We All Died at Breakaway Station (12 page)

Oh, Damion Leto had read all the words, all the sayings, all the prophets, but none of them answered. When it was all boiled down to its essence, they did not know either. So, then, if all the prophets could not answer, could Damion Leto? He was no prophet.

Was there even an answer? Perhaps not. Perhaps there was even no question. Sometimes he thought that too. Perhaps questions were but illusion.

He sat and watched the bubbling water, the swirling, the rising and falling of it, and he listened to movement as bare feet crossed the floor of the meditation hall and then stopped beside him. There was silence for a while, then a soft hand rested on his shoulder and a soft voice said, “Damion Leto.” Without turning his eyes away from the fountain, he answered, “Melissa Haconi.”

“May I meditate with you?” the young woman asked, lowering herself to her knees beside him.

“My meditation does not go well,” he said.

“And why is that?”

“There are questions in my mind.”

“There are questions in all of our minds, Damion Leto.”

“None like mine.”

“All are like yours. We are all a part of Life.”

“Are we too a part of Death, Melissa Haconi?”

“We are.”

“Then, perhaps, that is why I have questions.”

“That is why we all have questions. May I meditate with you?”

“How do you wish to meditate?” he asked, still not taking his eyes from the fountain.

“In the way of a man and a woman, in the way of Life, Damion Leto.”

“Perhaps that is not good for me now.”

“Perhaps it is good for you. You have not touched a woman in a long while. I know.”

“Yes. That is true. When I am troubled…”

“Join in the meditation of Life, Damion Leto. It will ease your mind.” Her soft fingers ran along his back, down across his hips, onto his thigh. She aroused him.

“Perhaps you are right,” he said, tearing his eyes away from the fountain and fixing them on hers. “Perhaps you are right, Melissa Haconi.” And he reached out and took her hands in his.

As she sat down beside him and drew her body close to his, she said, “Kiss me here, Damion Leto. Make me…”

Her words were broken off by a screaming sound that filled the air, that broke into the walls of the meditation hall, a sound like that of something rushing through the air at high speed.

Someone screamed, a shrill woman’s scream. “What is that?” Melissa Haconi cried.

“Missiles!” Damion Leto replied, leaping to his feet. “Jillie missiles.”

“It cannot be, not here,” Melissa Haconi said, rising with Damion Leto and wrapping her arms around his naked shoulders, pressing herself against him fiercely as if to drive away the awful, dawning reality.

“We must run,” Damion cried, tearing her away from him.

“Take me with you!” she cried.

But Damion Leto was already running, across the tiled floor of the meditation hall, out through the preparation room, out into the bright afternoon of Cynthian sunlight. Melissa Haconi was behind him, as were others, all running outside to see and know fear.

And outside they saw them, still high in the sky, the dark, blunt shapes of Jillie warships coming down into Cynthia’s atmosphere; great energy beams licked across the sky at the League patrol ships which rose from beyond the mountains to meet them.

“Life!” a man yelled. “They broke through the defenses!”

“Damion!” Melissa Haconi cried. “What does it mean?”

“Death has come to us,” Damion Leto said as light filled the sky brighter than the blazing sun, forcing him to turn his eyes away. A League patrol ship, unable to raise its screens in time within the planet’s atmosphere, had met a Jillie energy beam.

“Run!” yelled young Delinda Krael, the hall’s newest permanent meditator, holding her arms tight against her naked breasts.

“No,” Damion Leto told her, feeling a sudden courage rising within him. “Running will do us no good. There is no place to run.”

“Then what
can
help us?” Melissa Haconi asked. “Nothing,” he answered softly, standing naked under Cynthia’s sun, under the plunging Jillie warships. “Nothing can help us. We must make love now, Melissa Haconi. Now and forever.”

As he grabbed her hand and drew her down to the dry earth below him, he gave the sky one last glance, and thought he saw a barrage of missiles leap from one of the Jillie warships. Then he turned to face Melissa Haconi, and buried his face against hers, joined his body with hers.

He felt only the briefest flash of heat across his back as the descending Jillie missile detected the proximity of the surface below it and detonated its nuclear warhead. Then he felt nothing, ever again.

