist or Committee of Public Safety practices and duplicity. Opponents and rivals will twist anything they can to portray my Administration as the same old People’s Republic with no more than a change in labeling. I can’t—I won’t—give them a single extra piece of ammunition if I can avoid it.”

“I see.”

He lowered his hands, clasping them across his abdomen, and smiled faintly.

“Since you’ve been candid enough to bring up your predecessors’ perhaps somewhat less than stellar record of human rights abuses and… acquisitiveness, I suppose I might be candid enough to admit that I’ve acquired a rather better understanding of the interstellar realities than those predecessors would have preferred. Would it shock you to learn that not all of the State Security personnel sent here to keep an eye on us truly were stalwart paragons of the Revolution, immune to… inducements from certain of my own people?”

“Frankly, given the quality of the people who worked for StateSec, I’d be astonished if they had been.” Her voice was desert dry. “In fact, I was more than a little astonished Secretary Theisman managed to get Administrator LePic and his people here before one of those ‘paragons of the Revolution’ sold its location to one of the SS holdouts.”

“I’ve met the Admiral several times now,” Ambart said. “Before I met him, I probably would have shared your amazement. Now, though…”

He shrugged, and Pritchart nodded.

“I agree,” she said. “But that rather brings me to the point of my visit. You see—”

“Please.” Ambart raised one hand, his tone courteous as he interrupted her. “Allow me to speculate upon your purpose for a moment.”

She paused, then nodded and sat back in her own chair.

“As I say, not only were certain StateSec personnel amenable to persuasion, but there’s a certain downside to using political prisoners to kick start a planet’s economy. As a consequence, I’ve managed to educate myself on the realities of the People’s Republic—and, if you’ll excuse me for saying so, on the degree to which you appear to differ from them—rather better than Citizen Pierre or Citizen Saint-Just would have preferred.

“I was completely sincere earlier when I mentioned just a few of the uncountable ways in which the People’s Republic has improved the lives and the happiness of my people here on Sanctuary. If you’ve never lived in a society in which people routinely die of appendicitis, like my own grandfather did, or of diabetes—in which no one even dreams there might be a vaccine against cancer or what I believe they used to call Alzheimer’s—you can’t possibly appreciate the true magnitude of those improvements. So even though it had become apparent to me that the People’s Republic was far from the epitome of interstellar justice it had portrayed itself as, I felt very little resentment. It’s true that the independence of my dynasty was sharply curtailed when we became a Havenite protectorate, but in absolute terms, compared to our pre-protectorate position, we’re as much better off as our poorest subjects.

“My point is that Hereditary President Harris and Chairman Pierre—even Chairman Saint-Just—had a legitimate claim to have enormously improved almost every aspect of life here in Refuge. Not only that, they did it without directly intruding—not excessively, at least—into the personal lives of our people. They were prepared to allow us to retain our own law codes, our own customary usages, so long as we accepted our position as their secret arsenal.”

“And your position as second-class citizens in your own star system,” Pritchart said bitterly. “I’m not unaware of the extraterritoriality demands the People’s Republic has made on your people.” She gestured at the armed bodyguard standing at her own shoulder. “And I’m not unaware of the restrictions placed upon some critical aspects of your educational system. Like the ones which forced you to acquire that understanding of interstellar realities through… unofficial channels, let’s say.”

The shirkahna pursed his lips and cocked his head, rather like a bird considering some interesting tidbit. Then he shrugged.

“True enough,” he conceded. “In fact, a growing number of our intelligentsia have been murmuring quietly about that very point for the last few years. It’s only murmuring, so far at least.” He smiled slightly. “Trust me, my family’s secret police have had several centuries of experience telling the difference between genuine unrest and simple intellectual unruliness. For the vast majority of our people—well over ninety-five percent, I’d estimate—it remains a nonissue, in most ways. As long as the intrusion into our customs remains limited, it should stay that way.

“Yet I was never sure how long the intrusiveness would remain limited. You see, I had gotten at least a glimpse of the truth behind the façade they presented to us. For the moment, our value to them was both enormous and impossible to doubt and their arrangements here seemed to be working very well for them. But what would happen if someday that was no longer true? What would happen on the day my subjects began demanding the sort of self-determination about which our modernized education system has, as you just pointed out, been remarkably silent?”

“Or the day when your subjects began to question just who ought to own everything they’ve built over the last thirty T-years or so,” Pritchart said quietly, and he nodded.

“Or on that day,” he agreed. “Mind you, I can see the argument that none of that building—certainly none of it outside our own atmosphere—could possibly have happened without the People’s Republic’s massive investment of education, technology, and money. It isn’t unreasonable for the people who made its construction possible to be the ones who own it.”

“Your people may feel that way now,” Pritchart said. “They may even be right to. But ultimately, it wouldn’t exist without all the sweat and effort and human capital Sanctuary’s provided, either. And quite aside from that, your star system’s natural resources were there long before the Peoples’ Republic discovered you or invested a single credit in Refuge. Whatever might be true of the infrastructure that’s been built since, they ought to belong to you, not to outsiders.”

“I will confess that that thought has crept through my mind a time or two,” he admitted. “I’m not quite as blind to our own contribution to the Bolthole complex as my earlier remark might have suggested, and I’ve wondered more than once, over the years, how Chairman Pierre or Oscar Saint-Just might have responded if my people began asking the same question. I’m afraid I didn’t like the conclusions I reached.

“Then Admiral Theisman… rearranged things. I found myself with a new and totally unknown power structure to deal with, so I set about learning what I could about him, as well. And about you, when you became President. So I wasn’t quite as surprised by your remarkably courteous request for a meeting as you might have assumed I’d be.”

“You weren’t?” Pritchart asked, watching his expression, listening to that measured exposition in something suspiciously like fascination.

“No.” He shook his head. “You had to come, Madame President. Whether you were sincere in your protestations renouncing the People’s Republic’s imperialism or not, you still had to come. Either to explain to me—courteously, no doubt, but firmly—why despite your complete commitment to individual rights and the sovereignty of star nations it would be impossible to extend those same rights and sovereignty to my star system. Or to explain to me that those rights simply didn’t apply to Refuge. Or to lie to me, and to promise me that they did—or would, as soon as humanly possible—while you saw to it that nothing of the sort actually happened. Or—” his eyes sharpened suddenly “—to tell me that they did apply… and that you were prepared to make them available to Refuge immediately.”

Pritchart winced internally. The shirkahna was even more astute—and better informed—than she’d assumed he would be.

“You’re exactly correct,” she said after a moment. “In fact, I came here to discuss a variant of one of those with you. And not, I’m afraid, the final one.”

“Ah?”

He regarded her calmly, and she squared her shoulders and met his gaze.

“I have two mutually conflicting problems,” she said. “As I’ve said, unless I’m prepared to demonstrate by my actions that the Republic of Haven is no longer the People’s Republic of Haven, no one will believe it isn’t. But my second problem is that Baron High Ridge, the Manticoran prime minister, is clearly unwilling to negotiate an actual peace treaty. At the moment, he’s excusing his delay on the basis that he’s not sure which of the competing regimes will end up in control in Nouveau Paris. In fact, all of our sources suggest Manticore is quite confident that under Secretary Theisman’s direction of the war, my administration will be the last one standing. If High Ridge had any intention of negotiating at any time, he’d already have opened at least preliminary conversations with us. He hasn’t, and that’s incredibly stupid of him. Whatever happens, the Republic of Haven isn’t going to just disappear, so anyone with a measurable IQ should realize how much to Manticore’s advantage it would be to engineer what they call a ‘soft landing’ for an administration that doesn’t want to continue the war. One that isn’t going to come looking for vengeance in another fifteen or twenty T-years.”

She paused until the shirkahna nodded. No one whose dynasty had ruled for as long as Ambart’s could fail to grasp the points she was making.

“We believe his… intransigence has a lot to do with the military advantage the Royal Manticoran Navy and its allies currently enjoy. He doesn’t see any reason he has to negotiate, because the tactical and strategic imbalance is so vast that there’s nothing we could do to compel him to.”

Ambart nodded again.

“And that’s the reason my administration can no more afford for Bolthole’s existence or location to become known to the Manticorans than Pierre and Saint-Just could have. The Manties have intelligence assets in all of our known shipyards; we’ve identified many of them, but there have to be far more we haven’t. If we were to begin laying down starships capable of fighting their starships toe-to-toe in any of those yards, they’d know about it long before the first ship was completed. And if someone like High Ridge knew about it—”

“I believe the applicable term would be ‘preemptive strike,’ Madame President,” Ambart said.

“Precisely.” She nodded.

“And you’re confident your adversaries don’t have those intelligence assets here in Refuge.”

“We’re as close to certain of it as intelligence matters ever get,” she said flatly. “If they knew enough about Bolthole to have infiltrated any of their spies into it, the Royal Manticoran Navy would already have come calling on you. Which, I’m afraid, could still happen if they find out about it,” she finished unflinchingly.

“So Refuge has become even more important to you than it was to the Legislaturalists or to the Committee.”

“Unless I’m prepared to accept the Manticoran refusal to negotiate, yes. And I can’t accept that.” She shook her head. “Not only do I owe the Havenite star systems currently under Manticoran occupation the protection of my government, but if the Manties won’t even negotiate with us, how long can I maintain the pretense that my administration really is the Republic’s legitimate government? A government powerless to even end the unjust wars of its predecessors? A government so ineffectual—so irrelevant—its adversaries won’t even talk to it?”

She shook her head again, and those topaz eyes were dark as night.

“It isn’t only foreign perceptions that concern me, Shirkahna Ambart. There are millions—probably billions—of Havenites who were horrified by the Committee’s overthrow. People whose power, whose wealth, whose influence disappeared or was severely damaged when Admiral Theisman deposed Saint-Just. People whose patriotism is invested in the People’s Republic of Haven’s military might and imperial accomplishments. And, even worse, people who simply see an opportunity to fish for personal advantage in the chaos. Who don’t care about restoring the Constitution. Who see only the chance for them to become the decision-makers, the ones with all the power, and the hell with the rule of law or individual rights.

“If I can’t convince the rest of the Republic’s citizens that I’m the legitimate President and that my administration is a legitimate, effective government, the bottom-feeders will see their opportunity. And if they take it, they can destroy everything Admiral Theisman and I are trying to accomplish.”

“And this High Ridge’s… intransigence, I believe you called it, is likely to convince them they do see such an opportunity?” Ambart murmured, but the question was actually a statement, and she nodded.

“I want to believe that whatever is motivating him represents a temporary situation. That he has a domestic objective, and that once he’s accomplished it, he will negotiate with us. I can’t afford to plan and operate on that basis, though. For that matter, even if it’s true, it’s entirely possible that attaining his domestic objective will take long enough to create the situation I’m afraid will destroy my domestic objective of restoring genuine representative government to the Republic.”

She paused, letting that settle for a moment, then leaned back in her arm chair and laid her forearms along the armrests.

“What I would like to do—what I need to do, if I’m going to demonstrate that the restored Republic genuinely respects interstellar law—is to acknowledge Sanctuarian sovereignty here in Refuge. I need to announce the discovery of your people to the galaxy at large. I need to withdraw all of those Havenite ‘advisors’ and ‘administrators’ who are actually controlling your educational system and every facet of your economy. And, above all, I need to transfer ownership of the Bolthole Complex and all of its supporting infrastructure to Sanctuarian ownership. It’s the right thing to do, it’s the moral thing to do, it’s the legal thing to do, and from a purely pragmatic viewpoint, if I did that and then announced it to the entire galaxy, it would absolutely demonstrate that we are no longer the People’s Republic of Haven.

“But because of High Ridge’s… arrogant, stupid, shortsighted blindness, I can’t do it. This is the only place Secretary Theisman and I can possibly build the fleet that might make High Ridge pay attention to us. I can’t give that away, however much I might wish to.”

“I see.”

Ambart regarded her thoughtfully for endless seconds. Then his nostrils flared.

“Among the other things I’ve learned about through those unofficial channels of mine is the Solarian League,” he said. “In particular, about its ‘Office of Frontier Security.’” He smiled thinly. “I’m reasonably certain your predecessors would have been even more unhappy to discover that I’ve learned about OFS, given the way it’s behavior with the ‘transstellars,’ I believe they’re called, mirrors what’s happened here in Refuge.”

Pritchart hid another mental wince. A rather deeper one, this time, given how well taken Ambart’s comparison was. But the shirkahna wasn’t finished.

“The difference between Frontier Security and its arrangements, as I understand them, and what you’ve just said to me, Madame President, is quite profound, actually.”

“It is?” Surprise drew the question from her, and his smile broadened.

“Yes,” he replied.

Her raised eyebrows invited him to continue, and he shrugged.

“Madame President, I believe you mean every word you’ve said. Oh,” he waved one hand in a brushing away gesture, “I’m sure that even you are likely to… shade meanings, even unintentionally, but you’re refreshingly different from most Sanctuarian politicians and every System Administrator the Legislaturalists or Pierre ever sent us. You actually believe what you’re saying, and you’ve actually tried to tell me the truth.”

“I do. I have.”

She couldn’t keep the surprise at his analysis out of her voice, and he chuckled.

“You may get over it in time,” he told her almost reassuringly. “At the moment, however, you’re still too much the revolutionary and too little the self-seeking politician to make a satisfactory liar.”

“I’m not entirely sure you mean that as a compliment,” she said.

“Oh, I do. For now, at least, and not simply because it makes it much easier for me to discuss matters such as this with you.” His expression had sobered. “Humans have lived on Sanctuary for almost thirteen hundred years, Madame President. We’ve seen a great many wars, a lot of politics, in that time. I’m not as unaware as you might think of the enormity of the task you’ve undertaken in seeking to reform something like the People’s Republic, and you’re right. You can’t succeed in real reform without breaking the pattern of the political leaders who allowed it to become so corrupted in the first place. And despite any of the People’s Republic’s transgressions against the people of Sanctuary, I want you—I need you—to succeed. Despite everything, we owe far too much to Haven for me to want any other outcome than to continue in a mutually beneficial relationship with a reformed Republic.

“My discussions with Administrator LePic and with Admiral Theisman have told me what kind of men they are, what dreams they dream. This conversation has shown me the woman—the dreams—behind President Pritchart, as well, and I would far rather deal with her than with anyone who might someday replace her.”

“Shirkahna Ambart,” she said after a moment, “understand that the Republic of Haven is not Frontier Security. You’re right, I’m sure, about all of the… beneficial fallout of Haven’s presence in Refuge. And you’re certainly right about who provided the capability to build the Bolthole Complex and its supporting infrastructure. But this system belongs to Sanctuarians, not Havenites. It has to. On behalf of my government, I would propose an ultimate ownership stake of, say, thirty percent in the existing infrastructure for the Republic, with the understanding that we would intend to privatize it eventually. And the further understanding that Sanctuarian investors would be given the first opportunity to bid on any privatization offers.

“I’m prepared to sign a treaty formalizing that understanding immediately. And, regardless of your decision to accept or reject that treaty, I intend to withdraw all Havenite authority to control any aspect of your educational system or your economic system outside the Bolthole shipyards themselves. Obviously, I will recognize Refuge’s sovereignty at the same time.

“In return, I would ask you to continue to conceal the existence and location of your world. And I would ask you to assume the risk—the very real risk, should Manticore somehow discover Bolthole’s existence and location—of a major attack on your star system which could well result not simply in massive destruction but in major loss of life, as well.”

“You realize you don’t have to ‘ask’ for anything?” Again, his tone made the question a statement. “There’s clearly nothing we could do—in the short term, at least—about any of those matters.”

