Guardsmen of Tomorrow (31 page)

“You’re proposing stealing the
Millennium
?” Ethan asked.

“On the books,” Roz said, “we already have.”

“And doing what with her?”

Roz sighed. She’d been thinking about this since she went through the Cactus Corridor. “She’s our home, isn’t she? None of us has family anywhere else.”

The staff was silent.

“And we’ve been doing things we don’t like for reasons that we all hated because we thought we were working for the Alliance. It turns out we weren’t.”

“So shouldn’t we go back and get a court-martial for Galland?” Ivy asked.

“Maybe,” Roz said. “If we can. If we believe it’ll happen. Like I said, I don’t believe in much anymore.”

“What are you suggesting?” Ethan asked.

‘They can’t come after us,“ Roz said. ”We’ve screwed up their passage through the Corridor. It’ll take them a few tries before they realize that the Ba-am-as believe there’s an agreement, a few more tries before they anger the Ba-am-as into believing the agreement’s over, and then at least two years of flying before they make it here, our last known stop.“

“We’d be fugitives for the rest of our lives,” Gina said.

“Only in Alliance space.”

The entire staff looked at her as if she had three heads. Roz was beginning to get used to that response.

She shrugged. “It’s just an idea. I’m beginning to realize that I’m not the most subtle person in the world. Or the greatest brain. But I do have an ethical center. I’m not suggesting we go out and pillage this part of the galaxy.”

“Then what are you suggesting?” Ethan asked.

“Doing what we were hired to do. Exploring. Helping when we feel it’s right.”

Belle rubbed her chin with her left hand. “You think helping the Xanadians is right.”

“Not so that they relearn space travel,” Roz said, “but so that they can defend themselves against anyone who wants to use their special abilities for the wrong reason.”

“And what would you take in payment?”

“Nothing,” Roz said.

“Nothing?” the crew asked in unison.

“Well, supplies,” Roz said. “We’re going to have to learn how to barter for those, if you follow my suggestion. And one other thing.”

“What’s that?” Ethan asked in a tone that suggested he hated the idea without hearing it.

“Adding a Xanadian to our crew. Provided we learn to like the creatures and feel we can trust them.”

“Why?”

“A universal translator is a valuable thing,” Roz said. “And the Xanadians want to learn what space flight is like. So we work together.”

“Create a new alliance,” Ethan said, sitting down hard, making the chair groan.

“Not a formal alliance,” Roz said. “More like an association. A friendly interaction.”

“It makes me uncomfortable. Any Xanadian on this ship will know everything about everyone.”

“Unless it lives in some kind of water environment,” Belle said. “Think you could jury-rig something like that over the next year, Tom?”

He nodded. “I even know the place to do it.”

“It’s not a sure thing,” Roz said. “We wouldn’t do it if we decide we don’t like them or we can’t trust them.”

“Then what do we do?” Ethan asked.

Roz leaned forward. “We leave.”

“Just like that?” Ethan asked.

She nodded. “What’s holding us here? What’s holding us anywhere?”

“Imagine what we’ll see,” Tom said. “Imagine what we’ll do.”

“It won’t all be easy,” Belle said.

“But it will be interesting,” Gina said.

Ethan looked at Roz. “Is this what freedom feels like?”

She grinned. “I don’t know,” she said, “but I have a hunch it is.”

The Xanadians agreed to the loose alliance. Roz made plans to interview some of the other species on the planet, and the
Millennium
orbited like a glorified guard ship while all of this was going on.

There was still a lot to work out. The entire crew had been notified, and she expected dissension in the ranks. Tom told her that one of the shuttles could be modified so that dissenters could try to fly back to Alliance space if they wanted.

So far, no one had volunteered.

Roz had a hunch no one would. The adventure out there was just too promising, the universe too vast.

Everyone on the crew had joined the Patrol for the same idealistic reasons she had, and the last eleven missions had whittled away that idealism. Since she made her decision to break off from the Alliance, though, she heard a lot more laughter on her ship.

The pressure was gone. It was as if they had worked for an evil master and were now free.

