The Voyage of the Star Wolf (23 page)

“You didn't have to. It was on your face. Listen to me. That first week's schedule is easy. Every week from now until the job is finished, I'm upping the ante on you and every single man and woman in this crew. Every time you meet a challenge, I'm going to raise the target. You are on a treadmill. I am going to make this the single most dreadful experience in the lives of each and every one of you. Because after you live through the hell I'm going to give you, the Morthans are going to look easy.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And that brings me to my last point. There is going to come a day when this crew is more terrified of you and me than they are of the Morthans. On that day—and not before then—they will not only be ready to go up against those murdering bastards, they'll be positively
eager
.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Questions? Comments? Feedback?”

Korie shook his head. “No, I don't think so.”

“Good. Did you notice I didn't say word one about your—” Hardesty waved a hand in careless dismissal, “—inner turmoil. You're a man. Handle your healing however you have to.
But from now in, you'll do it in the privacy of your own cabin.
Got that?”

Korie managed to nod.

“Good. Now get the hell out of here. You're already a day behind schedule.”

When the first Morthans were decanted from their artificial wombs, they weren't called Morthans. That would only come much later. At the time, the “enhanced babies” were thought of only as a specialized form of humanity, and great care was taken to give these children a special pride in themselves. They were told that they were
not
a subspecies, but a superspecies.

Perhaps that was the mistake. Perhaps that was where it started.

Generations later, when the science of bioengineering had become a commonplace technology, when the designing and creation of new species of humanity had become routine events, the pride in one's superior abilities was still a part of the training, and the term “more-than” had become part of the common slanguage.

Humanity wasn't slow to notice. The “more-thans” were useful. They were interesting. They were admirable. Humanity was fascinated by the “more-thans.”

But not all the “more-thans” felt the same about humanity. As the number of “more-thans” grew, so did their wealth and their power. And so did the separatist settlements of those who resented the patronizing attitudes of so-called “normal” humanity.

It was inevitable that some of these “more-thans” would leave the human worlds and establish their own colonies. The more extremist of the separatist groups went as far as they could beyond the frontier; they made it known that they wanted no human intervention, and they made it known in such an aggressive manner that they got their wish.

That was the beginning of the Morthan Solidarity. They had resources, they had ability, they had a smoldering resentment. Soon, they had a plan. They designed a culture for themselves. It was a fierce and terrifying brew; its primary emphasis was a studied aggression. There were sixteen castes of martial arts training, twelve levels of self-discipline, a religious order based on warrior-Buddhism and medieval samurai codes, and an intensely developed convention of politeness and protocol. There was honor or there was humiliation—a Morthan knew nothing else. The Morthans created holidays of rage and horror; culminating in mass outbreaks of hysteria and riots. Their culture spawned new ways of turning
amok. Berserkers were commonplace. There was ritualized cannibalism. Sexuality invented itself in terrifying new perversions.

The Morthans knew what they were doing—they were inventing a past for themselves, so they could design a future. Out of this chaos, they bred themselves into a species of super-Morthans. They augmented and enhanced. They engineered each new generation to be strong enough to kill the previous one. They channeled the horror, trained it, disciplined it intensely. Their rage was a nuclear fire—and they tempered themselves in its flames.

It did not go unnoticed.

But humanity's only defense would have been to become Morthans themselves—and that they could not or
would not
do. There had to be a better way.

But then the war broke out. The Silk Road Convoy was destroyed, and it was too late.

A starship is a bottle. A liberty ship is a bottle inside a bottle. The inner bottle is the main life-support module. The outer bottle is the ship's primary hull. The space between the two is known simply as the inner hull. It is a raw, unfinished-looking volume; a techno-wilderness of cat-walks, railings, structural members and naked work lights; it is a cross-hatched maze of structural members, latticework partitions, ducts, and cables. There are naked work-lights throughout; haphazardly placed and casting odd shadows.

The liberty ship comes off the line deliberately unfinished so that each ship can be custom-fitted for specific tasks later. Usually, most of the inner hull is intentionally set aside as a place where a starship crew can
gafiate
.

G
AFIA
: (
abbrev
) Get Away From It All. T
O GAFIATE
: The process of getting away from it all.

The theory was that a crew needed a little bit of wildness and disorder, a place where they could achieve a bit of psychological distance from the pressurized environment of the military regimen. Mostly, the theory worked. Sometimes, it didn't.

Which is why Lieutenant Commander Brik and Lieutenant JG Helen Bach were searching the inner hull for the
LS-1187
's notoriously peripatetic still. As they moved along the catwalk, HARLIE was turning the lights on ahead of them and darkening them behind. Most of the aeroponics webs had been removed from this section. Korie had left many of them in place and the Luna moss could still be smelled throughout the inner hull.

