Praxis, p.37
Praxis, page 37
Listen, you fucking moron.The words were forced from her diaphragm as gee forces built. This is Lady Sula of the Dauntless, and youve just fired on me for the second time! She glared into the camera and screamed, Do I look like afucking Naxid, you piece of rodent shit? Stop panicking, get a grip on yourself, and call off your missiles! With one hand she thrust a vile gesture at the camera pickup. I hope I live long enough for you to court-martial me over this, you useless bastard!
She felt better for having vented the anger, but the missiles were still coming. She programmed a massive acceleration and turned off the sensors. As her head thudded against the padding in the back of her helmet and she felt the miniwaves drumming against her back, she clenched her teeth and fought the smothering blackness that started to creep over her mind&
Consciousness returned more slowly this time, a slow rise from an oblivion akin to death. It took Sula a while to focus on the displays even though they were projected onto her visual centers. The radiation count was high, and so was the hull temperature, but neither were as hot as after the first barrage.
Still, she was thankful for the slabs of radiation shielding that surrounded the cockpit.
When she turned on the sensors, she saw the cloud of plasma behind her, again obscuring her view of the fight. No missiles were coming at her, and she had eighteen of her own left. When the clouds finally dissipated, the light squadrons seemed to have lost interest in her: now all the ships were firing on the Naxids ahead. The area on the far side of Barbas was a continual boil as Naxid missiles met those of the loyalists.
Sula programmed her own swing around Barbas, but her wild accelerations away from the oncoming missiles had forced her out of the most efficient route. She swung wide and had to burn hard to get herself onto the line for Magarias sun, the next step on the loop around the system.
It had been over two hours since she transited the wormhole. She allowed herself a drink of water and ate half a ration bar. It was flavored with some chemists idea of strawberry, and the taste didnt encourage her to finish the second half. She had to open the faceplate of her helmet to eat, and the cabins interior smelled hot, as if someone had forgotten to turn off a stove burner.
The two light squadrons, taking the inner track around Barbas, had pulled ahead of her. Behind them came Jarlaths six huge battleships, and behind them a heavy and light cruiser division, both of which were dueling with pursuers, to judge by the missile bursts in their rear.
The light squadrons were firing less regularly now, which argued that they might have realized their munitions were not unlimited, but the space between them and Fanaghees squadron was still opaque with detonations, one blaze of plasma after another.
Disaster happened so quickly that Sula barely had time to register what was happening before the loyalist squadrons were engulfed in flame, a succession of colossal bursts in and among them.
Nothing came out the other side of the expanding plasma spheres. Sixteen ships had just been blown to bits.
Sulas stunned amazement was followed by a burst of rage. She wanted to shriek, to pound a fist against the armored walls of the cockpit. But instead she forced her mind to work at what had just occurred.
It seemed that missiles had flown through the plasma screen undetected. Then she decided that wasnt what happened. The missiles hadnt accelerated. They were launched, burned for a short time while their signature was obscured by plasma bursts, and then just lay in wait, drifting toward the oncoming ships. If the light squadrons had seen them at all, theyd seen what appeared to be debris. The missiles let the light squadrons overrun them and then detonated.
That was how Martinez had hit Magarias ring, Sula remembered, let unpowered missiles drift in while no one was looking. Fanaghee had learned a trick from her enemy.
The odds were horribly against the Home Fleet now, nineteen ships against something like fifty, and Jarlath had to know it. The Battleship Squadron broke into two divisions of three ships and began massive accelerations to overtake Fanaghee, whose Majesty supported eight heavy cruisers. Sula watched in awe as she calculated the growing velocity: everyone aboard the battleships had to be unconscious, with the computers doing the steering.
What Jarlath was attempting seemed worthy of her support. The battleship division had to take out the enemy heavy squadron or no one was escaping Magaria alive. Sula programmed her own acceleration and burned an interception course for the Naxid squadron, her missiles spreading out in a wave in front of her. Again, the antimatter engines blazed, flattening her against the couch. Again, she fought against unconsciousness until it spun her into blackness.