For Absolom Bracer and the captains and first officers of the three starships from the Paladine the next two hours passed quickly, sometimes loudly, sometimes bitterly, but they did pass and a decision was made.

“Captain Bracer, I really don’t understand.” The image of General Crowinsky within the tank in the briefing room was frankly puzzled.

“I simply said, sir, ‘do you have any objection to my ships delaying their departure for about five weeks?’
 
”

“For God’s sake, Bracer, why? You can make it to Earth in two weeks or less. Why do you want to‌—‌” Crowinsky’s voice broke off, realization began to emerge within his eyes. “My Heavenly God, captain, do you know what you’re asking for?”

“I know very well, sir,” Bracer said slowly. And he did know, he and the senior officers of the three starships; they knew far better than General Crowinsky what they were requesting. They had all experienced death at Jillie hands before.

“I have discussed this with my senior officers,” Bracer went on. “They understand the situation. There is reluctance, I admit, general, but we
have
reached an agreement. We know what we’re doing. We don’t like it very well, but‌—‌” like Crowinsky, Bracer let his voice trail off.

Reluctance is hardly the word, Bracer thought. I’ll probably face at least one mutiny before this is out. But I think we can survive
that
. We’ve got worse things to face than disaffected officers and crewmen. Things like‌—‌ourselves. “Frankly, captain,” Crowinsky was saying, “how much help could you be to us if‌—‌if the Jillies attacked again?”

“I don’t really know, general. I only know that you have no other defense to speak of now. If we remain, and if the Jillies do attack‌—‌and I’m praying to every god I know of that they don’t‌—‌but if they do, we can at least give you a better chance than you’ve got without us. And without us, general, you don’t have any chance at all.”

“I know
that
, Captain Bracer, but, really, this isn’t your fight. God knows you’ve done your duty. Nobody can expect more than that of you.”

“That’s what I keep telling myself, sir,” Bracer said, “but something keeps telling me that, well, this
is
my fight. I can’t help but look at it this way, general: if the Jillies don’t attack, we haven’t lost anything but a few weeks. If they do, and if we’ve gone on to Earth, and if they destroy you and break the communications link, Earth will be out of touch with the Paladine, and with Admiral Mothershed, if he makes it back. Then we’d be lying in hospital beds on Earth, not knowing whether a Jillie fleet is on the way to blast the homeworld out of the sky. Maybe a break in the communications chain will give the Jillies just the edge they need. Maybe not. I don’t know. But, God help me, sir, I don’t think we can take any chances with it.”

“I think I do understand you, Captain Bracer,” Crowinsky answered. “As soon as I can get a clear channel to Earth, I’ll put in your request.”

“I would certainly appreciate it,” the starship captain said. “Would you patch me in on that, sir?”

“Of course. Is there anything else, captain?”

“No, sir. I don’t suppose so at the moment.”

“I’ll be back in touch with you soon.” Crowinsky thumbed his controls and his three-dimensional image faded from the tank.

Had it not been for the heavy metal base of the cylinder that supported his body, and his life, Captain Absolom Bracer would have collapsed. As it was he slumped forward from the waist, to be caught by the strong prosthetic hands of his first officer.

“Captain?” Daniel Maxel said urgently.

“Let me rest for a minute, Dan,” he said with difficulty.

Pain. Red stinging tongues of pain like flames clawed at legs that no longer existed, blazed in a shoulder that was nothing more than a stump, flared in a scarred groin.

“Shall I call the medical officer?” Maxel asked.

“No, no. I’ll be okay.”

Pain that was too much like the blasting of a plasma torpedo tried to consume the mind of Absolom Bracer. Back, back into his skull he crept, huddling against an outcropping of bone and trying to hide from the glowing pain.

After a while he bit his lower lip, then shook himself, raised back up and looked at the other starship officers who were with him in the
Iwo Jima’s
briefing room.

Besides Bracer and his first officer, there were four others, starship officers who had been through their own hells not too unlike his own, who lived and moved and functioned thanks only to mechanical limbs and organs.

Captain Charles Davins of the LSS
Pharsalus:
he had lost half his face and there was a mechanical heart thumping in the ruined cavity of his chest.

