Theirs Not to Reason Why 5: Damnation (35 page)

“All hands, this is Yeoman Fielle; we are now departing orbit from Beautiful-Blue and will be transiting to FTL in fifteen minutes. Lock and Web until we’ve made the transition just in case, meioas.”

Mandella removed his hand from the lift opening, allowing the panels to slide shut. As soon as they were out of sight, Ia sighed and let her shoulders slump. Denora eyed her. “Tired, General?”

“Exhausted. I run thirty-two-hour days, most of the time. Plus, we’ve cut the gravity back to 1.01Gs Standard, which is screwing with my physical reactions,” she confessed.

The reporter nodded. “Oh, I know that feeling—you’d think it’d be easier and safer to move in a lighter gravity, but you’re having to tense up and move slowly and carefully, over and over, so you don’t overact and then over
react
in all this light gravity. On the trip out from Dabin, the other heavyworlders and I had so many bruises in the first week, the infirmary on board almost ran out of contusion crème. Ahh . . . about my
recording
our interviews . . .”

“That’s the other reason why you’re bunking with Private van de Kamp,” Ia told her, palming open the section-seal airlock door. “She knows how to take professional-quality images—flatpic, holography, videography, you name it. She’ll be your camera operator and your footage editor while you’re on board since she knows exactly what is, and isn’t, allowed to leave this ship in an archived format. You’ll also get all the nonsensitive raw data when you leave, to do with as you please, but she has some nice editing equipment and will be able to put together some good-quality interviews for transmission between now and then.”

“How far in advance did you know you’d need her for her holocamera and editing skills?” Denora asked her.

She didn’t reply immediately, but opened the section-seal doors so they could pass through. Finally, she asked, “On the record, or off?”

“I don’t have a camera to record anything yet, so off,” the reporter reminded her.

“I knew back when I was fifteen. And yes, I knew you’d ask me for an interview on Dabin, and yes, I knew you’d be invited here by the Admiral-General. She likes how well you’ve interviewed herself and other military personnel, not just me,” Ia added.

She stopped in front of the woman’s temporary quarters and held out the datapad Sunrise had given her. Denora used her thumb to sign in and looked at Ia. “I know you’ve said over and over that everything started when you were young, but . . . I guess I just want to know
when
, exactly, you started seeing all the details. Or rather, each detail.”

“I saw the outlines and the key points on the first morning, and spent the rest of the day arguing with my mothers that I
had
to do what I foresaw, and in dealing with what I saw. I took that week off from school to look at all of the details. I went back to school, convinced my teachers that I was bored and wanted to study for my general equivalency degree, and split my time studying for that and studying the timestreams. I declared emancipation at sixteen and continued studying the timestreams, adding in physical as well as psychic training.”

“Yes, but—”

Ia held up her hand. “Please, meioa. I saw
all
of it. When I was fifteen. Everything you are about to see, I have already seen, and more. A lot more, because I have also seen many of the alternative outcomes. Now, here are your quarters. It’s first watch right now, but neither meioa-e has gone to sleep yet. You’re welcome to stay inside and get some sleep when they do; otherwise, there’ll be a review of the plans for Sallha and the other colonies in the officers’ meeting room at 1000, Deck 6, amidships, forward from the bridge. Wildheart will teach you how to navigate the ship.”

“I learned how to navigate military ships on my way out here, meioa,” Denora returned dryly. “I was on the
Aitzaz Hasan
before transferring to the
Kuribayashi
. I do know a thing or two about nameplate colors and corridor designations.”

“Yes, but this ship isn’t built like other vessels in the fleet,” Ia cautioned her. “The central core, which runs from Deck 7 to Deck 17, bow to stern, disconnects the starboard and port sides, and the way to get from one side to the other efficiently depends on which sector you’re in; you can always refuse, of course, but it’s a courtesy Wildheart is willing to extend. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get out of this mountebank’s coat and go get things ready for the meeting. Either I’ll see you there, or I’ll see you later on.”

“What, you don’t know which I’m going to pick?” Denora asked skeptically.

“It isn’t overly critical for anything,” Ia told her. She turned and started up the corridor. “Lives aren’t hanging in the balance, so you are very free to choose . . . which is what I prefer, whenever possible. That’s why I’m doing all this, so that everyone will have better choices than just ‘die now,’ or ‘die a few minutes or hours or days from now.’ Sleep well, if you choose that. If not, I’ll see you soon.”

“Sleep well, when you get there,” Denora called out after her.

Waving, Ia headed for the lift to get back to work.

