Amos nodded. Without Simeon, the stationers lost their advantage of superior coordination. Against professionals, he had been the only one they had had, once the Kolnari recovered their balance.
“Simeon was a . . . a brave man,” Amos said. And if he were really a man, a dangerous rival, he added to himself. “And very skillful. I honor his memory.” Joseph nodded; they clasped hand to forearm. “Farewell, my brother.”
“Fardlin‘ touching, really,” a voice said in his ear.
Amos leaped upright, then ducked again frantically as a bolt spattered metal near his face.
“Simeon?” he gasped.
“No, the Ghost of Christmas Past,” the brain replied. “I’m back. So,” he went on, glee bubbling through his voice, “are some other people.”
A holo formed behind the barricade: a figure in green power armor of a chunkier, more compact design than the Kolnari suits Amos was used to. In the background was the bridge of a large vessel, battle-clad figures moving about. A woman, with a man in like equipment but different insignia beside her.
“Admiral Questar-Benn,” the woman said. Remarkably, she appeared to be in late middle age but undeniably healthy and close-knit. “Commodore Tellin-Makie, of the battlecruiser Santayana.”
“Oh, God is great, God is Merciful, God is One,” Amos murmured through numb lips. “Bethel?”
“Don’t worry. It’s a big navy. We hit them as they were getting ready to leave. Reports show not much damage to the planet since you left, if you’re Benisur Ben Sierra Nueva.”
“Keep firing!” Joseph barked to the others at the barricade. “You can die just as dead winning as losing.”
The commodore laughed shortly. “Profoundly true,” he said. “Simeon, Ms. Hap, all of you, you’ve done a very good job. Heroic, in fact. We didn’t expect to find anything but bodies and wreckage.”
“It was a close-run thing,” Simeon said feelingly. “A damned close-run thing.” Both the officers seemed to find that amusing.
“Here’s my record of the whole thing, start to finish,” said Channa and the Navy officers’ eyes turned. Evidently they had video of her. Amos hissed a low complaint, and three more holos joined the image of the Santayana‘s deck.
“We’ve still got a lot of the pirates in station,” Channa said. “Should we back off?” She swallowed. “A lot of our people have been hurt.”
“Negative,” the admiral said, shaking her head. “Give them time to think, and sure as death and fate, one of them will find a way to blow the station. I’ve got a Marine regimental combat team in the transports. We’ll forcedock as soon as I swat the Kolnari warships. That battle platform could be tricky.”
The commodore leaned out of the sight picture and spoke to someone else. “Well, then, get the destroyers to englobe it, then!”
“It’s not over until it’s over,” Questar-Benn said.
“Er . . . not the Questar-Benn?” Simeon asked, awed.
“Not if you mean Micaya,” she said dryly. “I’m the dull sister, the straight-leg.” She glanced down at the data flowing in from SSS-900-C. “Bastards. Murdering sub-human mutant swine. Maybe now the inbred penny-pinching High Families incompetent corruptionists back at Central will get their thumbs out of their backsides and let us do something about Kolnar and all its little offshoots.”
“Ma’am,” Tellin-Makie said warningly.
“I’m not bucking for another star, Eddin,” she said. “I can afford to tell the truth without a bucket of syrup on it.” She looked up and out at the stationers. “Here’s what we want you to do,” she went on crisply.
God, Amos thought. Thank you. For victory, and for someone else to tell him what to do for a change. Leadership could get very tiring. He suspected Fate was going to send more of it his way. The prospect did not seem as attractive as it once had.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“I never understood what he meant before,” Simeon said, looking out at the huge docking chamber which held only the dead, now in covered silent rows. “I thought I did, but I didn’t.”
The medics and their patients were gone, to station sickbays or to the trauma stations of the warships. Equally silent were the motionless Marine sentries who stood with weapons reversed by the Navy dead. The squad at the docking airlock snapped to attention as each shrouded body went by. The civilians looking among the stationer dead were nearly as quiet, only a few sobbing faintly.
“Understood what who meant?” Channa said, blinking behind the dark glasses that hid her bandages. She appeared detached, almost aloof, just like the two Navy commanders who stood with her and the little group of stationers.
