We All Died at Breakaway Station (6 page)

“It’s a hateful looking place,” Reddick said, half to himself. “You wonder why anybody’d want to fight over something like that.”

“I think we both know why, Mr. Reddick,” Bracer told him.

“Yes, sir,” Reddick answered flatly and continued to stare at the tank for a few moments longer before turning to the captain and asking, “Sir, may I have your permission to go down?”

“What’s that, Mr. Reddick?” Bracer asked, more puzzled than ever.

“Well, sir,” Reddick went on hesitantly, “what I mean is, could I ride down to Breakaway in one of the shuttles carrying the reaction mass? I could come back up in another, and cause no one any inconvenience. My additional mass in the shuttles wouldn’t appreciably affect their fuel consumption.”

“That’s true,” Bracer replied slowly, “but as you know, Mr. Reddick, I’ve ordered that no one be allowed shore leave.”

“Couldn’t you make an exception, sir?” Reddick asked, something pitiable in his face, his eyes.

“No,” Bracer said slowly, almost wishing that he could, but knowing that for the sake of morale he could not allow his second officer to do something denied all the other officers and crewmen. “I’m sorry, Mr. Reddick, but I can’t give you permission.”

“Yes, sir,” Reddick said flatly, his eyes going back to the tank and to Breakaway. “I understand, sir.”

As the second officer walked away, Bracer wished again that he could allow Reddick to go down. He needed something to get his mind off the pain and terror, off the memories of his own death that floated just behind his eyes. Reddick, like most of the rest of the
Iwo
’s officers, had died before, and like them he could not rid himself of the horror of death. But, for some congenital reason, it was a little harder for Reddick to live with it than others. But perhaps, Bracer told himself, perhaps Reddick can handle it. I hope so. I think so.

He looked back up at the image of Breakaway in the tank once more, and let his mind return to its interrupted chain of thoughts, back to what Breakaway was, and what the Jillies had tried to do to it three weeks before.

Out of the twelve thousand men and women who had manned Breakaway Station, five thousand were still at their posts, working double, triple shifts until the ships from Adrianopolis could arrive with their reinforcements‌—‌if they would ever arrive now. Of the rest, the other seven thousand‌—‌well, about four and a half thousand of them, dead and half dead, all in cold-sleep‌—‌were being ferried up to the
Rudoph Cragstone
, to go back to Earth, to be put back together. The other two and a half thousand? There hadn’t been enough of them left to worry about, not even for the organ banks, after the Jillies attacked. The Jillies tended to do a good job of whatever they did‌—‌and what they usually did was kill human beings.

And the two warships, the twelve interceptors that had guarded Breakaway Station?‌—‌they were gone, fragments still in orbit around Breakaway, around its sun, metal meteors that had vaporized when they reached the planet’s tenuous atmosphere, dead, gone. And Breakaway’s ground defenses: energy cannon, plasma torpedo launchers, nuclear missiles: most of them gone too, as were sections of the power station, the solar receptors, the polar antenna. But the defensive warships, the energy cannon, the plasma torpedoes, the nukes of the human station had all taken their toll of the enemy, toll enough that even with Breakaway Station naked and weakened, the Jillies had not taken the final step and plastered the planet with thermonukes. Nor had they attacked the relay station, but then that artificial worldlet was as well armed with defensive weapons as any warship. So, after coming within scant kilometers of totally destroying Breakaway Station, the Jillies had retreated, had been driven off. The communications channels were still open, Earth still talked with Adrianopolis, still knew what was happening in the Paladine, still awaited word from Mothershed’s expedition, still massed her forces for one frantic stab into the heart of Jillieland before her colonies were severed and herself surrounded.

These, then, were some of the thoughts that ran through the mind of Absolom Bracer as he “stood” on the bridge of the
Iwo Jima
and watched the shuttles arrive from the planet below, and depart. Some of his thoughts, but not all. There were some thoughts in his mind that he didn’t want to admit, even to himself.

“Miss Cyanta,” he said aloud at last, his voice sounding harsh and overly loud in his ears, “see if you can raise General Crowinsky on Breakaway for me.”

“Yes, sir,” replied the dark, attractive communications officer whose legs were made of metal and plastiskin. And she looked at him for a moment, something in her face, her eyes that Bracer could not read.

