Galactic Empires (35 page)

But it was not to be. And when we dared to imagine that we had seen the worst that the branching tree of historical possibilities could offer, that we had done well not to stray into the dominion of the lemurs, that Heaven must yet be ordaining our adventure, we had the glorious misfortune to fall into the realm of the Smiling Ones.

They came hard and fast, and did not trifle with negotiation. Their clawlike green ships moved without thrust, cutting through space as if space itself was a kind of fluid they could swim against. Their beam weapons etched glimmering lines of violet across the void, despite the fact that they were being deployed in hard vacuum. They cut into us like scythes. I knew then that they could have killed us in a flash, but that they preferred to wound, to maim, to toy.

The
River Volga
twisted like an animal in agony, and then there was a gap in my thoughts wide enough for a lifetime.

*

The first thing that flashed through my mind after I returned to consciousness was frank amazement that we were still alive; that the ship had not burst open like a ripe fruit and spilled us all into vacuum. The second thing was that, given the proximity of the attacking vehicles, our stay of execution was unlikely to be long. I did not need the evidence of readouts to tell me that the
River Volga
had been mortally wounded. The lights were out, artificial gravity had failed, and in place of the normal hiss and chug of her air recirculators, there was an ominous silence, broken only by the occasional creak of some stressed structural member, cooling down after being heated close to boiling point.

"Commander Qilian?" I called, into the echoing darkness.

No immediate answer was forthcoming. But no sooner had I spoken than an emergency system kicked in and supplied dim illumination to the cabin, traced in the wavery lines of fluorescent strips stapled to walls and bulkheads. I could still not hear generators or the other sounds of routine shipboard operation, so I presumed the lights were drawing on stored battery power. Cautiously, I released my restraints and floated free of my chair. I felt vulnerable, but if we were attacked again, it would make no difference whether I was secured or not.

"Yellow Dog," a voice called, from further up the cabin. It was Qilian, sounding groggy but otherwise sound. "I blacked out. How long was I under?"

"Not long, sir. It can't have been more than a minute since they hit us." I started pulling myself toward him, propelling myself with a combination of vigorous air-swimming and the use of the straps and handholds attached to the walls for emergency use. "Are you all right, sir?"

"I think-" Then he grunted, not loudly, but enough to let me know that he was in considerable pain. "Arm's broken. Wasn't quite secure when it happened."

He was floating with his knees tucked high, inspecting the damage to his right arm. In the scarlet backup lighting, little droplets of blood, pulled spherical by surface tension, were pale, colorless marbles. He had made light of the injury but it was worse than I had been expecting, a compound fracture of the radius bone, with a sharp white piece glaring out from his skin. The bleeding was abating, but the pain must have been excruciating. And yet Qilian caressed the skin around the wound as if it was no more irritating than a mild rash.

I paddled around until I found the medical kit. I offered to help Qilian apply the splint and dressing, but he waved aside my assistance save for when it came time to cut the bandage. The
River Volga
continued to creak and groan around us, like some awesome monster in the throes of a nightmare.

"Have you see the others?"

"Uugan, Jura, and Batbayar must still be at their stations in the midship section."

"And the pilot?"

I had only glanced at Muhunnad while I searched for the medical kit, but what I had seen had not encouraged me. He had suffered no visible injuries, but it was clear from his extreme immobility, and lack of response as I drifted by him, that all was not well. His eyes were open but apparently unseeing, fixated on a blank piece of wall above the couch.

"I don't know, sir. It may not be good."

"If he's dead, we're not going to be able to cut back into the Infrastructure."

I saw no point in reminding Qilian that, with the ship in its present state, Muhunnad's condition would make no difference. "It could be that he's just knocked out, or that there's a fault with his interface harness," I said, not really believing it myself.

"I don't know what happened to us just before I blacked out. Did you feel the ship twist around the way I did?"

I nodded. "Muhunnad must have lost attitude control."

