The End of All Things (19 page)

“How much breathable air do you think they have?” I asked Aul.

“Not a lot,” ze said.

I glanced over to the co-pilot’s monitor, which still erroneously showed the
Odhiambo
as a single unit. The fore of the ship was rapidly cooling; all power had shut down and heat and power were venting into space.

The aft of the ship, on the other hand, was warm and getting warmer as I watched.

“I don’t think they have much time,” I said.

Aul followed my gaze to the co-pilot’s monitor. “I think you’re right,” ze said, then looked up at me. “You didn’t bring a vacuum suit with you, by any chance, Councilor?”

“I did not,” I said. “And the very fact of your question makes me begin to regret that very much.”

“It’s fine,” Aul said. “It just means I have to do this without a co-pilot.” Ze pressed a button on his pilot monitor. “Attention, team,” ze said. “You have two ditu to get on your vacuum suits. In three ditu I’m pumping the air out of the hold and opening her up. Be ready to take on passengers at speed. Have emergency air and heat prepared. These people are going to be cold and near asphyxiated. If they die once you get them, I’m leaving you out here.”

“Inspiring,” I said, after ze had finished.

“It works,” Aul said. “I’ve only had to leave them out here once. Now, slide in a little more, Councilor. I have to seal up this compartment. Unless you want to try holding your breath for a while.”

*   *   *

“The four of them haven’t drifted too far from each other,” Aul said, as we were underway, two ditu later. Ze put an image on the main screen showing the positions of the diplomats. “And two of them are together so we really only have three targets.” A curving line swept through all three positions. “We open the gate, bring our speed down, and literally let them drift into the hold. Three targets, three ditu, we go home, we’re heroes for the sur.”

“You’ll curse us if you put like that,” I said.

“Don’t be superstitious,” Aul said.

The aft portion of the
Odhiambo
erupted.

“Oh, come
on,
” Aul yelled.

“Give me tracking, please,” I said. Aul transferred the screen to the co-pilot monitor. The main portion of the
Odhiambo
’s aft was still spinning away from the diplomats, but a large chunk of debris was now launching itself in a different direction entirely. I watched as the shuttle’s computer plotted its trajectory.

“This debris is going to hit these two,” I said, pointing to the paired diplomats.

“How long?” Aul asked.

“Three ditu,” I said.

Aul seemed to think about it for a moment. “All right, fine,” ze said.

“All right, fine, what?” I asked.

“You might want to make your center of gravity as low as possible. The inertial and gravity systems in this thing are pretty reliable, but you never know.”

I hunkered down. “What are you about to do, Aul?”

“It’s probably best you wait until it happens. If it works, it will be really great.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Then it’ll be over quickly.”

“I’m not sure I like where this is going.”

“If it’s all the same, Councilor, don’t talk to me until it’s over. I need to concentrate.”

I shut up. Aul pulled up the diplomats’ positions on zis pilot screen and overlaid the trajectory of the debris. Then ze started moving the shuttle forward. Aul stared at zis pilot screen, typed furiously into it, and never looked up.

I on the other hand looked at the external view monitor and saw a distant rising mass of debris, and our shuttle moving inexorably closer to it. We appeared to be on a suicide mission straight to the heart of that debris. I glanced over to Aul but ze was in focus, all attention drawn to the screen.

At almost the last possible instant I saw on the monitor a white starburst which I registered—too late!—as a vacuum suit we were going to hit head on, just as the debris rose like a leviathan below us. I sucked in a breath to shout, saw the images on the monitor streak, and then clenched for the violence of the debris smashing into our shuttle from below. As Aul promised, it would be over quickly.

“Huh,” Aul said, and spoke into zis headset. “You get them? Yes. Yes. Right. Good.” Ze looked over to me. “Well, that worked,” ze said.

“What worked?” I asked.

“High-speed rotation around the target,” Aul said. “It takes a tiny bit of time for the shuttle’s inertial field generators to register a new entity and adjust its velocity. If I picked up our new passengers on a straight path at the speed I was going, they would have turned into jelly against the interior of the shuttle. So I rotated us very quickly, to give the field just enough time to register their presence and match them to us.”

