Annihilation (Star Force Series) (35 page)

That threw me into a greater rage, because I knew what it meant. They all knew Sandra was dead. They all knew that she had no mind left, that somehow this Imperial Assassin had finally struck the blow that so many like her had tried to land before. She’d brought down one of our best, and truly hurt me, personally.

I took a step forward. Alexa stiffened, but she still stood at attention, facing the wall.

“I have witnessed your crime personally,” I said. “I have heard your plea. I will now pronounce the sentence: death. Do you understand, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir,” she said very quietly.

I was impressed with her resolve. There were no tears. There was no begging, or lies. She didn’t even tell me what a tin-plated bastard I was. She just stood there at attention, staring at the wall…waiting for death.

I took another step closer. I now stood in the cell with her. It was cramped, and stank lightly of urine.

How was I going to do this? I thought about it. I’d never executed anyone before, at least not a human.

I felt a surge of anger. Not about her crimes, but about the conflicting feelings she was causing within me. I stepped closer, and stood between her and the wall. Her eyes finally met mine for a moment.

“Why?” I asked her.

She opened her mouth, then closed it again. “Please sir,” she said. “Carry out the execution.”

I blinked. “You don’t even have the common decency to tell me why you tried to kill me? Did I kill your family in South America, or Florida, or Italy, or—somewhere else?”

“No, Colonel.”

“Why, then?” I demanded.

She did not answer.

I narrowed my eyes, suspecting a rat. Was I being recorded? Was this a propaganda vid I was making this moment? A million bizarre scenarios played out in my mind. I didn’t want Crow to win this one somehow. I didn’t want him to gain anything through my actions.

“I think there will be a stay of execution,” I said. “I think we’ll question you. We’ll get every detail from you.”

She shook her head and drew her lips tight. It was a determined, but sad expression. There was a weariness in it that I didn’t quite understand.

“No, you won’t, sir. I’m sorry to disappoint.”

My mind was racing. I decided to try to a lay a trap for her. “All right,” I said. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to ship you back to Crow. I’m going to tell him you tried to cause some harm, but you failed. Utterly. I’ll tell him Sandra and I are both fine.”

Finally, at long last, her demeanor changed. She looked up at me, and stared into my eyes. I saw fear there.

“No, you can’t do that. Sandra is dead. I killed her. I almost killed you, whether you know it or not.”

I nodded slowly. “Yes, you and I know that. But Earth doesn’t. The Ministry of Truth will be fed doctored vids of Sandra and I, alive and well. We can do that, you know. Hell, I’ll make a fake Sandra, if I have to. She’ll walk and talk for the cameras. You won’t win. Not this one.”

“Please don’t do that. It serves no purpose.”

“I’m not going to serve your purpose, whatever it is, nor am I going to let Earth get whatever it wants out of this.”

“It will only hurt me, not Earth,” she said. “My father—my entire family.”

“Explain.”

She finally told me why she’d become an assassin. Her father was indeed a marshal in the forces of Earth. But he’d gone against Crow and tried to remove him from power. The entire family had been arrested, and imprisoned in the ruins of Sao Palo.

I frowned. “South America?” I said. “There’s nothing there. I’ve seen it. I was there when the city died.”

“There are spots of life on the continent, but Sao Palo isn’t one of them. In the middle of a blast zone, hot with rads, it’s a massive prison now. The Committee for Public Safety sentences people like my father to be imprisoned there. It’s where the unwanted go to be forgotten forever.”

 I suddenly began to understand Lieutenant Brighton. If what she said was true, she was here to keep the rest of her family alive.

“So, that whole thing with General Kerr was an act, a stunt designed to gain our confidence?”

“Yes, sir. That’s all I can tell you. What else do you need to know, really? The Emperor wants you dead. Everyone on Earth must obey the Emperor, or everyone they love will be horribly mistreated.”

I felt sick at the idea that Earth had fallen under the spell of such a monster. I knew Crow—or I thought I did. Was it possible that great power warped weak men? I’d always heard that, but I’d never witnessed it firsthand.

“If you think this confession will gain you forgiveness for your crimes, you are sadly mistaken.”

There was a tiny popping sound in Lieutenant Brighton’s mouth. I stepped back away from her. She kept her mouth shut, but she looked at me, she turned her head and exhaled, away from me. A strange gas rolled out of her mouth. It was bluish-white, like cigarette smoke. I took another step back, staring at her.

“I’m dead now,” she said, “and I could have killed you. But I didn’t. Remember that, and have mercy, Colonel. I—”

She slumped onto the floor. I walked out of the chamber, and called for a bucket of constructive nanites. No one moved for a second, and I repeated the order much more loudly. Then, Captain Sarin ran up to me. She handed me the container, and stared into the cell.

Lieutenant Brighton lay on the steel floor, twitching. Liquids bubbled from her mouth. I’d seen the effects before. She’d erased her own mind.

I threw the bucket over the entrance, sealing it. The nanites knew what to do. They covered the open space, forming an airtight door.

“Captain Sarin,” I said, “jettison the brig into space, with all its contents.”

“You really did it, Kyle. I didn’t think you would.”

I looked at her, not quite knowing what she was talking about for a second.

“But I understand,” she said, staring up at me. I could see sympathy in her dark, pretty eyes. “Your grief overcame you. It could happen to anyone.”

 I got what she was saying now. She thought I’d struck Alexa dead. Another woman would have called me a murderer, and possibly never seen me the same way again. But not Jasmine. She was already making excuses for me.

“That’s not exactly how it happened,” I said. “Follow me to the bridge, I’ll fill you in.”

-29-

Some people have called me a hothead. Other people say the opposite is true, that I’m as cold and unfeeling as a glacier. There is truth in both these accusations. I have a temper. I act rashly at times, especially when under great stress. But I also get over things faster than most people. I can take stress in stride, and keep functioning. For me, life always went on.