—

The Admiral-General was already waiting for her in her office. Myang had claimed Ia’s chair, though she had not activated the console nor scrolled up the screens into working position. Letting the door slide shut, Ia stepped up between the two chairs and stood in modified Attention, hands clasped behind her back.

“Admiral-General, yes, sir,” she stated briskly, shoulders and chin level, gaze affixed to the back wall behind Myang’s head.

“Is that an acknowledgment of my presence, soldier?” Myang asked, eyeing her. “Or is that a confession of your guilt?”

“Ask your questions, sir. I will answer honestly,” Ia stated. This was an unpleasant moment she had to face, but most every pathway out of here would continue on the correct course. Of course, there was always that three percent chance that she’d get shot in the shoulder anyway. Figuratively speaking.

Myang eyed her, and nodded. “Very well, General. The problem is, I cannot
remember
how the main cannon on this ship was built. Nothing about its specs, nothing about its capacity. I
know
what it can do, for I’ve seen all the footage of your battles . . . and I know it was built on Oberon. But no one
else
on Oberon remembers how it was made . . . and all the data files, all of their research notes, have mysteriously vanished. What did you do?”

“I gave an order, sir.”

Myang narrowed her brown eyes. “You gave an order. What order?”

“Admiral-General. I ordered the Feyori to selectively wipe all traces of how to re-create the Godstrike cannon, including the suppression of logic chains and leaps of intuition that would allow the original creators to re-create how they did it, sir.”

“Why?”
The single word was a warning, a soft-voiced, wary growl. It was not necessary for the Admiral-General to shout at Ia in order to get her underlying threat across.

Ia tried not to shiver openly. “That cannon is too damned dangerous for anyone to attempt to re-create. I spent more than a dozen rescue missions on and around Oberon’s Rock, just trying to keep that information out of the hands of the criminal elements of the known galaxy. I knew that I would not be free to continue to perform precision countermeasures for years, decades, and even centuries. Expediency and the safety of the Alliance worlds demanded that the information on how to re-create the cannon be removed from our collective awareness.

“After considering the implications, and the sheer power of the laser in its Mark II version, the Feyori agreed it was necessary.”

“That was
not
your call to make!” Myang snapped, rising and slapping her hands on Ia’s crysium-plated desktop.

Ia dropped her gaze from the wall to the shorter woman’s face. “I will
not
always be on a ship that would be free to intercept another such theft attempt,” she countered firmly. “And I would
not
leave it up to the vagaries of Fate. I had Grandmaster Ssarra
ensure
I would be assigned to Ferrar’s Fighters as a fresh-out-of-Basic grunt, just so I
could
be there the first few of those dozen tries, and I arranged for the Lyebariko of undergalactic lords to be
disrupted
long enough to stay away while I was on Blockade patrol . . . but I still had to go back after the
Hellfire
was commissioned.

“The problem, Admiral-General, is that I will not always be
able
to be there. And this cannon is too damned powerful to allow anyone else to use it in my place.” She held Myang’s gaze steadily, and stated, “At the end of the Second Grey War, I fully intend to destroy
this
ship as the last relic of that technological advancement in extreme, laser-based caloric efficiency. Sir. Because the Alliance is
not
ready, nor capable, of handling the repercussions of every would-be planet pirate or mass murderer being capable of building their own version and holding whole worlds hostage.”

“So you
say
,” Myang sneered.

Ia slapped her own hands on the edge of her desk, glad her workstation screens were scrolled down below the edge. She leaned over, not quite nose to nose with her superior, and growled,
“So I know.”

Myang narrowed her eyes. She clearly wanted to say more, but she had also been working with Ia for nearly four years, she had seen the strength of Ia’s precognition, and both of them knew it.

“I will not waste one more life than absolutely necessary . . . and you,
sir
, do not yet comprehend just how powerful the Mark II version is, compared to the Mark I. You will hold your tongue, and hold your orders, until the destruction of Sallha and the other infected colonies.”

“You do not give
me
orders,” Myang countered, lifting her chin.

“
I
am still the General of the Alliance Armies, and we are still under Martial Law, because we are
still
at war, soldier,” Ia returned sternly. Exercising the power that had been given to her. “Until both the Salik
and
the Grey threats are dealt with, I will remain in charge . . . and if you try to remove me from command, I have the authority of all the
other
governments in the Alliance to have you removed and thrown in a brig for attempted treason. Grand High Treason.

“I will
not
allow this technology to fall into the wrong hands, and if that requires removing it from the
right
hands to prevent it, then that is what I will do. I will fight these wars to the best of my ability, with every scrap of duty and conscience I carry within me, and I will not let you flaunt your rank as a
carte blanche
pass to be an idiot. I respect you
too
much to allow that piece of asteroid-headedness to pass on my watch.”