“Oh.”

“That’s the short version,” Aul said. Ze was entering commands into zis pilot monitor, presumably to pick up the two remaining diplomats. “I also had to tell the shuttle what speed I wanted the targets to have relative to the interior of the shuttle, and burn off the momentum we suddenly had dumped into the system. And such. Point is, it worked.”

“Where’s the debris?”

“Behind and above us. It missed us with a couple plint to spare.”

“You almost killed us.”

“Almost,” Aul agreed.

“Please don’t do that again.”

“The good news is, now I don’t have to.”

Picking up the other two human diplomats was the very definition of anticlimactic.

As we headed back to the Conclave’s asteroid, Aul restored air to the cabin and opened up the pilot’s compartment. “One of the rescued diplomats would like to speak to you,” Aul said.

“All right.” I ducked and found my way to the main cabin. As I did so a Fflict nudged past me, nodding; the co-pilot, anxious to get back on duty. I ducked again and entered the cabin.

The rescue team were busily attending to the diplomats, all of whom were covered in self-heating blankets and sucking air through masks. All except one, who was covered only in what I now recognized was a Colonial Defense Forces combat unitard. The unitard’s owner was kneeling, speaking to one of the diplomats, a woman with dark, curled hair. She was holding his hand with a grip that I imagined would be uncomfortable for anyone other than a genetically engineered supersoldier, which is what the unitard’s owner was. His green skin gave him away.

The soldier saw me and motioned to the woman, who stood up, shakily. She removed her mask and shrugged off her blankets—a bad idea because she started shivering immediately—and walked over to me, hand extended. The soldier stood with her, slightly behind.

“Councilor Sorvalh,” the diplomat said. “I’m Danielle Lowen, of the United States Department of State. Thank you so much for rescuing me and these other members of my team.”

“Not at all, Ms. Lowen,” I said. “Welcome to the Conclave’s headquarters. I am only sorry your entrance was so … dramatic.”

Lowen managed a shaky smile. “When you put it that way, so am I.” She began shivering violently. I glanced over at the soldier, who picked up the hint, stepped away, and returned with a blanket. Lowen accepted it gratefully and slumped slightly into the solider, who bore her weight easily.

“Of course, we of the Conclave cannot take all the credit for your rescue,” I said, nodding at the soldier.

“I regret to say that I was only seventy percent successful with my own rescue attempt,” the soldier said.

“No, you were one hundred percent successful,” I said. “You got seven safely to the
Chandler,
and you knew that if you got the other three away from the ship, we would come find you.”

“I didn’t know,” he said. “I did hope.”

“How lovely,” I said. I turned to Lowen. “And you, Ms. Lowen? Did you hope as well?”

“I trusted,” Lowen said, and looked at the soldier. “It’s not the first time this one’s tossed me out into space.”

“I was with you the whole way the last time, too,” the soldier said.

“You were,” Lowen said. “That doesn’t mean we have to keep doing it.”

“I will keep that in mind,” the soldier said.

“The two of you have an interesting history, clearly,” I said.

“We do,” Lowen said, and then motioned to the soldier. “Councilor Sorvalh, if I may introduce you to—”

“Lieutenant Harry Wilson,” I said, finishing her sentence.

Lowen looked at the both of us. “You two have met before, also?”

“We have,” I said.

“I’m popular,” Wilson said, to Lowen.

“That’s not the word I would have used,” she said, and smiled.

“If memory serves, the last time we met there were also exploding starships,” I said, to Wilson.

“That’s odd,” Lowen said. “The last time I saw Harry, there were exploding starships, too.”

“It’s coincidental,” Wilson said, looking at Lowen and then at me.

I smiled at him. “Is it?”

PART THREE

“I didn’t expect you to challenge me so much on my request to come back alive,” Tarsem Gau said to me, as I entered his office after the rescue mission.