She was awakened by a bleating in her ears and a pain in her chest. As she gasped frantically for air, she realized that the pain was caused by trying to breathe against the weight of gravity.
Gradually, awareness of her surroundings came back to her. She looked for the red lights on the displays, and saw they registered to her own life signs.
Sula sat up with a curse, forgetting that the displays were in her head and she couldnt get a better look at them by leaning forward. She waited for her head to clear, then read that acceleration had been shut down when her suit detected a blood pressure spike, well into the dangerous levels even for someone in good health. Her body was failing under the pressure of too many gravities.
She looked at her current readings and found them well within the normal level. Weightlessness had brought the dangerous condition to an end, though she should certainly not press her luck with a high-gravity acceleration anytime soon. Then she checked the situation outside her craft and found her missiles still blazing ahead, toward the enemy.
But her missiles seemed redundant now. Jarlath and the battleship squadron had already engaged the enemy, and they were hurling out immense waves of missiles. Each Praxis-class ship had over sixty launchers, and they were all firing, all pumping one tremendous salvo after another from their huge magazines.
Fanaghees ships were shooting back. It was impossible to keep any kind of score of the missile tracksthere had to be hundreds of them, and on a hundred different trajectories, some direct, some looping around to attack from an odd angle.
Sula told her missiles to cease acceleration. Shed reserve them for a final blow against the enemy, if such a thing were needed.
The flanks of Jarlaths ships pulsed with the blaze of antiproton beams, and the ships began to maneuver apart from one another. He had learned from the loss of his two squadrons, and anything that looked like debris in his path was getting blown up.
Two of Jarlaths ships died first, and Sula gave a cry of rage and despair as she saw the fireballs erupt around them. But Fanaghees flagship died next, buried in a wave of missile strikes, and three of the cruisers near her were destroyed in the same fiery salvo.
After that, both sides lost the ability to defend themselves against the oncoming attacks. The missiles flooded in. Fury, triumph, sadness, and despair wrenched Sula as antimatter bursts obliterated friend and foe alike.
In the end nothing was left. Battleship Squadron 1 had ceased to exist, and so had Fanaghees heavy ships. It seemed that only she was left, she and her eighteen missiles drifting toward Magarias sun.
It was clearly time to quit the battle. There were at least forty Naxid ships remaining, and no more than thirteen survivors in the Home Fleetmaybe less, as there was a continual blaze of action behind her. She needed to swing around Magarias sun, then around Rinconell en route for Wormhole 1 and Zanshaa. Her only contribution to the battle, it seemed, would be to expend six of her missiles defending herself against a useless attack fired at her by her own side.
Hatred of her own uselessness stung Sulas throat. She blinked back tears of frustration and rage. All around her was death and ruin, to which she had not been a participant but an angry witness. In a way, that was worse than dying. Even annihilation had been denied her.
The long hours went past. Sula ate ration bars to keep up her strength and drank an electrolyte supplement to replace what shed sweated away. She skated the rim of unconsciousness in her burn around the sun, but managed to hang on to herself, to her bitter knowledge of her own uselessness.
The battle behind her died away. Perhaps everyone concerned was running low on missiles. Her detectors showed six vessels of the Home Fleet surviving, pursued by a swarm of enemy.
Six ships, she thought, out of fifty-four. Whole worlds were ending this day.
Including her own. She had hated the Fleet at least as much as she loved it, but it had provided assurance, stability, continuity, and tradition, in addition to mundane things like meals and a modest salary. All that was gone now. Sula was afloat in the void, surrounded only by a thin shell and preceded by a swarm of eighteen worthless, deadly missiles.
Black despair closed in. She could feel its chill fingers touch her face. All that she had done, all that she had been, and it was only for this.
Death owed her, she thought. Death owed her more than this solitary cruise, this lonely circuit around a wilderness of annihilation.
She and Death had known one another for a long time. It seemed to her that Death should be a better friend than this.
