Copyright 1992 by Jim Vassilakos
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                            Eighteen




Mike watched from the platform deck as emergency crews advanced
in teams, quenching the burning blaze. Magor had done a thorough
job with his air strike, taking out not just one ship but two.
That left fifteen unscathed; he'd probably get a medal for
precision.
   From the Louise they'd pulled out fragments of a least three
bodies. Fortunately, the other craft had been empty with not so
much as a goldfish on board, at least according to starport
records. Despite its crew's luck, however, Mike was sure they'd
have a few choice words for the General. He'd be in a cauldron of
hot water, and so far, he had nothing to show for it.
   Johanes was still busy chewing the bull with a pair of
inspectors while Korina sat quietly beside a burnt piece of
fuselage, her long, dark hair obscuring the left side of her face
as her cheek and forehead glistened crimson against the fiery
blaze. Mike walked over, doffing his helmet, his knees still
wobbly from the senseless destruction. She stared directly at
them, but didn't otherwise acknowledge his presence. Above, the
stars seemed to fade as the billowing clouds of smoke settled
amongst the black of night.
   "You're trying to sense for Sule, aren't you?"
   She blinked and looked up. Mike sat down beside her, the cold,
damp air layering a blanket of chill along his jacks.
   "And you're not finding anything."
   Kori looked down at the cement pavement.
   "For a moment...." she struggled to find the words, her eyes
narrowing into thin slits. "I thought I'd felt her laughter." She
smiled, probably at how stupid it sounded. "I guess I just feel
cheated. I wanted to kill her myself."
   She stared back at him through the flickering, smoky light,
uncertainty clouding her green eyes, and Mike gave her his
thought, if only for the humor's sake. She smiled, then tittered
at the edge of the joke, and then frowned again.
   "Yes, Mr. Harrison. She was capable of laughter. But it wasn't
the kind of laughter you or I know. I'd first felt it when she
kicked Erestyl's burnt corpse into my father's moat. It was the
sort of victory laugh that has nothing to do with anything anyone
normal would call funny."
   "Are you sure you felt it... here?"
   She stared into the flames, but wouldn't answer. She didn't
need to. Mike stood up, sliding his helmet back on.
   "Keep trying."
   Johanes, having finished with the inspectors, was busying
himself by nosing around the ship's shattered cargo hold. He
picked up a piece of smoking meat, smelling it and finally taking
a bite.
   "Devouring the evidence?"
   "Quagga liver. This stuff is great. You ever try it?"
   Mike shrugged, "My dad used to love it. What did you find
out?"
   "There were supposedly two crew members on board when it
happened. That makes four corpses, one unaccounted for. You
thinking what I'm thinking?"
   "This place is a mess, Jo. Three may not even be the correct
body count."
   "Don't kid yourself. I'm a professional, alright? Three is
correct." He handed Mike an automatic pistol.
   "Where'd you get this?"
   "It was on the floor. Check out the clip."
   Mike opened it up.
   "Fourteen of fifteen isn't bad."
   "Only the difference between life and death, or being healthy
versus feeling like slog shit." He smiled.
   "Why would she leave it behind."
   "Exactly. I don't think it's her's at all. But somebody did
fire it for one reason or another. This here may be the reason."
Johanes pointed toward a small, metallic, gold-tipped cylinder,
still gleaming in the light of the flames. "Look familiar?"
   Mike leaned over to grab it.
   "Don't, Michael. Look at it. Does it look like it went through
an explosion?"
   "No."
   "Which means that it's probably a little going-away present.
For us to go away. Permanently. You understand? I had the worst
time steering the fire crew clear of it when they came in here,
so I'll be damned if you set it off."
   "You sure you're not just being paranoid?"
   Johanes smiled, "Just because you're paranoid, Michael,
doesn't mean they aren't really out to get you."
   Johanes kept poking around, chewing quagga liver, hoping to
find some shred of evidence to prove himself wrong. Not too far
away, Gardansa was talking on a portable phone.
   "You say to them that their petition is under consideration,
however, if they violate our airspace, they will face the
consequences of their trespasses. That is all."
   He hung-up, wiping his forehead with the back of his sleeve,
and Mike put a hand on his shoulder.
   "What's going on, General?"
   "Trouble."
   "Of what nature?"
