The Middle of Nowhere Read online

  “Right,” said Hodel. “You’re a big boy now, Robby. How about we call you Gatineau . . . or Mister Gatineau when we’re pissed?”

  “Uh, sure—thanks, I think.”

  Hodel swiveled forward again, pressing one finger to his right ear to concentrate on an incoming message. “Roger that, thanks,” he replied. “Over and out.” To Brik, he said, “We’re clear to launch.”

  “Strap in,” Brik said to Gatineau, indicating the seat commonly occupied by the flight engineer.

  The launch procedure was simpler than Gatineau expected. Brik gave a single command to the boat’s intelligence engine. “Prepare for departure.”

  A moment later the intelligence engine replied, “All hatches sealed. All systems up and running. Confidence is ninety point nine.”

  “Disengage.”

  Abruptly the sense of gravity fell away to nothingness and Gatineau’s stomach went with it. His gut clenched alarmingly, and then—as he recognized the not-very-familiar sensation—he began to relax. Almost immediately there was a soft thump from the rear of the craft and the quiet voice of the I.E. reported, “Disengagement.”

  “Set course and activate.”

  Although there was no apparent sensation of motion, the view out the window began to shift sideways and downward. A moment later and the stars began to rotate around an axis somewhere below Gatineau’s feet.

  “If you want a better view,” said Hodel, “climb up into the observation bubble.”

  “Can I? Gee, thanks.” Gatineau unstrapped himself and floated straight up out of his seat, bumping his head on the roof of the cabin. “Oww—” He grabbed for the top of his head, which caused him to start rotating clumsily in the tiny cabin. He grabbed for the wall and ended up at a very awkward angle, upside-down in relation to Hodel and Brik with his legs kicking at the ceiling. “Oops. Sorry about that.”

  Hodel grabbed the younger man by his waist and gave him a push out through the cabin door. He grinned at Brik and shook his head. Newbies. From the passenger cabin there came a confirming series of painful grunts and thuds as Gatineau careened and bounced his way aft toward the observation bubble. Hodel grinned at Brik. “I love this job.”

  Brik grunted. He wasn’t without a sense of humor, but he did not believe as Hodel did that slapstick was the highest art.

  In the cabin Gatineau pulled himself into the bubble with unalloyed delight. The glass of the observation dome sparkled with luminance, the reflections of hundreds of thousands of work lights. The Stardock was a technological confection, its complex structure a blazing hive of light and color and motion, belying the darkness of the vast night beyond. Vertical spars struck upward, horizontal planes sliced crossways; tubes and pipes of all kinds, some lit from within, curled and coursed throughout the vast structure. And everywhere, there were ships hanging off it—ships of all sizes, all kinds—but mostly liberty ships; the beautiful little cruisers with their polycarbonate foam fuselages and bold carbon-titanium spars. They were held together with monofilament tension cables and a lot of hope.

  The New America assembly lines were turning out three new liberty ships every twelve days. In the nine months since the mauling at Marathon, the Allied worlds had begun to respond to the threat of the Morthan Solidarity with an extraordinary commitment. Some of the evidence of it was already filling the docking berths.

  As the boat drifted away from the dizzying mass of spars and tubes, modules and tanks, the larger structure of the deep-space Stardock came clear. It was a giant metal snowflake. Within it, suspended as if in a spider web, were scatterings of habitats, cylindrical, spherical, and patchwork; the living and working quarters that had grown and spread across the original design.

  There was no light in the bubble except that which came from the Stardock itself but it was enough to bathe the shuttle in a bright white aura. Gatineau’s eyes were suddenly moist with emotion. A flood of feelings filled him, some joyous, some fearful—mostly he was rapturous. The conflicting sensations only added to the overwhelming impact of the moment.

  But all too soon the light began to fade and with it, Gatineau’s rapture. They were accelerating now into the night. As the Stardock shrank away behind them, finally vanishing into the speckled darkness, Gatineau was suddenly aware how small and vulnerable and alone he was here in this tiny spaceboat. He had never before in his life been this far away from . . . safety. His life depended solely on the strength of the fragile glass and polycarbonate around him. After a moment, the sensation became unbearable.