When Gredel returned from opening her account in Lady Sulas name, she found Caro groping with a shivering hand for her first cup of coffee. After Caro took the coffee to the bathroom for the long bath that would soak the stale alcohol from her pores, Gredel replaced Caros wallet, then opened the computer link and transferred some of Caros money, ten zeniths only, to her new account, just to make sure it worked.
It worked fine.
I have just done a criminal act, she thought. A criminal act that can be traced to me.
Whatever she may have done before, it hadnt been this.
After Caros bath, she and Gredel went to a café for breakfast, and Gredel told her about Lamey being on the run and asked if she could move in with Caro so that hed be able to send for her. Caro was thrilled. She had never heard of anything so romantic in her life.
Romantic? Gredel thought. It was sordid beyond belief.
But Caro hadnt been in the sultry little room in the Laiown quarter, the smell of ammonia in her nostrils while Lameys sweat rained down on her. Let her keep her illusions, Gredel thought.
Thank you, she said. But she knew that once she was with Caro, it wouldnt be long before Caro would grow bored with her, or impatient, or angry. Whatever she was going to do, it would have to be soon.
I dont know how often Lameys going to send for me, she said. But I hope its not on your birthday. Id like you and I to celebrate that together.
The scowl on Caros face was immediate, and predictable. Birthday? My birthday was last winter. The scowl deepened. That was the last time Sergei and I were together.
Birthday? Gredel said, in her Earth accent. I meant Earth day. And when Caros scowl began to look dangerous, she added quickly, Your birthday in Earth years. I do the math, see, its a kind of game. And your Earthday is next weekyoull be fifteen. Gredel smiled. The same age as me. I turned fifteen Earth years just before I met you.
It wasnt true, not exactlyCaros Earthday was in three monthsbut Gredel knew that Caro would never do the math, might not even know how to do it.
There was so much Caro didnt know. That knowledge brought a savage pleasure to Gredels mind. Caro didnt know anything, didnt even know that her best friend hated her. Caro didnt know that she had stolen her money and her identity only an hour ago, and could do it again whenever she wanted.
The days went by, and were even pleasurable in a strange, disconnected way. Gredel thought she finally understood what it was like to be Caro, to have nothing that attached her to anything, to have long hours to fill and nothing to fill them with but whatever impulse drifted into her mind. Gredel felt that way herselfmentally, at least, she was cutting her own ties free, all of them, floating free of everything shed known.
To save herself trouble, Gredel went out of her way to please Caro, and Caro responded. Her mood was sunny, and she laughed and joked, and dressed Gredel like a doll, as she always had. Behind her own pleasing mask, Gredel despised Caro for being so easily manipulated. Youre so stupid, she thought.
But pleasing Caro brought trouble of its own, because when Lameys boy called for Gredel, she was standing in the rain, in a Torminel neighborhood, trying to buy Caro a cartridge of endorphin analogwith Lameys businesses in eclipse, she could no longer get the stuff from Panda.
When Gredel finally connected with her ride and got to the place where Lamey was hidinghe was back in the Terran Fabs, at leasthed been waiting for hours, and his patience was gone. He got her alone in the bedroom and slapped her around for a while, telling her it was her fault, that she had to be where he could find her when he needed her.
Gredel lay on her back on the bed, letting him do what he wanted, and she thought, This is going to be my whole life if I dont get out of here. She looked at the pistol Lamey had waiting on the bedside table for whoever he thought might kick down the door, and she thought about grabbing the pistol and blowing Lameys brains out. Or her own brains. Or just walking into the street with the pistol and blowing out brains at random.
No, she thought. Stick to the plan.
Lamey gave her five hundred zeniths afterward. Maybe that was an apology.
Sitting in the car later, with her bruised cheek swelling and the money crumpled in her hand and Lameys slime still drooling down her thigh, she thought about calling the Legion of Diligence and letting them know where Lamey was hiding. But instead she told the boy to take her to a pharmacy near Caros place.
She found a box of plasters that would soak up the bruises and took it to the drug counter in the back. The older woman behind the counter looked at her face with knowing sympathy. Anything else, honey?
Yes, Gredel said. Two vials of Phenyldorphin-Zed.
