Annihilation (Star Force Series) (37 page)

The light changed from orange to red, and I snapped my visor shut. Kerr wasn’t wearing one. Then I reached out toward the portal release.

Kerr lurched in my grasp. Despite his injuries, he managed to wrap his legs and his one good hand around my arm. But it didn’t do him any good. He strained and heaved, but I pushed the button anyway.

The gases still left in the room exited with a forceful gust. I shook the General loose from my arm and let him float outside. There, in the cold void of space, his eye stared back at me.

“You see that?” I shouted, pointing into the darkness. “That silver line out there? That’s your ship. All you have to do is swim over to it. I’m doing as you asked, General. I’m sending you back to
Carrington
.”

Kerr ignored my speech. I wasn’t even sure he could hear it, as the air was gone.

He knew what to do, of course. He was a space veteran. It was pointless, but he exhaled, letting all his breath out. He had to depressurize his lungs as quickly as possible, or they would rupture. He could last a few seconds longer in total vacuum that way.

Unlike common misconceptions, humans do not instantly freeze in space. They
do
depressurize. The body is too hot, and too tightly compressed for space. Our blood begins to boil and the lack of oxygen quickly does its inevitable work.

But nanotized marines are a thing apart from normal humans. They’re self-repairing and the little microscopic bastards just don’t know when they’re beaten. Kerr hung out there, in agony.

He’s twisting all right
, I thought to myself,
but there’s no wind.

A lot of things went through my mind as I watched Kerr die outside my ship in the heartless nothingness that is space. I thought of the moments we’d shared, both good and bad. We’d always found a way to live together, he and I. Others had died all around us, but we’d never struck the final blow against one another.

Maybe that was because we were alike in some ways. Determined men with iron resolve. Men unafraid to order others to die, or to die ourselves. It had always been difficult not to admire Kerr. I had to admit, in my heart of hearts, I blamed Crow for his recent turn to dark deeds.

Something about the way he was going out impinged on me. I’d just witnessed Lieutenant Alexa Brighton, standing at attention, accepting her death as calmly as she humanly could. Here was Kerr, fighting it hopelessly to the final second.

Alexa had died for her family. I believed that part of her story now. She was an honest young woman, and as Kerr himself had said, she’d chosen one devil over another, not because she loved either, but because she had no choice.

Crow would no doubt punish more innocents back on Earth, due to my actions today. Someone had to fall. Someone had to be proven disloyal. Wasn’t that the way of every dictator, or at least, most of them? They ruled via terror, the terror of their subjects and of the dictator himself. Both were afraid of the other, and that fear kept everyone in line, forcing them to do horrible things.

And here I was, reacting. Killing Kerr for revenge, despite the fact he hadn’t given the order in the first place.

I cursed under my breath, and said: “tether!”

A nanite line extended from my suit to the wall of the ship. I threw myself out into space, after Kerr. I reached out a hand, and grabbed him.

I tugged on the liquid steel tether and it drew me quickly back into the ship. I hit the button on the wall, and the lights went from red, to orange, to yellow, and in about thirty seconds, turned green.

I opened my visor and stared down at Kerr. There was frost on the walls, forming ice crystals in the cold chamber.

Kerr had stopped moving. In fact, he looked extremely dead. As I watched, frost formed on his eyelashes. His face was so cold, it was causing water vapor to condense and freeze upon it.

But nanites are cruel, heartless things. They don’t quit. Dead bodies, charred and swollen, might look beatific the following day, after the tiny robots inside work their magic pointlessly on a corpse overnight.

I waited a minute, and I thought I saw something. A slight rise and fall. A redness replacing the bruised purple around the nostrils.

“Are you still in there, General?” I asked the corpse.

The right eye popped open. Although the eye rolled around, I knew it was too frozen to see. His breath wheezed and rattled in his throat. It sounded like the last gasp of a man on his deathbed, but he was breathing.

The blind eye kept moving, as if looking for me.

“I’m right here, Robert,” I said. “It didn’t look like you were going to survive your little journey to Carrington, so I had to reel you back in.”

Finally, the one good hand the General had left rose up slowly. It curled, gesturing for me to come closer.

I bent my ear to his blue lips and listened.

“Fuck you,” he wheezed.

-31-

I felt better after killing Kerr. Oh sure, I’d revived him, and I was now allowing him to recover in the very same coffin where Alexa had spent her final days.

But I
had
killed him. I took some perverse pleasure in that. He’d gone through the pain, the anguish and the fear. He’d experienced the hopelessness, the final black moments of succumbing. He’d died out in space, with the full and certain knowledge that he was well and truly screwed.

I’m not going to say that was good enough for me, because it wasn’t. I’d kill a thousand General Kerrs to save my Sandra. But of course, she couldn’t be saved.

The ordeal I’d put Kerr through didn’t atone for his part in this evil scheme. I never would have reeled him back in, except for one thing: I didn’t want to make Alexa’s family suffer for nothing.

That woman had struck a hard blow against me and mine, but she’d done it to save her own people. I could understand that. If it had been my own family on the line, I probably would have done the same to her.

My family was all dead now, but her people back on Earth were presumably alive and possibly suffering under Crow’s harsh rule. That’s the part that had changed my mind, and had saved Kerr’s life in the end.

“Sir?” Captain Sarin said, approaching me cautiously.

Everyone was treating me like I was a feral dog on the street these days, even Jasmine. No one liked to make a sudden move in my presence. Probably, that was wise on their parts.

“What is it, Captain?”

“It’s the
Carrington
again, sir. The Captain is demanding that General Kerr be released.”

“If I did hand him over, he’d probably die. They don’t have medical equipment as good as ours.”