“I think you may underestimate yourselves a bit.” Pritchart’s tone was dry. “Over the decades, the People’s Republic learned quite a bit about what passive resistance and selective sabotage can do to military and industrial production.”

“I imagine it did.” Ambart chuckled, but his expression remained serious. “All the same, my point remains.”

“Perhaps it does.” Pritchart shrugged. “But many, many years ago, on the most terrible day of my life, I decided what I was willing to put on the line for my beliefs. It came from an ancient document I once read, and it was only three words. Very simple ones, but words that expressed both the least I could justify giving and the highest price I could conceive of paying. I try to bear them in mind every day, especially now that I’m actually in a position to rebuild the Republic of Haven of Michèle Péricard.”

“And those words are… what—?” he asked softly.

“‘Our sacred honor.’” Her voice was equally soft, her eyes somber with memory. “Our sacred honor,” she repeated. “That’s what my friends and I put on the line the day we decided to stand and fight. That’s what we believe in, what we stand for, and that means being honorable. It means conducting ourselves so that the people we’ve lost would approve of what we’ve done. And it means I have to give you back—return to you, not bestow it upon you like some gift—your own star system and your own future. But when I do, I have to do it in a way that preserves my own star nation and everything I gave my sacred honor to thirty-seven T-years ago. And I have to ask you to understand—and accept—that.”

Ambart considered her in silence once again. Beyond the tower window, lightning flared and flickered, and the first rumble of rain drummed on the tower roof. Thunder rolled, and she waited until, finally, he sighed.

“I wonder if you have any idea, truly, of what a remarkable woman you are, Madame President,” he said.

“I don’t think I’m remarkable at all,” she replied. “Or, if I am, it’s only because the events in my life made me that way. And the price it took to get me to understand what I needed to do was too terrible for me to not try every day to be worthy of it.” A tear glittered at the corner of her eye, and she shook her head. “It’s not just my mirror I need to be able to look into, Shirkahna. It’s my memory.”

“Perhaps one day I’ll ask you about that memory,” he said, and his voice was gentle against the background grumble of thunder. “But not today.” He smiled again, more warmly. “I’m certain we’ll have many opportunities in the future for me to ask. Perhaps when we sign that treaty of yours in the next few days. Or perhaps on the day—some years from now, I’m sure—when you join me in a toast to the privatization of our friends in the Republic of Haven’s interest in our star system’s infrastructure.”

Her eyes widened ever so slightly, and his smile grew broader.

“Or perhaps even on the day when Refuge seeks admission to a Republic of Haven worthy of the men and women fighting to restore it.”

The Dark Fall Saga

But Dark Fall ends.

Dawn comes at last to even deepest night,

And men unafraid,

And women of valor

Walk bravely into the light.

Brendan DuBois

Love in the Time of Interstellar War

I was late getting into the NCO staff meeting at the Mitchel Joint Navy-Army station that morning and when I started getting ragged on by the other three NCOs, I took my cane and rapped it against my right leg—the metal and wooden one—and I said, “Give it a rest, guys, okay? One of the K-9 units dragged my leg out last night for a chew toy.”

That got some laughs but my Ell Tee—Antonia Juarez, a regular Army officer who was sent down to this unit once her spine got broke during a Creeper attack—moved her wheelchair a bit next to her desk and said, “Very good, Hart. Have a seat. And then come up with a better excuse. That’s the third time you’ve used it in the past six months.”

I sat down with a thin folder in my hand, joining the other NCOs who were part of the 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, the New York National Guard unit tasked to keeping peace and order on Long Island.

I was the unit’s intelligence officer, which should have been assigned to a lieutenant or captain, but since the Creepers invaded a decade ago, the thinned out armed forces of the United States had to adjust to doing a lot more with a lot less.

Including me, a one-legged first sergeant whose stomach felt like it was on fire, and who had skipped breakfast again this morning.

More than a century ago the Mitchel Joint Navy-Army station had been an Air Force base, flying and training a lot during World War II. Post-war, it was eventually decommissioned, parts of it were turned over to civilian use, and then it was only re-founded ten years ago, when the Creepers invaded. Technically it should be a Navy-Army-Air Force station because of its history, but since the Creeper’s killer stealth satellites in orbit burn down anything with electronics that flies, the United States technically doesn’t have much of an Air Force anymore.

Lieutenant Juarez glanced down at her clipboard. “All right, let’s get with it. Give me your morning stats, and keep it short and to the point.”

One by one, we gave our status reports.

Armed patrols along the abandoned and tsunami-swept towns of Long Island reported the detaining of forty-three coastie refugees trying to sneak back to their homes. They were being fed, processed, and would be returned via ferry to a Red Cross camp near New Canaan.

Logistics reported that a convoy successfully arrived yesterday at 1400 hours after an uneventful trip along the old I-295.

A couple of other reports followed, and it was my turn

“Ma’am, I beg to report that no alien activity has been monitored at the enemy base dome at Cunningham Park during the last twenty-four hours. During that time period, mobile artillery from the 1st Battalion, 258th Field Artillery, fired a total of six 155-mm shells at the dome.”

“No response?” she asked.

“No, ma’am,” I said.

“Very well,” she said, and after going through the day’s schedule and other housekeeping details, she said, “Dismissed… save for you, Sergeant Hart.”

There were sounds of chairs scraping and a low “uh oh” as the other NCOs walked out, and I shifted in my seat, adjusted my wooden leg, and when the door to the lieutenant’s office—a former classroom—was shut, I said, “Ma’am, I apologize again for being late.”

She reached over and took a red-bordered file folder from her desk. “Shut up, Hart. Apology not accepted.”

I kept my mouth shut, and Lieutenant Juarez said, “We’ve got visitors coming here tomorrow. You’re tasked to escort them, accompany them, give them what they need, and ensure they have a successful visit. Got it?”

“Yes, ma’am. May I ask why?”

“Because you’re what passes for intelligence in this unit, that’s why,” she said. “You’re to escort them to the base dome and do whatever it is that they require.”

“Are they VIPs? Visitors?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” she said. “They’re from Russia, and they’ll be arriving by watercraft at about oh nine-hundred, at the harbor at Hempstead. Provide meals, shelter, transport.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Are they military?”

She glanced over at me like I was an errant first-grade student who had just wet himself. “No, they’re an advance unit for what’s left of the Bolshoi Ballet… Christ, of course they’re military.” Lieutenant Juarez went back to her paperwork. “They are Russian Navy personnel… Petrov and Kosanskey. Special detail from Kallingrad. They’ve been on the water now for nearly a month.”

“I see, ma’am,” I said. “And how long do you expect them to be here?”

“Long enough to do their job.”

She waited and I waited, and then I bit.

“Lieutenant, what’s their job?”

She closed the folder, put it back on her desk.

“To destroy the alien base dome at Cunningham Park.”

Well, that got my attention, because I’ve only heard second- or third-hand about successful attempts to destroy the base domes. Scores of them were scattered around the United States countryside, and many others were stationed around the world. They were the base of operations for three types of Creepers—Battle, Transport, Research—that skittered out in their armored exoskeletons to explore, kill, or whatever else aliens do as part of their occupation.

But they were nearly invulnerable to any form of attack, from lasers to explosive shells to napalm. My mention earlier about six 155 mm shells striking the dome in Cunningham Park—about 29 klicks to the west of us—was just the Army’s way of telling the Creepers inside that they were still being observed.

Not that it seemed to bother them that much. We had one reliable weapon to use against the Creepers, a binary nerve agent fired from an infantry weapon, a Colt M-10, but more often than not, when it came down to a fight, sometimes the Creepers got killed and most times, the attacking soldier or Marine was either scorched to a cinder or sliced into pieces by a laser beam.

But to destroy a Creeper base dome took one thing and one thing only: a nuclear bomb.

Seemed simple enough, didn’t it. There were tens of thousands of nuclear bombs among the world’s arsenals when the invasion took place, so why hadn’t each dome been destroyed upon its establishment?

Delivery devices, that’s why.

With the killer stealth satellites in orbit, anything flying—from a missile to an aircraft to even an unmanned drone—would be blasted out of the sky before it posed a threat. Which left delivery by truck, tank, or even a horse drawn carriage. But even then, the Creepers could detect the electronics contained within the weapons, and they would still be destroyed by a particle beam or a “rod from God” before it got close enough to do any damage.

But just over a year ago, word filtered down from the government in Albany that our allies, the Russians—everybody was an ally nowadays—had come up with a way of destroying a dome by a nuclear device.

It involved breaking the bomb into several components, being able to shield the electronics from detection, and then slowly, gradually, transport those pieces up to a Dome, usually by two or three soldiers armed with nothing more than a knapsack. There, the soldiers would quickly reassemble the device, and then set it off.

Not by timer.

Not by a remote switch.

Not by anything electronic.

But mechanically, using Mark II eyeballs and hands.

If the mission was successful, it meant a destroyed Dome and lots of dead Creepers.

But it also meant two or three dead humans as well.

Suicide mission.

But the Russians being the Russians, some were prepared to pay the ultimate price.

And now they were coming here to Long Island.

“Sergeant Hart?”

“Ma’am?” I realized she had just spoken and I hadn’t heard what she had said.

“Did you hear what I just said?”

Decisions, decisions.

I decided to throw myself on the mercy of my superior officer and confess the truth.

“Ma’am, I’m afraid I didn’t.”

“Late for the briefing, not hearing a word that I uttered,” she said, shaking her head. “A hell of a way to start the day.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You’re one sloppy NCO, aren’t you.” It wasn’t really a question.

“The sloppiest, ma’am.”

“But you also happen to be one of my smartest, which helps. Sometimes. Don’t push it.”

“No, ma’am.”

She referred to another piece of paper. “What did you have for breakfast this morning?”

“Ah… I was running late, ma’am. Didn’t have breakfast.”

“Major Glenn reports that you’ve vomited blood twice in the last week.”

I didn’t reply to my boss.

What could I say?

She said, “How are you holding up?”

“Fine, ma’am.”

“You’re probably lying to me, Sergeant Hart.”

“It’s a possibility, ma’am.”

She stared at me with her brown eyes and I saw something there that was not usual.

Sympathy.

“When the time comes,” she said, “we’ll change your duty status.”

“If you say so, ma’am.”

“I do so.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

The lieutenant picked up another sheet of paper, a thin light yellow message flimsy, and she said, “You were stationed at Fort Saint Paul in New Hampshire three years ago, correct?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And served in a Ranger Recon platoon with a Randy Knox?”

A slight smile at the memory of being at that platoon and Knox’s silly but very capable Belgian Malinois named Thor.

“That’s right,” I said. “Sergeant Knox.”

“It’s now Lieutenant Knox,” she said.

“Great,” I said, feeling just the tiniest bit jealous of him earning his lieutenant’s bars before me.

“Not so great,” she said, putting the message flimsy down. “Got last quarter’s casualty reports this morning. He’s listed MIA after an ambush in Connecticut.”

“Connecticut?” I asked, hoping for a mistake. “Last I knew, he was still stationed in New Hampshire. What was he doing in Connecticut?”

“Getting ambushed,” she says. “He was part of a convoy, heading east to Massachusetts when they were attacked by a band of Creepers. Most of the convoy was destroyed. Knox was listed MIA. Sorry.”

I took a breath. Losing friends and family members was nothing new in this ever-constant war, but one tried not to get used to it. And I wasn’t going to fool myself by hoping he was, indeed, missing. Not in this time, not in this war. In a very few instances, being listed as MIA was a way of a soldier deserting into the wild and not being listed as being absent without leave. But most times it was a way of facing reality, that in a war when we humans faced lasers, flame weapons, rods from God and kinetic energy weapons, sometimes there were no remains or dog tags left behind.

So Knox was MIA.

Poor Randy. At some point, years from now, some overworked and undermanned graves registration unit might find a charred bone or two, tangled up in his dog tags, and that would be that.

Dogs.

I hoped his Thor had made it.

“Sergeant Hart?”

“Ma’am?” I replied, knowing I had been caught again, not paying attention.

“Your visitors are arriving at approximately oh nine-hundred tomorrow, at Hempstead Harbor. Be there.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Dismissed.”

The next morning I was standing at one of the floating docks making up the Hempstead Harbor structure. Pre-war there were lots of harbors scattered along Long Island, but the invading Creepers had dropped asteroids in oceans, lakes and rivers, causing artificial tsunamis. That meant a lot of cities around the world were drowned, and places like Long Island were pretty much scoured clean, and any surviving ports were tumbled places of junk from broken docks to boat hulks.

That meant most harbors were artificial, built with floating docks, and the one I was on took care of this part of Long Island. Fishing boats of all kinds were moored on two long docks, and the third dock I was on belonged to the Navy, as small as it was.

Out on the waters there was a distant haze masking the Connecticut coastline, and among the fishing vessels out there was a steam-vessel of some sort—it looked like it had once bore masts—and at the stern of the craft a flag was slowly waving in the steady breeze. It had three stripes—white, blue and red—and in the corner was a yellow square with a double-headed eagle.

One of the Navy’s harbormasters came up to me, and she said, “Looks like our Russian friends have arrived.”

The harbormaster was cute, wearing a khaki blouse and pants, and a blue baseball cap covering her blonde hair. She seemed to be about my age, 16 or so. Per her nametag, her name was COOK.

“What’s the flag?”

She had a pair of binoculars hanging from a leather strap around her neck, and brought them up. One of the lenses was missing.

“Russian Imperial flag,” she said. “The Russians now have a czar again.”

Two launches slipped out from the dock, being rowed by six crewmen each, and in a few minutes, they were coming back, the boats riding lower in the water. There were large containers in the center of the first boat, and two passengers riding in the rear, and four other Russians in the other.

“This way,” the harbormaster said, and I followed her to the end of the dock. The first launch came around and there was a flurry of lines being tossed, oars being raised, and a couple of beefy guys managed to unload the containers—made out of scuffed black plastic—and then two individuals stepped out, wearing dark blue uniforms of a type I had never seen before, with garrison caps with badges on their heads. The near individual was a heavy-set man, with a big smiling face and close-cropped hair. He turned and spoke to the person behind him, who turned out to be a young Russian woman, and she smiled at me, and I fell in love at that very moment.

She quickly walked up to me and extended her hand, which I quickly shook. She was about my height, wearing the same uniform as her male comrade, but she looked nothing like her fellow officer. She was slim, pretty, with bobbed blonde hair, wide smile, blue eyes, and clear skin.

“Good day,” she said, speaking fine English with a Russian accent.

“Hi,” I said, knowing, at that moment, I sounded like a moron.

She let me hand go, gestured to her companion. “This is Senior Lieutenant Kosanskey, Imperial Russian Navy.”

He smiled, saluted, and I saluted back, realizing that while these two had probably traveled for weeks across the Atlantic and looked like a Russian Navy recruiting poster, I was dressed in mended and slightly dirty Army fatigues.

He said something quickly in Russian, and the woman said, “Yuri extends his deepest greetings in fraternal thanks to the American Army. I’m sorry, he doesn’t speak English.”

“That’s all right, I don’t speak Russian.”

“Ah,” she said, “my apologies. “Captain Lieutenant Ludmilla Petrov. Glad to meet your acquaintance.”

Then I realized, like a dummy, that it was my turn, and I said, “Sergeant Walter Hart, 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, New York National Guard. I’m your escort for your mission.

Ludmilla smiled, revealing dimples on both cheeks. “So happy to greet you, Sergeant Hart.”

Yuri stepped forward, smiling, and slapped me on my shoulders. I winced. He rattled off something in Russian, and Ludmilla said, “Yuri says… after many weeks… so glad to be in America, so glad to help you kill the… nasekomyye.”

“The what?”

“The nasekomyye,” she said. “The insects. The bugs.”