Tarsem’s private office was, as ever, cramped; after years in spaceships and their tiny spaces Tarsem still felt most comfortable in close quarters. Fortunately I was not claustrophobic, and I agreed with the political wisdom of his personal office being smaller than that of even the most undistinguished Conclave representative. The office was even smaller than the one given to the human envoy, which I suspect might shock Ms. Byrne. Fortunately Tarsem kept a sitting pedestal for me so I did not have to crimp my neck.

“If you don’t want me to almost die, you shouldn’t task me to missions where dying is a real possibility,” I remarked, sitting. “Or at the very least don’t put me on missions where the pilot is a mad Fflict.”

“I could have zim disciplined, if you would like.”

“What I would like is for you to give zim a commendation for quick thinking and admirable piloting, and never put me on another of zis shuttles.”

Tarsem smiled. “You have no sense of adventure.”

“I do have a sense of adventure,” I said. “It’s overawed by my sense of self-preservation.”

“I don’t mind that.”

“Nor do you seem to mind testing the proposition, from time to time.”

“I don’t want you to be bored.”

“I am, alas, never that,” I said. “And now with chatty preliminaries out of the way, I want to impress upon you what an utter disaster this entire event has been for us.”

“I thought it went rather well,” Tarsem said. “The humans were saved, the
Odhiambo
was successfully destroyed without collateral damage to headquarters or other ships, and thanks to the actions of your mad Fflict in rescuing the stragglers, we remain in the good graces of Earth, and even got a tiny bit of credit with the Colonial Union diplomats for rescuing one of their own.”

“A thin skin of self-congratulation on a rather messy pudding,” I countered. “Which includes the very likely fact of an enemy action against the
Odhiambo
in our own space, which we neither saw coming nor could defend against, the fact that now we are no longer able to keep separate the humans from the Colonial Union and the Earth, as we intended to do for these discussions, and the fact that all of this plays perfectly well into the plans of those who are even now gathering against you in the Grand Assembly.”

“I seem to recall you arguing to save the human diplomats,” Tarsem said. “And me taking that advice.”

“You were going to attempt to save the diplomats regardless of what I advised,” I said, and Tarsem smiled at this. “And the decision to save them was more important than mere politics. Nevertheless, saving them will be seen by your enemies as proof of your regard for the humans, not a sign of basic decency.”

“I don’t see why I should care how they see it. Anyone with intelligence will understand what happened.”

“Anyone who isn’t blinded by ambition and frustration with the Conclave will understand it. But those who are blinded will
choose
not to see it, as you well know. They will also choose to see Colonials rescuing the earthlings as hugely significant, which it is.”

“You don’t think any ship so close would have made the attempt to rescue those diplomats?”

“No,” I said. “I think the
humans
might have made the attempt regardless. These particular humans, at the very least.”

“You think well of the Colonials.”

“I think well of Ambassador Abumwe and her team, including their CDF liaison,” I said. “I wouldn’t trust their government with a cooking fire, and I don’t advise
you
do, either, no matter what comes out of Ambassador Abumwe’s mouth in your meeting with her.”

“Noted,” Tarsem said.

“Even the two sets of humans arriving within a serti of each other will be augured as consequential,” I said, returning to the topic at hand. “And this was an easily avoidable blunder, as I warned you not to meet with the Colonials.”

“And if I had not agreed to, then all the humans would likely be dead because our rescue mission might have failed. And you dead with them, I might add.”

“You wouldn’t have sent me on the rescue mission if the Colonials hadn’t been there,” I pointed out. “And if the humans from Earth were dead that would indeed be tragic, but it would not then be leverage for your enemies.”

“The fact their ship was destroyed in our space would be.”

“That’s something we could finesse with findings and if necessary with resignations. Torm Aul would not be pleased to be out of a job but that’s easily dealt with.”

“This line of conversation is the sort of thing that makes me smile when people who don’t know you praise your gentility to me,” Tarsem said.

“You don’t keep me around for gentility. You keep me around because I don’t lie to you about your situation. And your situation is now worse than it was when we woke up this morning. It’s going to get worse from here.”

“Should I send both sets of humans away?”

“It’s too late for that now. Everyone will assume you’ve had clandestine meetings with both groups and your enemies will intimate you had that meeting with both at once, because they are functionally the same in their eyes.”