   "Of an Imperial nature. Commodore Reece sends her malevolent
tidings, a delegation of inspectors to assess the damage."
   "So what's the problem?"
   "They will be accompanied by the Crimson Queen's escorts to
ensure interstellar peace and the sanctity of Imperial property."
   He added a flowery emphasis to the last part. If Xekhasmeno
was Imperial property, then the starport was even more so. The
planetary government's treaty with the Empire made that point
abundantly clear. It was the very reason the city was under
siege, and it was also the reason the Imps would float a dozen
armored gunships over the starport, regardless of airspace.
   "How long do we have?"
   "A centim. Two perhaps." Gardansa shrugged, "I hope we have
finished our work here."
   "You're going to back down?"
   "I have no choice. They know, and I know it. The situation is,
in short, frightfully plain."
   "Then we've achieved nothing."
   "Can you prove that?"
   "No, but I'm working on it."
   "Do it, and I will destroy every vessel on this platform just
to be done with her."
   Mike blinked, "I take it you've met Sule?"
   "She visited me before you arrived three days ago. Told me
that ISIS would be watching, and that if I didn't cooperate, she
would emasculate me and have my testes for breakfast."
   "So it was love at first sight."
   "Hardly."
   "Admiration perhaps?"
   He sighed, "Admiration and love are two distinct creatures,
sometimes confused, occasionally compatible, but otherwise the
one has absolutely nothing to do with the other. No my friend. It
was something more akin to dread and dishonor mixed together with
a touch of avarice, the sort of complementary qualities a man can
sink his teeth into."
   "She made you an offer."
   "She made me betray you, or at least I chose to."
   Mike smiled, though Gardansa could not see it through the
helmet's face plate.
   "You'd better get inside, lest Sule make good her promise."
   "She is dead."
   "She wants air cover so she can get out of here."
   "You are hallucinating, my friend."
   "Just do me a favor."
   Gardansa laughed, turning around, "What is it now? Shall we
scorch the entire platform on a gatherer's hunch?"
   "That's not a bad idea."
   "And start a war in the process, not to mention putting my
neck on the chopping block? No, I think not."
   "Just do a ship by ship search and try to hold off the Imps as
long as you can. That's all I'm asking."
   "There are fifteen vessels here. What you propose will eat
more time than we are served."
   "What do we have to lose by trying?"
   Gardansa shifted away, making a guttural sound somewhere
between annoyance and acceptance. Mike had to smiled. He knew he
would get his way. It was easier for the General to give in than
sift among the hypothetical arguments, and Gardansa was basically
a lazy person.
   Mike started to pace the vessel's circumference, watching the
work crews extinguish the last of the flames. One of Gardansa's
officers stood among them, pulling groups of two off the work at
hand and pointing them toward the other vessels. Several meters
away, Korina stood upright in the smoke veiled darkness. With the
light intensification, she looked almost ethereal, walking toward
Mike through the patchy, grey mist.
   "So what's the verdict?"
   Mike sighed, "Well... you still feel cheated?"
   "Sule's alive then."
   "Probably. Can you track at all?"
   Kori shook her head, "I'm a telepath. I get in people's
heads."
   "Can you read impressions from non-animates?"
   She nodded, "Most psyches can somewhat."
   "A friend of mine once honed her ability to the extreme by
wandering around my house, picking up my things, and scolding me
for whatever was going through my mind when I last handled them."
   "I'm not that good."
   "Considering who your parents are, one would tend to think
otherwise."
   "I'm not that practiced."
   "We'll see. C'mon."
   Johanes was still poking around the deck, a piece of quagga
liver in one hand and a short, metal rod in the other. Kori
regarded him with a mixture of apprehension and curiosity.
   "What are you doing?"
   "Trying to find the bullet."
   "What's he talking about?"
   Mike showed her the clip.
   "Jo, I'd like Korina to take a look at Sule's going-away
present."
   "Why?"
   "To glean some impressions off it."
   "That means touching, doesn't it?"
   "Yeah."
   "She moves it a centimeter and we could all be organ donors."
   "You can stand back if you want."
   Johanes sighed and stepped back about a dozen meters.
   "Why take chances?" he grinned, lengthening the distance a
little further.
   Korina didn't look amused.
   "I take it this is going to be dangerous?"
   Mike shrugged, "Crossing the street is dangerous. Breathing
smog is dangerous. This... this is a cakewalk."