“You
respect
me?” Myang scoffed.

“Yes, sir. I still do. But until you know the lay of the local terrain, stop trying to lead from a thousand light-years away. Sir.”

“Are you
comparing
me to Brigadier General Mattox?” the Admiral-General asked, rearing back with a scowl.

“If
you
think that, sir, then you just might be a little too close to
being
it. I am giving you an order, soldier,” Ia repeated. “Stand down, hold your tongue, and
watch
, so that you will see just how dangerous what you are trying to grasp is, before you actually touch it and burn yourself—and if you cannot trust my precognition and my sense of ethics after nearly four damned years of working with me, then you had
better
shut up and watch, because time is the only thing left I have to prove my words are true.”

Pushing away from her desk, she stepped around the desk.

Myang frowned. “Where are you going?”

“To get out of this damned coat. I feel like a court jester in it.” She slapped open the door to her private quarters, stepped through, and turned to face Myang. “Our next meeting is at 1000 hours, Deck 6 officers’ meeting room, amidships, forward of the bridge, sir. I’ll see you there.”

The door slid shut between them. It was not going to be an entirely peaceful flight to the Salik homeworld.

My heart . . . is a bit harder to convince.

~Ia

JULY 26, 2499 T.S.
SALLHA

Sallha was a beautiful blue-and-white world when seen from orbit. The defense satellites had been shot down earlier, and orbital-sweeper robots had been sent—and sacrificed—to sweep the debris out of orbit, aiming it down into the atmosphere to burn up or crash, depending on the size, the angle of reentry, and the composition of each errant mass. More than that, thousands upon thousands of Feyori soap bubbles still swooped through the atmosphere, checking for plague particles and stray scraps the sweepers had missed.

Every once in a while, a silvery sphere would swoop down into the atmosphere, do something, and swoop back up again. Some were dumping matter; some were snacking on the natural radiations bouncing off the planet’s magnetosphere or issuing up from the atmosphere in the form of electrical jets and sprites. Ia herself wasn’t sure of the numbers, but knew they numbered somewhere above fifty, sixty thousand, not counting the ones at the other colonyworlds. More were still coming in from beyond the edges of the known galaxy, drawn as much by the promise of Ia’s precognitive help in their own positions as by the threat of the consequences of failure to appear. Carrot-and-stick.

With the middle and highest orbits cleared, the flagships and escort vessels of every Alliance member sat and waited in extreme far orbit, including a token ship from the Choya. They were still essentially war prisoners, and their government officials awaited trial for crimes against the Alliance, but it was deemed important for them to have a delegation here to witness the death of the Salik nation. But they, too, had seen the broadcasts from the Salik and knew how close they themselves had come to this death.

First, the boasts, the threats, the promises. Then, the pleading, sly at first, then more and more sincere as the reality of their predicament became more and more real to them. Then . . . the panic, from those that still had the energy to be panicked by their fellows slumping and sagging and barely breathing. Ia had banned most of it from being broadcast on the ship. Recorded, yes, but openly played, no; she knew it would be too depressing. Nor were the Salik images the only ones banned from being played over and over by her crew.

There were other starships out there. Most of them were hydrotankers, but—flying here in defiance of the Quarantine Extreme—various well-meaning but poor-thinking “Save the Salik!” groups had banded together to protest what was happening. They had tried legal channels, trying to force the governments of the Alliance to end the destruction of the Salik race, only to be blocked at the highest levels by the Terran Premiere, the Gatsugi President, the V’Dan Emperor, all the Queen Nestors . . .

The ones who had tried to save the Salik as a species were now trying to broadcast messages that General Ia was a monster, that her crew were psychopaths for following her, that she would turn the plague on all of them next. Others were trying to protest the restriction of just how many surveillance drones were allowed to descend and record everything on the Salik motherworld one last time. Still more were only pretending to be protestors and conscientious objectors; they were here to try to sneak in and snag a bit of the plague, or maybe to find a way to grab a bit of Salik wealth and figure a way to cleanse it for resale.

Ia didn’t want to hear any of that invective aimed her way. On one level, she knew she very much deserved it. She was damned for everything she did. But on every other level, she had heard it and endured it long, long ago, and knew there was no better way. No path that she could live with. Not when compared to all the deaths her murderous choices had prevented. Ia knew the other military ships were threatening to shoot and tow them for being in a restricted space, but that was up to them to handle. Her mind was elsewhere.

