My Life: An Ex-Quarterback's Adventures in the Galactic Empire (26 page)

“It was fantastic!” Her face lit up as she told me about the fight for the cruiser. “Haranyi always said his tactics would work and they did. The Imperials fought hard, very hard, but they’re not accustomed to this and they couldn’t adjust fast enough.”

At first, I was caught up in her enthusiasm; it was so infectious. But there was something wrong about the conversation. It sounded like a postgame interview, but we weren’t standing in a locker room peeling off tape and pads. There were dead and dying scattered all through both ships. To be excited about it seemed perverted. I turned away from her, toward the screen, wondering if I was just plain weak.

“What’s wrong, Danny?”

I shook my head. “We can talk about it later.”

I was watching the Flower on the screen when, suddenly, it disappeared into a fireball before my eyes. Gone in an instant. Jaenna’s eyes followed mine to the screen.

“Oh Danny, your ship. I’m so sorry.” When I made no reply, she said, “I’ll see that this ship is secured,” and went off to do it.

I didn’t want to do anything. It was as though my feet had been welded to the deck, and my eyes were fixed on the screen long after the flash had faded to a faintly glowing cloud. There were no answers to the question of why it had happened. There had been no fire from the cruiser then, but the Flower had been badly battered. Maybe it had only been a matter of time before her engines detonated. Should I have foreseen it? Even if I had, what could I have done differently, other than stay with the crew that could not make it to the boat? Such thinking served no useful purpose, but it occupied my mind to the exclusion of all else.

Since I was a pirate captain on a captured ship, events didn’t let me stay preoccupied for very long. The first interruption was a bellow from behind me.

“Hey, Cap’n Danny! We got a problem here.”

I turned around to see what trouble Angel had found. He had a youngish Srihani in the uniform of an Imperial officer in tow. He planted the Imperial right in front of me and stood just behind him, maintaining a firm grip on the Srihani’s upper arm.

“Danny, this here piece of shit is called Ferens a Lynnar. Seems to be a junior bridge officer.”

From the youth’s uniform, Angel was right about his position, although I thought that all of the line officers had been killed. The huge purplish bruises over Ferens’ right cheek and temple explained his survival. He had been unconscious while the heaviest fighting had raged.

“So,” I asked Angel, “what’s the problem?”

Ferens answered that himself. “I told him and I will tell you. I will not join you and I spit on your parole and I spit on you!” Physically, he did it right after he said it, just in case there was any doubt about his meaning. “The son of a squadron commander knows his duty!”

The words were barely out of his mouth before I saw blasters coming out of holsters all around the bridge. The weapons had nothing to do with the blood-tinged gob of spittle that adorned my chest. They were more concerned with the word “parole.” Angel was right. We had a problem.

Through centuries of faction fights, the kvenningari had evolved a simple system for dealing with prisoners of war. Holding them was out of the question. To do so would have given the lie to the fiction that the empire was at peace. In addition, the fighting had become so much a part of everyday life that no one saw a way for it to end. Holding prisoners through a perpetual war would have been impractical and would have complicated the frequent shifts in alliances the kvenningari practiced. It was better to let a prisoner choose between shifting allegiances himself, or to retire to civilian life. Freebooters followed a variation of the practice, as witnessed by Carvalho’s treatment of Flower’s crew.

The only alternative to changing sides or parole—just going home—was death. Ferens believed his duty was to force us to kill him, and therein lay our problem. The young Srihani was the last surviving bridge officer, the only survivor in the ship’s command line. By setting an example, he was hoping to compel the other surviving Imperials to join his martyrdom. Not all of them would, I was sure, but I was just as sure there would be a good number who would. Once word got out that we had executed them, Christ, we would have half the Fleet hunting us, bent on revenge. All it took was a look at Ferens’ eyes to know that he was counting on that. By his death, he would ensure that we died as well. To an Imperial, I guess, that made sense. If I followed custom, there was no way out.

“I don’t recall offering parole,” I said.

