A Grey Moon Over China (28 page)

A sideways motion was added to the crush of acceleration. White spots spread across my vision. The targets began corkscrewing on the screen; we were accelerating toward them along a spiraling course the weapon couldn’t track. FleetSys’ calculations for the course must have been stunningly complex. Bolton hadn’t been wasting his time.

“FleetSys broadcast,” said Bolton, and his next words boomed through the ship. “Expect turnover and maximum thrust.”

Maximum thrust? Surely this was it. Already I felt I couldn’t take the pain any longer, as though my heart would burst from the weight of it. I wanted it to stop, no matter what the cost.

Now the target ships filled the entire screen. The apparently unarmed ship, target number one, fired its engines and moved away. An instant later the weight vanished and I was falling. My stomach heaved, and the bile sprayed out in a cloud across the deck. We pitched forward drunkenly as the ship rotated end-over-end, the turnover, and then I understood what Bolton was going to do: the Parthian shot. He had programmed the ship to burn an enemy with the ship’s own engine, pulsing its hundred-mile lance of flame toward the other ship at maximum power.

Our targets swam back into view through the after cameras, then in the very next instant I was slammed backward by a hammer blow of unimaginable force, and passed out.

Blackness finally lifted, leaving an awful pain. Then I was slammed into the seat again. I came out of it one more time to find myself choking on my own blood, then the blow came again, and again, and again, until I lost all sense of time, all sense of anything but the pain.

T
he darkness lifted for the last time. My sleeve came away from my mouth soaked in blood. Others coughed, or retched, or gasped for breath.

Across from me sat Polaski, blood all around his eyes, turning slowly to look at the overhead screens.

The two European ships drifted aimlessly. The robot ship carrying the weapon was intact, although discolored over much of its length. The other ship had been burned through. The ragged edges of its wound glowed red,
fed by wisps of oxygen seeping from the ruptured seals. The severed end of the ship drifted nearby, surrounded by a cloud of debris and the twisted, dismembered corpses of the crew.

Polaski, for one of the few times I’d ever seen him do so, smiled. It was a grotesque thing—his thin lips curling upward in a face turning black from the acceleration, his eyes, red all through and seeping blood across his cheeks, the tendons in his face pulling his mouth into that rictus of a thin, self-satisfied smile.

He’d been vindicated. His prophesy, self-fulfilling though it might have been regarding the inevitability of conflict, the decisive advantage of acceleration, the high-G training—all of it had come true just as he had said. In these people’s blind rush to escape from Earth, to get away from its hatred and warfare, in their willingness to use whatever means that escape required, they had only brought it along. And Polaski, finding within it fertile ground for yet another victory, misunderstanding completely our purpose, was pleased.

Yet no degree of desperation on the part of the Europeans really explained why they had brought such weapons with them, and why they had used one without provocation the minute they were through the tunnel. Clearly they hadn’t meant to use them all against us, not at that time anyway, because they had sent just the one armed ship and one crewed escort ship while the rest of their fleet raced by.

But whatever their reasons, they had to be stopped.

I turned to Bolton and worked against the pain to open my mouth.

“We need to talk to survivors,” I said.

“Yes,” he said, “my very thought.” He didn’t move, but looked around a little blankly, nearly as stunned as the rest of us. Finally he brought his microphone into position and wiggled a switch on his armrest, and blew into the mike. Sound roared from the speakers.

“Stand down, all stations. We will hold in pattern at one-quarter G. Roscoe, assemble boarding parties if you would, please. Fully armed. Take three of the shuttles, with torches for the locks. We need at least one English-speaking prisoner in good health. The others are to be neither harmed nor rescued. Ms. Pham—I assume you are still on 30-deck—you may accompany Mr. Throckmorton’s party if you wish, but you are not to interfere.”

He got up and leaned down next to his communications officer. I got up, too, then waited for the dizziness to pass. We were going to need to break out the acceleration suits, the ones with the hydraulic cuffs that stemmed the flow of blood.

“Torres,” said Bolton. He beckoned me over. “It was One-Fox they hit. I’m sorry.”

I looked at him for a moment, then all at once remembered the column of strange light and the disintegrating ships. And the fact that people had died.

“Captain Keller,” he said. “Thirteen others. Including some friends of yours, I believe. Delgado.”

Ramón and Elena Delgado. Yes, the little entomologist, and the woman who drew children’s books and illustrated our manuals for us. And Teresa and Ana, their daughters.

“God help us,” I said, and ran a hand across my face. “And one of your ships? Is that what happened?”

“I’m afraid so—Seven-Three. Sixteen people, plus Jamie Peterson in your shuttle. All soldiers, at least. No families.”

I shook my head, bewildered, not really grasping what had happened. Twenty-four hours ago I’d been in Charlie Peters’ quarters, counting the hours till escape, completely absorbed with my own, small concerns.

Sometime later I pushed into the tiny head and tried to scrub the blood from the stubble on my chin, thinking all the while about little Teresa Delgado. When I rinsed my mouth I only spat more blood, so I gave it up and turned to the business of emptying my bladder in the tiny space with so little weight. It felt as though something had torn inside—I tried not to bite through my tongue a second time.

“They’re back.” Someone pounded on the door to the head. The pressure changed and the walls clanged as the shuttle docked. Down on the lower commons deck, Polaski stood to one side, while Bolton stood in the center with his hands behind his back, facing the airlock as it sucked open.

Commandos stepped briskly through and moved aside, making room for a very tall man who stooped to make it through. He was propelled from behind by Pham, who dug him repeatedly in the kidneys. There was high color back in her cheeks. Her eyes flashed. She looked sleek again, alive.

