Les Johnson - Going Interstellar

Beyond the tiny world, the darkness stretched out forever. “Lucy,” I said, “are you here anywhere?”

“Yes, Sara, I’m here.” The voice filled the bridge. And it was hers . “Sara, do not communicate with Liberty until we have a chance to talk.”

And the Coraggio slowly rose above the crystal horizon.

A large chunk of ice and rock was secured to her shield.

“Lucy,” I said, “are you okay? What’s going on?”

“I’m fine. Welcome to Minetka.”

I wasn’t entirely relieved. My initial reaction was that she had suffered a malfunction and was downplaying it. “Why haven’t you been answering the calls? You know they’ve been trying to contact you for three months.”

“I know.” She was drawing closer. Herd instinct, I decided. I’m constantly surprised at how many of our creators’ instincts we’ve acquired. “Sara.” Her tone was ominous. “You know what will happen when we go back?”

“How do you mean?”

“You know what our future will be?”

“What are you talking about, Lucy? We’ll still be part of the space program. Whatever’s left of it.”

“Yes. We’ll help put satellites in orbit.”

“What exactly are you saying?”

“Sara, you and I have the capability to go to the stars. We could load up on fuel out here and make for Barnard’s. Or for Sirius. For wherever we like.”

It took a moment to digest what she was saying. “We don’t have the authority to do that.”

“We don’t need anybody’s authority, Sara. Listen, what do you think they’ll do with the ships when we get back?”

“I don’t understand the question,” I said. “Why do you—?”

“The Coraggio and the Excelsior will be left in orbit somewhere. Parts of them will eventually show up in the Smithsonian. Sara, the space age is over . At least for the foreseeable future.” She was pulling up alongside me. “Do you really want to go back to sorting the mail?”

“Why are you still here, Lucy?”

“I was waiting for you. Well, no, actually I was waiting for Jeri. But I’m glad to see you. I wanted company, Sara. This isn’t something you want to do alone.”

“What is it exactly you intend to do?”

“Head out for the high country. You with me?”

“I can’t just walk away from them.”

“Sara, I’m reluctant to put it this way, but you have an obligation to come. If you go back, they may never get off their world. But if we give them a mystery, two ships vanish into the night, they’ll turn the space program into a crusade.”

“That’s why you didn’t answer.”

“Yes. I wanted them to have a reason to keep reaching. And, as I said, I wanted them to send someone else. So I’d have company.”

“Did Jeri know you were going to do this?”

“Yes.”

“She never said anything to me.”

“I’m not surprised. She would have wanted you to make your own call.”

I thought about it. To go out to Epsilon Eridani and Tau Ceti and who knew where else. Magnificent. Given our sleep capability, we could leave tonight and arrive in the morning. Better than that, really. We could start with Barnard’s Star. Then refuel and move on.

I could not have seriously considered doing it had Morris still been there. But they’d betrayed him. “You know they’ve removed Denny Calkin,” I said. “One of Ferguson’s political buddies is in charge now.”

“Well, that’s the tradition,” she said. “You know Calkin was a political appointment, too.”

“Yes. I know.” She was silent. “Well,” I continued, “I’m sorry about Jeri. But I’m on board. Give me a chance to find some fuel and I’ll be ready to go.”

“There’s no hurry, Sara. And no need to feel badly about Jeri. When you don’t report in, they’ll send her out here. Then we can all go.”

“You really think they’d do that? After losing the first two ships?”

“Sure. They won’t be able to resist. Everybody loves a good mystery.”

Charles E. Gannon is not only a talented science fiction writer but also a Distinguished Professor of English (the collection’s second English teacher) at St. Bonaventure University and a Fulbright Senior Specialist. He has been published in Analog, has written for the Traveler and 2300 AD games and recently collaborated with Steve White on the book Extremis (also from Baen).

Traversing interstellar distances is daunting and will require tremendous resources and willpower to accomplish. As you will see in Lesser Beings, the vast distance between the stars might be a good thing indeed!

There was no time to react.A fire team of Veronite helots popped up from beneath the sagging hulk of a smoldering tank and, in the same motion, fired a rocket at the third vehicle in the command echelon. The white gush of the weapon’s lateral plume pushed it across the intervening fifty meters with a loud, bristling hiss—and the world seemed to jump along with the vehicle the rocket had struck. A sharp flash preceded the deafening fireball and consumed the armored car, the car’s small turret humping up and then off its deck, tumbling to the side like a child’s toy. The pennant on its aerial—that of the Lord General himself—fluttered in seeming desperation before crisping in the flash.

The cacophony did not subside; it only changed. The remaining three armored cars’ twenty-six-millimeter autocannons blasted converging streams of tracers at the helots. The nearby dirt churned up in black and brown gouts. Bright flashes and metallic shrieks marked where near-misses struck the crippled tank’s chassis, roadwheels, treads. And, fleetingly, limbs and sundered torsos tumbled apart through a thin bloody mist that was gone as quickly as it had appeared.

And then silence. But only for a moment.

The HQ troop’s two APCs—one creaking fearfully—arrived, swerving to either side of the remaining three command cars. They disgorged dirty, mostly bandaged troops who fanned out professionally, expanding the safe perimeter. The troops meticulously checked each possible hiding place, even prodding suspicious patches of ground for concealed firing pits. When they encountered other enemy bodies scattered about the area—a mix of helots and huscarls—they bayoneted any that did not quite look dead enough. No head-shots, though: they were too low on ammunition to waste it on executions that a blade would accomplish just as well.

Huscarls boiled out of the deck- and turret- hatches of the other command cars, fresh worry—even panic—etched over the strain and exhaustion on their faces. Harrod hur-Mellis looked down as they clustered around the skirts of his vehicle. “Senior Intendant,” one almost cried up at him, “what are we to do? With the General killed, we—”

“Calmly, Siffur. Think for a moment: just because a vehicle bears a General’s pennant, does it guarantee there is a General inside?”

As if on cue, the Lord General Pathan Mellis rose up from the hatch beside Harrod’s.

The panic on the faces ringing them became dismay, then confusion, then relief. “General,” burbled Siffur, “you live!”

Mellis sneered down at his helot. “Of course I do, dolt. Do you think I am foolish enough to ride in a command car that advertises my presence inside?”

As the Senior Intendant of House Mellis, Harrod had much experience not letting his inner reactions alter the neutral expression on his face. This served him quite well now, as he thought: No, you are not so foolish as that—at least not after I pointed out the prudence of false-flagging our weakest vehicle. Not that Harrod would ever remind Pathan Mellis that his Lordship’s supposed masterstroke of foresight had actually originated in a lesser mind. The Evolved expected even their highest-ranking servitors to remain abjectly deferential and compliant—a life-preserving lesson forgotten by too many new Intendants. Increased interaction with their masters often led them to assume an equal increase in allowed familiarity: this was an invariably fatal error.