  Nervously, he pushed himself down out of the bubble and pulled himself carefully forward back to the flight deck. He strapped himself into his seat and held on to the edges of it with a tight grip, while he closed his eyes and tried desperately to overcome the overwhelming rush of contradictory feelings. He was being buffeted by dizzying agoraphobia and smothering claustrophobia, exhilarating joy and terrifying loneliness, raving enthusiasm and stark panic. It was all too much to assimilate.

  Both Hodel and Brik noticed the whiteness of Gatineau’s expression; neither said anything. Hodel swiveled his chair around, opened a panel next to Gatineau, and pulled out a bubble of bouillon. “Here,” he said, pressing it into Gatineau’s hand. “Drink this. It’ll help. The first time can be a little overwhelming. I know.”

  “I’m fine,” Gatineau insisted. “Really, I am.”

  Hodel’s expression suggested that he knew otherwise. “It’s a six-hour ride. Do you want to spend the entire time with your eyes closed?”

  “Uh ... okay.” Reluctantly Gatineau took the bubble. “Thanks.” He popped the top off the nipple and sucked at the hot liquid slowly. It gave him something to do, something to concentrate on. After a bit the emptiness in his stomach began to ease, and so did the feelings of panic in his gut.

  Now it was Brik’s turn. He finished what he was writing in his log, switched off the clipboard, and stashed it in its slot. He swiveled his chair around and unstrapped himself. He was three meters tall; his bulk nearly filled the flight deck. “Autopilot’s set. I’m going aft. To get some rest. You will too, if you’re smart.”

  Hodel was peering at the displays in front of him. He nodded in satisfaction, then unstrapped himself and followed Brik. As he floated past, he said to Gatineau, “Rule number one. Never pass up a chance to catch an extra nap.”

  “Um, okay.”

  Gatineau sat alone in the flight deck of the boat for a long silent moment. The display panels in front of him gleamed with information, some of it understandable, some of it not. He pursed his lips, he frowned, he swallowed hard. He was all alone in the flight deck of a spaceboat, godzillions of kilometers from anywhere at all. There was nothing for light-years in any direction but light-years.

  He thought about climbing into the pilot’s seat—just to see what it felt like—but decided against it. He might be breaking some kind of rule, some code of conduct, some tradition. He didn’t want to risk getting off on the wrong foot. Nevertheless, the temptation remained. He sipped at his bouillon and stared out the window at the distant stars and wondered what it would be like to pilot a ship of any kind. He wondered if he would ever earn striated diamonds like those on the uniform of that officer—what was his name again?—who had helped him in the corridor.

  After a while he realized that the bulb was empty and he really was tired. He also realized that he was having the time of his life; the afterburn of three consecutive adrenaline surges had finally burned off and now he was feeling simply content in his exhilaration. He pushed the bulb into the disposal chute, unstrapped himself, and floated back to the passenger cabin. It had been darkened, there was only a faint glow of illumination, just enough to see shapes.

  Both Brik and Hodel were strapped to the bulkheads like logs, or sides of beef; but neither was yet asleep. Hodel glanced at his watch and remarked, “Twenty minutes. Not quite a record, but pretty good.” Brik grunted in response. It was neither approval nor disapproval, merely an acknowledgment.

&nbs
p; Gatineau wasn’t quite sure what Hodel meant, though he knew the remark was about him; he decided, for safety’s sake, to ignore it. He pulled himself into the tiny compartment that served as the head and shortly rediscovered the singular joy of zero-gee urination. After cleaning himself off as best as he could, he pushed himself back into the cabin to hook his belt to a strap on the wall. He arranged himself “horizontally” and connected a second strap to the front of his shirt. He was still way too excited to sleep, but Hodel’s advice had been good, and the least he could do was try to relax for a bit.

  He let his arms hang limply by his sides as he had been taught to do, even though he knew they would eventually rise up until his body had assumed the position of a corpse floating face down in a pool of water.

