John Scalzi - The Android's Dream

No deaths.

"Holy shit," Brian said.

The plain of Pajmhi melted away and Brian was back in Hayter-Ross's garden. "Now you see," Hayter-Ross said, from her table.

"The only way to survive was to surrender," Brian said.

"Not only survive, but to thwart the Nidu in the bargain," Hayter-Ross said. "In the actual Battle of Pajmhi, the Nidu bombed the plain of Pajmhi almost as soon as the humans left—they dropped their planet crackers and turned one of Chagfun's most fertile and populated areas into a lava-strewn ruin, not to mention throwing the entire planetary weather system into a profound depression that caused famine and death all over the globe. None of that could have been accomplished if human prisoners had remained on Chagfun."

"Now I see why you had me do this," Brian said. "I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't have seen it."

"You wouldn't have believed it if you hadn't seen the UNE troops killed scores of times, either," Hayter-Ross pointed out.

"It's the whole experience that matters. And now you see what your friends must do."

"Surrender to the Nidu," Brian said.

"Exactly so," Hayter-Ross said.

"It's going to be tough to convince Harry of that," Brian said.

"He's not in possession of all the facts," Hayter-Ross said. "And come to think of it, neither are you."

"What new hoops are you going to make me jump through to get them?" Brian said.

"We're done with the hoops for now," Hayter-Ross said. "You've been a good boy with a pleasing learning curve. I think I'll just come right out and tell you."

And she did.

There's a small detail about entering and exiting n-space that captains and their navigators don't bother sharing with the general population; namely, that they are completely blind when they do it.

Entering n-space completely blind isn't actually much of a problem. N-space doesn't have anything in it, at least not in a "whoops we've just hit an iceberg" sense; it's a complicated mishmash of theoretical states and nested dimensions and undetermined probabilities that even higher order physicists admit, after two beers or six, that they just don't goddamn get. The races of the CC use n-space to get around because they know it works, even if on a fundamental level they are not entirely clear why it works. It drives the physicists mad and every few years one will snap and begin raving that sentient beings should nae fuck with that which they ken nae unnerstan'.

Meanwhile, captains and navigators and everyone who travels in n-space on a regular basis shrug (or whatever their species equivalent of such an action may be) because in over 40,000 years of recorded space travel, not a single ship has ever been lost entering or using n-space. A few have been lost because someone entered bad coordinates prior to entry and thereby ended up hundreds, thousands, or millions of light-years from where they intended. But that was mere stupidity. N-space couldn't be blamed for that.

No, it was the coming out of n-space that gets you. Objects coming out of n-space—much to the disappointment of special effects professionals across the galaxy—don't flash, streak, blur, and fade into existence. They simply arrive, fining up what is sincerely hoped to be empty vacuum with their mass. And if it isn't empty vacuum, well, then there's trouble as the atoms of the object coming out n-space and the object that was already mere fight it out in a quantum-level game of musical chairs to see who gets to sit in the space they both wish to occupy.

This only occasionally results in a shattering release of atomic energy annihilating both objects. Most of the time there was simply a tremendous amount of conventional damage. Of course, even "conventional" damage is no picnic, as anyone who has just had a hole ripped out of the skin of her ship will tell you, if she survives, which she generally will not.

For this reason, it is extremely rare for a ship filled with living entities to blithely pop out of n-space in a random spot near an inhabited planet. The near space of nearly every inhabited planet is well-nigh infested with objects ranging from communication satellites and freight barges to trash launched overboard to burn up in a planet's atmosphere and the wreckage of personal cruisers whose drivers manage to find someone or something to crash into well beyond their planet's ionosphere. A captain who just dropped his ship into a stew of that density might not actually be considered a suicide risk by most major religions, but after a couple of these maneuvers he would find it extremely difficult to find a reputable insurer.

The solution was simple: Designated drop-in zones, cubes of space roughly three kilometers to a side, which were assiduously kept clear of small debris by a cadre of basketball-sized monitor craft, and of large debris by tow barges. Every inhabited world has dozens of such zones devoted to civilian use, whose coordinates are well known and whose use is scheduled with the sort of ruthless efficiency that would make a Prussian quartermaster tingle. In the case of ships like cruise liners, which have set, predictable itineraries, drop-in zones are scheduled weeks and sometimes months in advance, as the Neverland's was, to prevent potential and catastrophic conflicts.

This is why the Nidu had all the time in the world to prepare for the arrival of the Neverland. They knew when it would arrive, they knew where, and they knew that there would be no witnesses for what came next

"Relax, Rod," Jean Schroeder said. "This is all going to be over in about an hour."

"I remember someone saying that to me before the Arlington Mall," Rod Acuna said. He paced the small guest deck of Ambassador win-Getag's private transport. The transport floated off to the side of a Nidu gunship, whose Marines would perform the boarding of the Neverland to take the girl, and which would then take care of the cruise liner after they returned.

"This really isn't the Arlington Mall," Schroeder said. "We're in Nidu space. The Neverland will be floating in space. There's a damn huge Nidu gunship ready to blast the thing to pieces. If the Nidu Marines don't kill Creek dead, he'll be dead when the Neverland gets turned into dust"

"I'll believe it when I see it," Acuna said.

"Believe it, Rod," Schroeder said. "Now relax. That"s an order." Schroeder waved in the direction of a corner. "Look at your flunky over there. He's relaxed. Take a page from him."

Acuna glanced over at Takk, who had his face jammed in the same book he'd been reading for the last couple of days, the one he'd gotten off the geek before he ate him. Acuna had mocked Takk earlier for taking a souvenir; Takk had just looked at him with a flat, expressionless stare that Acuna figured wouldn't have been out of place on a cow. He hadn't actually been aware Takk could read, or read English, in any event.

"He's relaxed because he's got the IQ of furniture," Acuna said, and walked back over to the strip of manufactured crystal that served as the deck's window. The limb of Chagfun was visible at the bottom left. "I can't believe I'm back at this shit hole," he said.

"That's right, this is where the Battle of Pajmhi was," Schroeder said, in a tone of voice that exactly expressed his total lack of interest in the topic. Acuna glanced over at him and not for the first time wondered what it would be like to crack that smug head like a melon. Acuna wasn't the sort to get "band of brothers" emotional, but even he treated the battle with something that approached (for Acuna) grim and quiet contemplation. Schroeder's casual obliviousness to it was insulting.

Acuna shook it off. Regardless of how much Schroeder could benefit from a metal bar across the teeth, if one were applied to him, Acuna wouldn't get paid afterward. And it certainly wouldn't help him in his desire to serve it up to Creek.