The Empty Warrior (41 page)

“I’d offer you a drink,” the captain said casually, “but we’ll effectively be in zero-g once the antigravs kick in. And I don’t need any balls of sticky liquids floating around near my hair this morning.” The captain paused, and O’Keefe got the impression that she was receiving a message via her com unit. She straightened, then motioned to the chairs. “Let’s sit, shall we?”

O’Keefe scowled slightly but then did as he was asked, tossing his bag of belongings to the floor below the suddenly provided seating before he did so, just to be sure there was something solid there to stop its flight. The chair, although spartan in appearance, felt luxuriant and plush. He looked below. Sefforia had grown from a globe into a rounded vista that filled the available lines of sight.

“Time to strap in,” the captain said. “Raise you arms like this,” she added, demonstrating by holding her arms straight up in the air.

O’Keefe followed her example. “
Vigilant,
restraints please,” the captain ordered. The chair seemed to come alive, nearly swallowing O’Keefe. His arms, head, and lower legs were free, but his thighs and chest were held securely by the chair that was now wrapped around him. Surprisingly the cushions that looked to be squeezing the captain like a python and seemed to be trying to devour O’Keefe as well were not at all uncomfortable. They reacted to movements as insignificant as taking a breath, keeping him fast in his seat yet not constricting him in any way.

To his left, he heard the captain speak softly into her com unit. “Understood,” she said. “Take her down, Colvan.” She leaned her head toward O’Keefe. “Prepare yourself, Mr. O’Keefe; in a moment we will be without gravity.” As quickly as she had spoken, he felt the burden on his muscles evaporate as he floated within the confines of the embracing upholstery.

“
Vigilant,
rotate us forward forty-five degrees.” The captain made the order without warning and, before O’Keefe could protest, his chair swung him forward until he was looking down into the approaching atmosphere of Sefforia. His spine had stiffened slightly at the movement, his mind programmed by experience to expect some discomfort to ensue from hanging in the chair, but in the weightless environment he found himself to be as comfortable in his current position as he had been sitting upright.

Beneath them the surface of the planet loomed ever larger in his sight, and in only minutes the ship was entering the upper reaches of the thermo-sphere. Unable in his current position to see any of the ceiling or the rear wall with even his peripheral vision, O’Keefe had the feeling of floating down, dreamlike, without the confines of a vessel surrounding him. He turned his head to the captain, unable to keep from grinning broadly.

“Wait until we get closer to the clouds,” she said, reading his expression perfectly. “Then you’ll really feel like you’re flying. We could drop in vertically if we had to of course, but the ship wallows as the antigravs compensate for atmospheric conditions. It’s not a particularly comfortable ride, and it would probably be worse now considering the shape the ship is in. So standard practice is to decelerate to a speed that won’t heat up the hull too badly, but that still leaves enough air under the wings to keep her stable. It makes for a breathtaking approach. You’ll see what I mean shortly.”

The captain obviously spoke from experience. As they fell deeper and deeper into the atmosphere, O’Keefe’s perceptions gradually shifted from a sensation of floating to one of flying at great speed. The clouds seemed to flash by beneath
Vigilant
at an ever increasing rate as she descended closer to their wispy tops. When at last they sailed through the altitude that marked the summits of the scattered cumuli, the view alternated between vaporous gray nothingness and the sparkling cobalt blue of the ocean below. The spectacular display continued for several minutes, then abruptly ended as the ship knifed from the base of one of the towering, misty monoliths.

Once clear of the clouds, O’Keefe could readily see the coastline of Valenta ahead.
Vigilant
soared toward the land like a great gliding condor with he and the captain suspended beneath her stalwart prow. Only the lack of wind rushing through his hair reminded him that he was still enclosed inside a ship at all. “This is wonderful,” he exclaimed, loudly but still more to himself than the captain.

“Yes, it is, isn’t it,” she nevertheless replied. “I’ve done this hundreds of times, and it never ceases to thrill me.” She was silent for a moment, reflecting, but then added, “You should try it on a gas giant. It’ll scare the life out of you!” She laughed while cheerfully pushing her weightless hair back behind her head, knotting it loosely to keep it away from her eyes.