A few minutes later Bracer heard her speaking to someone on the planet below: “Breakaway Central, this is the League Starship
Iwo Jima.
Captain Bracer wishes to speak with General Crowinsky.”

“Acknowledge,
Iwo Jima.
Hold on one moment, please,” replied a feminine voice from the communications speaker‌—‌and Bracer momentarily visualized a whole and beautiful woman, as Eday Cyanta was once, one with all her arms and legs and everything that goes to make up a woman, and visualized himself as a whole man, and… Damn you! he told his mind. Damn you to everlasting hell! Why must a man torment himself like that?

A few moments later the speaker in Comm Officer Cyanta’s console spoke again with the female voice: “General Crowinsky is occupied at the moment. He will return Captain Bracer’s call as soon as possible,
Iwo Jima.”

“Can you tell me how soon that will be?” Comm Officer Cyanta asked. “No more than an hour,
Iwo Jima.”

“Thank you, Breakaway Central. LSS
Iwo Jima
out.”

“I heard,” Bracer said without turning his head. “Inform me at once when the general calls. I’ll be in my cabin.”

“Yes, sir. I will.”

He could not see her face now, but somehow he knew that expression was still there, that one he couldn’t read, and he wondered what it was, and why. And thought that perhaps he did understand a little of it, and perhaps it would be better if he didn’t.

Then, as he started to leave the bridge, he had another fleeting, unfinished thought, but one that made him turn, go back toward his first officer’s position, the treads of his supporting cylinder hissing faintly on the metal deck.

“Mr. Maxel,” he said.

“Yes, captain?” Daniel Maxel answered, looking up from the board before him, his broad Slavic face impassive, serene.

Too serene? Bracer asked himself. Is Dan’s expression an indication that he’s going under? I can’t afford to have a first officer who accepts conditions the way they are. There’s such a thing as too much… Oh, dammit, Absolom, let it go. Dan’s the best damned officer you’ve got. And one with guts.

The last thought almost made Bracer laugh aloud. Guts! There were very few on that ship who had real flesh and blood gats.

“How’s it going?” Bracer asked his first officer.

“Well enough, sir,” Maxel answered. “Everything’s well under control. It couldn’t be going any more smoothly.”

“Then turn the watch over to Mr. Reddick and come to my cabin,” Bracer said, thinking that it would be a good idea to give Reddick something to do, though that was hardly the main reason he had asked Maxel to come with him. What that reason was he had not yet fully admitted to himself.

“Yes, sir,” Maxel replied, his face betraying no trace of emotion, if he felt any. One of his artificial fingers touched a stud on the panel before him, a light blinked on, a buzz came from the speaker: “Reddick here. Yes, Mr. Maxel.”

Quietly rolling down the corridor leading from the starship’s bridge to the officer’s quarters, Bracer’s mind rambled aimlessly, but returned with terrible consistency to two images. One was that of the planet called Breakaway, rotating below them, its vast gray-brown deserts, the solar receptors that ringed its equator, the glint of metal of the power station complex, the array of antennae and projectors at the north pole, the five thousand embattled men and women who still operated the station, who still relayed the communications from Earth to Adrianopolis, from Adrianopolis to Earth, who waited to hear word of Albion Mothershed’s audacious expedition into the heart of Jillie-controlled space, who waited to hear word of the great armada of starships that Earth was gathering for one last magnificent attack, an attack, an invasion that might scatter the Jillie forces‌—‌or might destroy the last of mankind’s defenses.

And the other image was of blasting, burning, searing light and heat, exploding out of the darkness, destroying starships and men, and those were thoughts that he did not wish to think, those were memories that he did not wish to remember. He had died once. Wasn’t that enough?

Oh, God, wasn’t that enough?

At about 45° north latitude the Inward Sea cuts deeply into the western crescent of the continental mass of Nortlan on Adrianopolis. And some eighty-odd kilometers north of the city of Holmdel, in the region once called Saint Michel, the cliffs rise sharply above the glistening, restless sea, great granite bluffs rearing into the sky, and atop one of these bluffs stands Culhaven, the ancestral home of the old lords of Nortlan, the Guardians Culhaven. And now, between the towering castle and the plunging bluffs, stood a slender figure, his hair whipped by the sea wind, his eyes gazing off into the distance, off across the sea to the curve of the world.