“The Creepers,” I said. “Thank you for coming here, to kill our Creepers.”

They had some more gear to get off their boat, and there were more Russian naval officers that came ashore to meet the senior officers of the Mitchel Joint Navy-Army station. A photographer from Stars & Stripes was also there, and after a while, I got them secured in their temporary quarters, and their gear was placed under guard in an adjacent small warehouse.

I was heading back to my quarters when I got word that there was a dinner being held at the Officer’s Mess to honor our Russian allies, and I got an invite, which surprised me, because I was listed as an NCO, despite my Intelligence Officer position. But a meal was a meal, and I managed to get something resembling a dress uniform together and got to the mess hall.

I was late, so it meant I sat in the back, near the swinging doors leading to the kitchen, but the meal was pretty good, pre-war canned stew that had made it through in reasonable shape, along with homemade bread, and there was a speech by both of the base’s commanders—Army and Navy—and dessert was chocolate chip cookies, and after it broke up, I was mingling around, leaning on my cane, when there was a tap on my shoulder.

I turned and it was Ludmilla, smiling at me.

I leaned into my cane, something in my chest going thump-a-lump.

“Thank you for welcoming us,” she said.

“You’re very welcome.”

“You are taking us to the Dome tomorrow, correct?”

“That’s right.”

Damn, those dimples looked so sweet.

She leaned over to me and said, “There’s a… what you call. Association. Get-together.”

“A party?”

Ludmilla quickly nodded her head. “Yes. A party. Please join us.”

I had reports to type up, laundry to do, and a review of incoming telegraph traffic from other intelligence battalions in New England, but I instantly said, “I’d love to.”

The party was in an abandoned building on the edge of the old landing strip, and was made up of a bunch of Americans and Russians from the ship, which I learned was named the HMS Alexander III. An American flag and Russian flag had been nailed on a wall, and somebody had rustled up an old stereo that played records.

Lots of loud music, some snacks, and the Russians had brought along a case of their vodka, which tasted a hell of a lot better and sharper than our Long Island stuff, made from damaged or surplus potatoes. There were lots of toasts, laughter, and I danced as best as I could with Ludmilla, using my cane, and at one point, I needed to go outside and get some fresh air.

Even on this lonely stretch of the base, there were gas lamps, illuminating the cracked roads and sidewalks, and overhead was the never-ending light show of pieces of space junk burning up as they re-entered Earth’s atmosphere. A lot of the debris came from satellites and the old ISS that had been destroyed when the Creepers had invaded, and for the past several weeks, some of the larger chunks had come from the Orbital Battle Station, destroyed in some desperate attack by what was left of the Air Force.

It was supposedly the end of the war, our ultimate victory, but like the earlier nightmare of alien invasion, a sequel had been planned.

The war wasn’t over.

Not with a second Orbital Battle Station suddenly appearing in the sky more than a month ago.

“Enjoying yourself?” a woman’s voice spoke up, making me jump.

I turned and it was Cook, the assistant harbormaster. She was dressed in patched jeans and a very faded New York Giants T-shirt, and she lit up a cigarette. She offered me a puff and I declined, thinking of the irony of it all, and I said, “Very much so.”

“Yeah, I can tell,” she said. “Can I give you a word of advice?”

“Sure.”

“Me and about half the base can see you mooning over the Russian blonde chick. Don’t.”

“Why the hell not?”

She took a quick puff. “Really? You don’t know why? I thought you were in intelligence.”

“The best around,” I said.

“Hardly,” she said. “Ludmilla and her bulky friend? They’re the team that’s going to bring the bomb components next to the Creeper Dome and set it off. Both of them will be dead in a few days.”

The next morning I was ordered to take Ludmilla and Yuri as close as possible to the Creeper Dome, and I got a chit to sign out an electric Humvee from the motor pool, but it was in the middle of being overhauled so I had to make do with a quartermaster’s horse and carriage, with two old dark brown farm horses taking us out to the west. A young Explorer Scout with a bad complexion who was doing an internship with the motor pool was our driver.

In a few minutes we were on old Route 25, going along the remains of small businesses and single-family homes that were abandoned after the war began. Other wagons and carriages were on the road, along with horses, bicycles, some old cars that had basic engines that weren’t fried ten years ago, and a couple of Humvees trundling along on routine patrol. Ten-year-old hulks of abandoned cars and trucks were on either side of the road, where they had been dragged over in the past years.

I managed to sit across from Ludmilla, and Yuri sat next to her, smiling and looking around at the old desolation. Both were dressed in denim workpants and blue-and-white long-sleeved shirts.

I tried very hard not to recall what Cook had told me last night, not wanting to think of this pretty young girl across from me and her large friend dying in a nuclear flash.

Ludmilla said, “All the people who lived here… where are they?”

“Refugees or dead,” I said. “The bugs dropped an asteroid near Staten Island, and in the middle of Long Island Sound. That meant New York City was drowned and a lot of the towns on the Connecticut coastline and here were washed away. The survivors eventually left, either on their own or via the National Guard. Pre-war, the population of Long Island was about eight million. Now? Maybe eighty thousand, if that.”

Ludmilla shook her head, spoke to Yuri and pointed at the passing landscape. Yuri’s face colored, he shook his head, and then spoke quickly to Ludmilla. She turned to me and said, “Yuri says… he’s happy to be here… to help avenge all those who have died…”

I nod but I want to ask, but what about you? How can you come so far to die on a foreign land?

After about an hour we came to a checkpoint, and after showing my ID and orders, we were passed through. The checkpoint was an old mobile home trailer shoved across the road, with an armored-up Humvee keeping watch. The top of the Dome was now in view, and the horses started whinnying and shaking.

The Explorer scout up forward turned, reins in hands, and said, “As far as I can go, Sergeant.”

“All right,” I said, “we’ll hoof it from here.”

I got out of the carriage, wincing when my fake leg hit the cracked pavement first, shooting pain up my right stump. Yuri got off, helping Ludmilla, and each grabbed a canvas satchel, and started following me.

I took my time, walking along the path, using my cane, and here the pavement was torn up, melted in places, the homes and businesses either crushed or burned. The air seemed off, still, and I knew it was from the presence of the Dome, which also caused the absence of any wildlife. Two soldiers on patrol gave us a wave, and the near one said, “Hey, folks, don’t get scorched, okay?”

“I’ll do my best.”

But when they spotted Ludmilla, they stopped and smiled and just stood still as we went by.

Up ahead, there was a cleared area, and then a high berm made of plowed-up dirt, asphalt, and concrete, with carcasses of old trucks, cars, and vehicles. There was a stairway made of wood and metal, and I said, “This’ll give us a good view. Watch your step. This stairway is pretty beat-up and old.”

Yuri went up first, Ludmilla followed, and I took up the rear, moving as well as I could with one leg. At the top platform there was a soldier I knew, a Corporal Tanner, who was sitting on an old folding chair and with a spotter scope on a tripod set before him. At his feet was a small knapsack, and next to it, a field telephone with a phone line stretching out all the way back to the checkpoint.

He turned and said, “Hey, Sarge. What’s going on?”

“VIPs,” I said. “Russian Navy, here to check out our neighbors.”

Tanner whistled. “Sure came a long way to spot bugs. Don’t you have enough back home?”

Ludmilla said, “Yes, but we’re here… diplomacy mission. We’re here to destroy this Dome.”

Tanner said, “Have at it. Here, want to take a look?”

So he stood up and Ludmilla bent over to the spotting scope, and then she called over Yuri, and for a few minutes, they talked to each other in Russian, and then took turns looking out over the field to the Creeper Dome. It was its usual perfect dome shape, colored a dark gray-blue, and from the dirt berm before us, the land sloped down and across to the structure. The land was torn, blackened and blasted, with foundations of destroyed houses, burnt cars and trucks, and the rusting carcasses of artillery pieces and M1-A1 tanks.

Yuri said something to Ludmilla, who in turn said to Tanner, “How active is this Dome? Have a census been taken? How often do the bugs come out?”

Tanner grinned, scratched at his ear. “Active? Not very. The bugs come out when they want to… no set schedule that anybody knows of. And census? What’s that?”

Ludmilla looked serious. “You don’t do census? A count?”

Tanner looked to me, and then to Ludmilla. “They all look the same. How can you do a count?”

She said, “There are three classes of Creepers, da? But in each type of Creeper, there are differences… marks on the legs, scorches on the abdomen, worn bits of armor. That way… you know how many bugs are in the Dome.”

“But why?” I asked.

Ludmilla smiled. “So you know how many is there when you kill them all.”

Yuri said something to Ludmilla, she said “Da,” picked up her bag. Yuri picked up his bag, and then they climbed over the berm and started heading to the dome.

“Hey!” I yelled out, and Tanner said, “Crap, what the hell are they doing?”

Ludmilla and Yuri walked a few meters and then dropped down, and I did my best to follow them, although with my fake leg and cane, it took a while. I fell, crawled, and stumbled, and when I got to them, their satchels were open and they were staring at the dome with binoculars, making marks on a notebook, talking to each other low.

I slid in behind them and said, “Are you two out of your freakin’ minds?”

Yuri grinned. Ludmilla said, “Out? No, we’re surveying. Doing our jobs.”

“You…”

Yuri said a series of words, and Ludmilla said, “The dilation. Opening into the dome. Where does it usually appear?”

“Straight ahead,” I said. “That’s why we have a spotter there, keeping an eye on what’s going on.”

“Ah,” Ludmilla said.

She and Yuri went back to work, and I tugged at her near boot and said, “You’ve got to get out of here, now! This whole area is a killing zone.”

Ludmilla smiled and I couldn’t be angry with her any more.

“Da, and we’re here to kill them.”

Two more days followed where I escorted Ludmilla and Yuri around the Dome, where they made drawings, took measurements, and otherwise scoped out the Dome and its surroundings. I kept up as best as I could, though my right stump ached something fierce and twice when I was out with Ludmilla, I doubled over with nausea and vomited with no warning. Luckily, though, she never saw me in distress.

But on the third day, everything went wrong.

I rolled out of my bunk and the door to my room opened up, with a young orderly standing there, looking at my cluttered quarters and then at me, trying to put on my wooden and metal prosthetic.

“Yeah?” I said. “Don’t you know how to knock?”

“Sorry, Sergeant,” she said, staring at my stump. “Lieutenant Juarez needs to see you, soonest.”

“Got it,” I said. “Now get the hell out so I can get dressed.”

And about fifteen minutes later, I was in Lieutenant Juarez’s office, and she said without hesitation, “We’ve got a problem. One of the Russians is missing. Deserted.”

Something went thud in my chest. “Which one?”

“The male,” she said. “Yuri. Ran off last night.”

Then I hated myself right then, because I was torn. If one of the Russians had indeed deserted, I would want Ludmilla to have been the one. But by staying behind… I could see her again.

And maybe she would abandon her mission.

And live.

“Go see her,” Juarez said. “See what we can do… if anything.”

Ludmilla was in her own quarters, and it was crowded because there were four of the large black plastic cases that had come ashore when they had first landed. The tops of the cases were open and Ludmilla seemed to be checking the complicated gear and electronics nestled in dry black foam.

“Yes?” she said, still looking at the pages in a thick manual written in the odd-looking Russian-looking letters. “What is it, Walter?”

“I… sorry to hear about Yuri.”

She shrugged. “A temptation… being here in America, battered as you are. He and I, everyone else, they are volunteers.”

“So what are you going to do?”

Ludmilla looked at me like I had just suggested we flap our arms and go up to the Creepers’ Orbital Battle Station. “My duty, of course. I am going to do my duty.”

I leaned on my cane. “But I thought it took two… persons to do the job.”

“Da, yes, usual. But this is not usual, correct? I have sworn to my family’s memory, to the Czar and my God, that I will do this mission. I will find a way.”

I said, “Ludmilla… don’t.”

“Don’t ask me that again. I have no choice.”

“But if you do it yourself, you might not make it.”

“What other choice do I have?”

My gut is churning, from fear and something else.

“I have an idea.”

She looked at me from her manual. “What is that, Walter?”

“I volunteer,” I said. “I’ll take Yuri’s place.”

After two day’s worth of arguing, meetings, more arguing, finally permission was granted.

And it all came down to our unit’s medic, who said to Lieutenant Juarez and myself the day before I was deployed, “I’m not sure how advanced the tumor is in Sergeant Hart’s stomach, but I know its inoperable and untreatable. Even in the best times, before pre-war, Sergeant Hart’s case would be a difficult one for long-term survival. Now…”

I didn’t need to hear any more.

And neither did my boss.

Her eyes moistened. “Are you sure, Sergeant Hart?”

“The end of my service was written last year,” I said, remembering the onset of my symptoms. “But the last page… it was going to be either in a hospice room somewhere, alone, or on the battlefield. I prefer the battlefield.”

Lieutenant Juarez just nodded, and in a quiet voice, whispered, “Bless you.”

So today was the day, or more accurately, the night was the night.

I demanded from my lieutenant that I didn’t get any kind of send-off—I was afraid that seeing all of my fellow troopers would spook me and I’d turn around at the last minute—so the only person to see me off was the same soldier as before, at the OP at the top of the stairs.

Corporal Tanner was there, blanket around his shoulders, and he said, “Hey,—Sarge, I mean—“

“Keep quiet,” I said, “and help us with this stuff.”

The “stuff” was two plastic sledges, with black boxes and components tied down, and ropes to drag them. He helped Ludmilla and me over the top of the berm, and he gave me a quick slap on the back.

“Take care.”

“That’s my plan.”

Ludmilla said “Soldier?”

“Yes?”

“Go away now. Far away.”

“Yes, ma’am,” and Tanner scampered down the stairway.

Now it was just Ludmilla and me.

“We go.”

“Great,” I said.

I followed Ludmilla’s lead, and moved slow, very slow. We dragged the sledges behind us, and she said, “We learn… from hard lessons… to move slow. Not set any pattern.”

“I see.”

I followed her slim body, as we traversed the torn up and scorched earth. Overhead the constant flares and burning lights of space wreckage coming into the atmosphere continued. My stomach and abdomen were burning, but having Ludmilla in front of me calmed me down some.

We went up and down a trench, around some burnt wreckage from attacks a decade ago—some kind of artillery piece, its barrel and support melted—and Ludmilla whispered, “Stop, now.”

“Okay.”

I sat there, and then Ludmilla rustled her way over to me and said, “I’m cold.”

I was dumb, but not that dumb.

I put my arm around her, and she cuddled in next to me, and I smelled her hair and fresh soap.

I can’t remember that last time I’ve been so happy.

I said, “How did you end up here?”

She said, “You mean, how I get into war?”

“Something like that,” I said.

I looked up at the lights flaring and burning through the night sky, feeling the dull and heavy presence of the dome base close by.

“I… was a child. On holiday. With my family. On a cruise ship from Vladivostok. The ship was called the V.V. Tereshkova. I don’t remember much. But the bugs come, drop their rocks… many tidal waves… our ship, she was sunk.”

“I’m sorry.”

She moved under my arm. “So. A long time back… somehow… I ended in life raft… washed ashore… when I grew up, in All Orphan Pioneer Party, I swore I would get my revenge… and here I am.”

“But…”

“But what, Walter?”

“Aren’t you afraid?”

“Are you afraid?”

“Some… but I know what’s ahead of me. It’s not good. I’d rather go out doing something… oh, I don’t know. Special. Heroic.”

“Good for you,” Ludmilla said. “I just want to kill the bugs. Let’s move some more.”

We dragged our sledges across the landscape, stopping at Ludmilla’s command, me not too sure what she was doing, only knowing that she must have been working from years of experience. It was hard to believe that in these plastic sledges, bouncing behind us, sometimes getting caught up in torn and blasted metal, that there was a weapon that would destroy this dome.