Now, I saw surprise, not just in Ferens but in my would-be firing squad as well. The Srihani hated being bumped out of their customary rituals. The blasters didn’t go down, but there was no shooting either.

“You would shoot me without offering parole?” His smile—more of a sneer—was back. “Go ahead then, the result is the same.”

Ferens was so set on dying honorably that he had missed my point.

“Not at all. There was no offer of parole, so you can’t refuse it and compel me to kill you. You can join us if you want, but otherwise you are free to go, or you will be as soon as we can set you down on a planet.”

Ferens had the look of someone who senses a trap. His voice, however, was all hauteur. “You realize, freebooter, that without parole if I ever get another ship, I will come after you when I can.”

I shrugged. “You would anyway. Or your father would, if he really is a squadron commander. The empire, I’m sure, would hold that parole given to a freebooter does not have to be honored. So, why bother? But you won’t have the Fleet hunting us to avenge a crew that surrendered and went free.”

That was just a guess, but it made sense. Otherwise, there would have been no reason for Ferens to provoke a massacre. All at once, he exploded. Kicking and flailing his arms, he screamed as he went for me. Fortunately, Angel still had a grip on him. That gave me the half second I needed to shield my face. Then three more of my crew piled onto him and held him fast on the floor.

“Ferens, ask your father, when you see him, whether he would rather have you dead if all he got for it was one destroyed freebooter.”

“I know the answer to that, scum.” He tried to spit at me again, a difficult task since he was flat on his back.

“Ask him anyway. I’d like to hear the answer.” Then I told Angel to find a cabin and lock Ferens into it. The sooner I could unload him, the better.

My dealings with the Imperials didn’t end there. While I had been busy with Ferens, Andrave got the in-ship communications running again.

“Captain Danny,” he called as soon as Angel had escorted Ferens out, “Engineering reports that the surviving Imperials there will join us. That includes surviving officers. Full power is now available.”

“Great.” That was one bit of very good news. Obviously, many of the Imperials were more pragmatic than the way the uncompromising party line that Ferens spouted made it appear. “See if you can find someone who can handle the Helm and Navigation positions and have them bring us in-system.” I looked back at the screen for a moment. It showed only stars. I would have needed to use the instruments to find any evidence that the Flower had ever existed.

While Andrave was busy trying to find crew to fill the critical open slots, I headed off to where many of both crews were probably located: the medical unit. The place was jammed. Every bed, every seat, in the ward was taken and a good part of the corridor space outside. Fortunately, the Imperial medical personnel were available and willing to work (they ultimately joined us, too). That was another stroke of luck, because our only doc had stayed on the Flower with the wounded.

The medical staff had good equipment to work with, no question about that. Any Earthside doctor would have signed away his right arm for any of the instruments in that ward. Blast burns, as well as other penetrating wounds, were dealt with by the physician using what looked like a robotic jellyfish. One of them was suspended from the ceiling over each bed and could be lowered over whatever portion of the patient needed work. Once over the wound, a bevy of fine tentacles dipped into the wound. They fed information back to the physician at the bedside via an interactive helmet that he wore. A small control panel at the side of the bed allowed him to control the activity of other tentacles that carried out the repairs. I saw no drapes or scrubbing. The apparatus projected a sterilizing field that removed the need for any special surgical preparation. The problem was that there were far fewer units than there were people in need of them.

I met Ruoni coming out of the medical ward. He held his shoulder stiffly, but otherwise seemed as good as new. Since he claimed to be ready and eager to return to work, I sent him back to the bridge. He probably would have gone there regardless of what I said, and Andrave certainly needed his help.

Cardoni was still in the medical unit. The funny way his arm had dangled earlier was apparently the result of a fractured humerus. The rig they’d fitted onto him was interesting. There was no cast, only a light plastic sheath holding the arm in one position. At the site of the break, two parallel metal rings were fastened. From each, a score of wires ran radially into the arm. The doc told me, when I asked, that some supplied a series of growth factors, others a small electrical current. The device would promote union and good callus formation in twenty-four to forty-eight hours, and complete healing after about two more days.