For a moment the normally austere captain was replaced by a pleasant stranger. Gone was the severe authoritarian with the tightly held countenance. She had been supplanted by a womanly, carefree sprite enjoying a jaunty excursion. O’Keefe chuckled a little to himself at the sight, the laughter that gurgled up from his diaphragm causing his already large grin to widen even further.

“Well, the next time I find myself orbiting Jupiter, I’ll give it a go,” he said. “I always did like a good rollercoaster.” She glanced into his eyes and returned his smile for a moment, but it faded quickly, like a door momentarily held open by the breeze before being forcefully pushed shut and latched. She turned her attention back to the approaching landmass.

The ship continued its descent, soaring over white beaches before flying into the interior of Valenta—the forest. They swept lower over the land every second, closer and closer to the sea of verdant green until at last the ship began to brake and ease the angle of its descent. O’Keefe found he could discern individual hardwoods rising from the sylvan expanse below, but he could detect no sign of human habitation anywhere. That was soon to change.

It was only a few miles away when he saw it. Ahead of them, a large, rectangular swath of the forest was pushed up above the rest of the trees.
Vigilant
headed directly for the anomaly, slowing even more. O’Keefe craned his neck for a better view, but still they were but a few thousand yards away before he understood what it was.

A tremendous building, several stories high but still large enough to appear flat and broad, stood above the trees, suspended there on thick columns that disappeared into the forest below. Atop the giant slab were more trees. It was as if the structure had been built underground and then elevated, raising the level of the forest above it as it rose.

Vigilant
continued to reduce speed as she leveled, and ultimately approached the building at no more than a brisk walking pace until she was floating slowly down the long edge of the structure on a course parallel to its side. O’Keefe could see what appeared to be gangways extending from the side of the building as they passed. At length the ship came to smooth and precise halt with not so much as a hint of a lurch or a jolt.
Vigilant
was home.

“The fun is over, Mr. O’Keefe,” the captain said, already rewrapped in her usual dour deportment. “We’ll be experiencing Sefforian gravity momentarily.
Vigilant,
rotate us back to normal seating positions.” Both chairs simultaneously swiveled back to the upright position. A few seconds later O’Keefe began to feel a slow but steady increase in the amount of pressure his buttocks placed on the cushion beneath him. After a few moments the sensation stopped and, as if on cue, the chair shrank back into its normal shape.

Both he and the captain stood, O’Keefe with a bit of trepidation as he was still uneasy with the unseen floor and the long fall to the forest below. But once erect a feeling of strength and vibrancy began to flow into the length and breadth of every thew of his body. He held his left arm up before his eyes, clenched his fist, and stared at his wrist as he rotated it back and forth, testing the phenomenon.

“Yes,” the captain said, sensing his wonder. “Gravity on Sefforia is slightly less than Akadean standard, just as its pull at the surface of your world is insignificantly more. Unfortunately the feeling won’t last. Your body will acclimate fairly quickly.”

“Then why didn’t I feel this before, when I woke up?” O’Keefe asked, “Isn’t
Vigilant
kept at standard gravity?

“Well yes, but when you were removed from Earth’s gravity you were in a coma and nearly dead. I would hardly have expected you to be cognizant of anything in that condition, and as I said, the difference is quite insignificant. If your body felt anything it was while you were unconscious. It was quite accustomed to Akadean standard long before you awoke.” She spoke as if his dimwittedness was something to be expected and only reluctantly tolerated.

O’Keefe searched in vain for a witty rejoinder to the implied insult, but finally he just said, “Yeah,” ruefully accepting the fact that he had unthinkingly said something incredibly inane. And yet the captain’s acidic response made it clear that she had gathered in and packed away the small spark of elation and friendly openness she had displayed only minutes before. She had now completely reverted to her caustic, and what O’Keefe believed to be her true, personality. He had almost been convinced that the woman might actually be a half-decent companion after all, and that being stuck in her custody would not be too terribly bad. It had apparently been a vain hope.
This whole thing is going to be such a bitch
, he thought, his face unconsciously twisted into a glowering pout.