We were closer now, and we rested two more times.

“How further do we go?” I asked.

“Right up to the dome,” she said. “Where the access hatch dilates open… it’s the weakest spot.”

“Makes sense,” I said.

We cuddled up again and she said, “Now, your story, eh?”

“Not much of a story,” I said.

“Tell me still.”

“Grew up in Maine, up north of here. Small family. Deep in the woods… and, the war began.”

“How old were you?”

“Seven.”

“And?”

A particularly big piece of space debris came in, throwing off big sparks and flares.

She nudged me.

“And?”

Well, she asked.

“The weather took a hit with all the debris and water kicked up into the atmosphere,” I said. “The first year was tough, the second year was tougher. The little house we lived in was only heated by a fireplace. We took to going to bed for most of the day when the snowstorms came through. Dad, Mom and me. I was on a couch near the fire, covered in blankets and comforters. They were nearby, on a fold-out couch. One day… I don’t remember much. The fire had gone out. There wasn’t much wood. My parents wouldn’t get up, and then… well, they couldn’t get up.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Yeah. I walked a while to a neighbor’s house. Got turned away. Went to another house. Was taken in, joined the Boy Scouts soon afterwards. When I got older, I figured out my parents starved to death, trying to keep me alive.”

Ludmilla kissed me on the cheek. “So we both have reasons to kill the bugs, eh?”

“We do.”

I kissed her back, on the cheek as well, and then I kissed her lips, and that’s how the time passed for a long lovely while.

Two more movements, and then we were up against the Dome. I was shuddering and feeling scared, and my body was betraying me as well. I threw up again and from the light of a big chunk of space debris, I see there was blood in what came out.

No matter.

Ludmilla took her time, opening the hard plastic containers, explaining how the different modules and pieces of the nuclear device were put together.

“So many experiments, so many failures,” she said, moving slowly and then stopping for a while. “Many brave men and women died to get the… knowledge? Information. Da. Information. We all learned hard way that the bugs monitor all electronics, from space, from the Domes. But to what level? So… volunteers. Would go up against the Domes, carrying various electronics… they would be burnt, captured… a lucky few would escape… but we learned. We learned.”

She looked around, very satisfied indeed.

“We rest now,” she said.

She came to me and we kissed again.

“Walter, your leg?”

“The good one or the fake one?”

“What happened?”

“It’s buried somewhere in a landfill in New Hampshire,” I said. “I had been in the Army a month. It hadn’t been a good month.”

“I want to know more.”

“I don’t want to tell you.”

“Okay, then.”

I think Ludmilla dozed in my arms, which was a good thing, because I could sense… something. Movement. Vibration.

A light slowly started bathing the area to the north of me, and then I turned and closed my eyes, because I knew what was happening next.

The Creeper Dome was opening up and with its opening, came a bright flash of light.

I turned in a second and off to the distant north, one and then two alien Creepers skittered over the dirt berm. They moved at a good pace, and from my vantage point, with a beautiful girl in my arms, I could see they were two Battle modes, coming back to their home base after a night of burning and lasering whatever they wanted. Seeing the armored arthropods up close again made me tense with fear and anger, and then they safely slipped into the dome, and the dilated opening closed.

Ludmilla stirred and moved away. “What… what happen?”

“Two Creepers just came back, into their base.”

She sat up. A line of light pink and red was beginning to form in the east.

“Good,” she said. “Two more that will die.”

The morning day looked to be pretty fine. My arms and chest felt heavy.

One’s last day.

“Ludmilla?”

“Yes?”

“You and I… we could run away. Go to the west. They’re looking for workers, farmers out west. We would never be found.”

She didn’t say no, and she didn’t say yes. A hand came into my hand, gently caressed it, and squeezed it.

“But we would always know that we had run away, wouldn’t we?”

But to live with you, I thought… and there was a stab in my gut, reminding me that the decision, one way or another, had already been made.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” I said. “Show me what we need to do.”

Once again, we moved slowly, as different components were taken out, cables were hooked up, switches and such were inspected. Ludmilla said, “There were attempts, many attempts, to set up timers, or mechanical devices, or even a long, long cable to be used, to explode the device. It never worked. Some sort of… haze? Field? From the Dome? Only after volunteers hand-exploded, did it work.”

“Why two?”

“With one, it was too long to haul, too much chances of being found. And… two. There would be two to press the switch, in case one… runs.”

I nodded, just followed her directions.

All thought out.

And then, too soon, we were done.

We sat against a rise in the dirt, the bomb at our feet, ready and connected to go off and kill everything in the vicinity.

Two cables ran out of one of the black boxes, each ending in a trigger switch. I took one and Ludmilla took the other.

“What… now?” I asked.

The sun started to come up.

“Down there,” she said. “That’s the battery. You turn that switch down there… the light goes from red to green… powering up… when it turns to green… it’s time.”

“Okay.”

The sun came up higher. But there was little sound. No birds, no animals, nothing in this zone of death.

Ludmilla slipped her hand into mine, and then reached down, toggled a switch.

A red light came on.

She came back, cuddled up against me.

The light turned green.

“Ludmilla…”

“Please, Walter.”

“Wait, just for a bit.”

“Walter…”

“No,” I said. “There’s a reason.”

“What?”

I said, “I’m in intelligence. I keep track of things… according to the last orbital mechanics I saw, the new Orbital Battle Station should be showing up in a few minutes.”

She didn’t say anything and sitting against the dirt, I was feeling the vibrations coming through from whatever the Creepers were doing inside the Dome. There were probably human prisoners in there, and I hoped their souls or afterlife would forgive us for what we were about to do.

Then again, they might be thankful.

“Walter, I don’t understand.”

I squeezed her hand. “Wouldn’t it be something… if the Creepers’ orbital base was overhead, and they were looking down… they would see us destroying this Dome. Showing them that we’re still fighting. That we won’t give up.”

“Ah… how soon?”

“Very soon,” I said.

She moved even closer to me, kissed me.

“Da, that we do. We wait. We show them.”

So we sat there, the only free humans in probably miles around, and I was hoping for a lot more time, to talk to Ludmilla, to find out more about here, her life, her hopes, her regrets… thinking of what we might have been able to do together if—

There it was.

Rising up from the horizon.

“I see it,” she said.

“Me, too.”

“You… we will wait, then we’ll do it together. Okay?”

I kissed her and kissed her.

“Together,” I said.

The Orbital Battle Station was nearly overhead, and then—

Light.

Mike Massa

See of Darkness

"I swear I will faithfully, loyally and honorably serve the Supreme Pontiff and his legitimate successors, and dedicate myself to them with all my strength, sacrificing, if necessary, my life to defend them. I assume this same commitment with regard to the Sacred College of Cardinals whenever the Apostolic See is vacant. Furthermore, I promise to the Commanding Captain and my other superiors respect, fidelity and obedience. I swear to observe all that the honor of my position demands of me."

Pontifical Swiss Guard Oath administered to graduating recruits

The day that we locked the doors on the Sistine Chapel, the conventional wisdom inside the College of Cardinals was that His Holiness had died in his sleep from the flu stage of the devil-spawned plague. That wasn’t, strictly speaking, true.

I should know.

I shot him myself.

If anyone’s listening to this, then you know all about the zombie virus that the scientists called H7D3. It raced around the Earth, killing off hundreds of millions, and eventually billions. Some people appeared to be either naturally immune or capable of fighting through the first stage of the flu. That still didn’t leave enough to deal with either the mounds of decaying bodies or the living, perpetually hungry afflicted, which outnumbered the sane by hundreds to one.

We, the Guard I mean, started with a strength of almost one hundred and fifty. There were another hundred or so Vatican Gendarmerie at the beginning, but unlike the Guard they were more like police, equipped for crowd control and border security. They could marry early, have children—so many of them made the difficult decision to desert their posts in order to protect their families.

Understandable. They weren’t personally sworn to the Bishop of Rome. Just damned awkward for those of us that were left inside the walls. In the end, I doubt that many found any lasting safety. A few months on and there’s no view from the parapet where Rome isn’t mostly smoldering buildings and mobs of mindless infected.

By the time that the decision was finally made to use a vaccine made from the spines of the infected humans, we were at three-quarters strength and dropping and we were without the guidance of the Holy Father, whom we’d pledged our lives to protect.

Our Faith, all of our training, our weapons, the thick walls of Vatican City—how do you fight an infinitesimally tiny virus without medicine?

As it turns out, the pope had been aware of the existence of a vaccine. He also knew how it was made. We were told, later, that he had prayed for guidance and determined that the use of such a vaccine was sinful.

We were sworn to obey His Holiness or his successor.

So, no vaccine even though it was available before the worst hit.

At least he was consistent, which was more than could be said of much of the leadership of the Holy Church.

Which you will also know from the papers documenting the scandals of the church, such of those records that survived the Fall. One of the upsides of the Plague, as it turned out, was that we all got to start again, but I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself.

I’m Hauptman Matteo Gagliardi, commanding the remnants of the Pontifical Swiss Guard. Until the light of this Fallen world is re-kindled, we will hold the ramparts of Vatican City.

Or die on them.

* * *

… I didn’t start writing anything down at first. It was God’s own truth; the disease didn’t start out as a recognizable catastrophe; it began like something akin to a really bad joke. In retrospect, I can see that I began recording this diary after the most severe shock of my life. However, at the time I was just desperately reacting to one disaster after another.

If anyone listens to this, it’s going to sound like several series of rationalizations, all meant to justify what I did. But you weren’t there, were you, because if you were, that meant that you survived. You did what you had to do in order to stay alive, didn’t you?

All that I have done has been to keep the Church alive.

The fact that my actions were utterly necessary, that the man I killed absolved me even as I completed the trigger stroke, was cold comfort. I planned to tell my confessor, Cardinal Crivetto, even though I had already been shriven.

However, he had responsibilities too.

The pope has a sort of a chamberlain, the Camerlengo. In normal times, he’s simply a personal assistant to the pope. However, should the pope die, the chamberlain has some unique and traditional duties.

In his role as the Camerlengo, Crivetto is a senior member of the Familia Pontificalis, which is a fancy name for the staff that surrounds the pope. The overwhelming majority of senior Vatican officials is older men. In most cases, really old men with strong political ties to the existing power structure and a deep resistance to change. Benedict XVI had been a different sort of pope. From the start, he’d been preoccupied with re-establishing discipline in the senior ranks, even when the “ranks” pushed back.

It’s only if you look at it that way that his selection of this Camerlengo, a young outsider from an obscure order not normally employed in Vatican City, makes any sense. When you think about it, this uncharacteristic choice was a miracle.

The special duties of the Camerlengo cannot be postponed, and are guided by deeply respected tradition. As soon as the pope appears to have expired, the Camerlengo must notify the College of Cardinals, who will gather in Rome as fast as possible. After their arrival, the Camerlengo then personally and formally confirms the death of the pope. He’s to remove the Ring of the Fisherman, the symbol of papal authority unique to each pope, which doubles as a seal for all official papal documents. Afterwards, the Camerlengo must deface the ring, honoring the ancient practice that forestalled papal forgeries, before delivering it to the assembled cardinals.

That the means to prevent cardinals from manipulating the pope’s death is rote tradition tells you a little bit about what senior clergy used to be like. The fact that we still do this suggests that they haven’t changed, much. Anyway, after the ring is rendered unusable, the Cardinal Camerlengo—which is his official title—then delivers the pieces to the College of Cardinals, who are met to elect the new pope.

My job was to escort him.

Clad in a bright white environmental suit, respirator, purple nitrile gloves and face shield, I watched the Camerlengo perform his duty.

Turns out the only certain way to instantly stop a human infected with H7D3 is to destroy their central nervous system—which means destroying the brain or severing the spine just below the skull. Brutal, you say? Certainly. Necessary? Utterly. But as a result, Cardinal Crivetto didn’t have to invest much time in confirming that the pope was dead. Through and through gunshot wounds to the head are universally unambiguous and final.

Still, as is traditional, he murmured the dead man’s given name in his ear. Predictably, His Holiness declined to answer.

Getting the ring off the rigid, swollen fingers of the corpse was a different problem. Crivetto was a deeply spiritual man and his unease at roughly handling the body as he fumbled for the ring was plain to see in his eyes. They were all I could see of his countenance since he had sensibly donned the same full protections that I wore.

The body was still in rigor, so the Camerlengo’s doubled gloves continued to slip as he fought the stiffened, curled fingers. There’s nothing about being Catholic which is inconsistent with also being a pragmatist, and the cardinals were waiting. I leaned past Crivetto and handed him the bypass shears which were waiting for the ring. It was simpler to just sever the finger.

It turned out that Crivetto was a pragmatist too.

Thank God. And thank You for Cardinal Crivetto. We would all come to have reason to appreciate him.

Most of us.

Outside the sealed papal apartment, we sanitized the ring. Then I escorted the Camerlengo as he delivered it promptly to the Sistine Chapel. Normally, there would be a gravity, a deliberate pace to replacing the pope, but the College of Cardinals had assembled within twenty-four hours, such of those who either lived in Rome or were within easy reach of the City.

That’s when we had our second miracle. As soon as we delivered the mutilated ring, tucked into its own enameled pyx, I was notified by the watch center that the American president was making an important announcement. Crivetto elected to come with me so that he could inform the more stalwart traditionalists who had begun politicking over the papal vote within hours of the Holy Father’s death.

The Camerlengo, who could not vote anyway, would bring back the summary before the first ballot.

* * *

The zombie plague had begun slowly, compared to what came later. It hadn’t taken long for hospitals to become overwhelmed. Eventually, the Carabinieri and local police of Rome, the Municipale, began the wholesale collection of infected people. I knew things were serious when the Church closed the tour system, despite the lost ticket sales. Separating the Vatican purser from a rich source of revenue was a job that I wouldn’t attempt without least half a section of armored Swiss Guard.

Even with the many landmarks inaccessible, the number of supplicants in St. Peter’s Square stayed high. Had His Holiness approved it, closing the Square would’ve been a logistical nightmare—much of the southeast corner of the holy city lacked the high walls that lined the rest of our border.

That’s one of the defining qualities of Vatican City, we’re small. Less than fifty hectares—maybe twice that many of what the Americans call an "acre."

But to my point, right up to the day that he was rendered insensate by the disease, the pope insisted that the Faithful were entitled to come pray. I understood his compassion, but I didn’t think that we were doing them any favors. Even before the Crush, no day went by that some parent wouldn’t bring a struggling, sick child to the Square, hoping for a blessing, a miracle.

I watched parents get bitten and turn, right there, below my duty station on the second floor. The Municipale would swoop in, stun them, flex cuff them and lock them in an armored wagon. The entire family, gone, just like that.

Sorry. I was speaking of the College of Cardinals.

Right.

What with the travel restrictions, the unexpected timing of His Holiness' death and the naturally risk averse bent of the College, only a few dozen cardinals were present to receive the Ring, not the hundred or more that were usually on hand for the passing of the mantle. Most of those waiting for us were likely banking that the reduced number of electors present improved their own chances of become Christ’s representative on earth.

I know I sound cynical, not like the good Catholic you expected.

Believe me, I’ve earned it.

Once the chapel was sealed, in accordance with tradition, the Guards rotated through a watch bill. Unless the cardinals opened the door, we were to leave them undisturbed. It was a relief to get out of the isolation suit, though I kept a simple paper mask and gloves in place. They clashed with my traditional tricolor uniform of azure, scarlet and orange.

