6
MEETING THE EXPLORERS
Fifteen minutes later I sat at the transport bay’s control console, watching two Explorers float weightless outside the ship. These were
real
Explorers, not just fakes like me. Their suits were as glinty white as washed stucco, with cords of black piping along the sleeves and pant legs. As they drew close to
Willow,
little jets puffed out from their hips and shoulders to slow their approach.
From my point of view, the two people looked like they were completely upside down: flying along with their feet poking up in the air, because that was the angle they’d happened to come in on. But as soon as they touched the ship’s hull, they grabbed the handbar railings that surrounded the airlock entrance and pulled themselves right way up. I’d already told the ship-soul to open the outer hatch, so they slipped straight inside.
It took a minute for the airlock to cycle—and that minute felt like forever, I was so eager to see people again. These two were both humans, I could tell that from the shape of their outfits…but looking at their tinted visors and their lumpy tightsuits (with pockets and pouches and electronic attachments front and back) I couldn’t tell if the Explorers were young or old, male or female, bulky or slim. They hadn’t talked to me by radio either; there’d been no need, and Explorers aren’t the sort to chat for the sake of chatting. Not to strangers, anyway.
Finally, the inside airlock door opened and the two Explorers stepped out. A big thick observation window separated me from the transport bay, but I banged on the glass and waved. After a few seconds staring at me, both Explorers waved back. Pretty halfhearted waves, if you ask me.
“York?” a growly man’s voice asked. The Explorers had patched their helmet radios into
Willow’s
speaker system. “The name’s Tobit—Phylar Tobit.” One of the white-suited figures gave a slight bow. “And my know-nothing greenhorn partner is Benny Dade.”
“Benjamin!” the other snapped in a peevish high-pitched voice. “But everybody just cadis me Dade.”
Tobit gave a loud snort. “Dade? Who the hell calls you Dade? Everyone
I
know calls you the Sissy-boy Whiner…but I thought I’d be polite in front of company.”
Dade (or Benny or Benjamin) gave a hissy sniff that may or may not have been good-natured. I tried to keep a straight face. Explorers make a point of never addressing each other by title—it’s tradition. But without titles to go by, the young cadets sometimes get hung up on what they should or shouldn’t be called. Carefully I said, “Hello, Tobit. And, um, Benjamin. Welcome aboard the
Willow.”
“Yeah, yeah, swell,” Tobit answered, waving his arm dismissively. I tried to lock down in my head which Explorer was which, but knew I’d get mixed up as soon as they started moving. The two tightsuits looked exactly like each other on the outside, no names or insignia or anything.
“So what do you want to do first?” I called down. “Would you like a tour?”
“We’re supposed to follow a specific search pattern,” Benjamin replied, still a bit miffed and huffy. “You’re an Explorer, aren’t you, York? You should know there are procedures for this sort of thing.”
His voice sounded as young as wet paint. All full-fledged Explorers had to be at least twenty-two, but I didn’t think the boy could possibly be that old. It made me feel dry-dust ancient, the way I kept coming across recruits who were practically babies. “All right,” I told him,
“you do what you have to do. I’ll tag along and watch.”
“Yeah,” Tobit muttered, “we love spectators.” The tint on his visor had started to fade now that he was inside the ship; I could see his eyes, puffy and a little bloodshot. He stared at me a moment longer, then said, “Oh all right, you can come along. Professional courtesy to a fellow Explorer. Although if I were you, I’d just mix myself a drink and let other people do the work. You’ve been sick, haven’t you?”
“I’m fine now,” I told him. Then I whispered, “You know there isn’t really a disease, right? Everyone at the starbase is just pretending.”
He made a phlegmy noise in his throat, then said, “If everyone else is pretending, pal, I wouldn’t want to be the odd man out. The Admiralty High Council are rabid old bastards on the subject of solidarity.”
Benjamin looked at him in surprise. Before the boy could speak, Tobit went on quickly, “Okay, time to get our asses in gear. We got some damned important standard procedures to follow.” He belched loudly, then headed for the door.
It was too bad the Explorers couldn’t take off their tight-suits. As it was, I still felt kind of alone, even with them walking right beside me. They were all bundled up so I couldn’t see more than their eyes, and their voices came from the ship’s overhead speakers instead of from the people themselves.
