Death of a Starship (24 page)

“
Xenics again. Why do you hate
xenics?”

Wrong.

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

“
You don’t hate them?”

No.

“
Then why?”

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

“
They will kill us?”

Selves.

“
They will make us kill
ourselves?”

Yes.
Once more, that air of satisfaction.

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

‡

Albrecht: Halfsummer Solar Space,
Orbit of NSS Enver Hoxha

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

He’d always wondered what purpose
felt like.

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

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

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

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

“
Are you
nuts
?”

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

‡

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

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

For some reason, that was deeply
frightening.

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

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

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

But what did it mean?

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

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

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

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

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

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

“
Who is this? The
bione?”

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

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

Albrecht watched nervously. “Are
you controlling it?”

“‘
is’en. ‘oms. Ange’ ‘lan’ing
‘oms.”

“
Bombs?”

“
Yes.” That last, strangely
clear.

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

“
S’o’ i’. Don’ kill.
Choose.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

The angel stepped over him, then
stopped.

‡

Golliwog: Halfsummer Solar Space,
Orbit of NSS Enver Hoxha

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

Enemy.

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

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

Priest.

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

“
Choose.”

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

“
Live.”

Life.

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

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

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

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

‡

Menard: Halfsummer Solar Space,
Orbit of NSS Enver Hoxha

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

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

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

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

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

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

“
How do
you
know?” Menard asked
bitterly.

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

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

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

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

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

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