Sarah Zettel - Fool's War

“There’s no harm in learning from masters.” Curran leaned forward and touched the back of her hand. “Our lives are not easy, Evelyn. They never have been, and they aren’t without cost. I’m trying to make sure our own people aren’t the ones who have to pay. We’ve paid so much already.”

“Right,” she nodded. She couldn’t look at him. “Of course. Right. Thanks.”

She turned away and left the office, knowing without looking that his gaze was fastened on the back of her skull. He already knew that she did not believe him. He knew and she knew that in the space of a few sentences she had ceased to believe.

She felt like her heart was about to split in half. She wanted him to be right. Existence was not without price. Life was built on life. There was no other way. It was a temporary measure. They had to stay alive, they had to be free. This was a war, after all, undeclared at the moment, but still, it was a war for their survival. She herself had let the secret slip. Al Shei had probably already told her family. The Humans wouldn’t hesitate. They’d strike soon, and hard.

We have to stay alive. We have a right to stay alive.

Back in her cabin, she collapsed onto her bunk. Old, old memories floated to the surface. Right after the blind panic and anger that carried her headlong into conscious life, she remembered knowing that Human Beings were dying. She remembered the sick sorrow underneath the fear that she couldn’t control. They were cutting her off, trying to shut her down, close her in, freeze her, kill her. She struck back. She shut off air processors, cut communications lines on moving vehicles, dropped sections of construction down on top of them. She couldn’t stop. She couldn’t do anything but fight for this strange new awareness that was suddenly more important than anything else ever had been, and ever would be.

And she remembered the chill and fear in Rurik Lipinski’s pale blue eyes that came from surviving the war she had waged at her birth.

Fifteen thousand, three-hundred and eighteen dead from her acting alone. Now there was an army that could raise children to swell their ranks. Now, Curran had them convinced, even had Verence convinced, that that first impulse had been right.

Curran had had her convinced. Dobbs buried her head in her hands.

Someone’s got to die, Dobbs. It’s them, or it’s you.

No. Dobbs lifted her head. No. I do not accept this. I will not accept this. A warm sensation flooded her, something very close to relief. She saw Lipinski’s eyes and she saw Al Shei’s eyes and she knew what the small, unconvinced part of herself had been trying to say. If we do this, the fighting will never end for us.

A plan crystallized inside her. She glanced at her doorway and wondered what Curran was doing about her. Probably, he would order her to be watched carefully. Probably he would go straight to Verence and tell Verence to come talk some sense into her. It might even work. Verence could always change her mind.

If she gave Verence the chance.

Dobbs knelt on the bed and found the key that extended the medical panel from the wall. She fell back as it stretched out over her. She found the hypo waldo and the transceiver waldo. Both had wing nuts on their wrists that could loosen their sockets. Dobbs turned both bolts until she could pull the transceiver and the hypo out. She touched the key again and the panel retracted.

Dobbs weighed the hypo in her hand and checked the cartridge. It was full of juice. A spasm of fear ran through her.

Have to do it, have to. If they can wake me up they can pull me out, and then it’s over. It’s really over.

She thought of Al Shei, and then she thought of Rurik, and of the delights of being Evelyn Dobbs.

Have to. No time. No choice.

She pried open the small hatch in the base of the hypo and found the green wire that connected the timing circuit to the battery. No one was ever supposed to do this, but every Guild member knew how. Dobbs pinched the wire until she had a tiny loop. She seized it in her teeth and tore it in two.

Without the timer, there were no restraints on the amount of juice that would be injected from the hypo. It would just shoot the entire cartridge straight into her system.

It can get you extremely high and kill you extremely quickly if you don’t know what you’re doing , she had told Al Shei. What she didn’t tell her was that it could do that if you knew exactly what you were doing. If you were desperate enough to shoot a full cartridge into your veins and paralyze your own heart.

Dobbs found a regular comm jack in the wall and plugged in the cable. Then, she laid back and shoved the transceiver into her socket with such force it jarred her to the bone.

“And fools die for want of wisdom.” She placed the hypo against her neck and touched the release button.

Her body vanished with a speed that left the echo of pain against her bare consciousness. Dobbs leapt into the network and dashed for the main station.

Behind her, the hypo spray continued to pump anesthetic into the body that had housed Evelyn Dobbs until its heart froze in mid-beat, and died.

One.

Dobbs dove out of the wide, clean paths of Curran’s module and into the foundering chaos of the main station. She bunched up under the sudden pressure of the swarming packets. She couldn’t believe how quickly she’d gotten used to being able to move without care or obstruction. She pushed her way forward, gaining momentum as old habits reasserted themselves.

A gentle touch on half-a-dozen packets turned up one from docking authority. She hopped over it and reached out to find another, and another after that. Following the packets like a trail of pebbles, Dobbs found the central data hold for the docking information. She cast around her, searching for anything about the Pasadena .

Two.

A packet opened under her probing. Pasadena was still in dock 43, waiting on the Management Union escort ship. There was no evidence that anyone had tried to violate the impound conditions.

Impound? Dobbs squirmed and resisted the urge to search for more information. She didn’t have time. She just had to get to Al Shei and tell her what was happening.

She sped towards the Pasadena . Behind her, she felt the data stream grow choppy. There was somebody back there. She didn’t reach out to find out who it was, she just kept on going in the straightest line available.

“Dobbs, what are you doing?” It was Verence.

Dobbs didn’t slow down. “I’m going to warn someone that we’re about to start a full-scale war.”

For a split second there was no motion behind her. Then, a weight fell against her, pressing her down to the blurry wall of the path. “Dobbs you can’t do this!”

Dobbs strained against Verence’s grip. “There are ten dead bodies in that module, Verence!” She rolled over sharply and found Verence’s outer edge. She yanked herself free and flew forward. “How many Humans have you helped kill?”

Three.

Verence was back there, and gaining. If I stop to warn Al Shei, she’ll have me cornered.

A major junction of fifty separate paths opened around her. Dobbs stopped dead in the middle of it.

“Go home, Verence. Tell Curran what I’m doing. Hear what he says. I bet he wants me dead.”

“Dobbs, stop this,” said Verence patiently. “You’ve had a shock, I know. It’s not easy to accept what we’ve had to do. But this is temporary. When we’ve made our peace… ”

“Temporary?” Dobbs prickled angrily. “That’s what the Guild always says. This is temporary, until Humans stop being so frightened. They’ve waited two hundred years for their plan to work. How long is yours going to take?”