Not that they talked to me much; Explorers really
focus
on their jobs. From the moment they left the transport bay, Tobit and Benjamin were so busy giving their home ship a running commentary of what they saw, they scarcely tossed a word in my direction. I tagged behind like baggage, through machinery rooms with automatic systems doing automatic things…till we got to the hold.
When Benjamin saw the queen he nearly jumped out of his suit. “Shit!” he squeaked. “I mean, shoot! Look at the size of that thing! I had no idea they were that big!”
Tobit didn’t take his eyes off the queen’s corpse, but he gave a deep sigh. “Benny. Buddy. My dear bright spark. Didn’t you study the goddamned Mandasar castes in Explorer Academy?”
“Yeah, sure,” Benjamin answered, “but it’s one thing to watch them on chip and another to see one up close.”
“Christ on a crutch,” Tobit muttered. “If you don’t have enough imagination to learn from normal pictures, run yourself a VR sim. The first time you meet a real alien in the flesh, I don’t want my partner gibbering, ‘
Mercy me, look at the size of that thing!’ ”
Benjamin mumbled something I couldn’t make out. If Tobit had belonged to any other branch of the navy, he’d yell, “What was that, mister?” then shout in the boy’s face for ten minutes about subordinates keeping their mouths to themselves. But Explorers hated acting authoritarian, especially if it meant browbeating their partners. Instead, Tobit turned to me. “What’s with the defense clouds around the venom sacs?”
“Oh those. Um.” I dropped my gaze. “The ship had uninvited nanites show up a few days ago…”
“What?” Tobit snapped. “No one told
us
about nanites.”
“The folks at Starbase Iris never let me get that far,” I answered. “As soon as I reported the whole crew dying, they just stopped talking to me. When I tried to tell them other stuff, they cut me off sharp.”
“Bloody hell. Those morons at Iris have their heads up their candy-coated asses.” Tobit took a deep breath. “All right, York, we’re listening now. Tell us everything. The truth, not what you think we want to hear.”
So I went through the story, right from the start-—which shocked young Benjamin, let me tell you. He couldn’t believe the kind of party
Willow
held for crossing the line. Tobit told him not to be naive. “Just goes to show,” he said, “the crew knew they’d pissed off the League. They were all in on it, they were all guilty…and they were all whacked out with fear as they came up to crossing the line. In a way, you have to admire these bastards; most Vac-heads would just sit around moaning if they knew they were going to die. At least this group had the good taste to hold an orgy.” He sighed, then glanced at me. “I don’t suppose you know what gruesome deed they’d done?”
I shook my head. “No one told me anything.”
“You were just a passenger. Getting rotated back to New Earth, right?”
“Right. I was stationed on the moonbase near Troyen, but it was getting too dangerous to stay. You know Troyen’s having a big civil war? Most of the time they just fight among themselves, but a few weeks ago someone took a potshot at us—a missile came close to landing on top of our station. The blast disrupted our outer dome field and nearly knocked down the inner one…so our base commander decided we had to evacuate. The other personnel got away in a two-person scoutship, but I was assigned to stay behind till everything shut down properly.”
“They left you on your own?” Benjamin said. “While Mandasars were shooting missiles at your base?”
“There was only the one missile,” I told him, “and I volunteered to stay. Somebody had to make sure the computers finished locking everything down. Anyway,
Willow
came to get me, so it was all right.”
Tobit asked, “When did
Willow
show up in the Troyen system?”
“Right after the others left in the scoutship.
Willow’s
name just appeared on the base’s list of in-system ships. They hung around for five days, then picked me up to go home.”
“Sounds like they were on a secret mission,” Benjamin said with sudden interest. “The way they didn’t come out till everyone else had gone. Orbiting the planet five days even when they might get shot at. Not telling you what they were up to…”
“Of course, they were on a secret mission, toad-breath!” Tobit rolled his eyes. “For one thing, they were ferrying this queen from Troyen to Celestia…which was probably what got the poor buggers killed. The League takes a dim view of folks transporting dangerous non-sentients from one star system to another. And I’ll lay you good odds this queen qualified as non-sentient—ready and willing to commit murder. You said Troyen’s been at war for twenty years?”