This time, when she paused for a deep breath to steady her nerves, it was while standing outside the back door to the bridge, in the corridor that contained the two heads, the mini-galley, the door into the main corridor as well as into the bridge, and the side door into her clerk’s office. Rather than wearing formal Dress Blacks, she had donned a gray Special Forces shirt, black slacks with the four colors of each Branch down the seams, and a gray headband that hopefully would keep her sweat out of her eyes. Her shoulder boards and collar points bore the five stars of her rank, and she had attached to her rolled-up shirtsleeves the flashpatch for the Terran United Planets Space Force on one shoulder, and the flashpatch of the Damned on the other: a pale blue and gray snowflake on dull red and orange flames.

This time, it wasn’t the entire crew that awaited her, but rather, her bridge crew: Lieutenant Rico, whose watch it was; Yeoman Ishiomi, who would serve as her backup pilot; Private Shim, who would be plotting her course and all corrections needed; C’ulosc, who would be manning the comms; Nelson at operations; and Ramasa at gunnery, though unless things went terribly wrong, his teams would not be needed. The others in the bridge were her witnesses: Denora de Marco, Admiral-General Myang, her two aides, the Premiere, and two of his five watchdogs, Tango and Sierra. Seven guests were all they could fit into the bridge comfortably since there were only twelve seats: five primary workstations, the command seat, and a backup for each.

Her vision kept threatening to blur. Scrubbing at her lashes, she firmed her will. She knew what she was destroying, knew every beautiful island, lagoon, lake, river, fjord, waterfall, isthmus . . . every water feature, natural and artificial, which had prompted the Salik in one of their rare poetic moments to dub their world
Fountain
, an ironic contrast to the plebian, dull, Terran
Earth
. By the time she was done, though . . .

Squaring her shoulders, she sniffed hard to clear her nose, set her jaw, and opened the door.

“General on Deck!” Rico called out. Unclipping his harness, he gained his feet, faced her, and saluted formally. “General Ia, crew and ship are ready for maneuvers.”

His formality was for posterity. Ia preferred to run a casual crew, limiting salutes and requiring only that everyone be in uniform most of the time, without having to specify what quality of uniform, whether it was camouflage casuals or formal Dress. But this moment, on the bridge of her ship, was being recorded for history’s sake, and that meant running at least some of this moment by the book. Her casual-seeming attire was a necessity, as were the light layers she had ordered her bridge crew—her entire crew—to wear. Her advice to the Admiral-General, the Premiere, the Agents and aides to do the same had gone unheeded, but the reporter, she noted out of the corner of her eye, had donned a lightweight dress in somber navy.

Returning Rico’s salute, she spoke, keeping her diction crisp and clear. “Lieutenant Rico, you are relieved of bridge duty. Report to your secondary post.”

“Aye, sir.” Stepping down from the raised platform, he gave her room to step up in his place. The seat automatically adjusted its distance from the console to accommodate her shorter legs as soon as she sat down and clipped the straps in place. She listened to the bridge door hiss shut as her third officer left but did not look up to watch him go. Instead, she called up a chronometer and calculated how much time had passed.

“Status report,” Ia ordered.

“Orbit is holding steady, sir,” Ishiomi said, keeping his hand steady in the glove and his eyes on the screens in front of him.

“Courses plotted and laid,” Shim told her. “Stage one ready to execute at your command, General.”

“All ships on standby, and the Alliance is ready for broadcast, sir,” C’ulosc added.

“Gunnery teams on standby, sir,” Ramasa stated. “Bored but ready.

“All systems operational, and all systems normal, sir. Ambient temperature 20C,” Nelson reported.

“Private Nelson, let me know when it reaches 35C, counted off on the fives,” Ia instructed.

“Aye, sir.”

“Open the broadcast, Private C’ulosc.”

“Aye, sir. In three, two . . .”

Ia didn’t speak immediately. Instead, she let the silence stretch on the bridge. There were several variations of this speech she could give, but she wanted to give not just the right one, but the one from her heart. It was hard to find the right words, though. Not when her heart was in turmoil over all the things she had done, and all the things she had still left to do. Still, she had to say something.

“. . . I know this is being recorded for posterity. I know that everyone has questioned, and will continue to question, all of my choices. Particularly the ones leading up to this point in time.” Her voice sounded steady, which relieved her. She didn’t want her emotions to break loose now, not when she had too much to do in the next handful of days. “I want you all to know, from now until far into the future, just how much I regret the necessity of this act.