“Wellington,” Simeon said. “ ‘I don’t know what it is to lose a battle; but certainly nothing can be more painful than to gain one with the loss of so many friends.’ He said that after Waterloo.”
The admiral nodded. “I remember when I found that out,” she said very softly. “If you’ve got a grain of sense, you never forget it.”
“Ain’t that the truth!” Patsy Sue Coburn said. Beside her, Florian Gusky put his synth-splinted arm companionably around her shoulders. She stiffened, then forced herself to put up a hand and pat it gently. “You don’t forget anything. But you learn to live with it. C’mon, Gus. I do believe you owe me a drink.”
Channa turned her head toward their footsteps. “Yes,” she said, with a bitter smile. “We learn to live with it. If this is heroism, why do I feel like such crap?”
“Because you’re here,” Questar-Benn said. “Heroism is something somebody else does somewhere far away. In person, it’s tragedy.” Her voice sharpened. “And it could be worse, much worse, and would have been but for you. We did win. You are here. And,” she went on more lightly, “you’re heroes in the media, at least. Which means, by the way, you can write your own tickets.”
“Tickets?” Simeon asked.
“You always wanted a warship posting, didn’t you?” she said. “With this on your record . . .”
Simeon hesitated. Joat had been standing by Channa’s side, quiet and drawn. Now the old coldness settled over her face, and she began to edge away.
Everyone’s always left her, or cheated her, or hurt her, he thought.
“I’m not so sure,” he said aloud, “that I want a military career any more.”
Admiral Questar-Benn nodded vigorously. “That makes you more qualified. They shovel glory hounds out of the Academy by the job-lot and we have to spend years breaking them of such fatuous nonsense.”
“Besides, I have a daughter,” and his instant and totally gratifying reward was the dawning of hope on Joat’s face. “Thanks, though. Maybe, someday.” Some dreams don’t transfer well into reality, he told himself. He could see Joat’s chest lifting with the deeper breaths of self-confidence and she didn’t look about to disappear on him.
“And have you soured on Senalgal?” the commodore said, turning to Channa.
“It’s still a beautiful world,” she said, shaking her head slowly. “But it’s not my home.” She reached down to Joat beside her and, touching the girl’s face with her fingertips, felt the slightest of resistance to such fondling. Learning to trust, and to be a human being, was not something that came quickly or easily. But you had to begin somewhere or you never arrived. “Besides, Joat’s my daughter, too. And I’ve friends here, the best there are.”
Questar-Benn threw up her hands. “Simeon, you’re going to be around a very long time. The offer still stands. I’ll leave it on record.”
“Hey, Pops,” Joat said, her voice a little unsteady despite the cocky tone. “I mean you, Simeon.”
“Great Ghu! Can you, of all people, not think a more suitable title than ‘Pops’ to call me?” Simeon demanded in a semi-indignant tone, but he would have settled for anything of a familial nature from Joat.
“Sure, but I don’t think you’d like to know ‘em!” She smiled her urchin grin in his image. “Any rate, I’m gonna be sixteen standard in a few years. Enlistment a
ge. And I don’t want you blaming me for screwing up your career plans. I . . . I’d sort of like to keep this from happening to somebody else, you know?” She turned to the admiral. “Think these brass-a . . . um, general-type people might have a use for me?”
Questar-Benn shuddered. “I’m probably perpetrating horrors on some unsuspecting commander left to deal with you in the future, young lady, but yes. I’d be very surprised if we couldn’t find a use for all of you.” She swept the present company with her piercing gaze.
“Then we may take you up on that offer,” Simeon said. Although he was too enervated to enjoy thoughts of revenge, no amount of emotional exhaustion could remove the need to do something about the Kolnari: next week, maybe. “But right now, I’d rather call in the gratitude as a favor, if you don’t mind, Admiral,” Simeon said.
“Favor? For who?”
“A friend,” he said. A holo grew, of a boy about Joat’s age.
Joat started violently. “Seld! They wouldn’t let me see ya, said you were sick!”