I nodded.
“Well then,” Tobit went on, “she’d have her own army, wouldn’t she?” He patted the queen’s chitinous flank. “How long d’you think this old gal could play warlord and still keep her mandibles clean…never taking a single wee life except in direct self-defense?” He snorted. “When I studied hive-queens at the academy, no one ever described them as saints.”
“So,” I said, “the League killed the queen because she’d killed other people. And they killed
Willow
’s crew for trying to transport a dangerous creature to another world?”
Tobit nodded. “It’s the League’s own version of disease control: never let uncivilized organisms leave their home system. This queen must have claimed to be a perfect angel, and
Willow’s
crew gambled she was telling the truth. They lost the bet.”
It made me feel bad, how I’d been puzzling over things for more than a week without getting anywhere, then someone like Tobit could walk in, take one look, and explain why everybody died. “So,” I said, worried this would be obvious too, “who sent the nanites? What did they want?”
“Fucked if I know,” Tobit answered. “What good is stolen venom? And how did the nanites get smuggled onto the ship? Who knew
Willow
would be transporting a hive-queen? Someone on Troyen? Or maybe someone on Celestia?”
“Why Celestia?” Benjamin asked.
“Jesus, boy,” Tobit groaned, “didn’t you learn
anything
at the Academy? Celestia has a Mandasar population too—ten million children were evacuated just before the shit hit the fan on Troyen. Everyone thought it was only a temporary measure; a happy-sappy field trip. But the war’s dragged on for two decades, and the brats have all grown up.”
He turned suddenly toward the queen’s corpse and stared for a few seconds. “Hey…when the Outward Fleet shipped the kids to Celestia, I don’t remember the Admiralty including any queens.”
“They didn’t,” I said. “My sister belonged to the Diplomacy Corps back then; the High Council wanted her to check with all the queens to see if any wanted to evacuate with the children. Samantha just laughed—a queen would never abandon her home territory to baby-sit a bunch of kids. It wouldn’t be regal.”
“So Celestia has ten million junior Mandasars,” Tobit murmured, “and nary a queen. Then again, who gives a shit? The lower castes are as smart as humans. They can take care of themselves.”
“But they have all these instincts,” I said. “They want guidance. They need to be ruled by a proper queen.”
Tobit made a face. “I bet a queen told you that.
The poor dear peasants couldn’t possibly survive without kissing my royal heinie.”
He grunted. “But whether or not it’s true, some of the damned lobsters probably believe it. Especially on Celestia, where they don’t remember life under a queen’s thumb. If they arrived as kids, what are they now, in their twenties? There’s bound to be some who think their lives are fucked up—at that age, you’re
supposed
to think your life is fucked up—keep your trap shut, Benny—so it wouldn’t surprise me if a chunk of the population thought a queen would make everything better. Somehow they persuaded the Admiralty to bring them one…or else the Admiralty is running a scam of its own and wanted a queen to whip the baby lobsters into line.”
“The Admiralty doesn’t run scams anymore,” Benjamin protested. “They cleaned house three years ago.”
Tobit reached out and pretended to whack the boy on the helmet. “Every time you say pig-ignorant things like that,” Tobit said, “I dock another point off your performance evaluation.” He turned to me and rolled his eyes. “Fucking useless cadets.”
7
GETTING WARNED ABOUT MY FUTURE
We kept poking our way forward through the ship. The closer we came to the lounge, the more nervous I got that the Explorers would think I was a terrible captain for not cleaning up. The refrigeration had stopped people from rotting too much, but they’d still messed themselves when all their muscles went limp; the place smelled like a toilet no one had scoured for a long time. I kept apologizing in advance, saying I’d wanted to tidy up but knew I wasn’t supposed to touch anything no matter how bad it got. Just as we went through the door, it finally occurred to me Tobit and Benjamin wouldn’t smell a tiling—they were closed up in their suits, with their own air and all, so I was the only one who had to hold his nose.
Even so, young Benjamin went stone quiet when he saw dead people lying around—a lot of them naked and none nice to look at anymore. Tobit seemed okay till he caught sight of the admiral woman who’d kissed me; then he stormed straight to the corpse and stared down at it.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Do you know her?”