   She rested her pinky against it, closing her eyes for a long
moment during which Mike remained frozen still, all except for
his knees. They jiggled back and forth, barely supporting his
weight.
   Kori looked up, "She feels very dumb."
   "So do I," Mike added. "Why don't you take your hand away from
it now?"
   "One moment."
   Kori didn't close her eyes this time. Instead, she just let
them become enveloped by that glassy sort of gaze Mike was
growing used to.
   "Pain."
   Kori withdrew her hand, and Mike let the breath out of his
lungs in one, steady withdrawal.
   "That's it?"
   "Her pain was the strongest thing there. Once I found it,
there was no point in continuing. It will mask or distort
everything beneath it."
   "What kind of pain?"
   She reached out, and almost without thinking, Mike placed the
automatic into her hands. Johanes was back, a smug look on his
face.
   "Where's the boom?"
   "Your hypothesis about the gun is amassing evidence."
   "Of what sort?"
   They both looked toward Kori. She handed it back, uncertain.
   "It's too polluted. Like I said, I am not as good as your
friend, Mr. Harrison."
   "Well, we shouldn't have handled it. Jo, quiz time. Where do
you go on a ship when you're hurt?"
   "Medical Bay."
   "There is none."
   "Ship's locker."
   "Where would that be?"
   "In front of the airlock, most likely."
   Considering a missile had slammed into the ship, the locker
was remarkably intact.
   "What a mess."
   "Well, at least we won't need a key to open it."
   They began shoveling through its contents, most of them burnt
or foam covered, scattered in front of the open iris valve. There
were vacc suits, communicators, canned rations, and even a few
weapons, all standard fare for an independent freighter. There
were even medical supplies.
   "Oh my... look what we have here."
   Mike looked over Johanes' shoulder. The gauze towel was
stained a deep red where it wasn't carbonized.
   "Looks like somebody didn't want to bleed all over the
pavement. Kori?"
   "Can I move this one?"
   "Be my guest."
   She took it in both hand, closing her eyes.
   "Lots of pain."
   "Get past it."
   A look of concentration fell across her features.
   "There's too much."
   "You're trying too hard. I've seen Kitara... that's the friend
I was telling you about... at first she used to do what your
doing, and it never worked. Just relax and let it come."
   Kori, through drained and disheartened, looked somewhat
amused. "I'm am the psyche here, Mr. Harrison."
   "Just try what I'm saying, okay?"
   She closed her eyes again, this time wandering amidst the pain
without fighting it. Somewhere in the corner of her mind, she
felt the worry and strain of failure engulfing her. It was like a
wave, drowning away all hope.
   "I can't..."
   "Yes you can."
   "...need help... Reece." She re-opened her eyes, seeming weary
and withdrawn. Confusion cluttered her green eyes.
   "Who's Reece?"
   Johanes answered as he continued sifting through the articles
on the deck. "She's the Imperial Commodore on the Crimson Queen.
It arrived in-system two days ago. I'm sure you've both heard of
it."
   Mike nodded, "She just sent a message to General Gardansa.
They're bringing in a team of Imperial inspectors, along with the
Crimson's defensive force."
   "You didn't think to mention this to me before?" Beneath the
overcoat, he was still wearing a Draconian insignia. Mike
realized that his own was even more blatant.
   "Sule must have reached her. Could any of these communicators
have talked to orbiting craft?"
   "Uh, this one."
   He reached for one which was so large it came complete with a
back harness. Mike held him back before he touched it, motioning
Kori forward. She looked bushed.
   "You're kidding, right?"
   "You want to find Sule or not? Just give it a shot."
   She took a deep breath, grabbing the harness in both hands.
Immediately she felt the pain, and underneath it the hopelessness
and anger. But there was more, something she couldn't reach. Kori
looked up, exhausted.
   "I can't."
   "We're putting you through a workout, aren't we?"
   "I was close to something. I'm just not trained for this."
   "C'mon," Mike lifted her up by her shoulders. "It's more
likely that she would have made the transmission outside. She
wouldn't want a bulkhead blocking the signal for one thing."
   "And it's not in a burning freighter for another," Johanes
added.
   "The surface emotions are too strong anyway."
   "We're just asking you to try, okay?"