The figure nodded. “You knew that. You know I’ve been sick a long while, Joat,” he said with the incredible patience of the chronic invalid. “Only it went off the screen. I can see this,” and he looked down at his frail, limp body, strapped in an upright position on the bed, “but I can’t feel anything or move it, or do anything, really.”
“Oh, damn!” Joat moved a hand through the holo as if she could reverse the damage somehow.
“The navy medicos have got me hooked up to a nervesplice monitor, to keep my heart going and stuff. Simeon himself,” and now he managed a proud grin, “is hacking into it.”
Joat blinked. “I’m sorry,” she said in a small voice. “I shouldn’t‘ve called you a wuss. I heaved my cookies afterwards, too. I guess it’s my fault, hey? Expecting you to do more’n you could, should!”
“Nah,” Seld on the holo said. “I was stupid, you know. You could do all those things I couldn’t, and I was . . . hell, Joat, I was gonna end up like this anyway, sooner’r later. Grudly, but I knew it. Dad knew it, but he sort of didn’t at the same time. I’ve had a lot of time to think about it.”
Joat nodded, then narrowed her eyes. “Those caps were the final push, weren’t they? Why’d you use one?”
“‘Cause I was so scared of seeing you get killed, Joat. You’re my best friend. Besides,” he went on, “that Kolnari Lord’d just belted me real hard. Then . . . I tell you, the ultimo grudly,” and Seld rolled his eyes in disgust, “when he kissed me, so I wanted some of my own back.”
“Yeah,” and Joat nodded in approval, “you would at that!”
“That’s when I had a fit. Would have happened eventually, really it would, Jo. Dad says another ten years, max.”
Joat looked around at the Navy officers. “I don’t think that’s good enough. Can’t you guys better the odds for ‘m? Doesn’t he deserve more than ten years?” Her hard voice cracked a little.
Questar-Benn winced and the commodore focused his eyes on something else.
“I never get used to this,” the commodore under his breath. “What’s the favor, Simeon?
Channa’s head came up sharply. “Simeon? You’ve a suggestion?”
“I do,” Simeon said in such a positive, you-should-have-known-I-would tone of voice that he commanded everyone’s attention. “I’ve been checking around and the AlexHypatia-1033 told me about new tricks that Dr. Kennet Uhua-Sorg’s been working on. No one—yet—is able to regenerate the spinal nerve sheaths. Kenny Sorg developed a prosthesis—for himself, incidentally, but it’ll suit Seld’s particular requirements, too. Kid, you’re too old to be a shellperson: you’d never psychologically adjust. Kenny Sorg’s condition is about the same as yours and he gets around just fine,” and Simeon projected a holo of a man, moving down a corridor but too smoothly to be “walking.” He “walked” upright, true, but his body was framed by an slender exo-skeleton which held him erect, with his feet on a platform, similar but much thicker than the station float disks. The base ingeniously held the power supply and monitoring equipment. “I’m told, Seld, that you’ll have use of your arms and the base is sophisticated enough to do as much for your body as my shell does for me. Long as you don’t try slipping through ventilation ducts or falling headfirst out of services hatches, you should last as long as most softshells, skeleton man!”
In this instance, Simeon’s rewards were many: Joat jumping up and down, gurgling with laughter while tears streamed down her face, as well as Channa’s, and Seld crowed like he’d turned rooster. There were expressions of intense relief on the faces of admiral and the commodore.
“I do like to see alternative solutions,” Questar-Benn said, “and we’ll put a naval courier B & B ship at the disposal of Seld and his father for transfer to the Central Worlds Medstation where Dr. Sorg is currently practicing. Is that the favor you wanted, Simeon?”
“The very one,” the station replied.
“Frabjus, Skelly Seld,” Joat was saying to Seld, “I’ll be right down and we can celebrate together,” and she waved a jaunty farewell behind her as she left.
Exhausted as much by this unexpectedly felicitous outcome as the weight of problems still to be resolved, Channa sank back into her float chair.
“One more on the up side,” she murmured to reassure herself. “Simeon, I’m sort of tired. Could you . . . ?”
The others murmured apologies and moved aside while Simeon guided her chair away.
