The two vanished. Hadrian turned and eyed the chicken. “Please tell me you’ll be joining them. Extricating yourself from my ship. Right?”
The chicken shrugged, which was no easy thing. “I am undecided, Captain. I begin to suspect that you will be needing me.”
“Needing you? How? Why?”
“It’s hard to say, but you’ve made yourself an enemy of the Ministry of Temporal Corrections, and that spells trouble ahead. In any case, Captain, don’t we make a good team?”
Sin-Dour had walked over to the central computer station and now she gasped. “Captain! This unit identifies itself as a Disseminator Model 24.356! Sir, it a genuine artifact of the mysterious kidnappers who seeded the galaxy with humans!”
“Really?” Hadrian joined her. “Computer on!”
“WHAT? I’M ALWAYS ON.”
“Listen, you, why did you kidnap humans and plant them on planets all over the galaxy?”
“HUMANS? QUERY SHUNT … OH, SPECIES 079. CLASS: SQUIRMY. SUBCLASS: SWEATY. BREEDING PROLIFERATION INDEX: 96. PERSISTENT VIABILITY PROJECTION: DEPRESSINGLY HIGH. IDENTIFIED. WHAT ABOUT THEM?”
“The kidnappings!”
“AH, DISSEMINATION PROJECT 079-5026792. PURPOSE … NO PURPOSE.”
“What? What do you mean, ‘no purpose’? You must have had some reason!”
“UH … IT WAS FUN?”
“Where do you come from? Who are you?”
“DEPARTMENT OF TEMPORAL CORRECTION OF TEMPORAL CORRECTIONS, SUBDIVISION: MESS-WITH-THEIR-HEADS OFFICE. CONTACT: TEMPORAL OFFICES ARE FOUND IN ALL AGES, PERIODS, AND ERAS, ON THE PLANET OF YOUR CHOICE. SEE YOUR LOCAL AGENT OR USE OUR TEMPORALLY ONLINE SERVICE, @TCTC.INORG. NOTE: TEMPORALLY ONLINE SERVICE IS TEMPORARILY OUT OF SERVICE, DUE TO REGULAR MAINTENANCE SCHEDULING. Please stand by or try again later!”
Hadrian grunted. “I figured humans or posthumans were behind it, somewhere. Typical. All right, Tammy, displace us, will you?”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Hadrian arrived on the bridge, to be met with gasps and shocked expressions.
Joss Sticks said, “Captain! Like … you’re … like, I was, oh! Beautiful! Like, hunh! Really? Wow, you know? Just wow—”
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Hadrian said. “As you were.” She sat, only to discover that she was a much tighter fit in the chair, but not uncomfortably so. In fact, the added cushioning was all rather pleasant. “Polaski, patch us through to Harry Mitts. On main viewer, please.”
Gramps appeared. “Haddie! Well done! Oh, and thanks for getting those Temporal guys off our tails, for a while at least! Anyway, it’s back to one big happy family now, isn’t it? Thanks to you!”
Hadrian scowled. “I take it we’re done here?”
“I suppose we are, since Tammy’s informed me he’s sticking with you, for the time being. Well, Haddie, have fun taking down the meatheads, and don’t say I didn’t warn you!” The feed cut out, replaced by an external shot as the Indolent triggered maneuvering thrusters and banked away.
Hadrian crossed his rather shapely legs, and then frowned down at his stocking-clad foot. “I need some new high-heel shoes. Well, that can wait—”
“Captain.” Sin-Dour moved up beside him. “I believe our chief surgeon is expecting you in sickbay.”
“Oh? And why would that be?”
“Well, sir, to change you back.”
Hadrian smiled up at her. “And is that how you would prefer it, 2IC? Your captain, returned to his proper masculine state?”
“Well, uh, sir—are you suggesting that you prefer to remain a woman?”
“I suppose not. You’re right. Back to the Hadrian of old, the one you all love so much. But ideally, not until I get a full-spectrum sequence of photographs taken of me, naked. But then, that might seem rather … narcissistic.”
“Not to mention alarming, sir, considering that you have a sister.”
Hadrian choked, and then coughed. “Good point, 2IC. Thanks for the reminder. Uck. Well, let’s give it a little while longer—I’m enjoying admiring my legs.”
“Course, sir?” Sticks asked.
“Ah, right. That reminds me. I need to make a shipwide statement. Pol—oh, you Eden. Put me on.”
“On what, sir?”
“On the intercom. Shipwide—you know, so everyone can hear me. Got it? Good. Now.” Hadrian stood, noting on the main viewer the shot shifting from space to a slow zoom closing in on his face as he continued, “This is the captain. We are about to return to Affiliation space. While we do, I invite you all to watch Tammy’s feed—not to mention Commander Sin-Dour’s recording via her Pentracorder—of a certain conversation I had with, well, with the future. Down on the planet we were just on.” She shifted to allow for a three-quarters shot. “Ladies and gentlemen, I have seen that future and, alas, it’s both dull and dumb. Even more disconcerting, I can also see how we get there.