The man she drove before her towered over us, though he was no more than nineteen or twenty. He had wavy blond hair and boyish good looks, and turned his head from side to side, looking frightened and eager to please at the same time, as though hoping for some kind word. His hands were tied behind him.

When he was a few steps into the room Bolton made a gesture, and Pham pulled him to a stop.

“So, who are you?” said Bolton, his tone conversational. The man’s lips worked themselves into an anxious smile, and his eyes darted from side to side.

“Margyl,” he said. “Dieter Margyl.” His accent was Dutch, or Flemish.

Bolton nodded thoughtfully. “You understand, Dieter, that you are far
from any international court, and that your friends are not coming back.” As he spoke, he drew his knife from its ankle scabbard. The man licked his lips, while Pham fidgeted impatiently.

“We would like to know,” said Bolton, straightening with the knife, “why you attacked our vessels.”

The prisoner’s eyes widened in astonishment.

“But, I think,” he said, “to make so you cannot stop us, yes?” He was watching the knife.

Pham snorted in derision, yet the man’s answer had caught my attention.

“Stop you from what?” said Bolton. “Go on.”

Margyl was beginning to panic. “I think you make fun of me, yes? You would stop us from landing, and—”

The knife shot out, only at the last minute flicking aside to cut open his breast pocket. He strangled on his own shout, then stood with his eyes tightly shut, taking short, hard breaths. A sour smell filtered into the room.

Bolton sliced open the rest of Margyl’s pockets, finding them empty except for a radiation badge that clinked against the deck and spun to a stop. Bolton stepped back.

“Stop you from landing, and what? By all means, continue.”

“From going on to the next projection machine,” said Margyl. His pale face quivered. When no one answered, he opened his eyes to steal a glance around the room.

“I am not understanding,” he said. “Please. You try to keep everyone from leaving Earth, then you do not tell the truth what your robots find, and now you ask—”

Pham moved too fast to follow. For a moment I thought she’d fallen to the deck, grabbing Bolton’s arm for support, but then I saw that she was still on her feet, crouching, and that she had Bolton’s knife in her hand, and that her right foot was coming up toward the prisoner Margyl. With all of her strength she came up, her heel striking home between his legs with an awful sound and lifting him off the deck. Even before he’d crumpled back to his side, she had a hold of his hair and was pushing his face down, landing with a knee in his kidneys and the knife against his throat.

Margyl struggled for breath, drawing his knees up and vomiting. She pressed his face into it and leaned down.

“Now,” she said, “Tell us.” The knife broke the skin.

“I don’t . . . yes,” he gasped, still trying for a breath. “I try . . . okay.” His eyes rolled up to look at her. “Yes, I will tell you. Please, no, listen. When we begin to build ships, we know that you let us build them only because you need us to help you—” Pham’s knee pressed harder.

“Please, it is true . . . we knew you would try to destroy all the ships, so that you would have everything for yourself here—we and the Chinese, we know this. Then you lie to everybody about what your robots find here. You say there is no place to live. Nothing, so for sure we have no place to go . . . just you. Now you hide from us
Le Paradis
, and you go there alone, and have that planet for yourself, too.”

He began to shake. His eyes, white and glassy, turned away from Pham and rolled first one way and then the other, then finally chose mine to which to issue their plea. Blood trickled from around the knife. Pham leaned closer.

“If we hide these things,” she said, “then how come you know them, hah?”

“Please, there is informer. In your ships. He tells us everything—”

With an almost convulsive force she drove her knee into his side. He screamed and the tendons stood out terribly in his neck. Sweat dripped from his chin and mixed with the blood and vomit around his face.

“His name,” she said.

Bolton gave a sigh at that moment, and straightened. “We know his name,” he said.

Pham ignored him and twisted the knife harder. “Tell us his name,” she said.

“I swear, please. We do not know his name. We have never known his name. Always we call him ‘the Chinaman’ . . .”

Then all at once I understood. How could we have missed it, I wondered. All of us had missed it, except Bolton. Chih-Hsien Chien, our Chinese guest. Watched over by Bolton’s troops, on Bolton’s ship. All the while feeding the Europeans lie after lie, to whatever unfathomable end.

Pham took a long, slow breath, then jerked suddenly, as though from a spasm. She stood up.

I had turned away by then, but I began to hear an odd, swishing sound, like a bellows being pumped. I looked back at Pham, then down, not understanding at first the pool of red swirling around her feet.

My stomach turned. Dieter Margyl’s throat had been cut from one side to the other, the wound gaping open in a hideous leer. His eyes were empty and wide, staring directly into mine.

I took a quick step back and made a sound at Bolton, but he only put his hands in his pockets and raised an eyebrow. Pham tossed down the knife. It landed next to Margyl, in the pool of blood still pumping from his throat.

“I think we talk to Chien,” she said. Her feet made a splashing sound as she moved away. Bolton said nothing. I tore my eyes from the dead man to watch her go, seeing that the old sinuous grace had returned to her as she
walked, rippling through her hips and her thighs. Her feet left smears of blood behind her.
The boundless celebration of our purpose,
I thought,
however black its nature . . .
I was fascinated, and revolted. And in some awful way, aroused.

“34-deck,” said Bolton finally, turning to follow. The rest of us fell in behind him, the trance broken.

But the sight that awaited us in Chih-Hsien’s quarters brought us no comfort, nor did it bring us any closer to the truth. He sat in his big acceleration chair, facing us with his head to one side, his tiny, frail body crushed by the acceleration. Whatever reasons he might have given us for his deadly manipulation of the Europeans, they had died with him.