“A moment then, Amos ben Sierra Nuevo,” Questar-Benn. Amos turned in surprise, shot one anxious look at Channa’s disappearing figure but had no choice but to give the Admiral his attention. “If you’d be good enough to accompany the Commodore and me to our quarters . . .”
He was as glad as they appeared to be to leave the sad ambience of the cargo bay, though only one more of his shrinking band of Bethelites lay there.
The Admiral and Commodore noted his interest in the interior of their flagship and explained as they walked through the maze, absently accepting salutes or nods as they passed details of men and women hurrying about their tasks.
None of the Central Worlds’ ships had taken much damage though the battle with the desperate Kolnari warships had been fierce, if brief. The guided tour was enough to make Amos wonder anew how Guiyon had managed to get the old Exodus anywhere, much less reach SSS-900-C.
He was sighing in semi-despair for all the problems he now faced in giving his poor plundered planet even a semblance of the efficiency and expertise Central Worlds took for granted.
“Ah, yes, here we are, Benisur . . .” the commodore said and Amos with suitable humility corrected him to “a simple Amos, sir.”
“We’ve been receiving updates of affairs on Bethel and have need of your assistance.”
Five men and women were seated about the lounge, the two youngest—a man and a women in their early twenties, jumping to their feet at the entrance of Admiral, Commodore and their guest.
“Here he is, gentlefolk,” Questar-Benn, “Benisur ben Sierra Nuevos, aka Simeon-Amos and the putative leader of the Bethelites.”
“No, no,” Amos said, shaking head and hand to deny that title. He didn’t want that mantle laid on his shoulders. Not now.
“As you will, young man,” Questar-Benn said curdy, “but you were the leader of the dissidents as well as the defender of Bethel and we need your input.” Then while Amos continued to demur, she overrode him by introducing the group. “Senior Counsellor Agrum of SPRIM, Representative Fusto of MM, Observer Nilsdotter, PA’s Ferryman for SPRIM and Losh Lentel for MM. Simeon, are you here?”
“I am,” Simeon said, his voice issuing from the comunit.
He might have warned me, Amos thought sourly. But perhaps swiftly done is best done. He gave them a dignified greeting, hand to heart and mind. The young woman, the Observer, was both startled and charmed.
Suddenly he was seated and stewards were passing among the group with drinks and finger foods.
Perhaps I?
??m merely light-headed with hunger, Amos thought, feeling the better after a sip of a sustaining hot drink and a sample from the plate of delicacies offered.
“Quite simply, ben Sierra Nuevo . . . all right then, Amos,” the senior counsellor began with no more to-do, “we need your help to reassure those elements of your people who managed to hide away from the Kolnari. They are terrified and not about to take the word of any strangers even when we holo-ed every surface with ‘casts of the Navy taking Kolnari prisoners.”
“And making them unload all the loot they’d stored,” said the beetlebrowed Representative Fusto. He looked as if he had personally overseen that operation and enjoyed it. He had a narrow face and close-set eyes in a narrow head set on shoulders much too muscular in contrast.
“Some of my people survived?” Amos tried not to wince for this only reinforced the inevitability of his return.
“Specific figures number the survivors as 15,000 . . .”
The population—the former population—of this station, he thought, unable to suppress a groan.
The Observer misinterpreted it with a smile of great sadness and understanding. “Your people have been very brave and suffered terribly. We of SPRIM and MM,” and she pointed to the other four, “are empowered to assist the reconstruction of your world. . . .”
Amos groaned again. So much to be done. And his people would resent the intrusion of infidels, no matter how well intentioned.
“We cannot, of course, interfere with the government of any planet,” Agrum said, clearing his throat and giving the woman an admonishing glance, “but humanitarian aid certainly falls in our jurisdiction and we are able to provide whatever supplies and materials are needed on an interim basis.”
Beetle-brows Fusto gave his opposite number in SPRIM a dark look. “MM requires you to survive on your own efforts but we prevent exploitation of minority groups for any reason whatever. We prefer to establish contact with a senior government official, preferably elected by the minority in question, but you qualify—according to Simeon—as the logical and most accessible representative.”