As an officer, I didn’t carry a polearm, but my basket rapier was fully functional, as was the SIG P220 pistol under my blouse. Two of the steadiest men in my section guarded the ornate double doors that led into the inner part of the Sistine Chapel.

Fedlwebel Felix Boivin was marked as noncommissioned officer by the partisan, a sort of pike, that he carried in place of the regulation Guard halberd. He wouldn’t normally guard a single door, but this wasn’t an ordinary post. Boivin was Swiss-French, and his Italian retained the same Gallic accent as my own. He was flanked by Korporal Muller, a bull necked Swiss-German who’d watched the Polizia sweep up his younger brother during a fracas among the infected in the Square. But he’d stayed at his post.

The rest of my section I posted singly at unused side entrances.

The Chapel is only steps from St. Peter’s Square. Its greatest protection is its appearance. From the outside it’s largely nondescript, compared to the glory of the Basilica. For serious trouble, which we didn’t expect, we also had some plain-clothed Guards whose MP7s were discreetly tucked into briefcases.

The real action couldn’t start until the Camerlengo returned. Oberstleutnant von Messen, our vice-commander, was also on hand. I relied on his link to our operations center via his low-profile earpiece and cuff mike. They’d all settled in for the first of what we assumed would be many watches, waiting for the cardinals to argue the merits of this or that candidate before holding several rounds of voting.

Back in the 13th century, one election lasted two years, but the modern ones average three days. I was counting on one day, at most. The wearers of the crimson from beyond Rome were ready to return home nearly the moment that their slippered feet touched the gray concrete of the Vatican’s helipad.

The good news was that I guessed over long. The conclave didn’t last even a single day.

The bad news was that we didn’t get a new pope out of it.

We never did determine which cardinals carried the virus into the Sistine Chapel that day. The College takes its privacy very seriously and literally locks itself in the chapel. Hell, even the word "conclave" is drawn from “cum clave,” Latin for “with a key.” Over the years, acoustic insulation and thicker doors improved their isolation. The red wax seals on the ornate double doors were for show, but the reinforced locks and steel bars were quite real.

However, like I’ve said, the cardinals are mostly older men. Appointed for life, they nonetheless suffer the limitations of the flesh and old men’s bladders. As a result, if there is one thing that they like more than their comforts it’s a predictable schedule. When no one came to admit our party, escorting the only man who could count the ballots for the papal election at the appointed hour, we were surprised.

Four hours later, we were mildly alarmed. Why no phone, video teleconference or computer, you ask? Why no externally accessible lock, you know, for emergencies? Why not give the Carmelengo a secret key?

Tradition.

Another hour passed.

Daring mightily, von Messen sought the permission of Crivetto to open the vestibule grille, a sort of two-way peep hole. We couldn’t see through to the other side, since the opposite grille was closed.

But we could hear.

And what we heard was screaming and fighting. Though past conclaves have been… exciting, this was a new thing, even in a world of rapidly devolving and unpleasant novelties.

When the Cardinal Camerlengo bade us open the door, we had to use a gasoline powered saw. The ceramic blade initially chattered on the steel reinforced doors, before settling into a long scream that left our ears ringing, mercifully drowning out the terrible sounds within. The doors sprang inwards suddenly, and we were treated to a view of Hell.

There was blood, bodies and parts of bodies everywhere. Immediately in front of the doors, a naked cardinal crouched over a freshly dead man whose robes were torn and pushed out of the way, exposing the soft abdomen and spilled purple entrails. The afflicted’s bloody face was pure feral hate, and it growled as if daring us to take its prey. Howls and screams rose even higher around the room as several more infected stood from their gory meals.

The Gendarme sergeant with the saw had stepped involuntarily into the room as the doors yielded, pulled inside by the weight of the cutting tool. I saw as he began to recoil, horrified at the sights before us.

Faster than thought, he was knocked sideways by another zombie.

I thought I recognized his Eminence from Argentina, but von Messen had drawn his pistol as the doors were cut open and was already servicing targets. Hastened by the regular metronome of my commander’s fire, I almost fumbled my own pistol, but managed to get my first rounds into another zombie that staggered towards us, slowed by terrible wounds that exposed the lower bones of one leg. The Gendarme was screaming and trying to scramble backwards across the blood slicked floor, his saw abandoned.

I’m ashamed to say that my marksmanship was not the magical thing that always seemed to be the case in American action films. After stopping the lurching infected, I ran through rest of my entire magazine, trying and failing to drop the second infected. Korporal Muller was behind me, and even as the infected closed to grabbing distance, Muller ran his halberd straight into its throat.

The zombie fought and struggled to get around the polearm, its hands pulling at the shaft. Muller was shaken like a fisherman overcome by the ferocious jerking motions of a giant catch, but he kept the zombie a safe meter away from me as it weakened, and blood pulsed out around the exposed part of halberd blade. The distinctive rattle of a MP7 rang in my ears, deepening the tinnitus that already sang so loudly as to nearly drown out everything else.

Enough of the 9mm rounds found the zombie’s head that it dropped to the worn tiles of the chapel.

"Back two steps, and rally!" von Messen screamed, even as he stooped to help the wounded sergeant, still scrabbling on the floor. "Close the doors!"

In that moment, there wasn’t time to puzzle out how in heaven so many of the College turned in so short a time. Later, we determined that there were only twelve mobile infected left when we broke in. We also found out the how. But at the time, it seemed like all the zombies in the world were charging us, keening and screaming for our life’s blood.

Von Messen had given up on helping the sergeant to his feet and simply towed him backwards through the ruined doors, fighting the pull of an infected who still maintained a literal death grip on the injured man. The trio left a broad smear of scarlet across the black and white mosaic tile.

Boivin drove the head of his partisan through one of the zombie’s arms, searching for connective tissue to cut the policeman free. I finally completed my magazine change. More of my section had clattered up, and their sturdy halberds held off the struggling zombies that were gathering around the open doorway. Even at touching distance it is very easy to pull your shot and strike the wrong target. With exquisite care, I stretched, placing the muzzle of my pistol nearly in contact before shooting the infected off the sergeant.

One more hard tug and we were through. As soon as the second door closed, we stood panting.

And bleeding.

The gendarme sergeant was bitten in multiple places. Round-eyed, he looked at the worst of it, a great scallop of missing flesh on one calf, and tried to squeeze his wounds closed with his shaking hands. By now, we all knew what a bite from an infected meant. I exchanged a look with von Messen as he barked orders into his wrist microphone, demanding that a first aid team join us at the doors of the chapel.

"Herr Oberstleutnant," I began, staring at his hand.

Our vice-commander glanced down and grimaced. A set of tooth punctures wept red death across his wrist.

* * *

"This man murdered His Holiness!" yelled the archbishop. His cloth of gold robes flapped as he gesticulated wildly. "And then he killed the vice-commander of the Papal Guard!"

Seated at the right hand of the Camerlengo, he flung one arm outwards, pointing towards the place where I was standing against the wall.

The Camerlengo had called an emergency meeting of the senior surviving officials. The excited archbishop was screaming himself hoarse at my presence and was becoming borderline hysterical. I can’t say that it was making me any calmer, considering what I had just been asked to do not even half an hour earlier.

For the second time.

"Please calm down—" Cardinal Crivetto tried to interrupt.

"… and now you’ve promoted him into the victim’s place! He murdered his commanding officer! And you reward him? You’re insane! He’s insane! You—"

Crack!

Crivetto’s calloused right hand left a white splotch on the archbishop’s cheek. Stunned into silence, the archbishop raised a manicured hand to touch the numbed skin.

Like I said.

Pragmatist.

"Archbishop Tangretti, please to calm yourself," said Crivetto in a loud and clear voice, spanning the shock of the now quiet officials who were gathered around the antique gilt meeting table.

Believe it or not, even a tiny country like the Vatican needs a proper government. Ours is called the Roman Curia. The simplest description is to call it the Cabinet of the Roman Catholic Church. The heads of each department are always cardinals. There’s a department of commerce, a department of communications, we even have a secretary of state. Okay, we had a secretary of state.

Now we had a deputy secretary of state. And Crivetto had just slapped him to silence.

The Camerlengo hadn’t changed his black cassock since we’d resealed the Sistine Chapel. One of Muller’s especially energetic blows with the halberd had splashed several feet. We’d disinfected our exposed skin and changed masks, but that was all. The dry blood stains on Crivetto’s wide red belt had darkened, nearly matching the coarse fabric of the working uniform underneath.

Idly, I wondered if anyone else recognized the stains for what they were.

Cardinal Crivetto, having firmly established who was in charge of the meeting, continued speaking.

"There are pressing matters at hand which demand our attention, so I will only address this once," the Camerlengo said. "Hauptman Gagliardi is here at my personal request. As you all well know, he did not murder His Holiness. Instead he valiantly defended the passengers in the elevator when His Holiness very suddenly succumbed to virus. With his last lucid thought, the Holy Father understood what was happening, recognized the peril to the group and forgave Gagliardi for the necessity."

He stared around the table, meeting each the eyes of each official in turn.

I stared across the narrow chamber, focused on a point a thousand meters away.

"When the senior surviving officer of the Pontifical Swiss Guard was infected only an hour ago, he, too, recognized the danger that his illness represented, and knowing that suicide is a mortal sin, begged the Hauptman to end his life. I pray to God with thanks that we have strength such as this officer left in our ranks, especially now."

A few of officials looked like they wanted to object, but they only darted glances at reddening mark on Archbishop Tangretti’s face.

"The mother church is at mortal risk," Crivetto went on. "His Holiness is dead. The entire Conclave is likewise dead. There are doubtless infected staff and dependents inside the Vatican. Unless we move swiftly to contain the infection and protect the Faithful, we risk everything."

"Your Eminence, what do you propose?" asked Archbishop Atherton-Clive. "His Holiness, may God grant him peace, set forth very specific guidance on these matters, conforming to the most hallowed doctrine. We cannot divert from his path unless redirected by a new pontiff."

The deputy vicar of Rome and vice-regent was very much a member of the existing power structure. Atherton-Clive been appointed by the late pope’s predecessor. Though a member of the Familia Pontificalis, or papal family, his office oversaw the diocese of Rome and had no real authority in Curia matters. However, his boss had been a significant political player in Church politics. The vicar of Rome had also been a cardinal.

I think that he was the one that Muller took in the throat.

"This emergency is without precedent, Your Grace," responded Cardinal Crivetto. "And you’ll of course pardon me if I recall to you that the Vicar of Rome and his deputy are invited to the Curia as a courtesy only."

If the vice-regent was concerned with the reminder, he didn’t show it.

"Still, Your Eminence," Atherton-Clive replied, waving away the objection. "The point stands. We can’t arbitrarily select which doctrines and traditions we’ll follow and which we’ll dispense with in the name of expediency. Just as it is doctrine that I’m present as a courtesy—" He smiled unctuously. "—so too is it true that only the pontiff may change a standing Papal Encyclical."

"Tradition has its place," said Crivetto, turning again to address the entire room. "And so does modern medicine. We will accept the plague vaccine, regardless of source. We—"

His next words were drowned out by yelled objections, delivered by several members of the Curia who stood, some pounding on the table. Atherton-Clive stayed seated, but his quiet smile spoke more loudly than the yells of his faction.

The late pope had in fact rejected human sourced vaccine. Some three dozen of the Guard who had been bitten, and turned, might otherwise have been saved. For that matter, we wouldn’t be without a pontiff if the previous one had chosen differently.

So, yes, I wasn’t neutral in this debate. And it wasn’t supposed to be a debate.

I raised my hand, and as I dropped it the section of Guard that I had brought with me, twenty strong, slammed the iron ferrules of their halberds downwards, marring the wooden floor. I’d never ordered it in this room before and the crashing sound was unexpectedly loud in the confined space. It startled the meeting attendees and silenced the historic chamber.

I felt nothing.

A few faces turned to look at us.

As a rule, the clergy do not pay much attention to most Guardsmen, though a well turned out monsignor might dart the occasional glance at the younger, handsomer recruits. Indeed, our military role was often dismissed as ceremonial. However, we now carried live blades, and our firearms, normally carried out of sight, were in plain view. I could see that some of the more thoughtful church officials were noting the changes.

I didn’t care, as long as they stayed quiet and let Cardinal Crivetto get on with his job.

"You have all noted that I’ve ordered the Guard to this meeting," Crivetto said. "Their very presence is mandated by the absence a vaccine. Without restricting entry to the City and mandating prophylaxis within, the possibility of providing lasting shelter to the Faithful is remote. We’ll immediately embrace the vaccine, and encourage dioceses everywhere to do the same."

"Your Eminence, His Holiness declared the vaccine attainted," objected a second official, who rose to his feet but moderated his tone. Bishop Dutto was a minor prelate, titular deputy to the Papal Almoner. Like most of the meeting attendees, his cardinal’s demise had left him in charge of the entire folio. With a sideways look at Atherton-Clive, he squared his narrow shoulders. "Made from corrupted material stolen from still-living members of the flock, it represents most vile of sins. The doctrine is quite clear. Your pardon, Cardinal Crivetto, but your Order may have focused your thinking too much upon worldly matters and not enough on the moral peril that represented by this temptation, in what may only appear to be the last extremity."

Murmurs of pleased agreement buzzed around much of the room, and Dutto sat, arranging his robes. Crivetto briefly allowed the low sidebars to continue.

Then the Camerlengo stood and leaned on the gleaming table top with the splayed fingertips of both hands. I could see a spot of blood under one cuff. He tapped the table surface twice. The prearranged signal prompted one of my own and the halberds crashed again.

The room was still.

"Bishop Dutto, thank you for recalling to me the precepts of my Order," Crivetto said, his face set like stone. "The Cistercians are misunderstood by many, and indeed our habits of manual labor, austerity and fidelity have often felt quite removed from the—" he paused, sweeping his eyes over the assembled council, all clad in formal attire made of rich, colorful fabric. "—sophistication of the Diocese of Rome. However, long has my Order endured both the disdain of our more worldly brethren as well as truly dire straits, such as the Nazi occupation of Greece, or the crushing of the Hungarian revolt by the Soviet fist. We know something about the last extremity. One might suppose that is why His Holiness appointed me and a few brothers to this place…"

He paused and took a deep breath.

"Fellow members of the Familia Pontificalis and my Brothers in Christ," he began. "I’m afraid that you’ve misunderstood. I am not contravening doctrine in any way, not in the slightest detail. I’m also not seeking your agreement. The office of the Camerlengo includes the historical duty to serve as acting sovereign of Vatican City in all matters, both legal and spiritual, during an interregnum. In order to elect a new pope we must again assemble the College of Cardinals, and I will work diligently towards that goal. However, until that happens, my word is the final word. Vaccinations will begin at once. Any who refuse may relocate to the Castel S’ant Angelo—"

The incipient roars of opposition were stilled as soon as I raised my hand, preparing to signal the Guard again.

"—immediately." finished Crivetto.

Archbishop Tangretti looked first at me and then towards the Camerlengo. A bright red hand print was now visible on his face. The man of the cloth communicated his hate and fear very clearly with bright, loathing eyes. However, he kept his peace.

Down the table, Atherton-Clive still wore his smile.

* * *

The recipe for vaccine is pretty brutal. It starts like this. "Begin with three dozen live infected humans. Separate spinal cords from surrounding tissue and process to a fine even, consistency." I think that they’re omitting an important step. I hope that they’re omitting a step.

I know for certain that I do not want to know how to recognize "a fine, even consistency."

Apparently, the hospital had people for that.

The vaccine was a two-part series of injections, at least a week apart. The first dose "primed" your immune system to recognize H7D3. It began to provide a little protection, but for full coverage, the "booster" was needed to accelerate the immune system’s response to the point where you could reliably beat the infection before the first phase of the flu hospitalized you. So, one person meant two shots.