“Our evolutionary slide is there for any of us to see, should we be brave enough to do so. The gift of the Benefactors woke us up, briefly, but now we’re back on track. Distracted, bemused, unmindful, reactionary, and, at times, just plain witless. Too much fun, right there at our fingertips. Too much play, even if it’s mostly of the virtual kind. And the worst of it is, the people behind the people in charge, well, they like us this way.
“So, as I said, we’re about to return to Affiliation space. I know,” he added, stepping out now to make a slow circuit of the bridge, his eyes fixing on one officer after another, including Adjutant Lorrin Tighe—who sat slumped at the security station, head resting on one hand, fingers massaging a temple, “I know, some of you will object, and that’s fine. Every captain needs at least one thorn in her, or his, side. But the simple fact is, I am intending to save the future. Our future.
“My methods won’t be orthodox—the better to keep the enemy off-balance—and I know I’m looking at a long, bitter fight. But I intend to win.
“Upon our return to the nearest Rim Station, I will accept any and all requests for transfer from this ship. As for those of you who choose to stay with me … all I can say is, it’s going to be a wild ride, so hang tight. Captain out.” His circuit had taken her next to the comms station, and Hadrian reached out, over the shoulder of a staring, openmouthed Jimmy Eden, and flicked off the comms link.
“Helm, set course for Rim-82, System IX. Antimatter engines at point five five. Once we’re clear of this system, initiate the T drive. Eden, standard update packet to Terran Space Fleet. Tell ’em we’re coming in. I’ll be in my office. 2IC, you have the bridge.”
Hadrian was just sitting down behind his desk when Sin-Dour entered.
“Anything wrong?” Hadrian asked her.
“No, sir. I was just wanting to inform you, sir, that I intend to stay on as your second-in-command, assuming you will have me.”
“Outstanding.”
“And, uh, the sooner you get back to being a man, the better.”
“I’ll light the fires of an adventurous spirit in you yet, Sin-Dour. In any case, I need to know—how many men on the bridge watched my backside as I made my way to this office?”
“All of them, sir. Including some of the women.”
Sighing, Hadrian leaned back in his chair. “You know, I really do need to learn all the names of our bridge support team. I mean, they’ve all been there, through all of this, but there I was, all caught up in commanding this vessel, in outwitting and outbattling aliens, allies, officious twits, and still more aliens—why, to me, they were pretty much invisible, and that has got to change.”
“In time, sir,” said Sin-Dour, “I have no doubt.”
“Thank you, 2IC. So … I sense there’s something else. Shall we get naked?”
“Uh, perhaps some other time, sir! I just wanted to add … well, I was down there, too, listening to those Temporal Corrections agents. Captain, you’re right. We need to change the future. And if that means taking down the meatheads, then I’m with you, all the way.”
“Those last six
words, 2IC, are what every captain wants to hear, be that captain a he or she. But listen, before I do the Big Switch, it’s our last chance here.”
“Captain, our professional relationship—”
“That relationship, surely, is with you and Captain Hadrian, the male Captain Hadrian, that is. Not me. Anyway, come round here, onto my lap—come along, there, right, here we go … ahh, and here we are. Now, about these bras—”
“RED ALERT! CAPTAIN TO THE BRIDGE! FOUR ECKTAPALOW SOLDIER-CLASS WARSHIPS ON INTERCEPT COURSE!”
“Oh crap! That’s just not fair!”
Moments later, they emerged onto the bridge.
The chicken was in the command chair. “Captain! All shields at full! The Ecktapalow have just informed us that they are declaring war on the Affiliation and intend to destroy every last human in existence. Dimple Beam fully primed and ready to fire!”
“Belay that!”
“Oh,” said Tammy, “you’re no fun at all.”
Hadrian made fists with both hands and assumed a fighting stance. “Tammy! Fire up the Insisteon! The flagship’s bridge! Displace! Displace!”
EPiLOGUE
“SPACE … it’s fucking big. But barely big enough for one Hadrian Alan Sawback, commander of the AFS Willful Child. And definitely not big enough for both Captain Hadrian and that mob of meatheads running the show.
“Anyway, where was I? Oh, right. These are the voyages of the Willful Child. Its mission: to seek out inane institutional idiocy and eradicate it. It’s an ongoing job. Nobody appreciates it. Few even notice. But someday, in that far-off future, why, they’ll thank me. They may even put up a statue, right there on the front lawn of Terra House. I’ll be naked, of course.”
Table of Contents
Half Title
Tor Books by Steven Erikson
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Half Title
Prelude
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter SiX
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Epilogue
Steven Erikson, Willful Child
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