  He closed his eyes and let himself wonder about the distant starship they were heading toward. He’d studied so many schematics, looked at so many pictures, walked through so many virtualities, he felt he knew the liberty ship already—and yet, he knew he didn’t know anything at all. He’d have to prove himself to the crew. He’d have to earn the right to be one of them. He felt so terribly innocent and naked . . . and then someone was shaking him and all the lights were too bright and he was futilely trying to push them away.

  “Come on, Gate—we’re almost home. Don’t you want to see your ship from the outside?”

  “Huh? What?”

  Hodel was shaking him gently. “Go up in the bubble. That’s the best seat in the house. You’ll see.”

  Still not fully awake, Gatineau followed instructions. He unhooked himself from the bulkhead and pulled himself up into the observation bubble again. This time, it was a lot easier. The boat was no longer a confining presence, but a comforting one. The opportunity to look out into naked vacuum was like peeking out from under the blankets.

  Looking backward, there was nothing to see; only the stars, hard and bright and forever unchanging. When he turned around to look forward, however, he caught his breath immediately.

  There, growing swiftly ahead of the boat, was the Star Wolf. They were approaching her stern, rising up beneath her starboard side. This was the closest Gatineau had ever been to a liberty ship and he cherished every detail of her.

  She was beautiful and she was ugly—beautiful because she was a faster-than-light ship; ugly because she was utilitarian and undressed. She wasn’t dressed to go out, she was undressed to go to work. She wore no makeup. Her bones were visible along her skin. Her fuselage bulged oddly around the sphere of her singularity engine, giving her a humpedback look.

  She didn’t wear as many work lights as the Stardock. Nevertheless, against the emptiness of space, she shone with a compelling beauty. There were bright lights along her hull, as well as up and down her fluctuator spars. Additional sources of illumination came from various observation bubbles studding her hull, as well as from portable work modules stuck here and there across her metallic surface. As the ship swelled in his field of vision, Gatineau could make out men in starsuits as well as several spindly robots hard at work on various repair projects.

  The ship was a hard-edged cylinder, at least as long as a football field. Three long FTL spars struck out from her hull, spaced 120 degrees apart, each one reaching out from the singularity at the heart of the stardrive. The dorsal spar was open to space and three crew members in starsuits were floating alongside. Gatineau envied them and wondered when and if he would ever get his chance to go starwalking.

  The boat was slowing now; it crept forward along the length of the vessel. Now he could see that her fuselage was studded with machinery of all kinds; scanners, weapons, radiation fins, hyperstate lenses, gravitational plates, and other devices whose purposes he could only guess at. Running the length of the hull, mounted so they ran between the fluctuator spars, were three matched pairs of long narrow tubes; the ship’s plasma torch drives.1

  The torch drives could accelerate massive amounts of high-energy particles to nearly the speed of light, and they could fire either forward or backward; simple action-reaction physics did the rest. There were other ways to move a ship through space—fluxor panels, for example—but none more cost-effective for the purposes of the war.

  The starboat was almost to the nose of the parent ship now. Gatineau craned forward eagerly, but abruptly the boat rotated along its own axis, shifting his view of the starcruiser upward and over, completely out of sight. “Damn,” he said. He wasn’t sure if the pilot was celebrating something with a victory roll, or if it was part of the docking maneuver. Obviously the boat was going to connect to the forward airlock; that meant they would have to back into the nose of the cruiser. Gently, he hoped. The observation bubble should still provide the best view—

  He was right. The starboat kept rotating and this time when the Star Wolf came rising into view again, it was directly behind and slightly above Gatineau’s viewpoint with its bow pointing almost directly at the aft of the boat. Gatineau was looking in the other direction, but he sensed her presence behind him almost immediately; it was the reflection of the light on the inner surface of the observation bubble. He turned himself around and saw the Star Wolf head-on for the first time—his breath caught in his throat. He was awestruck.

  The most forward part of the Star Wolf’s fuselage was a cylindrical framework holding a docking tube and airlock connector. Just behind the framework was the real nose of the ship, and just back of that were three stubby fins; they looked like canards; the tubes of the plasma torches projected through them, and their purpose was obviously to monitor and control the torches’ output and hold them in alignment. But this was not what had caught Gatineau’s attention so dramatically. It was the paint job.