Despite the papal sanction against the manufacture and use of the vaccine, many Italian Catholics who had both the connections and the budget were still clamoring for it. Where there is a demand, someone will find a supply, and the demand was enough that while we were dithering, the black market stock was being used as fast as it was made. Further, the lab manufacturing the vaccine had an "arrangement" with the Polizia Stato—the police handled raw materials in exchange for finished product.

We found out later that was not uncommon on a small scale, pretty much everywhere. Seems as though persons who are charged with high risk duties have a tendency to find solutions on their own, and policy makers be damned.

Damned.

Get it? I joke.

Anyway. The lab wouldn’t do delivery and their agents, the cops, wouldn’t sell to us, not openly. We had to go pick it up at a hospital. Fortunately, there are no fewer than five hospitals within a three kilometer drive from the walls of the Vatican. Our target was Salvator Mundi Internationale Hospitale.

Despite the apparently heartfelt emotions in the Curia’s war council, most of the senior Vatican officials and nearly all of the staff elected to accept the course of vaccine. The permanent population of the Vatican used to be about eight hundred, of which a fifth was the Swiss Papal Guard. However, more than two thousand worked there, and that’s not counting the tour operations. Even after attrition and desertion, we were already housing about fifteen hundred in total. The list of petitioners for refugee status grew daily.

Cardinal Crivetto had been quite specific about everyone in the Holy City requiring a complete course of vaccine.

Do you know what that costs?

During early negotiations I asked the Directore di Hospitali, but he equivocated. The bottom line was, "How much you got?" Paper currency and bank drafts were no longer negotiable. Bullion was a possibility. The Vatican isn’t short on gold. But what he really wanted was the Lancea Longini.

That’s right.

The good directore wanted the Spear of Destiny that is locked deep under the Basilica. In exchange for a six hundred units each of primer and booster now, and triple that in two weeks, he’d accept the lance of Centurion Longinus, who stabbed the crucified Christ.

I had a feeling that this was going to be a one-time transaction, but if that is what it took, I’d take the deal. Of course, I had to get permission from Crivetto.

He said yes without a second thought, but endorsed my insistence on getting all the vaccine up front.

Still a pragmatist.

* * *

Very early in the crisis, we had deployed the vehicle barricades that closed off vehicle access to the St. Peter’s Square. Despite experimentation, our efforts proved that there was no practical way to stop pedestrians from entering the Square itself. Not even the Gendarmerie’s riot control grenades, shot into the Square from high above, kept the supplicants away permanently. Both refugees and infected humans could stroll all the way up to the base of the steps of the Basilica and short of shooting them out of hand, there was nothing to done about it.

However we could close and fortify the building entrances. We also completely blocked pedestrian access from St. Peter’s Square into the Vatican proper. The walls of the old stone buildings were more than sufficient to keep zombies at bay. Any sane humans that appeared to have evil intent were verbally cautioned over loudspeakers and if they persisted, given a warning shot. After the collapse of our relationship with the police, I ordered the omission of the warning shot.

More on that later.

The point is that we couldn’t just drive out of St. Peter’s Square and ease on down Via delle Fornaci—I mean the main road south to the hospital. And even if we could, the roads weren’t wholly safe. Supplies were running low in the city, particularly petrol. Any vehicle was going to attract attention both from criminals and the merely desperate.

Why did I fear the regular people? Just because I’m not a parent doesn’t mean that I can’t understand how a father will do anything to provide for his family. Know how easy it is to stop a vehicle?

Exactly.

So, yes, our mission needed to account for every threat. On the outbound leg, we had surprise on our side. But anyone watching would know that we had to eventually return.

We rolled out the sally port built into the Museo Vaticano and made it to the hospital without incident. The greatest challenge was navigating the around spilled mounds of black plastic garbage bags that were heaped head high along the street. The naked infected we just ignored.

The swap was likewise unremarkable. The directore was sweating, but that might have only been the fact that I’d ordered full Quick Reaction Team kit for the job. I used Muller to carry the locked Haliburton case with the lance head inside, so the Municipali at the meet got a good look at his hulking size. We’d had to order special body armor for him—they just didn’t have troll-sized kit on the shelf. Of course, Boivin and several others were covering us. We’re limited to individual small arms, but the Gendarmerie aren’t, so I’d borrowed a couple of their automatic weapons gunners.

Nothing says “Tutti stanno calmi, calmi…” like a bipod mounted FN Minimi and a box magazine of belted ammunition. Except perhaps, two of them.

Yes indeed. One per vehicle, perched across the roof.

I checked the coolers that the directore offered us. As far as I could tell, everything was present and correct. I’d insisted on getting the complete order in one go, despite his bleating that he couldn’t afford to short other customers. Eventually, with a few glances at our team, he yielded, and added a third container.

We left the hospital without incident.

It is a human failing to want to relax as soon as you pass the point of maximum perceived danger. That’s an error.

The mission is never over until you count your last Guardsman across the threshold and turn over the post. Which is why, even as we turned onto Viale Vaticane, the road that parallels Vatican City just outside the stone walls, I wasn’t wholly surprised when a Carabinieri panel van shot out of the alley and hit us. Aldemar was one of our Guards who’d been to driving school, so his reactions kept the impact to a glancing blow, instead of being center punched as the attackers intended.

Once we came to rest, however, we were hung up on a traffic bollard.

Immediately, small arms fire peppered our SUV. I wasn’t too worried, since the damage to the bullet proof glass suggested a light caliber. However, we were immobile, which means we were vulnerable. Right on time, glass jars of petrol broke against the hood and grill. They were trying to damage the engine, not merely kill us outright. That meant a hijack.

Then the first high powered round pierced the glass, and struck Detective Tranquilo, the Gendarme with the FN. We immediately scrunched down behind the thicker door armor, and Hallebardier Aldemar rocked the SUV, trying to free us.

Understand, that this all happened in the space of fifteen seconds. I was still processing the direction of the attack, reaching for a trauma bandage with one hand and keying the radio mic with the other when the Boivin saved our ass. He ordered his driver to ram our stalled vehicle, knocking us back onto the road. He’d also gotten all of his guns into play, and plaster, cement and stone chips flew from the orange facade of the hotel that held our ambushers.

Then one of the windows of the hotel opposite our walls belched flame. I thought it was a rocket attack and cursed. That we couldn’t survive. Even as bile rose in my throat, a second window exploded, and the incoming fire dropped to almost nothing. I registered a sharp bark and looked over to see Boivin hanging outside passenger window of the second SUV, shooting his third grenade from a South African revolving tear gas launcher. Then a fourth.

While I knew that we had access to the crowd control weapon, I had no idea where Boivin had found explosive grenades. I probably didn’t want to know. Actually, scratch that. I really did want to know. We could use some more.

Meanwhile, we were still in the ambush zone and eventually some creative opportunist would come along to finish what our ambushers started.

"Will it run?" I asked Aldemar.

For an answer he gunned the gas pedal, and our SUV crabbed down the street a few hundred more yards, paced by my faithful Boivin.

Who attacked us? Someone with a police truck. Doesn’t prove it actually the Carabinieri. Was it the original buyers for the vaccine? Maybe desperate citizens that resented our apparent safety inside Vatican City? I still don’t know. Doesn’t matter.

The Gendarme bled out from his neck wound before we drove back into the sally port.

* * *

Cardinal Crivetto never relinquished the initiative that he seized during the first postmortem meeting of the Curia. He had the full, public support of only a few of the prelates. Much of the Curia and the surviving members of the College of Cardinals were overwhelmingly focused on finding a mechanism to reconvene the Conclave. Globally, there were still many cardinals, but the rule prohibiting members of the college older than eighty from voting subtracted heavily from the available pool. Many cardinals, often the younger and more pious, had also succumbed to the disease in the course of living up to their oaths to minister to the sick.

In fact, the entire basis for one of the seven sacraments, the Anointing of the Sick, was nearly called into question. Fortunately protocols that permitted clergy to minister to the "sick," even if they were bound, muzzled and tranquilized, were adopted from practices secretly perfected by the Archdiocese of New York. In fact, issues of scale persuaded them to administer last rights to thousands of infected at a time.

Talk about pragmatists.

At least it cut down on the number of priests that we were losing.

I know that this account is rambling.

Sorry.

I haven’t even mentioned one of my biggest problems. When I added it to the agenda for the weekly executive session of the Curia, it blew up more than a little bit.

We were nearly out of ammunition.

The sole remaining cardinal in Rome didn’t lose his head.

"Hauptman Gagliardi, we won’t try to dissect how this came to be," Cardinal Crivetto said, gesturing around the table where the weekly Curia executive committee was in session. "We must focus on what we can do. Is there more ammunition to be had anywhere?"

"Of course, we must discuss who is responsible for this outrageous lapse!" stated Archbishop Tangretti, lightly tapping one fist on the table. "Who’s to be held accountable? Is there not a store of military supplies beneath our feet?"

The good archbishop had gotten over his shock of being slapped. Then again, he wasn’t raising his voice overmuch or actually pounding the table, even now.

I’d take it.

Besides, he had a point.

The Vatican is honeycombed with tunnels, storerooms and secret passages. Construction projects overlapping nearly a millennium and a half of human activity have created a large amount of storage space. You’d think that with all that room, someone would have a tremendous cache of arms and equipment.

"Your Eminence, Your Grace, honored members of the Curia," I said, standing up. I’d been promoted to an actual seat at the table by this time. "There certainly have been substantial military stores inside our walls in the past, indeed there was a time the papal Armeria included muzzle loading cannon. However, we are limited by treaty and by Papal Bull to a much smaller force now. Our ordinary needs are modest and our ammunition is stored with the police, whose facilities we use to train."

Swiss Guard recruits were required to take a history class in the original Italian, but I won’t inflict that upon you. Suffice to say that in the early twentieth century, the Vatican accepted dramatic limits on its military capabilities in exchange for extra-territorial concessions from Italy. Then, in 1970, the reigning pope relinquished all but a ceremonial force.

Us.

"Then draw your ammunition from the police!" demanded Tangretti. The deputy secretary of state was nothing if not single-minded.

"The Carabinieri and the Stato are already operating somewhat…" I searched for an appropriate adverb. "… independently. Our stocks of ammunition were not huge to begin with. At this time, we cannot be certain that they still exist."

There was a low rumble of displeased conversation around the table.

Our ammunition stockpile had never really been worthy of the name, even prior to the advent of H7D3. Despite the more aggressive role assigned to the Guard after the assassination attempt on His Holiness John Paul II, the impact was principally on our protective role, not sustainment. In fact, during my vacation to the United States, I’d seen medium sized gunstores with several times the amount of ammunition that we kept on hand for range training.

"Can we not persuade them to relinquish some of our ammunition?" asked the Camerlengo. "Perhaps, Archbishop Atherton-Clive, you might lend us the support of the Diocese of Rome and persuade the police to yield back to the Vatican that ammunition so critical to our protection?"

Atherton-Clive tapped a gold pen on the table top before replying.

"Prior to the ill-advised raid on the Salvator Mundi that might’ve been possible," he said, holding the gleaming pen upright like a stylized exclamation point. "But now, our contacts in the Municipali are most upset and our relations are tenuous."

The police force was rapidly crumbling. We’d received a pro-forma request for extradition for unnamed Swiss Guard personnel who’d participated in the purchase of vaccine and subsequent gunfight outside our walls. The extradition order lacked any of the signatures which would make it genuine—understandable since many of the senior bureaucrats were dead or had fled the city.

Before I could argue, a browned-cassocked monk glided forward to hand Crivetto some papers.

I hadn’t realized that at least one of the Camerlengo’s aides was a Cistercian as well.

Huh.

Cardinal Crivetto read for a moment and then rebutted his colleague.

"I ordered the operation and so their anger should be laid at my feet," he said, consulting notes now laid at his side. "But a business transaction is hardly a raid. As if they dare to add me to the extradition order. Yet everyone in this room has already benefited from the initial injections, including you, Your Grace."

"Respectfully, Your Eminence, one doesn’t bring machine guns to a business meeting," Atherton-Clive said, reminding everyone about my security precautions. He might have continued with that logic because the Curia wasn’t comfortable with the twin concepts of force and violence. Instead, he made a significant error.

"But quite apart from the provocation that Gagliardi offered the authorities, you may recall that I did not request to be vaccinated with medicine made from the bodies of the dead. If I accepted your order, it was because of your temporary authority and my calling to serve the Church takes precedence, even if I must endanger my immortal soul upon your order to do so."

More than one prelate inhaled sharply, both at the gall of the vice-regent as well as the impact of his words. It wasn’t the first time that they’d thought about it, but it was the first time it had been spoken aloud since the vaccinations had started.

As Americans like to say, shit just got real.

As much as the assembled survivors were wary of the Camerlengo, they were creatures of habit. They were accustomed to the certainty of rote ceremony and hierarchy. Even if the Camerlengo was slightly alarming, his authority flowed from centuries of tradition.

To a significant majority, as it turned out, internal revolt was a more terrifying possibility than either zombies or Crivetto with indefinitely extended authority.

"You could’ve tended your business from S’ant Angelo," the Camerlengo replied, smiling towards the archbishop. "You still could, if you feel the moral hazard is too severe to allow you to remain here."

Precious few of the staff inside Vatican City had declined the vaccine. Even though it was made with attenuated virus, it wasn’t uncommon to experience mild discomfort for a few days as one’s immune system adjusted to the deliberately weakened disease. We had been administering it weekly to the Guard and rotating by section, largely out of an abundance of caution to ensure that we had enough hale Guardsmen every day. Second section had just received their last shot. In another month, all of us would be fully protected.

There weren’t enough Guard to protect S’ant Angelo, though. It was far less secure, and certainly more austere. And of course, to be outside Vatican City meant to be excluded from influencing the selection of the next pope.

That last made this mildly voiced rebuttal equal parts reminder and threat. Atherton-Clive briefly clawed his fingers before hiding them in his lap. He glanced at Dutto, who dutifully noted his cue.

"Your Eminence, how are we to protect ourselves without arms?" he asked.

I took up the thread of my initial briefing again.

"We have some ammunition, sufficient to defend against limited criminal behavior by uninfected persons." I said. "However, other than in a complete security failure, all future defense against infected humans will be effected by Swiss Guard in full armor and equipped with hand weapons. Our polearms are well suited to this role. The Armeria has dozens of historical armors with provide full coverage, and even the modern issue of armor includes a curraiss and morion," I added, referring to our individually fitted back and breast plates as well as helmets.

"Then we’ll be trapped inside, with no way out!" Dutto bleated.

"Calmi, Bishop Dutto," the Camerlengo said, motioning with both hands palm down, over the table. "Our place is here. We’ll accept as many more refugees as we can inoculate, we’ll provide guidance for the global church and we will seek to gather the College of Cardinals as soon as is practical."

"And when will that be, Your Eminence?" asked Atherton-Clive. "The Faithful need their pope."

I didn’t like our vice-regent, but we agreed on his last point.

* * *

As the ranking surviving officer of the Swiss Guard, I’d taken to sleeping in my office, only a few steps from the guardroom. It was no surprise when I was woken in the middle of the night only a few days after announcing our switch in primary fighting weapons. Full armor was now the required uniform for all internal posts, while Kevlar-clad Guardsmen and Gendarmerie discreetly patrolled our walls the better to avoid attracting the attention of infected below.

"Feildwebel, rouse the Hauptmann, already!" a voice said beyond my door. I didn’t recognize the speaker. "We must advise him on the incident and it can’t wait."

It was the work of a moment to pull on boots and don a cap before striding out to find Muller stolidly arguing in a low voice that I wasn’t to be disturbed. Boivin’s instruction, presumably.

