The Mind Field (8 page)

So here he stood.

Zakhar tried to remember what little he knew about the founding of the
Union of Man
, and the ancient Prophet, Rama Treadwell. Not much.
Union of Man
history had never been his thing, growing up. Too busy with racing speeders and sports teams.

He knew even less about the religious order known as Shepherds of the Word. Something about a group of wandering mystics looking for their lost Prophet in the depths of space, and carrying the Word like missionaries to all the worlds of the
Union
.

Javier had said that the Order still existed in a few places in the
Concord
, or the quieter corners of the worlds that had once belonged to the
Union of Man
. Before the Great War. Probably a museum somewhere on
New London
, if he cared enough to look. Maybe someday.

He leaned forward again to look down at this woman. She looked young. Sleeping peacefully, like the princess in the ancient fairie tale, or the strange little man who walked down into the fairie mound and lost centuries when the morning came.

Zakhar estimated her age to be in her mid–twenties, barely out of her childhood, although he had been commanding an armed pinnace at that age. Officer and Gentleman.

What to do with this kitten, after he found her by the side of the road and took her home?

Command.

“Javier,” he said firmly, projecting his voice clear into the hallway. It was a skill that made Captains. “How long to thaw her out?”

He noted how serious the man had become. Nothing like the normal class clown. That usually meant bad things. Today, it just meant serious. Like he was thinking the same things.

Javier had once been in command. He knew.

“Given the lack of a Ship’s Surgeon,” Javier replied, “I would recommend wiring the box to a portable generator and moving her close to
Storm Gauntlet’s
medbay first.”

He paused there and looked down at the coffin. Zakhar could see the wheels spinning in his head, calculating options and timelines. Were all Concord Fleet officers like that? Probably. Came with the territory. The Good Guys.

“After that,” the Science Officer continued, “I think we bring her out just about as slowly as the box will let us. Not like we’re rushed for time here.”

“You volunteering?” Zakhar asked gruffly.

The man shrugged eloquently. “You got anybody else?”

“No, mister, I do not,” Zakhar said. Command voice. Command decision. “You will take charge of the rescue.”

He turned to his Engineer. “Andreea, you are in charge of getting the ship ready to fly if possible. It’s too big to transport out inside
Storm Gauntlet
, and too valuable to section up unless we have to. Questions?”

She never once made eye contact. She never did. Sometimes, he felt like he should keep his shoes extra polished, just because she would be looking at them instead of his face.

“No, Captain,” she said quietly. “I estimate we will have a complete status in eighteen to twenty hours.”

“Good enough,” he replied. “Javier’s kitten first, Andreea.”

He turned and started to leave the room. Sykora fell into step with him, to his right and half a stride back. Just like always.

“Kitten?” she whispered as they walked. “What are you planning to do with her?”

“I’ll know that, Djamila, when he succeeds.”

“Aye, sir.”

Part Eight

Javier felt like the greater of two evils. Any two evils.

The Purser’s people had emptied out a nearby storage room for him, giving Kianoush Buday, his tea mug artist, a chance to see the whole affair unfold as he had several crewmembers sled the big sarcophagus over and then connect it to ship’s power.

It dominated the empty room, laying there like this was a state funeral.

He was the Science Officer, so he was in charge, right? Said so right there on the side of his mug. This was Science. Javier can handle it.

He looked at the hatch, as if it was transparent. Medbay was just across the hall, door locked open and machines on standby, in case something went wrong. He hadn’t bothered to tell them that if something went wrong during the thaw, she would be better off never waking up from whatever dreams had filled her long night. They wouldn’t understand until it was too late.

As far as he knew, nobody had ever been successfully kept alive this long under cryo. Not because the theory was flawed, but because there was no reason.

You found the survivors or you didn’t. She had had to be a prisoner of war, in a war that had ended five hundred and eighty–three years ago, to even be a candidate.

Javier sipped his tea and ruminated. How could you explain to someone the rise and fall of the
Union of Man
, the Great War with
Neu Berne
, or the rise of the
Concord
? Depending on how long she had been here, would she even know about the latter two?

What do you do when you wake up, Rip Van Winkled out of five centuries of history? Everyone you knew wasn’t even a footnote any more.

And then, to top it all off, you’ve been captured by pirates.

Javier was a well–treated and well–respected member of this crew. But he never forgot that he was here paying off a debt as a slave. Honor. Duty. But still a ransom.

If he brought her out of the fugue, wouldn’t she be just another slave? And did she have any skills that could make her valuable? Or would she be so hopelessly out of date that all she had to fall back on was a strong back on a mining colony?

Javier looked down at the sleeping face and realized that she might find a fate worse than being an agricultural slave. It was still, to some extent, a man’s universe.

The hatch opened before he could sink too deep into a funk. A body slipped in, closed it quickly. The lock keying into place got his attention.

Sykora.

He fixed her with a questioning stare. She had no business on this deck right now. None.

She was impervious to his look as she strode into the room and stood across the box from him. She stared back.

The quiet hung.

Usually, the air crackled with negative energy when he was around her. Today, nothing. Just silence.

She spoke first.

“Have you decided yet?” she said quietly. It was a tone he had never heard from her before. Calm. Serene. Inquisitive.

“Decided what?” Javier wasn’t going to play whatever game she was up to. Not right now. He would just keep score. There was always tomorrow.

“If she lives or dies,” the tall woman replied. She had a hard look on her face.

“I don’t make that decision, Sykora,” he said. “Sokolov does.”

“No,” she refuted him simply, “he decides what happens after that. You decide if she ever wakes up.”

Javier’s eyebrows threatened to crawl backwards over the top of his head. He tended to forget that underneath that tough killer exterior was a first–rate mind. Until she did things like this to remind him.

He would have been happier not being reminded.