   She sighed, holding it again as they stepped outside. She
could feel them depending on her. And yet there was more, Sule's
dependence on her people, her need to find someplace to hide.
Kori considered each in turn. They were both obvious facts and
thus constituted potential figments of imagination. If she could
not get below her own prejudices, how could she hope to
discriminate Sule's? Kori stared at the various vessels, trying
to imagine them as Sule might have seen them, without the
emergency workers knocking on doors, brandishing firearms. They
would be better off with someone else, someone neutral and non-
emersed. All she could concentrate on was her exhaustion. Her
anger and desire for revenge could no longer contain it.
   "C'mon, Korina. You're not even trying."
   She stared upward toward Mike, but instead of seeing him, all
she could see was a huge ball of fire where the ship had been,
it's flames engulfing her, searing her skin as she rolled on the
ground in agony. For a long moment, she couldn't breath, and then
she felt hands on her, pulling her gently toward the sky.
   "Kori! Come out of it!"
   "Wha..."
   "Put her down, Mike."
   Mike complied, though he wasn't sure why, and as though in a
trance, she crawled back to the communicator, grabbing the
receptor in a crouched position.
   "Who the hell are you?!"
   Several of the guards turned, distracted by her tone if not
the content which only a few could understand."
   "...get off planet... alive."
   She then crawled back toward the ship, tossing the
communicator back into the pile where they had found it and began
searching her pockets in obvious anger. Johanes handed her a
lightpen, which she threw into the ship's hold through the
airlock. Around her, Kori saw nothing of the audience she had
attracted. She knew only the fire, burning her hands and legs as
she stumbled, half-crawling from the blaze.
   "Kill you... Harrison."
   Mike stepped back as she staggered toward the far end of the
deck, clawing in vain at one of the vessel's airlocks and
fumbling open the outer comm-unit, the ship's doorbell, in
effect. Johanes stopped her from opening a channel, pulling her
back and dropping her soundly on the cement. Mike picked her back
up, dragging her several meters from the congregation that had
now formed.
   "Kori... come out of it."
   "I'm sorry... I can't do it."
   "You did do it."
   But she couldn't hear him. Nor could she hear the crowd of
soldiers lined up outside the ship, nor Gardansa telling Mike how
he always picked the craziest women, nor even the Imperial
gunships screaming overhead. Her world was a haze of smoke and
fire and illusory burns, powdered wet by an icy veil of morning
mist.
   "No! Hold fire!" Johanes held his hand up against the
anticipated spray of bullets, as though his flesh and bone would
constitute a serious deterrent.
   "This is an airlock! We need something big! You!"
   He pointed toward the adjacent ship. One of the crew was
peeking out the dorsal hatch to see what all the commotion was
about.
   "Who, me?"
   "Fire your aft laser turret at this door!"
   "What?! Are you crazy?!"
   "Do it!"
   "I'm not even a gunner!"
   "Harrison, take over!"
   Mike felt his heart drop down to his stomach as Johanes darted
toward the adjacent ship. Immediately, all the solders spread
out, and Mike felt the ground rumble as the vessel warmed up its
engines.
   "Jo, she's gonna bolt!"
   "Just grab something and hang on!"
   The vessel slowly lifted itself off the ground, a thin row of
hand holds convenient for zero-gee repairs extending from the
airlock down along its ventral surface. Mike leapt forward and
grabbed one, feeling all vestiges of sanity slowly slip away as
the vessel ascended further, hovering several meters off the
platform with a considerable roar while leaving his body dangling
beneath, like a bug about to be squashed.
   He had to avert his eyes as the crisp beam of laser light cut
a jagged hoop in the airlock's outer door. In its wake, it left a
black ring of molten slag, and more out desperation than design,
he felt himself crawl toward it, pounding open the smoking
circlet and sending it crumbling inward as a pile of gutted scrap
metal. Below, the emergency personal steadily shrunk to the size
of toy soldiers, and Mike clawed his way inside, the deck shaking
like a earthquake, sending him rolling against the inner door.
Only its window had been fully serrated by the laser, and the
opening mechanism refused to respond even to the coercion of an
automatic pistol.