The key, of course, was to maintain their own idealism in the face of being alone on this side of the Corridor. She felt they could do it.

She felt like her life’s adventure had just begun.

THE END

by Dean Wesley Smith

Dean Wesley Smith has sold over twenty novels and around one hundred short stories to various magazines and anthologies. He’s been a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula Awards, and has won a World Fantasy Award and a Locus Award. He was the editor and publisher of Pulphouse Publishing, and has just finished editing the
Star Trek
anthology
Strange New Worlds
.

Captain Brian Sable of the Earth Protection League could tell there would be a mission. Tonight was the night. The first mission in over a week. The border skirmish on the third moon of the Garland Star Cluster must have flared up again. Or something else threatened the security of Earth. The League was needed to stop the threat. He was needed, and he was ready.

Across the small nursing home room the old clock on the wooden dresser ticked, echoing in the small space and dim light, demanding his attention just as it did every night as he lay in his bed, awake, waiting. When he’d first arrived at the Shady Valley Nursing Home outside of Chicago six years earlier, that old clock had let him count down the seconds until he died. Long seconds, never-ending seconds that he had wished would go by faster.

Now the loud ticking of that old clock in the night counted the minutes until the next mission, until the time he could become young again. And the time waiting, getting older and closer to death went by too fast now.

Far too fast.

Now he wanted to stay alive, to stay with the missions and the Earth Protection League, to get the chance to be young enough to wear his Proton Stunners and fight the good fight against the enemies of Earth.

The clock ticked.

Time went by.

Down the dimly lit hall outside his room’s door a nurse laughed at an unheard joke.

Captain Brian Sable coughed, the sound weak and pitiful in the silence of the nursing home.

He glanced at the clock. He could barely see the hands in the light from the hall, but he could tell it was only a little after ten in the evening. It was still far too early for them to come for him.

He tried to roll his ninety-one-year-old body over on its side, but only succeeded in shifting the sheet slightly under him. He hadn’t had the strength to pull himself out of bed for over two years, let alone roll over. And he couldn’t remember the last time he’d walked across this small room on his own to the bathroom. A nurse’s aide always had to carry him and plop him on the cold toilet, then carry him back to his bed or wheelchair.

He laughed, and the laugh again turned into a rough cough that sent his old heart pounding. He forced himself to calm down and to not think about how he was at the moment. He hated thinking about how old he was, how frail his body had become, how dependent on others he now was. He reminded himself that none of that mattered like it used to.

Now he had the missions for the Earth Protection League. The missions gave his old life purpose, his continued liv-ing in this way station of the dying a valid reason. And even though there hadn’t been a mission for almost a week, he knew tonight was the night.

He could tell.

It was all in the details. For example, the night nurse had left the rail on his bed down. The nurse never did that, except on mission nights.

They had also cleaned him up early and put him to bed. They never did that either unless there was a mission to run.

Of course, when he had first talked to them about the missions after his first one, they had all laughed at him. They had said there was no such thing as the Earth Protection League. They claimed that he had just had a strange dream.

But he knew better.

He’d gone on a mission, gotten young again. He had helped Earth defend itself against the evil scum of the galaxy. And since that night he’d gone on many, many more missions.

Tonight he was ready again.

Hell, he was always ready. There was nothing else for him to do.

The clock ticked the night away minute by minute, second by second. On the night of a mission, waiting was the hardest. Sometimes he wished he couldn’t tell when a mission was. It would make sleep easier.

So he forced himself to think about other things. First he thought about his long-dead wife, Margaret. She would have laughed at him if she knew what he was doing. But she wouldn’t have minded. She had always supported him in everything he did, one of the many things he had loved about her.

Their children, Strom and Claire, didn’t have time for him much anymore. They had their own lives, their own jobs, their own kids to raise. He hadn’t bothered to even hint to them about the missions. There would have been no point. They were part of his past, his life as a grocery store owner. None of that compared with his life now as a captain in the Earth Protection League.

He watched the clock as it ticked away the time.