“I know the original,” Tobit answered, “and I guess there’s a slight resemblance. Explains why Ms. Deadmeat here thought it would be a good costume for the party. But it’s not the real Admiral Ramos. Just some chippie dressed up.” He turned away quickly. “Do me a favor, York, and scrub that crap off her face.”
“I can clean up now?”
“As if anyone ever cared. It’s not like there’s a question about cause of death. Right, Benny?”
Benjamin was staring at the
Willow’s
captain. The captain’s holo-surround had used up its battery power days ago, so you could see the man himself now. He was wearing his uniform shirt, but from the waist down, all he had on were white socks. It was a pretty undignified look for someone of his rank. If I were a captain and thought I might die, I’d aim at leaving a more presentable corpse.
“Benny,” Tobit said. “Partner mine. Prospective pride of the Explorer Corps. Are you with us?”
“What? Oh. Sorry. Do you want to move on?”
“No,” Tobit answered, “I want to go home for a bubble bath. We’ve wasted enough time on goddamned standard procedures.” He glowered at the boy for a moment, then said, “For novelty’s sake, how ‘bout I give you a direct order? Head back to the hold, cut off the queen’s venom sacs, and pack ’em for transport back to
Jacaranda.”
“What?” The boy’s voice sounded like a yelp. I felt kind of yelpy myself. Mutilate a queen? Even if she was dead, that was nigh-on sacrilege. “Why?” Benjamin asked.
“Because somewhere on
Willow”
Tobit replied, “there are nasty wee nanites who want to steal her venom. Christ knows why they want it, but I can’t imagine it’s for the blissful good of the universe. Besides, it pisses me off when people sneak nano onto a navy ship; just on general principle, I don’t want the bastards to get what they’re after. Best way to do that is haul the venom back to
Jacaranda—
empty the place so the nanites are shit out of luck.” He held his hand up quickly, to stop me from saying anything. “And before you ask, we’ll have
Jacaranda
triple-check to make sure we aren’t carrying nanites ourselves. Our micro-defenses aren’t half-bad…on the rare occasions we’re willing to cool our heels six hours in quarantine getting a full nano scan.”
Benjamin’s eyes were wide. “You really want me to hack the sacs off?”
“Not hack, you lunkhead. Perform a delicate surgical excision. With all due care and safety. Use a scalpel instead of a chainsaw. You know—finesse. Now get your scrawny butt moving.”
The boy sounded sick but he started off. I called after him, “Be careful, okay? Venom is dangerous stuff.”
“He’ll do fine,” Tobit said. “Benny trained for Medical Corps before he transferred to exploring. He has great hands with a scalpel.”
“Thank you,” Benjamin called back over his shoulder. He could still hear Tobit’s words over the ship’s speaker system.
“But you’re a piss-awful Explorer!” Tobit shouted as the boy disappeared.
I think Benjamin gave Tobit the finger, but it’s hard to tell with a tightsuit’s bulgy gloves.
As soon as the boy was out of sight, Tobit popped off his helmet. That surprised me; Explorers are supposed to stay suited up whenever they’re on a mission, even if it’s just over to another navy ship. For another surprise, he reached up to the bulge on his throat—his communications implant—and gave it a double-tap. “There,” he said. “I’m not transmitting anymore.” He took a deep breath. “Christ, it reeks in here, doesn’t it?”
“Sorry.”
“Not your fault, pal. You wanted to leave everything as is because you thought there’d be a real investigation. Which there won’t.”
He gave me a long look as if trying to decide something. Me, I was just trying not to stare. Tobit’s face had a ravaged flush to it, pockmarked, red and veiny. An old soak’s face, though I couldn’t smell booze on him. Maybe he’d been an alcoholic but had lately gone on the wagon; or maybe he had some genetic condition that made him
look
like a lush. Sure, that had to be it—Explorers always had things wrong with them, whether they looked funny or smelled funny or sounded funny. Phylar Tobit’s problem was just a whiskey-ish face. The navy surely wouldn’t let drunks be Explorers.
“We don’t have much time,” Tobit told me, “so just shut up and listen, okay? It turns out, York, you’re in a shitload of trouble.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. Apologizing was always a good first step, even if I didn’t understand what I’d done.
