Barry Longyear - Enemy Papers

She leans forward and suddenly my holographic display is replaced with another: a smaller scale representation of Amadeen with the six orbiting stations of the quarantine force surrounding it. Yora gets up from her couch and stands next to me. "Look at this, Ro. Thirty years of sitting on their butts and not doing anything has made them very sloppy."

She reaches over and punches something into the keyboard. The surface of the planet turns bright orange at the equator, the color growing dimmer as it reaches the poles. At the poles themselves the surface is blue. She punches in another code and the orbiters begin leaving bright pink tracks as they circle the planet. With less than one orbit, the eccentric orbits of two of the orbiters become obvious. When they are below the equator, the patch of blue at the north pole increases on one side. "See that?"

"Yes," I answer, looking up at her. "What about the fighter patrols?"

She taps in another code and tiny bright dots in motion begin leaving bright green tracks. A group takes a position thirty degrees above the equator and its sibling group takes a similar position thirty degrees below the equator. The entire surface of the planet is orange, including the poles. "Now watch this."

At that point in time when the two eccentrically orbiting quarantine stations and the northern fighter patrol are on opposite sides of the pole, a beautiful blue slot opens in the quarantine force’s coverage of the planet. "How long will it be open?"

"Long enough." She stands straight and glances toward the hatch. "I better let Eli know."

"Before you go, could you bring up the display I was observing?"

Her eyebrows go up. "I’m sorry. I didn’t know you had something in the works." She taps in a code and my own display replaces the one showing the orbiters. With a long finger she points at one of the glowing red lines on the surface of Amadeen. "The battle charts! So that’s what it looks like on the reader." She studies the display and nods her head. "Well, that’s encouraging. Most of the planet is at peace. All that’s left is to tidy up a bit."

I am certain she is joking.

A day from the A’ja Cou Station, after much sifting, sorting, and eliminating, we arrive at a list of names and locations of likely truce violators and likely candidates for our infant organization. Now all we have to do is verify the information, find them, watch them, add the new names, catch the guilty, prove them guilty, and call upon them with prejudice to the max.

Kita, Yora, and I are in the galley discussing the name of the organization. In my mind it has always been Aydan’s Blade. They have, though, other ideas. Yora leans on the table and says, "Aydan’s Blade is a great name, Ro, if you’re a Drac. It’s a story out of The Talman, the name of a Drac Jetah."

"The Front won’t think of us as neutral and independent with a name like that," adds Kita.

After some more argument I let go of the name in favor of the organization’s absolute neutrality in appearance as well as in fact. Reaper joins us and the four of us offer many names, reaching agreement on none of them as Captain Moss enters the galley.

"Where’s Davidge?"

"His quarters," I answer. "What is it?"

"Two messages from Atruin 'do Timan. First, he’s seen a general report issued by the USE-DC Quarantine Force that the Front and the Mavedah are both putting out feelers for another truce. The other message is that Estone Falna was found guilty. It got the long sleep." Moss holds my gaze for a moment, then turns and heads toward the passenger quarters. With joints made of water, I stumble to my quarters to be alone in the dark.

The A’ja Cou Station. The Planet Vikaan fills the blackness above us with its greenish-blue surface broken by bands and whorls of delicate white clouds as the station, looking like thick spokes of a wheel with no rim, comes into view. Illuminated by the sun, each spoke looks like a stack of thin white wafers, the bottom of each stack joined together at the hub. There are eight stacks, three of which are only partly completed. They seem to have a strange radiance. As we move closer the sheen I thought I saw resolves into thousands of illuminated window ports revealing that each one of those wafers is at least fourteen stories thick.

While Ghazi Mrabet is busy with Reaper, Kita, and Davidge, I sit in the engineer’s couch in the cockpit watching while the Aeolus prepares to dock. Eli and Yora flip switches and mutter unintelligible chatter at each other and into their headsets which prompts additional gibberish from the station port traffic controller into the headset I am wearing. Their instrument panel screens fill with numbers, diagrams, and attitude views of the ship as countless colored lights flash between blue and green. Despite this chaos of information, the Aeolus moves smoothly toward the most outside wafer on one of the eight spokes. The white edge of the wafer is broken with innumerable slots, each slot being a docking bay capable of handling one or more freighters or large passenger ships. As the ship follows a trail of five other ships around the spoke, bays illuminate. Each bay preparing to accept a ship has docking codes displayed. One by one the ships turn from the pattern into their respective bays in a silent, dreamy dance. At last the Aeolus turns and moves smoothly toward one of the bays. In moments the ship is swallowed by the cavernous interior and is brought to a halt so quietly I fail to notice when we actually stop. Eli and Yora shut down their panels and get up from their couches. Yora stops next to me. "Well, what did you think?"

I am so stunned by the scale and beauty of it all I cannot think of anything to say. Eli pushes past her and looks out of the cockpit’s ports at the interior of the landing bay. "It was kind of monotonous, wasn’t it?" He looks back at me. "Dockings and landings are lot more entertaining when the reception committee is shooting at you."

After disembarking, Yora and the captain go to the port director’s office while Davidge, Kita, Reaper, and I move through crowds of Vikaans, humans, Dracs, and some others to take a tram to Ekst 98, the cargo holding level, one wafer toward the hub from the docking level, Ekst 99. As the brightly illuminated car drops down and slows at the almost deserted level 98 boarding platform, Davidge and I see a familiar personage waiting for us. It is Estone Nev. The old Drac is clad in dark maroon trousers and boots and a black robe. I look at Davidge and his skin is pale.

As the doors open, Reaper heads straight for the cargo transfer office while Kita and I stand and watch Davidge approach Estone Nev. Neither of them say a word. Nev looks sadly at the human while the human cannot look into the old Drac’s eyes at all. Nev reaches out a hand, places it on Davidge’s cheek, and pulls the human toward itself. Nev embraces him and Davidge’s shoulders begin heaving. "It was not your responsibility, Will. You did not fail the child. Falna made its own choices."

Kita takes my hand and holds it. I look down at her and her eyes are filled with tears. I look away from them all before I too burn my eyes with tears. There is too much killing and dying in our futures to begin crying now, especially to cry for such as Falna. I feel another hand touching my shoulder, I turn to look and it is Estone Nev. The words tumble from my lips, "Forgive me, Nev."

It pulls me close and embraces me, its words gentle on my ear. "There is nothing to forgive, child."

"But Falna! If I―"

"I do not judge you, Yazi Ro. If I do not, who are you to judge yourself?"

Much later, alone in my quarters in the station, I am again sitting in the dark entertaining my demons. Why does the permanent suspension of a murderer―a murderer who once aimed death at me―act upon me harder than the death of any of those who loved me? I think on it and the only reason that makes sense is, with the exception of my parent, all of the others I expected to die. I never believed any of the others truly loved me because we all held something back. All of us expected ourselves and the others to die. Falna, though, had the most wonderful past and future I had ever seen—could even imagine. Blessed by the universe, it had to live for it was destined for a life of peace, love, prosperity, and fulfillment. That is why I believed Falna loved me. That is why I loved Falna. That is why some perverse part of me still loves Falna.