At some point along the way, at least an hour after midnight, he dozed off.

“Captain Sable?” the young, male voice said.

Strong arms picked him up from the bed and moved quickly toward the sliding glass door that lead into the center court of the nursing home. “We need your help again, sir.”

“Always ready to help,” Sable said. His old vocal cords managed to barely choke out the words. Those were the same words he always said at the start of every mission.

He glanced at the old clock on the way out. Three-sixteen in the morning. He would be back shortly.

If he lived.

The sliding door to the outside was open and the Chicago night air was cold against his old skin. But the young soldier who carried him didn’t even pause. He strode across to the center of the court and then tapped a badge on his wrist. A white beam of light from above lifted them quickly into the transport ship.

Sable knew that around the country the same thing had happened, or was happening, at least forty-one other times as his crew was gathered from their respective nursing homes and retirement apartments.

The young man with the strong arms quickly moved to a silver, coffin-shaped sleep chamber and laid Sable down slowly on the soft cushions.

“Any hints as to the fight?” Sable asked. “The nature of the mission?”

The young soldier smiled. “Couldn’t tell you if I knew, sir,” he said. “But they never tell us grunts what’s happening on this end. I just wish I could be there with you.”

Sable laughed. “I wish you could, too, son.”

But both of them knew that wasn’t possible. The reason the ninety-one-year-old Sable was going instead of the young soldier was because of the problems with Trans-Galactic flight. Simply put, it regressed a human body. If that kid had come along, he’d be nothing more than a baby, if that, when they dropped out of Trans-Galactic flight.

And so far no one could figure out why it did that, or so he was told. He had heard all the explanations of relativity, the curved nature of space, and the different fixed states of matter, but it still had made no sense to him.

All he knew was that he was old when the flight started and young again when it ended. The farther and faster the ship flew, the greater the distance from Earth, the younger he got. At times he wondered if the Earth Protection League had a group of middle-aged soldiers for shorter-range work, but he had never been in a position to ask anyone.

He was just glad space flight worked this way.

The young soldier patted his shoulder. “Have a good trip, sir.” Then he closed the lid on the coffin and tapped it twice as a signal to Sable that it was secure. In this old body, it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t have been able to even push the lid open if he tried.

A moment later the rose-smelling gas filled the chamber and he drifted off into the sleep of the dead as the Trans-Galactic ship jumped out of Earth orbit and headed toward the center of the galaxy.

The top of the coffin snapped open with a hiss and cool oxygen bathed his face.

Captain Brian Sable snapped his eyes open, then held his arms up to look at them.

What he saw was the young skin and shapes of youth. He flexed his fingers and the muscles under the skin rippled.

It felt wonderful!

No pain, no aches. Just the sense of health and youth.

Yes! He had made it again.

With both hands he grabbed the sides of the sleep module and lifted himself out, kicking over the side without so much as a caught heel. The feeling of youth was simply wonderful.

He still wore his old man’s nightgown, but he quickly pulled that off and tossed it back in the coffin. He’d need it for the return trip, if he lived through this coming fight. If not, they’d need it for his body. And tomorrow morning his kids would get a call that he had died peacefully in his sleep.

He flexed the muscles in his shoulders and neck. His body was one he barely remembered from his youth. Yet each time he went on a mission, this body returned, good as ever. Whatever the strange relative-matter-physics involved in Trans-Galactic travel, he loved this body.

Quickly he dressed in his uniform of the Earth Protection League. First the leather pants and high boots, then a silk blouse that flared under his arms and fit tight over his shoulders. Next he put on a leather vest over the blouse that had the EPL triangle symbol on the chest. Then he strapped on his twin Photon Stunners, one on each hip.

Brushing a hand through his full head of dark hair, he turned and glanced at the only mirror in the small room. The reflection that greeted him was one of his youth, control, and power. He couldn’t be more than twenty-one or twenty-two. Only the knowledge and memories inside the young body were of a ninety-one-year-old man who had, seemingly moments before, been asleep in a nursing home room just outside of Chicago.