We All Died at Breakaway Station (32 page)

The heavy came in closer, jumping forward in a sudden burst of acceleration, heedless of its own safety, or perhaps realizing the
Iwo’s
growing weakness, anxious to make the kill.

“Missiles!” the voice of Akin Darbi yelled. “Sectors IV, IX and…”

“Screens up full!” Maxel yelled. “Close all…”

The starship shook, shivered, shuddered, screamed.

…roger!…

…screens faltering, blast got through, hull breached…

…damage control?…

…still active…

“Admiral,” Daniel Maxel yelled, “our underport guns are out.”

The
Iwo Jima
was virtually weaponless.

“Let’s get out of here!”

“Missiles at…”

Metal screamed, lights flickered‌—‌darkness fell across the bridge. Somewhere, far off, Absolom Bracer thought he heard the whistle of escaping air.

“Seal all compartments,” he yelled even as the automatic controls began that operation.

The bridge lights came on, flickered back out again. Darkness for two, three seconds.

…absolom?…

…yes, roger…

…plasma torpedo broke through, aft sections HI and IV destroyed, drive out. screens going…

The
Iwo Jima
was dying. In seconds, or minutes at the very most, the screens would fail and the enfolding energy would cascade in, crushing, vaporizing, and it would all be over. And Absolom Bracer would die again.

He knew that his time had come, and this time for good, yet now he felt no fear, no pain. He had done what he had set out to do, and that was enough. Call it a hunch, or call it clairvoyance, call it whatever you like, yet Absolom Bracer somehow knew that they had lasted long enough, somehow knew that the single Jillie warship off Breakaway had not been enough to destroy the station, somehow knew that Admiral Mothershed’s report had reached Port Abell and was even then being beamed Earthward. It might have been wishful thinking, a dying man’s fantasy, but he didn’t think so. It was something more than that; it was a sort of knowledge; and it was a triumph. The report
was
getting through.

Suddenly the ship shook, and through the metal of the deck Bracer could hear a tremendous explosion.

“Roger!” … roger!…

…absolom, my circuits are damaged…

…roger, hang on…

…i am well, but my communications are going out. my eyes are‌—‌absolom, i can’t see, i can’t hear, i can’t‌—‌…

…roger!…

For the first time since boarding the LSS
Iwo Jima
Absolom Bracer was alone, really alone.

“Cold-sleep coffins, everybody!” he yelled over the growing roar, yelled as the artificial gravity of the bridge vanished and weightlessness took control of his clumsy body.

“You too,” Dan Maxel cried.

“No.”

“For God’s sake, Absolom, save…”

The universe exploded in light, heat, flame. Bracer saw the near bulkhead begin to melt, glowing white and then flowing. He saw Maxel grab up Eday Cyanta in his strong prosthetic arms and stagger with her in the brief return of artificial gravity toward an open cold-sleep coffin that had rolled into view on his command. He saw Akin Darbi stand up slowly like a man in a trance, something on his lips that might have been a prayer, or a curse, and turn to face the hell pouring through the bulkhead, to die again. He saw Bene O’Gwynn, beautiful in her facelessness, turn back to her faltering scopes for one final view of the stars she had helped carry them through. All this in an instant, and pride in it.

And then his prosthetic eyes were burned away as the energy beam raked the bridge.

But he did not scream as he died, nor did he regret his dying.

The relief ships from Earth arrived three standard days later.

Wreckage orbited Breakaway; wreckage stretched in a line to the very limits of the Breakaway planetary system, and in that wreckage were found the bodies of only seventeen crewmen in cold-sleep coffins, only seventeen who had not died for the last time, only seventeen who could be taken to the hospitals of Earth and given life again.

And one of those seventeen was not actually a body, but a brain in a saline solution, a brain and the machines that kept it alive, now all but insane, in the ruin that had been the
Iwo Jima.
Roger had said that he was a starship, and the starship that had been his body had died, as had the bodies of all the others. Roger had died again. But he too, that naked brain that still “lived,” could be taken back, given sanity again, and another body, another mechanical, starship body. And he again would go out to fight.

And he would remember when his sanity came back to him how it had been out there, for there was a story to tell, many stories to tell, of men and women and of how he, along with all of the others, had died at Breakaway Station.

Breakaway Station consisted of little more than a series of still glowing craters in the surface of that dun-colored world, craters that would burn with radiation for years to come.

But Admiral Mothershed’s report had gotten through‌—‌Earth had been informed‌—‌and even now her fleets prepared to move into Jillieland, toward the home of the enemy, toward his vulnerable places‌—‌to kill and to avenge.

The End