Adrianopolis was old as colonial planets went for mankind. She was the first of the worlds of the open star cluster called the Paladine to be settled by men in their initial outward surge from homeworld. Here in this region of space, Earthlike worlds were spread in abundance: Cynthia, Carstairs, Davisport, Midwood, the others, and most Earthlike of all, beautiful Adrianopolis.

So men had come into the Paladine, had settled Adrianopolis and the others, and began building new civilizations for themselves. Then the Paladine was cut off from Earth as the Damian Plague‌—‌that vile, insane disease that had no business existing in a rational universe‌—‌swept through the worlds of mankind and came terribly close to destroying his civilization forever.

Lovely Adrianopolis dropped back into feudalism for over two standard centuries and men gathered together what the Plague had left them and tried to build from it, and it was during that time that the Culhavens established their ascendancy over the men of Nortlan. They, like feudal lords of other times and other worlds, gave protection and demanded obedience in return. For a while there were no men on Adrianopolis who dared challenge their power. They, and they alone, ruled supreme.

But then times changed. The starships came from Earth again, out to the severed colonial worlds, and commerce and communications were re-established between the stars. A new kind of thinking came over the men of Adrianopolis as they learned of republican Earth. And decades later, the serfs and servants rose in the Lords’ War and the Culhavens lost much of their power, if not their lives.

Still, with their authority broken, the Guardians Culhaven‌—‌for that ancient title still lived‌—‌were influential men, powerful men in the inner circles of Adrianopolitan government, and by the same token, within the Galean League itself. Most of them were, that is, until after the disaster at the Salient.

Glenn, Guardian Culhaven had but recently and unwillingly assumed his inheritance. His father before him, John, Guardian Culhaven, had been Grand Admiral of the Fleet at the Salient. And it had been the Grand Admiral’s flagship that had led the heroic, but incredibly stupid attack against the Bastion of Dehora, and as the history tapes tell us, no traces of the wreckage of the
Stalingrad
were ever found, all hands were presumed dead. Glenn, the new Guardian Culhaven, hoped that his father
had
died with the
Stalingrad.
For, if the Jillies had taken him alive… Well, such thoughts were better not to dwell upon.

Now young Glenn stood upon the Gray Cliffs of Saint Michel looking down into the sea below him, his mind in anguish. He wore the uniform of full Commander in the Space Forces of the Galean League, and he had just received his orders to take up his first independent command, and the responsibility of it weighed heavily upon his slender shoulders.

So he stood there on the cliffs, the wind blowing through his hair, the smell of sea heavy in the air, chewing on the stem of a battered old pipe that had once been his father’s, asking himself if he were really capable of commanding a starship, even a small patrol ship like the
Messala Corvinus
. He didn’t know‌—‌that was the worst part, not knowing‌—‌and he was afraid to find out. Maybe he really was a coward‌—‌but why couldn’t he have the kind of courage that his father had had?

He looked back at the huge, hulking structure of Culhaven rearing above him and thought how much it looked like the pictures he had seen of the ancient castles men had built on Earth a long time ago, and he vaguely wondered how much the first Guardian Culhaven had been influenced by those pre-space flight structures when he had his fortress-home built. What does it matter? he asked himself.

Culhaven had been abandoned since his father’s death, and this was Glenn’s first return to it, though why he had returned he was not certain‌—‌did he want it for his own home now? Or was it perhaps to find comfort in the past, something to lean back on for support, something to tell him that the universe was still real and hard, and that there was something enduring in it, and that the blood of the ancient Guardians Culhaven still ran in his veins, and perhaps some of their courage with it?

Here too was where he had spent his childhood, and perhaps he had also come back to remember how it had once been when he believed that there was goodness and happiness in this universe if a man just knew how to find it, or remember it. No, find it, he told himself again, and maybe he had found some small portion of the happiness that he believed somehow existed. And perhaps it wasn’t just a small portion, at that. For now inside the ancient, empty fortress above the sea Anjenet sat waiting for him to come back in, for the sea breeze had been too cool for her. At last she had come to him, he thought. At last she had told him that she would enter into a contract with him. She would give up her other lovers and become his wife.