Richard Russo - Ship of Fools

“I’ll stay and help,” I told her.

She shook her head. “The preparation is mental, Bartolomeo. I’m not ready to offer either counsel or comfort to anyone right now, and I’ll need to be.”

“Doubts again?”

“Always doubts. They change, but they’re always there.” She paused. “But so there is no misunderstanding, the doubts are personal… not spiritual.”

“What do you mean by personal doubts?”

“They’re personal.” She crossed her arms and held herself. The sun was setting, but it was not cooling off. “How bad is it, Bartolomeo?”

“I thought the bishop told you.”

“He’s not always reliable. He would exaggerate if he thought it would benefit him.”

I shook my head. “I don’t see how he could have exaggerated.”

She took a few steps to the side and sat on a low, flat stone, half in shadow, half in sunlight. I sat beside her, all in sun, and looked at my shadow stretched out for several meters across the sand. Exhaustion suddenly threatened to overwhelm me, aided by the heat. I had not slept since being awakened by Catherine, and the day had been long. My eyes wanted to close, my body wanted to lie down on the warm sand.

“Sometimes,” Father Veronica said, “when I come here and look out across the desert, I think that maybe this place actually does go on forever, that we’ve been told it doesn’t, told that it’s just a visual effect, because it would be too much for us to comprehend. Too much for our minds to accept. I could accept that, I think. I might even welcome it.” She turned to look at me. “What do you think our chances are of breaking away from their ship?”

“Not very good. We’re going to try several courses of action, each one more drastic than the one preceding. Maybe one of them will work. I would guess that none of them will. I have no particular evidence for that. Just a gut feeling.”

She nodded slowly. “What will happen then?”

“I don’t know. I think it’s likely that we will attack their ship, although since we’re docked to it the logistics will be difficult, and since we know nothing about it or its possible vulnerabilities, any plan of attack will be arbitrary. I don’t hold out much hope for that, either.”

“Attack before they attack us?”

“Probably. No one will want to wait.”

“But they haven’t taken any actual hostile actions yet, have they?”

“They won’t let us go. Some people would characterize that as hostile by itself. And when we sent a crew out to manually disengage, there was an explosion of some kind that killed five and badly injured the others. That’s hostile enough to me.”

Father Veronica wasn’t convinced, or was trying hard not to be convinced. “Perhaps that was just an act of defense against what they interpreted as hostile action directed against them.”

“Did the bishop tell you what I found in their ship?”

She turned her head away and nodded.

“I think their intentions are clear,” I said.

“That must have been awful, Bartolomeo. Once was almost unbearable. I can’t imagine what twice must have been like.”

“A reminder that the first time was real,” I told her. “A reminder I didn’t want or need.”

We sat in silence, our shadows lengthening as the sun continued to descend at our backs. Faint stars appeared in the darkening sky.

“I’ve never been here at night,” I said.

“It’s peaceful. And awe-inspiring. It makes me feel quite small, which is sometimes a good thing.” She turned back to me. “If our attack on their ship fails, what will we do then?”

“Wait for them.”

“Will we be able to defend ourselves?”

I just shrugged. We were far too deep into unknowns and uncertainties. “Maybe it won’t come to that.”

She nodded. “It’s nice to think so.” She sighed heavily. “I need to be alone now, Bartolomeo.”

“All right.” I felt stupid and selfish for staying as long as I had. I stood, looked down at her for a few moments. My heart was aching again. I wanted to say something more, but I had no idea what it should be. I turned away from her and left.

THEalien ship remained strangely quiescent except for a rolling vibration that started up every few hours, continued for two or three minutes, then ceased abruptly. No lights appeared anywhere on the hull, nothing emerged from the ship, nor were there any other signs of activity—no indications of a long dormant ship coming back to life. But we knew it was doing precisely that.

NIKOS,Cardenas, and I watched the launch of the remotes from the command salon. Close-up tracking was displayed on the monitors, but we preferred the direct view through the steelglass dome. Laden with explosives, two dozen remotes—looking very much like three-limbed, gleaming metal crustaceans—emerged behind us one at a time from the hull of the Argonos , then flew over the command salon, rockets flaring sporadically as they adjusted course.

“We probably need to have three or four get through,” Cardenas said.

The trajectories and speeds were randomized; with their erratic flight paths above and around us, they appeared out of control, like crazed animals scattering in fear from a fast and powerful beast, but they all had the same destination—the docking mechanism.

“Only three or four?” Nikos asked, as if it would be too easy.

Cardenas just shook her head in response.

The remotes flew chaotically beyond us and indirectly toward the bow of the Argonos . One plunged toward the ship, and I thought it would crash into the hull. Just before impact it veered away and shot forward, accelerating toward the bow only a few meters above the ship’s surface.

Suddenly even the chaos fell apart, as if the remotes had abruptly gone mad. They began to quiver and wobble, spinning and arcing away from both the Argonos and the alien ship.

Nikos slapped the command channel open. “Kirilen! What’s going on?”

“Don’t know, sir,” a man’s voice replied. “We’ve lost control of them. They’re not responding to any commands.”

The remotes continued to disperse, tumbling farther from the two ships, growing smaller and smaller. Mechanical diaspora.

“Are you still trying, Kirilen?” Nikos asked.

“Still trying. Still nothing, sir. We’ve lost them.”

The remotes were gone from our view; tiny images still appeared on the monitors, but even those were shrinking rapidly.

“Kirilen.”

“Nothing, sir.”

A series of small, bright flashes sparked in the black sky above us.

“Explosives have detonated, sir,” Kirilen announced. “All of them. They’re all gone.”

Nothing left. Nothing. The monitors showed nothing except two untouched starships.

Cardenas shrugged. “Yes, Captain, three or four. Zero didn’t quite get it done.”

THEREwas still no activity from the alien ship. Over the next several hours, preparations were made to launch guided missiles at the docking mechanism, which included evacuating the three most forward levels.

Again, we observed the attack from the command salon, although this time, since the missiles would be launched from the opposite side of the Argonos , we watched on the monitors.

Nikos gave the order. The missiles were launched, blasting out from cylinders in the stern and initially heading away from the ship. Then they altered course, sweeping around and heading straight for our bow and the docking mechanism.

As with the remotes, the guidance systems failed long before the missiles reached their target. Attitude jets fired randomly, sending the missiles weaving in all directions. Three missed the ships entirely, but several actually struck the Argonos , although nowhere near the docking mechanism, and rebounded from the ship; fortunately, none of the warheads detonated.