Qilian finished with his dressing, inspecting the arm with a look of quiet satisfaction. "I am going to check on the others. See what you can do with the pilot, Yellow Dog."

"I'll do my best, sir."

He pushed off with his good arm, steering an expert course through the narrow throat of the bridge connecting door. I wondered what he hoped to do if the technical staff were dead, or injured, or otherwise incapable of assisting the damaged ship. I sensed that Qilian preferred not to look death in the eye until it was almost upon him.

Forcing my mind to the matter at hand, I moved to the reclined couch that held Muhunnad. I positioned myself next to him, anchoring in place with a foothold.

I examined the harness, checking the various connectors and status readouts, and could find no obvious break or weakness in the system. That did not mean that there was not an invisible fault, of course. Equally, if a power surge had happened, it might well have fried his nervous system from the inside out with little sign of external injury. We had built safeguards into the design to prevent that kind of thing, but I had never deceived myself that they were foolproof.

"I'm sorry, Muhunnad," I said quietly. "You did well to bring us this far. No matter what you might think of me, I wanted you to make it back to your own people."

Miraculously, his lips moved. He shaped a word with a mere ghost of breath. "Ariunaa?"

I took hold of his gloved hand, squeezing it as much as the harness allowed. "I'm here. Right by you."

"I cannot see anything," he answered, speaking very slowly. "Before, I could see everything around me, as well as the sensory information reaching me from the ship's cameras. Now I only have the cameras, and I am not certain that I am seeing anything meaningful through them. Sometimes I get flashes, as if
something
is working… but most of the time, it is like looking through fog."

"Are you sure you can't make some sense of the camera data?" I asked. "We only have to pass through the Infrastructure portal."

"That would be like threading the eye of a needle from halfway around the world, Ariunaa. Besides, I think we are paralyzed. I have tried firing the steering motors, but I have received no confirmation that anything has actually happened. Have you felt the ship move?"

I thought back to all that had happened since the attack. "In the last few minutes? Nothing at all."

"Then it must be presumed that we are truly adrift and that the control linkages have been severed." He paused. "I am sorry; I wish the news was better."

"Then we need help," I said. "Are you sure there's nothing else out there? The last time we saw it, the
Mandate of Heaven
was still in one piece. If she could rendezvous with us, she might be able to carry us all to the portal."

After a moment, he said: "There is something, an object in my vicinity, about one hundred and twenty
It
out, but I only sense it intermittently. I would have mentioned it sooner, but I did not wish to raise your hopes."

Whatever he intended, my hopes were rising now. "Could it be the
Mandate?"

"It is something like the right size, and in something like the right position."

"We need to find a way to signal it, to get it to come in closer. At the moment, they have no reason to assume that any of us are alive."

"If I signal it, then the enemy will also know that some of us are still alive," Muhunnad answered. "I am afraid I do not have enough directional control to establish a tight-beam lock. I am not even certain I can broadcast an omnidirectional transmission."

"Broadcast what?" Qilian asked, drifting into the bridge.

I wheeled around to face him; I had not been expecting him to return so quickly. "Muhunnad says there's a good chance the
Mandate of Heaven
is nearby. Since we don't seem to able to move, she's our only chance of getting out of here."

"Is she intact?"

"No way to tell. There's definitely something out there that matches her signature. Problem is, Muhunnad isn't confident that we can signal her without letting the enemy know we're still around."

"It won't make any difference to the enemy. They'll be coming in to finish us off no matter what we do. Send the signal."

After a moment, Muhunnad said: "It's done. But I do not know if any actual transmission has taken place. The only thing I can do is monitor the
Mandate
and see if she responds. If she has picked up our signal, then we should not have long to wait. A minute, maybe two. If we have seen nothing after that time, I believe we may safely assume the worst."