I think it is this quality, above all others, that has contributed to my success as a commander. The Imperial British believed that one of the greatest attributes an officer could have was the capacity to remain calm under fire. To take death, blood, danger and pain all in stride. To think clearly, and act the gentleman, even when others might run, fall to their knees, or cry their eyes out.

I truly believe, at this point in my career, that a natural capacity to take emotional punishment has placed me where I am today. I’m not sure if I’m happy about it, but that’s how it is. That was the kind of man I am.

I’d presided over a thousand tragedies, and millions—no,
billions
of deaths. What kind of man, I asked myself, would not be broken by these events? Could anyone hold up under the weight of it forever?

So far, I’d never cracked under the strain. I’d made countless mistakes, but I’d never been broken. I’d done the incredible often, and the impossible occasionally, but frequently failed when it came to the mundane.

With all that said, the death of Sandra’s mind struck me hard. I think it might have been easier if she’d died in battle against the Macros. This lingering nonsense, with her body kept alive in a truly vegetative state…it was painful for me. How could you say goodbye and move on when she was still lying there, breathing through a tube of gleaming nanites?

When under serious stress, I had a sure-fire short-term cure: beer. I know it might sound childish, but I’d never been in a truly bad state of mind that could not be improved by six or twelve brews.

That was where I found myself after Lieutenant Brighton’s suicide. I sat in my office, downing beers. I’d laid down a stash from Eden-8, the only planet cool enough to grow good barley and hops. The farmers among us had found an excellent business almost immediately growing and selling crops we’d transplanted from Earth. Right now, I was very glad someone had had the wisdom and foresight to bring along the essentials for brewing one of man’s greatest creations.

There was a tapping at my office door. I took no notice of it. Instead, I popped open another brew. It was number nine, I think—or maybe eleven. For some reason, those numbers sounded extremely similar to me at the moment.

I didn’t worry about who was at the door. There had been a number of lost souls tapping out there since I’d placed myself inside, and as the ship was still in one piece, I’d decided they could all just wait until I felt like opening the hatch. Right now, I didn’t feel like doing that at all.

Tapping, again. Soft tapping. I could tell, even with my hazy, alcohol-soaked mind, that the tapping was feminine. There was something about it... Kwon would have hammered, that was just a reality when you had fists like ham hocks. Marvin’s knocking always sounded like someone was working a ballpeen hammer on a piece of sheet metal. Metal on metal had a distinctive clink to it that couldn’t be imitated.

But this sounded like a small hand tapping on a hard door. It was a woman, I was sure of it.

For some reason—possibly it was the beer, I’ll admit—coming to this conclusion made me grow curious. I wanted to know
who
was there, and if I was right about the persistent knocker being a female. I stood up, walked to the door and caused it to dilate open.

It was Jasmine. I didn’t smile at her, however. I just stared, wondering what she wanted, what was so damned important she had to invade my worst hour.

“Excuse me, Colonel,” she said. “I’m so sorry…I know you’re not in a good state of mind, but General Kerr’s ship is nearly at the rendezvous point.”

“So what?”

“Don’t you think you ought to sober up before you meet the General and accept his surrender? This is a matter of state. The stakes are high. You have to pull yourself together, Kyle.”

I stood straight, and tried not to sway on my feet. I stared at her flatly.

“You knew, didn’t you?” I asked. “Just like all the rest of them.”

Jasmine looked worried and slightly hurt. “I knew she wasn’t responding to treatment, but that’s all.”

“Nope,” I said, sucking in air through my nostrils. “I don’t buy it.” I stepped out into the passageway and looked right and left, expecting to see others out there, lurking. But the passage was empty.

As there wasn’t anyone else handy, I turned my anger toward Jasmine. “You knew Sandra was a turnip, and you didn’t have the guts to tell me. No one did.”

I noticed I had a fresh beer in my hand. I wasn’t quite sure how it had gotten there, but I was glad to see it. Very glad. I took a big hit on it and walked back into my office.

“Kyle,” she said urgently. “You only have a few hours before you have to meet with Kerr and talk to him.”

“Maybe you should do it,” I said. “I’m busy.”

She followed me into the office and sat across my desk from me. Behind her, the nanites hastily rebuilt the metal skin that served as my office door.

“Let’s talk about Sandra, if you want to,” she said. “I was worried about you and her and all of us. But I actually didn’t know it was hopeless. I thought she might recover. I’ve been as busy with matters of command as you have been.”

I handed her a beer. She looked at in surprise. A cool vapor of frost wound up from the squeeze-bottle.

“How’d you get it so cold?” she asked.

I smiled. I showed her a compartment in the floor. “There’s a tube from this box that leads right out to space. A few seconds in there, and it’s just right. Marvin taught me the trick.”

She shook her head and put the beer down on the desk. “I’m very sorry for your loss, Kyle,” she said. “I haven’t had a chance to tell you that.”

“No one has. I’ve been holed up in this office since I figured it out.”

We were both quiet for a moment, and my mind wandered. I thought of Lieutenant Alexa Brighton.

“I have to admit,” I said, “she was dedicated to her cause.”

“Who?”

“Alexa. She stood there, you know, ramrod straight and eyes ahead. Just standing at attention up until the very moment she dropped dead.”

“Awful and strange,” Jasmine said.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. How do you want to go out? That was her way. Not on her knees, begging and sniveling. She maintained her dignity until the moment her mind was gone.”

Jasmine fidgeted, looking uncomfortable.

“What is it now?” I asked her. With an effort of will, I set aside my beer. I decided it would be my last. It was a painful decision, but one that every drunk has to make at some point, unless they utterly fail nature’s test and pass out.