“The problem I have,” he said, “is that there are enough fractures to fill a clinic. No ship would stock that many bone-growth promoters, so some of them are going to have to make do with simple immobilization until the others heal and free up the units.”

I nodded. It was as reasonable a plan as could be made.

“There is another problem,” he continued. “There are far more blaster wounds than we are equipped to care for. This unit was designed to treat the type of injuries we see in ship-to-ship actions, not ground actions. The work takes time and I don’t have enough treatment units, or skilled personnel even if I had the units, to treat them all now. Some of them are going to have to wait.”

The doctor’s problem confirmed Jaenna’s comment that the Imperials didn’t customarily use strike forces in ship actions. They were not equipped to handle a large number of Srihani who had had high-energy beams drilled through various parts of their anatomy.

“What’s your name, doctor?”

“Ramorir a Sandorinn,” he answered.

“Then, Ramorir, give priority to the ones who need it most and those the ship needs in order to function. Use your judgment.”

“And, as regards from which crew?”

I had figured that was the real question. Any doctor on a ship doing border patrol had to understand the principles of triage.

“Without regard to that,” I said and put an edge into my voice. “We’re all on one ship now; we had better act like it.”

That seemed to be what he had been hoping to hear, because he straightened up and headed back into the madhouse much more briskly than he had come out. To my mind, it was the only possible decision. I wanted to recruit as many of the Imperial crew as I could.

It was late by the time I was able to go to the cabin Jaenna had appropriated for herself. I was exhausted and I felt sick to my stomach. I was learning the awful feeling that came with the knowledge that by
my
orders people had gone to their deaths. The landing on Gar didn’t begin to compare with the carnage I had seen—no, created—this day. Even having killed by my own hand in combat didn’t compare to it. It had been my judgments and my decisions and a great many people were dead. Once I had styled myself a “field general” for a couple of sycophantic reporters. Now I shuddered at the memory.

Jaenna’s door slid open at my touch. She was seated inside, shrouded in her cloak. She looked as though she had been waiting for me.

She said, “Danny, I know you are upset about your ship. I’m sorry. I really am, but we could not have gone faster. It was impossible.”

“I know that,” I said. “That’s not what I’m upset about.”

“Then tell me what’s wrong.”

“Dammit, Jaenna, you liked it!” The words exploded from somewhere in my gut. “You really enjoyed winning that fight. How can you be that way when most of our crew is dead or wounded?”

“Danny, you don’t understand.”

“What don’t I understand? I understand that there are a lot of dead people around here right now. I understand that I gave the orders. What else is there that I don’t understand?”

“You don’t understand the empire.” Jaenna’s voice started out soft, but it gathered strength as she went along. “Of course I know Srihani died today. I’m no fonder of it than you are, probably less. But that’s not the point. We all did what we had to do today. You, me, the crew. If we had done it any differently, you and I and all our crew would be dead. As for my liking it, Danny, my strike force took an Imperial cruiser. I am proud of them, and I am proud of me, too. It
was
tremendous and we
did
win and I
do
feel great about that.”

“Danny,” she continued, “what was I in the Inner Empire? Nothing. An ill-favored youngest daughter. I was taught how to manage a trading station. On a
computer
. I had to scheme and connive to be sent to the Outer Empire to see if I could do it for real. I still don’t know if I can. But I was also taught about combat. Of course, today you have to be deaf and blind not to learn anything about combat in the empire, but I was carefully taught. Unofficially, but very carefully. I listened to Haranyi, even though no one else, my father most of all, cared what he said about ship-to-ship actions. I listened and I learned and now I know that I can do it. Not just on a computer. For real. Remember that first day I took over the Strike Force, I told you how I’d felt, all of a sudden, that I would fail? I’ve had that feeling ever since, that worry that I would fail a real test. Until now. It’s gone. I know I’m good at this. Why shouldn’t I feel good about that?”

“Because no matter how good you are, people die,” I retorted. “I can fight, too, but it makes me sick to my stomach and scared I’m going to die every time. It doesn’t stop me but it’s not a thrill.”