“You look down and see a woman,” she continued, “and wonder if she can find a place in this world, or if she would be better off not having to make that choice.”

Javier shrugged, unsure where she was going but unwilling to gainsay her.

“You were raised to think of women as weak,” Sykora said. “The
Union of Man
was the worst, but the
Concord
is not much better. In
Neu Berne
or
Balustrade
, women are the equal of men, in all things.”

“And?”

She leaned forward, almost conspiratorially. “If that was a man, would it be a question?”

He leaned in as well. “Would a man be at as much risk of finding worse things in life than being a slave in a mine?”

She looked down, considered the peaceful face between them. “Is it a fate worse than death, Javier? I’ve seen men and women indentured to brothels. As slaves go, they tend to be better kept than those in mines, or farms. It is a business, after all. She might be happier if that happened to her.”

“Oh, I know,” Javier replied finally. “There are a number of places the Captain might sell her. Me? I’d head to one of the big worlds and ask for a finder’s fee from one of the big universities to cover the expenses. They would love to have someone who lived that long ago, just to talk about what the world was like.”

“And what makes you think the Captain won’t do that?” she asked him, harsh vitriol creeping back into her voice.

“Because I’m a slave, Sykora,” he said flatly, harshly. “Dress it up all you want in fancy language, but I owe a bonded debt to that man. One of these days, maybe, MAYBE, I will be in a position to pay it off and get my own life back.”

“And are you treated poorly, Mr. Science Officer?” She leaned closer, getting right down into his face.

He leaned closer as well. “You killed my ship, cut her into parts so that I’ll never get her back,” he snarled hotly. “You drag me all over the damned galaxy doing pirate shit, so that I’ll hang with you if we ever get caught by someone big enough to do the job. And I am not a free man, Sykora. You could walk away from this ship if you wanted. Just walk out the hatch at the next station we visit and never come back.” He tapped his finger on the top of the box as he spoke. “I do not have that luxury.”

“You were a mouthy punk who pushed as hard as you could, when I met you,” she snarled back, nose almost touching his, voices so low that someone at the doorway might have mistaken them for lovers. “You were offered the choice to be here or somewhere else, somewhere where you could have escaped if you wanted. You chose to stay. You do not get to complain now.”

The room was suddenly tiny.

“So I should just trust that you people will do the right thing?” he growled back. “That Captain Sokolov really is a good guy and it will all turn out? Based on what?”

She stopped and drew a breath.

It broke the spell.

She leaned back, flushed. She blinked.

“Because it is not your decision to make,” she said quietly, tapping on the sarcophagus. “It’s hers. Anything else makes you just as bad as Sokolov.”

If she had just slapped him, a good open–palmed right hand to the face, he probably would have been less surprised.

Javier bit back any retort that might have come out of his mouth. He leaned back as well, drew a breath deep into his chest, tried to burn off the surge of adrenalin that threatened to overtake him.

They stared at each other for several moments, neither moving.

Javier nodded, mostly to himself, partly to her.

He reached down and flipped open a panel by his right knee. Inside, a big red button. Obvious in its intent and purpose, scribed in half a dozen written languages, just in case.

He leaned into it, watched it start flashing slowly. Off. On. Off.

He straightened up and looked at the tall woman standing across the sarcophagus from him.

“Who are you?” he said querulously.

She straightened out to her own great height, towering a whole head above him in the tiny space.

“I am a woman who will not take any shit in a man’s world, mister.”

Javier nodded. That was about right.

Part Nine

It had been nine hours. Javier was keeping himself awake with heavily caffeinated tea and regular potty breaks. He had napped some, early on, with Sykora, of all people, keeping watch while he did, lights dimmed and all sound off.

This day had gotten completely and utterly weird.

Now, there was nothing to do but wait.

The sarcophagus had a timer function, but he had cranked the system down to the lowest setting to bring the woman out of her sleep. He figured that would do the least amount of damage, and let her recover best.

If the theory of this machine was the same, she was slowly being refilled with the same synthetic blood that had been keeping her alive for so long, with the anti–freeze elements slowly being weaned out. The longer she had to recover, the better. At least in theory.

Any Ship’s Surgeon, even the drunkard that Sokolov had apparently fired three years ago, would have made him feel better right now.

Javier wished he had Suvi handy to talk to, but that would raise too many questions from the crew as well. And he really wasn’t prepared to deal with Sykora again, any time soon, not if her latest gambit to drive him crazy was going to look like this.

He sipped his tea and thought dark thoughts.

The hollow thump caused him to blink. He didn’t think he had been asleep. Hell, with this much tea in him, he wasn’t sure when he would next sleep.

Thump. Right. Activity. Progress.

The sarcophagus suddenly started to hiss, just like a tea kettle reaching the boiling point.

Javier was out of his chair and across the room in almost one bound.

The machine had broken the internal seal.

He could smell the gases it was releasing. It smelled like a pickled artichoke he had eaten once, at a parish fair.

The room picked up the faintest hint of fog, even as the air circulation system kicked itself into overdrive and sucked the strange vapors down and away from him, probably to vent into space.

Below him, the glass slowly retracted into the belly of the system, like a vehicle window rolling down, with the faintest puff of dust.

Javier held his breath, mostly out of anticipation. He vibrated, but that was the adrenalin mixing badly with the caffeine. He rocked back and forth on his feet, like a kid waiting for his turn to open birthday presents.

Javier stopped when he caught himself.

I am a professional. I am this ship’s Science Officer. I need to act like a grown–up. At least for a little while.

He looked down at the girl asleep with bemusement.

Up until now, she had been a problem to solve. First, transporting her intact from the other ship over here, and then getting the power switched over. Finally, defrosting her like a ham.

He hadn’t taken the time to actually look at her.