We waited a minute, easily the longest in my life, then another. After a third, there was still no change in the faint presence Muhunnad was seeing. "I am more certain than ever that it is the
Mandate"
he informed us. "The signature has improved; it matches very well, with no sign of damage. She is holding at one hundred and twenty
li.
But she is not hearing us."

"Then we need another way of signaling her," I said. "Maybe if we ejected some air into space…"

"Too ambiguous," Qilian countered. "Air might vent simply because the ship was breaking up, long after we were all dead. It could easily encourage them to abandon us completely. What do we need this ship for in any case? We may as well eject the lifeboats. The
Mandate of Heaven
can collect them individually."

After a instant of reflection, Muhunnad said: "I think the commander is correct. There is nothing to be gained by staying aboard now. At the very least, the lifeboats will require the enemy to pursue multiple targets."

There were six lifeboats, one for each of us.

"Let's go," Qilian replied.

"I'll see you at the lifeboats," I said. "I have to help Muhunnad out of the harness first."

Qilian looked at me for a moment, some dark calculation working itself out behind his eyes. He nodded once. "Be quick about it, Yellow Dog. But we don't want to lose him. He's still a valued asset."

With renewed strength, I hauled the both of us through the echoing labyrinth of the ship, to the section that contained the lifeboats. It was clear that the attack had wrought considerable damage on this part of the ship, buckling wall and floor plates, constricting passageways, and jamming bulkhead doors tight into their frames. We had to detour halfway to the rear before we found a clear route back to the boats. Yet although we were ready to don suits if necessary, we never encountered any loss of pressure. Sandwiched between layers of the
River Volga's
outer hull was a kind of foam that was designed to expand and harden upon exposure to vacuum, quickly sealing any leaks before they presented a threat to the crew. From the outside, that bulging and hardening foam would have resembled a mass of swollen dough erupting through cracks in the hull.

There were six lifeboats, accessed through six armored doorways, each of which was surmounted with a panel engraved with both operating instructions and stern warnings concerning the penalties for improper use. Qilian was floating at the far end, next to the open doorway of the sixth boat. I had to look at him for a long, bewildered moment before I quite realized what I was seeing. I wondered if it was a trick of my eyes, occasioned by the gloomy lighting. But I had made no mistake. Next to Qilian, floating in states of deceptive repose, were the bodies of Jura and Batbayar. A little further away, as if he had been surprised and killed on his own, was Uugan. They had all been stabbed and gashed: knife wounds to the chest and throat, in all three instances. Blood was still oozing out of them.

In his good hand, Qilian held a bloody knife, wet and slick to the hilt.

"I am sorry," he said, as if all that situation needed was a reasonable explanation. "But only one of these six boats is functional."

I stared in numb disbelief. "How can only one be working?"

"The other five are obstructed; they can't leave because there is damage to their launch hatches. This is the only one with a clear shaft all the way to space." Qilian wiped the flat of the blade against his forearm. "Of course, I wish you the best of luck in proving me wrong. But I am afraid I will not be around to witness your efforts."

"You fucking-" I began, before trailing off. I knew if I called him a coward he would simply laugh at me, and I had no intention of giving him even the tiniest of moral victories. "Just go," I said.

He drew himself into the lifeboat. I expected some last word from him, some mocking reproach or grandiloquent burst of self-justifying rhetoric. But there was nothing. The door clunked shut with a gasp of compressed air. There was a moment of silence and stillness and then the boat launched itself away from the ship on a rapid stutter of electromagnetic pulses.

I felt the entire hull budge sideways in recoil. He was gone. For several seconds, all I could do was breathe; I could think of nothing useful or constructive to say to Muhunnad, nothing beyond stating the obvious hopelessness of our predicament.

But instead, Muhunnad said quietly: "We are not going to die."

At first, I did not quite understand his words. "I'm sorry?"

He spoke with greater emphasis this time. "We are going to live, but only if you listen to me very, very carefully. You must return me to the couch with all haste."

I shook my head. "It's no good, Muhunnad. It's all over."