  The topmost two fins were vividly painted with angry red eyes; they glowed like fire. The bottom fin was painted almost its entire length with sharp slashing teeth. The effect was striking. The face of the Star Wolf was a silent frozen roar of rage and fury. Caught between the teeth was a tiny, desperate-looking Morthan.

  Gatineau gulped and tried hard to breathe. He’d been caught by surprise by the savageness of the starship’s expression; it swelled in his field of vision as the shuttleboat backed steadily toward it; but even if he’d been warned, even if he’d seen pictures, he still would have been taken aback by the intensity of the moment. The Star Wolf was a ferocious ship.

  Now, looking farther back, he realized that wolf claws had been painted on each of the FTL spars as well. He grinned in raw appreciation. Suddenly all the weird stories he’d heard about this ship were forgotten, all the rumors and lies and half-truths—and just as suddenly all of his own fears and worries about his future evaporated like a bucket of water exposed to vacuum. This was his ship and he had fallen hopelessly in love with her. It was love at first sight.

  The starboat bumped softly against the docking spar; there were a few more clicks and thumps as various connectors locked into place—and then they were home.

  First Blood

  The docking tube was a triple security connection.

  Because the starboat had been decontaminated, but not the starship, the only physical link allowed between the two was a disposable security tube connected through an industrial decontamination station.

  A Morthan had been aboard the Star Wolf. It was taken for granted that he had planted multiple pods of nano-saboteurs; the pods were even now lurking in dark unknown places, waiting, holding their silent and deadly cargo until some predetermined condition triggered the release of their hordes of microscopic engines. Most micromachines were defeatable, often by other micromachines, but the ship would have to be scrubbed three times before it could be considered decontaminated to military standards.

  In the meantime, everybody and everything were routinely passed through decontamination scanners several times a day. The Star Wolf’s intelligence engine, HARLIE, was monitoring the entire process, and two decontamination engines were monitoring HARLIE.

  Gatineau looked down the length of the docking tube with a sk
eptical expression. It unnerved him. The tube was more than fifteen meters of narrow free-fall, mostly dark. The utility lights were insufficient to dispel the sense of ominous gloom. There was only darkness at the bottom. And the knowledge that there would be nothing between himself and some very hard vacuum except a paper-thin disposable membrane did little to give him confidence. Behind him, Brik growled impatiently, a sound like an internal combustion engine redlining.

  “Like this,” said Hodel, shoving past him. He pushed headfirst into the tube, pulling himself along hand over hand, grabbing ladder-like rungs strung along the interior. “See, it’s easy,” he called back.

  “Sure,” gulped Gatineau. “If you say so. It’s just that I’ve never done this before and—” Something huge grabbed him from behind and pushed. Next thing he knew, Gatineau was hurtling head-first through the docking tube. He started to tumble, careened against one side of the membrane, and then ricocheted off toward the other. He flailed wildly, bouncing and twisting. At last, he banged into a handhold and grabbed it frantically. “Hey!” he shouted back at Brik. “You didn’t have to do that! I was going to do it myself—”

  “Right,” rumbled Brik, coming along behind. “But I didn’t have the time to wait.”

  At the sight of the Morthan security officer coming up behind him, Gatineau flinched. Brik filled the tube with his bulk. He turned himself around forward again—and the rung came away from the wall with a dreadful ripping sound.

  “What the—”

  The membrane stretched. It bulged outward. And then at last, it began to come apart and for just an instant Gatineau was staring into naked space.

  It’s only a tiny gap, his mind insisted. You can make it. But it was happening too fast. A terrible whistling sound came screaming up. And suddenly his ears were roaring with pain—and popped from the collapsing pressure. His nose was filling with fluid. A hot wind shrieked past him, pulling him suddenly outward toward something black and bright. Instinctively he grabbed at the next rung, seized it and started pulling himself forward again. His hands came sliding off—