She was required to sign the Narcotics Book for the endorphin analog, and the name she scrawled was Sula.
Caro was outraged by Gredels bruises. Lamey comes round here again, Ill kick him in the balls! she said. Ill hit him with a chair!
Forget about it, Gredel said wearily. She didnt want demonstrations of loyalty from Caro right now. Her feelings were confused enough: she didnt want to start having to like Caro all over again.
Caro pulled Gredel into the bedroom and cleaned her face, then she cut the plasters to fit Gredels bruises and applied them. Next day, when the plasters were removed, the bruises had mostly disappeared, leaving some faint discoloration easily covered with cosmetic. Gredels whole face hurt, though, and so did her ribs and her solar plexus where Lamey had hit her.
Caro brought her breakfast from the café and hovered around her until Gredel wanted to shriek.
If you want to help, she thought at Caro, take your appointment to the academy and get us both out of here.
But Caro didnt answer the mental command. And her solicitude faded by afternoon, when she opened the days first bottle. It was vodka flavored with bison grass, which explained the strange fusil-oil overtones Gredel had scented on Caros skin the last few days. By mid-afternoon Caro had consumed most of the bottle and fallen asleep on the couch.
Gredel felt a small, chill triumph. It was good to be reminded why she hated her friend.
The next day was Caros phony Earthday. Last chance, Gredel thought at her. Last chance to mention the academy.
But the word never passed Caros lips.
I want to pay you back for everything youve done, Gredel said. Your Earthday is on me. She put her arm around Caro. Ive got everything planned, she said.
They started at Godfreys for the full treatmentmassage, facial, hair, the lot. Then lunch at a brass-railed bistro south of the arcades, bubbling grilled cheese on rare vash roast and crusty bread, with a salad of marinated dedger flowers. To Caros surprise, Gredel called for a bottle of wine, and poured some of it into her own glass.
Youre drinking, Caro said, delighted. Whats got into you?
I want to toast your Earthday, Gredel said.
Being drunk might make it easier, she thought.
Gredel kept refilling Caros glass while sipping at her own, then took Caro to the arcades. She bought her a summer dress of silk patterned with rhompé birds and jennifer flowers, a jacket shimmering with gold and green sequinsmatching Caros hair and eyesand two pairs of shoes. She bought outfits for herself as well.
After taking their treasures to Caros place, where Caro had a few shots of the bison vodka, they went to dinner at one of Caros exclusive dining clubs. Caro hadnt been thrown out of this club yet, but the maitre d was on guard and sat them well away from everyone else. Caro ordered cocktails and two bottles of wine and after-dinner drinks. Gredels head spun even after the careful sips shed been taking; she couldnt imagine what Caro must be feeling. Caro needed a jolt of benzedrine to get to the dance club Gredel had put next on the agenda, though she had no trouble keeping her feet once she got there.
After dancing awhile, Gredel said she was tired, and they brushed off the male admirers theyd collected and took a taxi home.
Gredel showered while Caro headed for the bison vodka again. The benzedrine had given her a lot of energy, which she put into finishing the bottle. Gredel changed into the silk lounging suit Caro had bought her on their first day together, and put the two vials of endorphin analog into a pocket.
Caro was on the couch, where Gredel had left her. Her eyes were bright, but when she spoke to Gredel, her words were slurred.
I have one more present, Gredel said. She reached into her pocket and held out the two vials. I think this is a kind you like. I really wasnt sure.
Caro laughed. You take care of me all day, and now you help me to sleep! She reached over and put her arms around Gredel. Youre my best sister, Earthgirl. In Caros embrace, Gredel could smell bison grass and sweat and perfume all mingled, and she tried to keep a firm grip on her hatred even as her heart turned over in her chest.
Caro unloaded her med injector, put in one of the vials of Phenyldorphin-Zed and used it right away. Her eyelids fluttered as the endorphin flooded her brain. Oh nice, she murmured. Such a good sister. She gave herself another dose a few minutes later. She spoke a few soft words but her voice kept floating away. She gave herself a third dose and fell asleep, her golden hair falling across her face as she lay on the pillow.