“We must leave straight away,” the captain said. “The property you arrived on board with has been packed and will be delivered to my car. I trust you have everything else in your bag. Don’t forget it.” Without further ado she pivoted and walked toward the door while O’Keefe knelt to retrieve his belongings. He stood with the top of the sack clutched tightly in his fist, and then hesitated. He had become used to the ship and the few people he had met within its confines, and now misgivings flared in his heart at the prospect of the unknown. The captain was almost out in the corridor and still O’Keefe had not moved.

“Come,” she said, turning to face him. “We haven’t hours to dally; time is of the essence. The spaceport cannot reopen until we are gone, and there is always a full schedule of flights arriving here from out in the belts. Already shuttles are backing up in orbit, which means, by the way, that to save some precious time we will be leaving with the rest of the crew, so please do not interact with them in any way. If you insist on doing so, I shall be forced to incapacitate you.” She opened her right palm to him, and he noticed for the first time the mechanism that lay nestled there. It had either been built specifically for her or it had been manufactured to mimic the skin pigment of its user, because its color was exactly the same as the palm of her hand. It was also obviously a weapon of some sort, with a tiny barrel just long enough to peek through her clinched fist below the index finger. She dropped her hand and again walked away.

O’Keefe swallowed hard and spurred himself into motion. He caught up with the captain just as she entered the door to the lift and rushed in behind her. After a short ride, it opened into a corridor teeming with lines of uniformed, short brown people snaking slowly past the door. The tallest of them barely reached the height of O’Keefe’s shoulders. All of them were laden with baggage. O’Keefe, after decades of being unacquainted with crowds, felt suddenly daunted by the scene and retreated a step toward the rear wall of the lift. But when the captain deftly broke into the queue and stopped its progress, O’Keefe awkwardly wedged himself in front of her. There was a murmur of gasps and stares from those around him as he did so. He bent back and downward where he could place his mouth near the captain’s ear. “So how come the crew is suddenly allowed to see me? Aren’t you afraid they will turn into mindless, slavering savages on account of this trauma?”

She turned her head slightly to whisper back to him, but then hesitated as several nearby crew members cocked their heads as if to listen. “It would seem that despite my best efforts to the contrary,” she said, after a pause, and in a normal tone of voice, “that everyone aboard is well aware of your presence among us.” She then raised her voice markedly before continuing. “But I am quite sure they won’t be confiding that to any outsiders who have no need for any knowledge of your existence.” The nearby heads swiveled back to facing forward, seemingly abashed by her back-handed reproach. “Now remain quiet, if you please,” she whispered. “Remember what I told you about behaving yourself.”

As they slowly wound their way around a corner bulkhead, O’Keefe could see a hatch up ahead that opened to the outside. Attached beneath the opening lay the end of one of the gangways he had seen from the observation lounge. The mass of crew members clustering ahead were slowly and patiently merging into a single file line that was moving out of the ship, onto the narrow bridge, and across the high gap that separated
Vigilant
from the terminal. When O’Keefe reached what appeared to him to be a narrow airlock just inside the outer skin of the vessel, the pace picked up somewhat and instead of shuffling along he was able to take small steps. But as he stepped outside, a second sickly spot of vertigo came over him. The gangway was little more than a three-foot-wide metal swath extending for what looked to be close to a hundred yards from the terminal out to the ship’s hull.
Vigilant’s
wingspan would not allow her to dock any closer. Instinctively O’Keefe spread his arms to steady himself and as he did so his left hand, and then the bag held in his right, impacted something solid. Exploring the contacts by feel he realized that the gangway was in fact enclosed; but that the enclosure was constructed of the same transparent material as the floor of the observation lounge. It had a slick, almost unctuous feel under his fingertips yet it would not accept the smudges of his prints.