“I will not do so by explaining how many lives I have saved. The numbers are so large, they are rendered meaningless to most everyone but me. Instead, I want you to know how long I have been working on this problem.” She looked up at the cloud-wreathed planet before her on her main viewscreen, just far enough away that the full curve of Sallha barely filled the screen at zero magnification. “Twelve years, one month, twenty-two days, twenty-three hours, and forty-six minutes ago, Terran Standard time units, I realized that for the rest of the galaxy to live past three hundred years from now, when the ancient enemy of the Greys would come to try to destroy us . . . the Salik would have to die.

“One month, eighteen days, eighteen hours, three minutes ago was the deadline for deciding their fate. In the intervening time between that moment of realization and that deadline, in the twelve years, five days, eighteen hours, and . . . now four minutes,” she allowed, checking the chronometer, “I strove every single day, even several times a day—for 4,388 days Terran Standard—in the effort to find another way that would keep the Salik alive while also keeping the majority of the members of the Alliance alive . . . and keeping the rest of the galaxy alive more than three hundred years from now.

“I did not find any.” She let her words hang in the quiet of the bridge. No one spoke, though Myang gave her a grim look, and Mandella a sad one. The two Agents eyed her warily, the two aides looked almost as grim as their superior, and de Marco swallowed, looking away. “My job as a soldier is to stand between my people and all that would bring them harm. To use my body, weapons, skills, and even my life if necessary to prevent my people, my home, from being devastated by war.

“My job as an officer is to do all of that and more, to do so with the least expenditure of resources wherever possible, and the least loss of lives . . . on both sides, ironically. But I will point out that for two hundred years, the Alliance has tried to Blockade the Salik . . . and that for two hundred years, they consistently slipped past our best efforts, rebuilt their war machines, and tried to shove us into, as the Dlmvla put it, the Room for the Dead. I have chosen instead to close that door upon them.

“In an attempt to warn them not to go to war, I arranged for myself to be captured by the Salik, and was nearly eaten alive three years, ten months, thirty days, ten hours, and fifty-two minutes ago. They refused to deviate from their course . . . so I destroyed their top military leaders and gave them time to reconsider. They did not reconsider. One month, five days, eighteen hours, and six minutes ago . . . I allowed the plague, created by the Salik in the first war, to infect the Salik nation here in the second. Another point of irony, but then I do admit I have a strange sense of humor.”

She touched her workstation console, warming it up for piloting. Strapping her left hand into the controls, she checked the complex navigation program her bridge navigators had painstakingly created over the last five hours, ever since arriving in this system. Checking the fit for comfort, she adjusted her headband, drew a deep breath, and nodded to herself.

“Yeoman Ishiomi. Helm to my control in thirty.”

“Aye, sir. Helm to yours in twenty-seven,” he replied promptly.

Her right hand flipped up the outer lid, and pressed to the scanner. “Navigation, ETA to target.”

“Two minutes thirty-eight seconds, sir,” Private Shim reported.

“Noted. Comms, inform the fleet I am moving into position in twenty seconds. Alert Commodore Baltrush to have the Navy 1st Cordon, 5th Division, 7th Battalion begin moving into position for refueling procedure.”

“Aye, sir,” Private C’ulosc agreed, and spoke into his headset in the low tones that were easy for the rest of the bridge crew to ignore, even as it remained crisp enough for the other comm techs across the system to understand.

“. . . Helm to yours,” Ishiomi stated several seconds later.

“The helm is mine,” she confirmed, as telltales lit up on her console and on her screens. “Moving to intercept target.”

She had to have her hand in the attitude glove in order to be the pilot, but Ia didn’t have to actively guide the ship. Not this time. The ship’s insystem thrusters pulsed, and the
Damnation
swept forward, still following an orbital curve but exchanging speed for altitude in a carefully pre-choreographed dance. A dozen hydrotanker vessels broke position as well, trailing after her ship like Terran ducklings in the wake of their parent.

The swirling mass of tiny, mirror-bright beads shifted, several hundred peeling off from the rest to flank the ship, with several hundred more peeling off and popping instantly out of view in handfuls of a dozen or more at a time. Plenty remained to keep up their sharp vigil, though; they were still acting as the thin, silver, soap-bubble shield between the plague and the ships of the Alliance.

“I admit freely that I allowed this plague to happen,” Ia stated for the record. For the recordings. “I did so under carefully controlled circumstances . . . for I will also state, for the record, that it has always been my intention to clean up the messes I have made. I shall begin doing so now. Private Shim, Private C’ulosc, coordinate the broadcast of the destruction of Sallha with the surveillance drones and the fleet.”