Lena Bugioli, the black-skinned first officer of the LSS
Pharsalus
: from the waist up she was whole, but her body below the waist was supported by a cylinder like Bracer’s. Her face, rock-hard and anything but serene, hid the terrible pain that she must have felt. She did not let the pain interfere with her assigned duties.

Captain Zoe Medawar of the LSS
Rudoph Cragstone
: once a starship medical officer, promoted to captain against all tradition, then killed at her first command, now “revived” to command again, now without a face. The image that Captain Medawar showed to her tiny world was that of a plastiskin egg with two tri-D lenses, two openings for nostrils, and a nearly immobile mouth for features. No one knew what other damages she might carry, what other pains she might have. She did not speak of them, and no one dared ask. First Officer Gautier Lindquist of the LSS
Rudoph Cragstone
: he had a face, two arms, two legs, but the pack that he wore across his shoulders, a complex electronic network that bypassed his ruined spinal column, betrayed his injuries.

These six had come to their decision, slowly, painfully, reluctantly, yet they had all come to agree with Absolom Bracer for differing reasons that Bracer himself did not fully understand, and they had let him relay their joint decision to General Crowinsky. They would stay‌—‌until the relief ships came from Earth, or until… That they did not want to think about.

“None of you wants to back out now?” Bracer asked when he had regained complete control of himself. “You still can. My ship is staying, but as of the moment I have no authority to order the rest of you to stay.”

“We have made our decision,” Captain Davins said slowly. “The
Pharsalus
stays.” He glanced at his first officer who only nodded a slow, sad reply.

Bracer turned his artificial eyes to Captain Medawar.

“Captain Bracer,” said a mechanical voice from the face that wasn’t a face, “you have really given us little choice. You’ve browbeaten us, intimidated us, accused us of cowardice and even treason if we don’t agree to your scheme‌—‌though I am sure you did not realize that you were being so rough on us. And perhaps we should have called your bluff and said that we were going on to Earth despite your wishes. You haven’t the authority to
make
us stay, as you just said. I’m not sure we shouldn’t have gone, and I don’t believe that if we had we would have been
charged
with desertion.” Captain Medawar paused reflectively for a moment. “However, we have agreed.” She paused again. “I don’t know what value a hospital ship can be to you. Perhaps, as you said, the Jillies wouldn’t know that it isn’t a warship. Perhaps you can use her to make us appear stronger than we really are, if it comes to that. That’s up to you, I suppose. You’re a combat officer, and if the stories are true, a damned good one. But I do know this: I can’t and won’t try to take the
Cragstone
on to Earth without your escort. I don’t fully agree with you, captain, but I rather think I admire you. You’re the biggest damned fool I ever met.” There may have been laughter in her artificial voice. Bracer wasn’t sure.

“Okay,” he said slowly. “I suppose I should thank you.”

“That isn’t necessary. That wasn’t really a compliment.”

Bracer smiled at her, then turned to the others. “Assuming that CDC HQ approves, and under the present circumstances I don’t see how they can help it, I will ask General Crowinsky to begin shuttling down the wounded at once. Perhaps… Yes, captain.”

Zoe Medawar’s hand had been raised. She spoke: “No, captain, I vote against that.”

“Why?”

“We have nearly twenty thousand patients in cold-sleep in my ship now,” the
Rudoph Cragstone’s
captain said. “To unship them all and transfer them down to Breakaway would take at least another day or two, maybe more. And it would take a hell of a lot of energy and fuel from Breakaway’s shuttles. Anyway, the real point is this: why? If anything happens they won’t be a damned bit safer on Breakaway than they are out here. If the Jillies do come back, there won’t be enough of Breakaway Station left to collect anyway.”

Or of us either, Bracer thought. “Okay,” he said aloud. “You’ve made a point. The cold-sleepers will stay where they are.” He was silent for a few moments. “Do any of the rest of you have anything to say now?”

The others were silent, dwelling within their own silent hells.

“Okay. Return to your ships. Make what preparations you can. If there’s anything I can do, let me know.”

Salutes were exchanged, and then the starship officers began to file out of the cabin.

“Go on to the bridge, Dan,” Bracer told his first officer. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”