Bach was uncomfortable at first, following the hulking Morthan along the catwalks. He didn't talk. She was sure he didn't like her. She wanted to let him know that she understood—about the prejudice and everything else. She didn't realize she was babbling.

“—I grew up on a Morthan farm,” Bach was saying. “I've been around Morthans all my life. Um, I guess what I'm trying to say is that—”

Brik cut her off. “I know what you're trying to say. It isn't necessary.”

“Oh,” said Bach. “Okay.” She looked at Brik uncomfortably. His immense size was disconcerting. Deliberately, she changed the subject. “Um. On my last ship, the inner hull was outfitted as a gym. We even had a running
track. It was great. Can I ask you something—?” When Brik didn't respond, she took it as an assent. “You know how the captain and the exec think. If we do it on our own time, do you think Mr. Korie would let us build a gym ourselves? We could probably—”

Brik wasn't listening. He held up a hand and explained, “Shut up.”

Bach fell silent immediately. She looked up—and up—at Brik. He was staring intently forward. Bach followed his stare, but she couldn't see what he was focusing on. She followed him silently forward.

They came around the curve of the hyperstate fluctuator channeling tube and stopped.

Ahead of them, on a wide platform, lit by worklights, was the still, a tangle of tubing and wires and boilers. Reynolds and Cappy stood on either side of it. They wore lazy, I-dare-you expressions. Behind them were four hulking men, part of the Black Hole Gang; they were big and mean-looking. Bach noticed that they were all carrying large blunt tools.

Bach snuck a quick glance at Brik. His expression was unreadable. She glanced back to Cappy and Reynolds. The silence stretched out—

“Well,” said Bach, crisply, in a deliberate attempt to break the mood. “This is a fine how-do-you-do! You're having a party and you didn't invite us! I'm hurt!”

Reynolds's gaze slid over to Bach as if he was seeing her for the first time. He remarked quietly, “Hanging around with Morthans is a good way to get hurt.” To Brik, he said, “Don't make any trouble here and we'll all get along
just fine
. Lots of ships have . . . extracurricular activities.”

Brik's answer rumbled deep in his chest. “Not this one.”

Reynolds shrugged. “Have it your own way.” He and the others spread out, readying themselves—

Without taking his eyes off them, Brik said softly to Bach, “Please stand back. I don't want you to get hurt.”

“Uh-uh. It's my fight too.” Bach held her ground.

“Lieutenant,” said Brik, picking her up swiftly and sliding her easily down the catwalk and out of the way, “you really must learn to follow orders.” Then he turned back to the six men with clubs.

Brik was a Morthan Tyger. He was not simply big and mean-looking. He was an
artist
.

He moved.

He did not seriously injure any of them, but he
hurt
each of them. He flowed like lightning. He reached, he grabbed, he conquered. They swarmed in around him, clubs swinging. He whirled, kicked, feinted, rolled, came up swinging—he disarmed them, disabled them, took them
out of the fight, and left them gasping in pain and shock. He gave each of them an unequivocal reminder that he did not want to do this again.

The fight was over before it started: kick, slash, punch, grab, thrust, jab, throw, parry, duck, clobber—and take a breath. He hung one man on a hook, he draped another over a catwalk, a third ended up wedged between the hull and a stanchion. A fourth man was dropped onto the next catwalk down. Cappy was jabbed in the groin as well as the solar plexus and left choking where he stood.

The fight ended with Brik
gently
taking the throat of Reynolds between his fangs and
growling
. Reynolds went white.

“It's a good thing you didn't get me angry,” Brik said softly. “I lose control when I get angry. People get
eaten
when I get angry.” Very controlled, he added, “Don't. Get. Me. Angry.”

Somehow Reynolds managed to gasp and nod.

“Good,” said Brik. “Now
I'm
sure that we'll all get along just fine.”

He dropped Reynolds rudely to the floor, then he nodded to Bach who was just now finding her way back. “Thank you for not getting in my way, Lieutenant. Would you please supervise the destruction of this unauthorized equipment?”

Bach nodded, as unable to speak as the others. She was stunned by the speed of Brik's victory.

Brik reached down and pulled Reynolds to his feet. “You,” he said. “You will begin dismantling the still now. Correct?”

Reynolds choked out his assent.

“Your crewmates will help. Correct?” Brik started plucking the other survivors off the walls he had hung them on. The six chastened men assented painfully, one by one. Brik stepped over to the still and loudly began pulling it apart. “Like this,” he prompted, handing the pieces to MacHeath. “Now, you do it.”

MacHeath and Reynolds stepped gingerly forward and began breaking down the equipment: the copper tubing, the boiler, the fermentation vat. The others made their way forward and began to help.

Brik watched for a moment, satisfied. “Lieutenant, you will report to me when the job is done.” Then he turned and strode off into the darkness.