"What’s the matter?" I said, breaking up their argument.

The newly-arrived guard turned to me with relief visible on his weathered face. It was Wachmeister—literally watch-master—Lecuyer, a ten-year man. He held his partisan at the trail and saluted.

"Herr Hauptman, there has been an incident," Lecuyer said. "One of the refugees was screaming and one of my section found a prelate—ah—interfering with a small child."

Well, fuck. There wasn’t time to do anything but confront the situation. The last thing we could afford was an open confrontation between clergy and our refugees, and with a dependent involved, the potential for conflagration was, you’ll pardon the expression, alles abgefuckt.

"Muller, boots and saddles," I bit out. "Turn out the reaction team and send a private message to His Eminence that we will need his guidance very shortly." I turned back to the Wachmeister.

"Take me there, immediately."

It was a few hundred yards to the wing of the Palazzo which we had converted to a sleeping area but I didn’t tarry, and only a few minutes elapsed before I strode into the office indicated by Lecuyer.

Another guardsman, this one a newly minted hallebardier in Fourth Section named Taliaferro, held his halberd at the low ready. His breath rasped audibly in the stone room, even though we were the ones who had just finished running. The needle-sharp spike that projected past the bill of his weapon hovered only a handspan from his prisoner’s throat.

The man looked up, his terrified expression seeking delivery as our boots scuffed to a halt.

It was Dutto.

* * *

Cardinal Crivetto didn’t wait for morning to conduct a quick inquiry. After receiving my succinct verbal report, he ordered that the enhanced guard force remain in position and very politely requisitioned the office of the late commander of the Pontifical Guard.

Under his instruction, we quietly orchestrated the meeting well before daylight. Six of my best, including the ogrelike Muller, were present. Three lined one wall and the others formed a shield around the mother of the child that Dutto had… well, molested is too light a term, but it will do. It had taken some persuasion to part the mother from her child, but after seeing her offspring safely ensconced in the Guard-only infirmary with one of the brown robed Cistercians and hatchet-faced Boivin for company, she reluctantly agreed to participate.

A fire danced in the grate, providing much of the light in the room. The large legal desk was overlaid with a plain white cloth, where a plain wooden crucifix was paired with a thick leather bound tome. A brazier stood in one corner, small blue flames occasionally darting above the grill and the objects laid there.

The entire scene was outside my experience.

However, we are sworn to obey His Holiness or His successor.

I stood by the door and when the seated Camerlengo gave a nod, I knocked against the door frame. A few moments later, a group approached, heralded by heavy footsteps and querulous pleading.

A Cistercian monk in a traditional brown robe, belted with a heavy beaded rosary, strode through tightly gripping the arm of Bishop Dutto. The prelate had been held under guard, and his black cassock appeared to be newly torn at the neckline and down one sleeve. He entered, visibly reluctant, and was trailed by a second monk. That man mirrored the first, firmly holding the accused’s second arm.

Both brothers carried small wooden cudgels, wrapped with thin pieces of iron.

Those were also new in my experience.

All present remained silent as the trio halted in front of the desk.

Dutto’s eyes darted around the office, searching for any anchor or familiarity to orient himself.

"Bishop Dutto, we are met to conduct an ecclesiastical inquiry into the incident reported by," Crivetto said, consulting a notepad. "Mrs. Angelina Tranquilo, widow of Gendarme Detective Tranquilo. Specifically, that you sexually assaulted a minor, her child, this very night inside the walls of Vatican City."

"I, uh, I mean, Your Eminence," Dutto said, stuttering.

"It is only meet and proper that you are advised of the complaint of Mrs. Tranquilo, the report of the pontifical surgeon and the report of Guardsmen Lecuyer and Taliaferro."

I flicked my eyes over to the young guardsman. He stared at Dutto, eyes slitted and sweat beading his forehead. Anger comes in many flavors, and Taliaferro was possessed of an indignant fury.

"The statements are quite comprehensive and leave no room for doubt as to what occurred," the Camerlengo said, implacably. "This inquiry is to give you an opportunity to confirm these reports and explain your actions."

"This isn’t proper, Your Eminence," Dutto replied unevenly. "I reject these accusations. Any inquiry must occur in due course, Archbishop Atherton-Clive was quite clear, this was perfectly arranged, I—"

"It was arranged, then?" Crivetto said, sitting back and seeming to relax. He smiled pleasantly.

"Yes, yes Your Eminence, the vice-regent told me himself, it was perfectly fine. He made the preparations for…" And then Dutto stopped, doubtlessly skipping ahead to the logic which would imperil not just himself but his master. He attempted to backtrack.

"I mean no, no indeed, I mean…"

"Well?" the Camerlengo cut off what would have been a long lists of protests, raising a single hand across his chest, fingers bladed together. "Which is it? There’s no room for denial. Are you suggesting that a senior prelate, the vice-regent for the Vicar of Rome himself was procurer for this vile act?"

The accused shut his mouth, which previously had been open in mid-expostulation. The clopping sound would have been amusing under other circumstances.

"Tell me Bishop Dutto," Cardinal Crivetto said, giving the prelate another chance. "Tell me now of your arrangement with the vice regent. For the sake of your immortal soul, tell me all."

Dutto stood mute, slowly straightening his spine, building his defiance.

"The evidence is overwhelming, Your Excellency. I give you one more opportunity to speak of your own free will, before God." the Camerlengo said. His words were absorbed by the old stone that walled us in.

Silence.

“Please!” Crivetto said, his tone suddenly changed. Pleading. “I implore you. Speak fully, spare yourself pain. There’s not time enough for me to persuade you to return to God. Please do not compel me to put you to the question!”

“You cannot!” Dutto replied, his voice firmer than it had been a moment before. “The Cardinal Camerlengo no longer has that authority. Only the Doctrine of the Faith applies.”

Dutto thought himself safe. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is—rather—was a sort of supreme court for senior members of the church who were accused of serious crimes. Only a few years before I was born, it was known by a different name, an ancient name.

The Inquisition.

There was a long pause.

Then the Camerlengo pounded his fist into the table top three times. By the third stroke, his face had transformed. His eyes were cold.

“The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith died inside the Sistine Chapel,” Crivetto said, slamming his fist into the table top yet again, making the crucifix jump. “I alone survive.”

Crivetto eyed his subject a moment longer and then nodded to Muller, who strode two steps to the brazier and selected a heated pair of insulated pliers. He brandished them with a grin, clacking the jaws in an obscene parody of castanets.

"What… ?" Dutto stammered, eyes wide now. "What are you doing?"

"As the scholar that you seem to be it should interest you, Bishop Dutto, that prior to the Lateran Treaty the Mother Church retained the option of physical persuasion in matters of ecclesiastical courts," Crivetto said, opening the book before him to a marked page. "As Camerlengo and sole remaining member of the Congregation that you correctly reference, I am the supreme ecclesiastical authority until the election of a new pontiff. In this matter, I have elected to return to the guidance of laws written when crimes such as yours were addressed more… robustly. It has been nearly a hundred years since then. Of course I have taken due care to consult with authoritative references. You will be reassured that we will strictly conform to prior ecclesiastical precedent, you see."

He consulted the book while Dutto looked wildly around the room. I gave him a bored glance, but most the others ignored him, save the widow Tranquilo, who met his frantic looks with truculence. Muller, who stood just to one side, snapped the pliers again.

"Ah, yes." Crivetto ran a finger down the page as he continued. "Here we are. Of course, physical, ah, intercession, was limited only to serious charges. Heresy. Apostasy."

He lifted his eyes again to meet Dutto’s unbelieving gaze.

"Pederasty."

Dutto swallowed, and watched Muller advance. The steel of the pliers had discolored in the flames and the air stirred above them, heated by the burning hot metal.

"You wouldn’t dare!" the prelate said. "You wouldn’t!"

The monks to either side of Dutto gripped his arms firmly.

If I had been my normal self, the screaming would have bothered me a lot more.

* * *

Morning mass was still a fixture of Vatican City.

Early morning sunlight streamed into the medium-sized chapel at a sharp angle, gemmed by the brilliant colors on the ancient stained glass. I stood near the Camerlengo, stained by a puddle of red-tinted light, cast by the image of the Sacred Heart.

The Guard, and perforce myself were on station, just as the Cardinal Camerlengo had carefully outlined following Dutto’s interrogation.

We were sworn to obey His Holiness or his successor.

By Cardinal Crivetto’s firm, standing suggestion, all of the Curia had made a habit of attending the daily seven a.m. service. Upon their entry this morning, they discovered a rather different setting. The altar furnishings were moved, and last night’s table, complete to crucifix and lawbook, was present. Something else had changed as well.

Aspiring bishops and archbishops dreamed of the day when they could don the crimson mantle of a cardinal, to become a Prince of the Church. Once they won that distinction, they rarely were seen in public without it. However, this morning Cardinal Crivetto wore a different garment, matching that of the other brown-clad Cistercian who flanked him on the dais.

As prelates arrived, they were conducted to their seats by a line of Guardsmen. By prior arrangement, we packed them into the pews closest to the front. The buzz of questions grew, but the Camerlengo sat unmoved until the entry of the last bishop occasioned the closing of the iron bound doors. Then he stood, displaying the broad red sash that belted his cassock and signaled his status as the last cardinal in Rome.

As he rose, the Swiss Guard came to attention, their cuirasses gleaming.

“My fellow Brothers in Christ, this morning we cannot celebrate Mass.” Cardinal Crivetto said, his voice soaring above the chatter courtesy of the small microphone clipped to his robe. “This morning, I was summoned to find that one of our own had interfered with a refugee, a small child. During the questioning, I learned that the death of His Holiness was not random chance, but the culmination of a careful plot. Therefore, we are met to hear the evidence against members of our congregation who conspired to murder His Holiness. Further, in the course of this conspiracy, the innocence of refugees sheltering within our walls was bartered away in exchange for silence from those complicit in terrible crimes.”

Even the threat of our halberds and my sidearm could not contain the murmurs.

“Crivetto, are you mad!” one voice rose above the rest. Atherton-Clive stood, his face white with fury. “What is this? On what authority do you begin any proceeding? This is an outrageous overstepping of your limited authority! Only the Congregation of the Faithful may call a full trial, and the Congregation-”

“The Congregation of the Faithful is dead!” thundered the Cardinal Camerlengo, still standing, his fists clenched in the air at chest height.

Startled, I stared at him, with the rest of the gathered Curia. This had not been any part of our plan.

“Archbishop Atherton-Clive. Sit. Down,” the Camerlengo said, his amplified voice over riding the archbishop and forestalling any reply. “Or I will have you bound to that pew.”

Atherton-Clive sat, his bloodless face a sharp contrast to his red-trimmed midnight stole.

After a moment, the Camerlengo sat as well. My Guard returned to parade-rest.

“As you well know, I alone remain among the cardinale who led the Congregation of the Faithful,” Crivetto went on in a slightly more normal tone of voice. “We find ourselves in a dark time and at a moment when we must work in concert, we instead confront evil inside our own ranks—inside the very walls of the Holy City. Therefore, we will return to the harshest of God’s law. I invoke the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition.”

Gasps of understanding were suddenly audible.

“And as to my limited authority-”

He let his eyes rove around the mostly silent room, passing over the hand-picked Guardsmen that I led.

The faintest rattle of armor came from one side of the nave. I glanced over at the offending guardsman. It was Taliaferro, from the previous night. He stilled under my look.

“Crivetto, you’re a power mad fool!” Atherton-Clive snarled. He stayed seated. “What evil do you speak of, then?”

“Ironic, that you label me power mad, Your Grace,” the Camerlengo replied. “I speak of your plan to succeed His Holiness, after he died of the disease which he contracted due to your careful preparation. I speak of your plot to kill the College of Cardinals. I speak of your web of collaborators whom you compensated with promises of power and the corruption of the flesh.”

“Absurd!” Atherton-Clive answered, and then twisted in his seat to address the remains of the Curia. “Crivetto’s cracking under the strain of his office. Where’s any proof of any of this madness, I ask you!”

“I have the proof here,” answered Cardinal Crivetto, tapping a clipped sheaf of notes. “Carefully transcribed from the questioning of Bishop Dutto which I personally attended this very morning. And I have Bishop Dutto to certify this testimony.”

He rang a small bell. The door to the sacristy opened and the remaining Cistercian monk pushed a wheelchair ahead of him. Bishop Dutto’s ashen face was beaded with sweat, despite the cool temperature. His hands were covered in white bandages, and his feet were splinted into place on the chair’s footrests. His wide eyes took in the entire room, like a sacrifice wondering which hand held the knife.

A widespread gasp spread across the gathered prelates, and the group swayed as though a strong wind had buffeted the room.

“What happened to you?” Atherton-Clive’s voice rang to the rafters, but Dutto was silent. “This man has been tortured! Who’s responsible for this outrage!”

I’d anticipated this question. We were back on script now. I ordered my Guard to attention and back to rest.

“Attenzione!” And the four-meter ashwood-hafted polearms snapped to the vertical.

“Riposo!” And the gleaming bills and spikes of the halberds were shoved a meter closer to the pews.

Two dozen halberds suddenly thrust towards the congregation had the intended salubrious effect.

The space was once again quiet, except for the rasping inhalations of the vice-regent.

“I put Bishop Dutto to the question,” the Camerlengo replied. His voice filled the still room. “And Bishop Dutto himself will explain why.”

He turned to the seated bishop.

“Your Excellency?”

Dutto stirred, and leaned to the opposite side of his wheelchair before he spoke.

I stared at him, at the man whose fellow plotters had placed me in the impossible position of having to shoot the man that I had sworn my life to protect. My hands quivered at my sides as he stuttered through the details of entire repugnant affair, occasionally lapsing into long pauses only to be gently encouraged by the Camerlengo.

The infection of the pope. The brokering of counterfeit vaccine to several of the cardinals who were terrified of H7D3 and prepared to accept the medicine after the death of His Holiness. The attempt to block the return of the true vaccine to the Vatican. Lastly, trading access to minors in exchange for the continued alliance with Atherton-Clive.

The restless Curia had stilled as soon as Dutto mentioned infecting the pope with the virus. The tale of the mass murder of the College of Cardinals drew mutters and a few of the Curia edged away from the vice-regent. By the time that Crivetto prompted Dutto to speak up as he recounted his personal crime against the child there was an armspan of open space around Atherton-Clive and a few of his closest supporters.

Finally, Dutto ran down the last bits of his testimony before sagging backwards like a doll whose sand was leaking out. Into the hushed atmosphere one of the prelates disbelievingly addressed a former friend.

“Gregory, is this true?” an older archbishop said, extending his arm to touch Atherton-Clive’s shoulder. The accused batted the shaking hand away.

“Shut up, you damned fool,” Atherton-Clive said, squaring his shoulders and facing the Camerlengo. “Your pet dogs will enforce this farce, no doubt, Crivetto. What would you have of me?”

“Confess, Your Grace,” replied Cardinal Crivetto. “Choose to repent. Declare a vow of silence, never again exercise any ordained ministry and accept a life at prayer within these walls for the rest of your life. If you insist upon the full trial under the Inquisition, you will certainly face a capital sentence.”

“You leave me nothing!” Atherton-Clive sidled towards one edge of the open space, but kept well distant from the nearest Swiss Guard.

“I offer mercy,” answered the Camerlengo.

“I choose more,” said the archbishop, unrepentantly. He drew a small, flat automatic from under his vestments and shot the nearest guards four times. One was Aldemar, and he slumped, dropping his halberd with a clatter. The other lay face down so suddenly, I couldn’t be sure who I’d lost. The vice-regent grabbed Archbishop Tangretti by the neck to serve as a human shield.