Our medical systems included microbial baths, not just robotic arms, brainboxes and intravenous nanites. I knew Earth didn’t possess our capacities to dispense life at will.

Jasmine paused after my last statement. She was probably hoping I was going to go on and say more. She was disappointed.

“Should I relay that to
Carrington
, sir?”

“No,” I said.

Jasmine gnawed her lower lip. “They might fire on us, Kyle, if we don’t even tell them what happened to the General.”

I shrugged. “Let them attack, then. I’d like to take out one more Earth battleship.”

“Sir, I don’t understand your—”

I heaved a sigh and straightened. “I’m sorry, Jasmine,” I said. “I’m being self-indulgent. I’ll now give you orders that make sense: tell
Carrington
that we’ve got their General, and he’s alive. But, he’s had an unfortunate accident. We’ll return him shortly.”

After this, I honestly expected her to turn around and go. But she lingered in the passageway outside my quarters instead.

“Yes?” I asked. “What is it?”

“Why didn’t you kill him?” she asked, her voice just above a whisper. “I know you wanted to. I know you almost did it.”

I nodded, and looked at her. My quarters were dark except for a few LED lights that ran along the floor for emergency lighting. I liked it that way right now—dark. You couldn’t pull the LEDs up without using a screwdriver, so I hadn’t bothered.

Her face and body were silhouetted against the relative glare of the passage behind her. Eyeing her, I thought her hair was perhaps a trifle longer than it should be—certainly, it was past regulation length. But I didn’t complain about it. She’d gotten away with that for months, and we both knew it was because I liked her to wear it long.

“Because if I kill him, Crow will abuse Alexa’s relatives back home.”

“The poisoner? Why would you care about her? And why should we worry about what the Imperials do to each other?”

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. It felt constrictive to me, so I stood up and began pacing.

“They’re our people, Jasmine,” I reminded her. “Star Force is sworn to defend them against all enemies, foreign and domestic. But it’s more than that. I feel partly responsible.”

“What?” she said, raising her voice. “That’s nonsense, Colonel. Everyone knows Crow is to blame.”

“Exactly,” I said. “And who do you think had the opportunity to take him out of the equation long ago? The kind of sin I’ve performed is one of omission—of inaction. I let Crow live and thrive like a spider in the dark, and now countless invisible people are suffering because of my oversight.”

“Now you’re blaming yourself for what Crow does? That’s silly.”

I took a few steps toward her. She backed away at my approach, out the doorway and into the hall. I wasn’t surprised that she was physically afraid of me, but I was saddened. I guess that after you kill a few people with your bare hands, the rest get nervous.

“Burke once said: ‘
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that
good men do nothing.’”

“But you didn’t know he was evil, Kyle,” she said. “Not back then.”

“I didn’t know exactly what Crow was going to do,” I said, “but I always had a pretty good idea. I let it slide. That’s why I’m taking part of the blame for this situation. The rest I lay at the feet of humanity. They could have stopped him; the men who follow him now could shoot him rather than serving under him. They must know what he is. In any case, I want you to relay my message to Carrington.”

“Yes sir,” she said, and left.

The door solidified behind her. A few minutes later, a light tapping began again. It was a feminine knock, and it sounded almost timid. With a grunt of frustration, I opened it.

“What is it now, Jasmine?” I demanded.

But when the door melted away, it wasn’t Jasmine that stood in the hallway. It was Dr. Kate Swanson. She looked wary, just the way they all did lately.

I rumbled in my throat inarticulately. “What do you want?” I asked finally.

Then I caught sight of something. It was a camera on a stalk, peeping over her shoulder. I leaned forward and followed it back. About ten feet away, Marvin filled the passage with his bulk.

I nodded in sudden understanding. “You figured I would open the door for a female—is that it, Marvin? Profiling me again?”

“There’s something we’d like to discuss, Colonel,” Marvin said.

I glanced at Dr. Swanson. She looked pale and her eyes were big. She hadn’t said a word yet.

“I take it the topic of discussion isn’t going to make me happy,” I said.

“On the contrary, Colonel Riggs,” Marvin said with a touch of excitement in his voice. “It may well be the best news you’ve heard all day.”

Marvin had me now, and we both knew it.

“Out with it, robot,” I said.

“I’ve begun a series of experiments in necrological reconstruction. It’s possible these efforts will bear untold benefits in the future.”

I squinted at him. “Necro-what?”

“Necrological. It’s a new term. Do you like it? I’ve just coined it, actually. As the inventor of this new science, I felt I’d earned the privilege.”

Dr. Swanson cleared her throat at this point. I eyed her and thought she looked worried.

“Marvin,” she said, “it’s not actually a
science
. It’s a
theory
. A research proposal, to be exact.”

“This is about Sandra, isn’t it?” I asked. I tried to keep my voice steady. “I don’t want you cutting her up, or anything like that.”

“No, no, certainly not,” Marvin said.

I stared at Marvin’s cameras and they stared back at me. They shifted and whirred. Neither of us said anything for a few seconds. We both knew he’d laid out the bait, and I was on the hook.

By this time, I’d pretty much figured out what was going on. Marvin had gotten a crazy idea about healing Sandra, and it was so awful that Dr. Swanson wasn’t sure she wanted to be a part of it.

I knew right away I should just steer clear of the whole thing, that I should tell him “no” and march down to medical and pull the plug on Sandra’s coffin myself.
Let her rest in peace
, some part of my mind told the rest.

But there was another voice there, too. A voice that whispered of hope and the powers of science. I recalled that voice from my distant past. Miracles of healing
had
happened. I’d witnessed them with my own eyes.