   Mike reached through the window, recklessly clawing for any
knob or button that would open it from the other side. He finally
found the appropriate switch at the very end of his reach and
nearly took his own arm off as the door slid open, the window's
compartment disappearing into the bulkhead. Then the vessel
lurched from some impact, throwing him forward and into the deck,
and for several moments all he could hear was a deafening
thunder. When he opened his eyes, the sky was as bright as day,
and he found himself draped over the corpse of a woman, her
bruised neck twisted almost completely around to the point where
her spine had been severed. Mike rolled off her, the sky
darkening as the airlock door closed behind him and several
nozzles on the ceiling began emitting a grayish fog.
   Through the helmet's face plate, he could see a patch of red
Galanglic blinking in the upper-left corner of his field of
vision. "Contaminant detected. Switching to internal oxygen
supply." The next several breaths felt strange, producing a
tingling sensation in his hands and feet. He sat down and
consciously slowed his respiration. Meanwhile, the fog began to
thin out, flowing through the air lock's shattered window and
into the cold, dark night. As the moon rotated from view, Mike
could barely make out the walls or the floor, even with the light
intensification the helmet provided.
   Mike waited a minute, letting his eyes adjust. More medical
supplies were scattered on the floor, and in the dim hallway he
could barely make out the aperture to the ship's locker. It's
latch was broken, and he slid the opening manually. Two vacc
suits rested on the floor, their rack broken, and a pile of seal-
it patches lay scattered about beneath. Mike grabbed a handful,
bumping his helmet into something solid. He yanked out the
offending piece of equipment to get a better look. It was a power
pack, its thin black cord anchored somewhere within the gloomy
confines of the locker.
   He reached back inside, pulling out a laser carbine. It's
metal barrel glinted dimly in the icy starlight, and Mike donned
the power pack over his shoulder, switching the weapon to "ready"
mode and pulling off its safety guard. He then crouched down,
slowly inching his way down the corridor. It was crossed by
another, and Mike peeked left, toward the prow. The new corridor
terminated with an iris value, and Mike guess it led to the
bridge, to Sule. The door would be locked, and he was holding its
key.
   Mike positioned himself on his knees directly in front of the
door and leveled the carbine to begin sawing. The valve's metal
frame seemed ever more sturdy than the airlock, its numerous,
interlocking layers refusing to yield against the laser light
which was emitted from the barrel in short pulses rather than a
steady stream. Another minute or two passed, the carbine's power
running low, and his only consolation as gravity began to
disappear was that he didn't have to worry about a kinetic kick
each time he fired.
   He stopped, looking for some power socket in the wall when the
valve twirled open, Sule standing in the open aperture with a
fully automatic rifle. She began firing before the door was even
open, and Mike ducked down as the first several bullets whizzed
frictionless and silent above his head, the next several
impacting with the top of his helmet, his face plate, and his
upper chest. He toppled backward, the numerous collisions
tumbling him down the corridor end over end while he watched his
own blood seep into the vacuum in the form of little red bubbles,
floating freely in the cold, breathless corridor.
   He fought the rushing noise in his head, pulling the seal-it
patches out of his pocket and tearing them one by one off their
spines while placing them all over the fleximesh and the side of
his helmet. The liquid adhesive hardened in moments, and in less
than a minute, he could feel the pure oxygen rushing into his
lungs, his hands tingling with excitement as the corridor seemed
to swirl this way and that. He pushed off, with a grunt, floating
himself back toward the bridge. Sule was no longer in the
corridor, and the open iris valve beckoned him to enter.
   Peeking inside, he half-expected to see her at the controls,
as if nothing had happened. Instead, he saw her writhing in the
corner of the room, a virtual pool with hundreds of little red
bubbles floating about the room. They continued to flow in a
steady stream from her arm, and Mike could see her desperately
trying to cover the burnt hole with her other hand. She didn't
have any patches, and as she looked toward him, she seemed to
scream, soundless waves of anger stealing the last of her breath
until she finally succumbed to the frigid vacuum.
   Mike continued to watch, floating without momentum, as a small
red spec drifted in front of one eye. It was from inside the
helmet, his own blood, and he knew he had no way of binding the
wound. Slowly, the cold began to wash over him, and he shivered
silently in his private abode. The ship was his, such as it was.
For all he knew, it would stay that way forever.


           _   /|
           \`o_O'          Jim Vassilakos
             ( )     <---  jimv@ucrmath.ucr.edu
              U            ucsd!ucrmath!jimv (uucp)
           Aachk!

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