At the first shot, several Guardsmen, including myself, lunged into the space between the Camerlengo and the shooter. Others advanced with their halberds as Atheron-Clive walked backwards out of the pew and towards the front of the church. For a sixty-year-old man, he moved well. Of course, he had the advantage of surprise and desperation. The other prelates were shocked into immobility and then panicked at the sudden violence. Some scurried towards us like a flushed covey of quail, blocking the Guardsmen who advanced, blades at the ready.

“Halt, or I’ll shoot this man!” Atherton-Clive threatened. He wedged his gun under Tangretti’s jaw, pushing hard enough to make the muzzle disappear into the man’s fleshy wattle. Where had the archbishop found a FN Five-Seven? It had been adopted by many security services precisely because it could defeat modern armor, let alone our antiques.

“Another step, and I’ll kill him and as many more as I can!”

I only carried my familiar SIG Sauer and though I closed the gap rapidly, I was still several meters away. Even at this range, I could easily strike the hostage.

“I’m leaving!” Atherton-Clive yelled. “Nobody follow or the good monsignor will join those dogs on the floor.”

It was worth the risk. I had a nearly ideal sight picture, the front post in perfect focus, the target’s head slightly blurred but distinct.

I inhaled fully and then let half of my breath trickle out slowly.

“Hold!” the Camerlengo ordered behind me. “Don’t shoot!”

I’d been shocked at Camerlengo’s offer of leniency. His order struck me with like a blow.

I vibrated with the need to kill Atherton-Clive. For a moment I almost added the extra fraction of pressure needed to trip the sear and complete the shot, but the moment passed. I forced myself to relax a trifle, and laid my forefinger along the trigger guard. Arrayed behind me were a dozen Guardsman, weapons held horizontally, hip high.

I could hear Muller panting, restraining his own urge to close and kill.

We all wanted blood. But we were still sworn.

“You can’t escape your sins, Gregory,” Cardinal Crivetto said, almost kindly.

Atherton-Clive snarled. With his right hand he used the muzzle of his weapon to force the hostage’s head upwards and with the other, opened the counter-weighted door before slipping through.

“Boivin, guard these men with Second section!” I ordered, trusting my senior noncom to keep the other accused from fleeing. “Fourth, on me!”

Even as I screamed my orders, I lunged after the vice-regent. So did several others and we piled up almost comically as too many men with polearms attempted to open the chapel doors. Once through, we stumbled again, squinting in the sudden brightness and tripping over the abandoned hostage.

I heard the footsteps receding, and gave chase along the garden’s emerald topiaries. There was no way that I would allow Atherton-Clive to escape. He fled northwards, toward the stairs that led to the museum and the underground car park we had used to get the vaccine.

I emerged from the garden, and immediately saw my quarry surprisingly close. Atherton-Clive was no fool, and knew that he couldn’t outrun us. Instead he shot several times. One round took me across my left thigh, burning like fire. Another glanced obliquely from my helmet, wrenching my head sideways so hard I felt my neck vertebrae grate together. My leg held, though blood sheeted down my leg, saturating my sock and boot.

Ahead, I could hear Atherton-Clive calling for help. Giant, calloused hands pulled me up. Muller, watching out for me again.

He grunted, eyeing me with concern, then ordered one of the accompanying Guards to tend to the other wounded man, down with two bullets that penetrated his cuirass.

“You okay, sir?”

“It’s nothing,” I answered. I began to add more orders when I heard Atherton-Clive ahead, screaming for help. I couldn’t see the museum, but it was close. I ordered the men forward.

“Don’t wait! After him!” It was imperative that vice-regent not escape. It was a matter of honor. It was a matter of justice.

The unwounded Guardsmen sprinted boldly ahead, but I heard more shots, more than Atherton-Clive’s pistol could hold.

Muller looked the question at me. I had no idea either. Who could be shooting?

We reached the foyer of the museum’s upper floor. There we found a bloody tangle of bodies. Swiss Guards lay shot, their striped blue, gold and carmine uniforms sodden with more blood. At least two were dead, curraisses punctuated with perfect black circles, the haft’s of their halberds still gripped in armored gauntlets.

Others were wounded. But how?

Two Gendarmerie were also present. Both were dead. Lecuyer lay with both hands on his weapon. The spike of his halberd was still buried in the chest of one dead man whose soft body armor had failed to stop the heat treated steel. The throat of the other was gashed all the way to his spine. He had a carbine, which I collected as Muller and a few others saw to our wounded.

I don’t know if the Gendarmerie were part of the archbishop’s conspiracy or just reacted to the sight of the Swiss Guard chasing the archbishop with murderous intent. It didn’t matter right now, except that the vice-regent had even more to answer for.

“On me!” I said, wrenching the door to the stair open. Below I heard shouts, then a single shot.

Atherton-Clive was still in reach.

Two flights later, we burst into the small garage. Our vehicles were there, as well as a wounded Gendarmerie officer, clutching his stomach. An SUV was being used to ram open one set of exterior doors, and the attempt was failing. The vice-regent had been accustomed to being driven everywhere, and had no idea that the comparatively lightly build SUV was no match for the heavy doors that sealed the garage. While we watched, he did manage to spring one, opening a gap of perhaps a meter.

Through which a naked infected promptly appeared.

Atherton-Clive either panicked or was unimpressed, because he wrenched the transmission back to reverse, and as two more zombies came through the gap, he shifted back into forward, and tried one last time to ram the doubled doors. They shook, but stayed intact. The vice-regent did manage to push the radiator back into the fan, and I could hear it beating itself to death as green radiator coolant poured from beneath the truck.

Atherton-Clive had also ran over two of the infected in the garage, which I appreciated, but he had further widened the gap. A few more infected trickled in, growling deep in their chests, their eyes on us, their prey.

The carbine I borrowed was good enough to kill them both with only five or six shots.

I ordered the men into a line, halberds at the low ready and stood behind them. The vice-regent bailed out of the car, and I shot a zombie only a step from grabbing him.

“No tricks, Your Grace,” I warned him. “Come to us with your hands empty or I’ll leave you as a meal for the infected. Your choice.”

He looked at the zombies starting to clamber over the hood and then ran towards our line without a second thought. Muller grabbed him by the back of the neck and lifted him straight of ground. The prelate began to protest, but a light cuff left him quiet. Muller searched him roughly but thoroughly.

Infected were pouring in now. The most damaged garage door was moving back and forth, as though it were being pounded by a hammer. The amount of screaming and growling grew so loud that I had to shout to ensure I was understood.

I emptied the carbine into the press at the door, clogging it for a moment.

“Back upstairs with him, Korporal!” I said, and then readied the line. “Shoulder to shoulder—aim for throats! Here they come.”

I bought us a few more moments, running my pistol dry with carefully aimed shots, and without time for reload, I drew my rapier.

The first few zombies reached our line singly, and economical blows dropped them to the ground. The next few approached at once, and the hallebardiers made quick work of them, working together, one holding the zombie off while the second made a deliberate aimed thrust.

We backed slowly, keeping our dressing. The walls narrowed as we approached the stairs, and then one door failed entirely. It fell inwards, propped up at an angle over the car. Beyond, I could see a nearly unchecked tide of naked, infected humanity. The sound of their keening and growling was so loud that even yelled commands were swallowed by the cacophony. They pressed us, a mindless wall of hunger, and I lost another man right away, his halberd caught in the sternum of his target. He failed to let go and was swarmed. He fought on, alone. I couldn’t afford to break ranks and retrieve him.

I didn’t want to think about what it meant to leave him.

But I still think about it, every day.

We backed to the stairs and compressed our line further, only two men wide. I was in the second rank, next to Taliaferro, and we were shoved back by main force, crushing us back up the stairs. The distance was so short, that we to choke up the grip on our weapons, and take care not to trip the men behind us, but the polearms and our armor were going to make this work.

We’d almost reached the top.

All we had to do was get to the landing, back through it cautiously and block the metal door. And then without warning, Taliaferro began screaming. Confused, I looked for his attacker.

There wasn’t any.

“Get it off, get it off me, get it off, get it off!” He dropped his halberd, tripping up the man in front him. His morion flew away and he began to try to unbuckle the clamshell armor that covered his chest and back.

He never stopped screaming.

“Taliaferro!” I shook him, looking at this eyes closely. “Taliaferro! STOP!”

His skin was hot to the touch. As I drew back in shock, he howled and abandoned his efforts to get out of his armor. His eyes focused on me and when I met them, they were empty of anything by hunger and hate. There was no room to stab him with the sword. Without hesitation, I rammed my rapier blade sideways, taking him above the armor, opening up the great vein on the side of his neck.

He screamed and grabbed for my face while blood spurted into my eyes, blinding me for a moment. The men in front tripped and I heard one scream.

I think it was only one.

Unable to see, I began punching with the guard of my rapier, striking yielding softness. Once my guard struck metal. I backed up a short distance more before I was plucked from my feet and thrown backwards, skidding on my backside.

I dropped the rapier to try to clear my sticky eyes of blood. Through a red-tinted film, I saw one more Guardsman come through the foyer stairway door. Then he and Muller slammed the door shut. Muller picked up a discarded halberd and rammed the spike under the door, wedging it tightly closed.

I stood, collecting my thought. There were four of us left. One guarded Atherton-Clive, and I turned to congratulate Korporal Muller. After today, he would be getting a promotion as well as my personal thanks.

We never would have made it without him.

He was staring at his hand.

It was shaking.

“I’m not doing that, Herr Hauptman,” he said, looking fixedly at the offending limb. “I’m NOT doing that!”

His voice began to rise.

“Shit, shit, shit – sir, help me! Help me, please!”

I tried to understand. Taliaferro in the stairway. Muller above? Both had been vaccinated, receiving their booster with the rest of… the rest of Fourth section. Using the last of the booster that had been sold to us by the reluctant Directore di Hospitale. It hadn’t been quite good enough, and he’d known it.

“No, Muller no!” I yelled. I was done killing my men. I didn’t know how I would restrain him, but I was not going to shoot another Guardsman. Not even if it cost me my life.

His eyes began to grow wild and he turned and blew through the outer door, back the way we’d entered initially. I followed, bumping into the Camerlengo and a quartet of Swiss Guard. Outside, the aroused mob of infected below the parapet sounded like heavy surf beating against our walls in a terrible, unending storm. Occasional keening wails added a terrible counterpoint to the guttural moans and growls. The sound reverberated from the stone buildings that surrounded the Vatican, so that it seemed like the entire burning city was howling in madness.

Korporal Muller stood at the edge of the parapet, at the very edge of the tempest. He was frantically scratching his arm. I approached him cautiously.

“Helmut, let me help you,” I said. “Please.”

“There’s only one way to help me, sir,” he rasped. I could see what the effort to stay in control was costing him. If we could tie him up, perhaps give the antibodies time to defeat the infection, maybe I could save him.

“No, not that way, just lay down and let me secure you long enough—”

“If you won’t do it sir, I will,” Muller answered simply.

And he stepped off the wall.

* * *

There is a gap in my memory. I don’t know how long.

I didn’t pass out.

I simply chose not to remember the next few moments.

The same way I chose not to listen to the sounds below the parapet.

I did focus one on thing.

Atherton-Clive.

I stalked back to the foyer. The Camerlengo’s Guardsmen, all from Second, had collected the vice-regent. The surgeon and his assistant were working on my wounded. A pounding noise came from inside, but a glance confirmed that it was another pair of Guardsmen pounding wedges around the door to the stairway, reinforcing it.

Absently, I leaned over and collected a halberd. It had been Muller’s and the haft was tacky with congealed blood. I walked back to where Atherton-Clive was held by a hallebardier, hands zip-tied behind his back. His hair was standing up in all directions and a deep scratch marred his white skin, oozing blood.

It dripped onto his cassock front, staining the gold silk. Cardinal Crivetto watched me approach, his faced lined with concern. Before he could speak, I lowered the polearm from the vertical, and twisting my wrists, I casually whipped the ferrule around in a tight circle, striking Atherton-Clive across the abdomen.

The impact doubled him over, driving most of the air from his lungs.

“Hauptman Gagliardi!” the Camerlengo reproved me, angrily. “He has surrendered.”

“Yes,” I answered.

With practiced, nearly automatic skill, I reversed my grip, and wound the halberd through another twisting move, moving it so rapidly that the blade whistled faintly, causing vice-regent’s guard to hop back in concern.

This time the ferrule struck the prelate behind the knees, dropping him entirely to the sod, where he lay wheezing, the pain of my blow muted by his shock. I might have broken one of his legs. It didn’t matter. I let the weight of the halberd blade carry the weapon upwards, and rotated to absorb the inertia. I stopped, poised with blade cocked over my shoulder, both hands gripping the shaft a few inches apart.

“Straighten him,” I ordered the hallebardier.

With a look at my blood-stained face, he kicked Atherton-Clive into a more or less straight line, face down. No one moved to interfere, but the Camerlengo spoke up, urgently.

“Matteo, you will not strike him!” Cardinal Crivetto began to understand what I intended. “You must not take God’s justice into your own hands! He has surrendered to the will of God! He’ll spend all his days in silence, contemplating his sins.”

“Yes, yes,” Atherton-Clive said, coughing. “Prayer, con—”

He coughed more and turned his head sideways, craning his neck to look at me.

I regarded him, looking directly into his eyes and shared my torment with him.

“Contemplation,” he said. “I will remain silent for the rest of my life! The Camerlengo has ordered it!”

I answered him.

“We are sworn to obey His Holiness or his successor.”

Then I unwound the strike with all my force in my soul, and brought the blade down across his neck, severing his head from body, and his life from our world.

Finished, I dropped the halberd to the reddened sod.

* * *

Your Holiness,

The foregoing was transcribed from an audio diary discovered among the records retrieved during our evacuation of the Holy See. All of the Pontifical Swiss Guard work in Italian, but also speak German and French as well—this officer used all three so my translation may be a little choppy thereby. I believe that you worked closely with Maggiore Gagliardi, and anticipate that you would appreciate the opportunity to read how he and his men kept the faith during the darkest hours of our Mother Church.

After the Purge, the maggiore could not continue in charge. He swore an oath of silence and daily toils in the gardens, speaking to none, commanding none. Yet we need his strength, his faith and his proven fidelity. More than that, I believe that we owe him the opportunity for redemption—not to redeem himself in our eyes, but in his own.

I beg you, Holy Father, to consider visiting him again, that he might hear your words, that you might yet help him mend his wounded soul, that he might lead the Army of the Faithful. The world must be raised from the shadows. It has been some time since the Church fought for its life, but we do so now. Men like Gagliardi are needed in God’s service again.

Yours in Christ,

Monsignor Hector Gallierez

Prefect

—Excerpted from a letter addressed to His Holiness, John Paul III from the Prefect to the Papal Household.

Content

Пауэрс Тим, et al Free Stories 2018

Travis S. Taylor Pain is the Fuel

Brendan DuBois An Eagle’s Flight

David Drake The Midshipman

Kevin J. Anderson and Sarah A. Hoyt Father Avenir and the Fire Demons of Yellowstone

Susan R. Matthews Ghost Flotilla U-boats: Embarkation

Stephen Lawson Homunculus

Tim Powers By Echo Light

Steve White Out of the Vortex

David VonAllmen Dragon’s Hand

David Weber Dark Fall

I

The Dark Fall Saga

II

The Dark Fall Saga

III

The Dark Fall Saga

IV

The Dark Fall Saga

V

The Dark Fall Saga

The Dark Fall Saga

Brendan DuBois Love in the Time of Interstellar War

Mike Massa See of Darkness