“Nothing to feel sorry about,” Tobit replied. “This crap-fest isn’t your fault. But the Admiralty is plotting a cover-up, I positively guarantee it. They’ve lost an entire ship because navy personnel acted non-sentient: all of
Willow’s
crew, and maybe the admiral who gave them their orders. That’s the sort of thing the High Council dearly wants to keep secret. Makes the whole fleet look bad.”
“I can keep secrets,” I said.
He patted my shoulder. “Yeah. Sure. But the Admiralty won’t take the chance. They only trust certain types of people—assholes who want to be admirals themselves and will do anything to get into the inner circle. Our beloved Captain Prope is like that, and a lot of other folks on our ship. High Admiral Vincence has stacked
Jacaranda
with scumbags who don’t mind taking orders that would disturb normal navy personnel.”
“Orders like what?” I asked.
“Like making you disappear, so you can’t spill the beans. Prope already has reassignment papers for you; I read them when I accidentally logged onto her computer and decrypted all her files. You’re headed for some godforsaken outpost in the back of beyond, where contact ships only show up once a decade. A one-man station.
Jacaranda
will take you straight there without a chance to talk to anyone, then they’ll fly away without looking back.” Tobit gritted his teeth. “You won’t be the first person our shite of a captain has marooned.”
For a second I didn’t say anything. You can’t imagine what it’s like, to be going home after twenty years—twenty years on a moon with nothing but vacuum outside, like a prison except no one has the decency to call it that—and just when you think it’s all over, that you’ll soon see grass and sky and lakes again, someone decides you’re going to be dumped on some new lonely dung heap. And why? Because a boneheaded
admiral
wants to hide you away from everyone else, for fear you’ll make him look bad.
The story of my life.
“So what should I do?” I whispered to Tobit. Whispering because if I didn’t whisper, I’d scream. “I’m stuck out in space,” I said. “I can’t run away.”
“Yes, you can,” Tobit answered, “but you have to make your move while you’re still acting captain of
Willow.
Hop into one of the evac modules and declare an immediate forced landing emergency. Use those exact words: immediate forced landing emergency. The ship-soul will launch all the escape pods straight toward Celestia, because it’s the optimal site for a forced landing right now: close by and habitable. You hit it lucky there, York—Celestia is a free planet, not part of the Technocracy. Once you touch down, the navy has no legal right to drag you back.”
“But won’t
Jacaranda
stop me from getting away?”
“They’ll try. But they can only catch one pod at a time. Even if they’re lucky, they’ll only grab four of the eight pods before you reach Celestia’s atmosphere. You’ve got a fifty-fifty chance of making it to the ground.”
“And a fifty-fifty chance of getting caught.”
“So what?” Tobit asked. ‘The worst? they can do is banish you to some asswipe of a planet, and they plan on doing that anyway.” He gave me a yellow-toothed grin. “You have dick-all to lose, York. And Celestia is reportedly a cream-puff world: all tame and terraformed. If you lie low for a while, you can head back for the Technocracy eventually. Within six months, some new crisis will make the High Council forget all about you. Admirals have the attention span of lobotomized gnats.”
Tobit obviously didn’t know who my father was…or he’d know Dad wouldn’t be so quick to forget. On the other hand, I figured my old man wouldn’t waste energy chasing me if I stayed out of his way—more than anything, he just wanted to pretend I didn’t exist.
I asked Tobit, “Will you get in trouble for telling me this?”
He shook his head. “Nah—they won’t have any evidence. I’m not transmitting back to
Jacaranda,
and you can erase
Willow’s
records of this conversation. You’re the captain; you have authority to wipe all the memory banks here if you feel like it.” Tobit grinned. “I also have a friend in high places: the real Admiral Ramos. She was the one who drafted me for First Explorer on the
Jacaranda
…to counterbalance whatever shitwork Prope is up to. Eventually the council will find an excuse to get me reassigned; and Ramos will send another of her favorite Explorers to keep
Jacaranda
honest. Even a dirty-tricks ship needs Explorers. Otherwise, the lily-fingered crew members would be the ones marching into stink holes full of rotting corpses.”
Tobit gave a sour look at the nearest dead bodies…and at that very moment,
Willow’s
alarm bells started blaring out RED ALERT.