Endymion

16

How long have I been unconscious?” Father Captain de Soya is gripping the tunic of the medic.

“Uh… thirty, forty minutes, sir,” said the medic, attempting to pull his shirt free. He does not succeed.

“Where am I?” De Soya feels the pain now. It is very intense—centered in his leg but radiating everywhere—but bearable. He ignores it.

“Aboard the St. Thomas Akira, Father sir.” “The troopship…” De Soya feels light-headed, unconnected. He looks down at his leg, now freed from its tourniquet. The lower leg is attached to the upper only by fragments of muscle and tissue. He realizes that Gregorius must have given him a painkiller—insufficient to block such a torrent of agony, but enough to give him this narcotic high. “Damn.”

“I’m afraid that the surgeons are going to amputate,” says the medic. “The surgeries are working overtime. You’re next, though, sir. We’ve been carrying out triage and…”

De Soya realizes that he is still gripping the young medic’s tunic. He releases it. “No.”

“Excuse me, Father sir?”

“You heard me. There’ll be no surgery until I’ve met with the captain of the St. Thomas Akira.”

“But sir… Father sir… you’ll die if you don’t…”

“I’ve died before, son.” De Soya fights off a wave of giddiness. “Did a sergeant bring me to the ship?”

“Yessir.”

“Is he still here?”

“Yes, Father sir, the sergeant was receiving stitches for wounds that…”

“Send him in here immediately.”

“But, Father sir, your wounds require…”

De Soya looks at the young medic’s rank. “Ensign?”

“Yessir?”

“You saw the papal diskey?” De Soya has checked; the platinum template still hangs from the unbreakable chain around his neck.

“Yes, Father sir, that’s what led us to prioritize your…”

“Upon pain of execution… and worse… upon pain of excommunication, shut up and send the sergeant in immediately, Ensign.”

Gregorius is out of his battle armor, but is still huge. The father-captain looks at the bandages and temporary doc paks on the big man’s body and realizes that the sergeant had been badly wounded even as he was carrying de Soya out of danger. He makes a note to respond to that sometime—not now. “Sergeant!”

Gregorius snaps to attention.

“Bring the captain of this ship here immediately. Quickly, before I black out again.”

The captain of the St. Thomas Akira is a middle-aged Lusian, as short and powerful looking as all Lusians. He is perfectly bald but sports a neatly trimmed gray beard.

“Father Captain de Soya, I am Captain Lempriere. Things are very hectic now, sir. The surgeons assure me that you require immediate attention. How can I be of help?”

“Tell me the situation, Captain.” De Soya has not met the captain before, but they have spoken on tightbeam. He hears the deference in the troopship captain’s voice. Out of the corner of his eye, de Soya sees Sergeant Gregorius excusing himself from the room. “Stay, Sergeant. Captain? The situation?”

Lempriere clears his throat. “Commander Barnes-Avne is dead. As far as we can tell, about half of the Swiss Guard in the Valley of the Time Tombs are also dead. Thousands of other casualties are pouring in. We have medics on the ground setting up mobile surgical centers, and we are ferrying the most severely wounded here for urgent care. The dead are being recovered and tagged for resurrection upon return to Renaissance Vector.”

“Renaissance Vector?” De Soya feels as if he is floating within the confined space of the surgical prep room. He is floating—within the confines of the gurney restraints. “What the hell happened to the gravity, Captain?”

Lempriere smiles wanly. “The containment field was damaged during the battle, sir. As for Renaissance Vector… well, it was our staging area, sir. Standing orders call for us to return there after the mission is completed.”

De Soya laughs, stopping only when he hears himself. It is not a totally sane laugh. “Who says our mission is completed, Captain? What battle are we talking about?”

Captain Lempriere glances at Sergeant Gregorius. The Swiss Guard does not break his fixed, at-attention stare at the bulkhead. “The support and covering craft in orbit were also decimated, sir.”

“Decimated?” The pain is making de Soya angry. “That means one in ten, Captain. Are ten percent of ship’s personnel on the casualty list?”

“No, sir,” says Lempriere, “more like sixty percent. Captain Ramirez of the St. Bonaventure is dead, as is his executive officer. My own first is dead. Half the crew of the St. Anthony have not answered roll.”

“Are the ships damaged?” demands Father Captain de Soya. He knows that he has only a minute or two of consciousness… and perhaps life… left.

“There was an explosion on the St. Bonaventure. At least half the compartments aft of the CIC vented to space. The drive is intact…”

De Soya closes his eyes. As a torchship captain himself, he knows that opening the craft to space is the penultimate nightmare. The ultimate nightmare was the implosion of the Hawking core itself, but at least that indignity would be instantaneous. Having a hull breached across so many of the ship’s areas was—like this shattered leg—a slow, painful path to death.

“The St. Anthony?”

“Damaged, but operable, sir. Captain Sati is alive and…”

“The girl?” demands de Soya. “Where is she?” Black spots dance in the periphery of his vision, and the cloud of them grows.

“Girl?” says Lempriere. Sergeant Gregorius says something to the captain that de Soya does not hear. There is a loud buzzing in his ears.

“Oh, yes,” says Lempriere, “the acquisition objective. Evidently a ship retrieved her from the surface and is accelerating toward C-plus translation…”

“A ship!” De Soya fights away unconsciousness with a sheer effort of will. “Where the hell did a ship come from?”

Gregorius speaks without breaking his staring match with the bulkhead. “From the planet, sir. From Hyperion. During the… during the Charlie Fox event, the ship skipped through the atmosphere, set down at the castle… Chronos Keep, sir… and plucked the kid and whoever was flying her—”

“Flying her?” interrupts de Soya. It is hard to hear through the growing buzz.

“Some sort of one-person EMV,” says the sergeant. “Although why it works, the tech boffins don’t know. Anyway, this ship got ’em, got past the COP during the carnage, and is spinning up to translation.”

“Carnage,” repeats de Soya stupidly. He realizes that he is drooling. He wipes his chin with the back of his hand, trying not to look down at the remnants of his leg as he does so. “Carnage. What caused it? Who were we fighting?”

“We don’t know, sir,” answers Lempriere. “It was like the old days… Hegemony Force days when the jumptroops came in by farcaster portal, sir. I mean, thousands of armored… things… appeared, everywhere, at the same second, sir. I mean, the battle only lasted five minutes. There were thousands of them. And then they were gone.”

De Soya is straining to hear this through the gathering darkness and the roaring in his ears, but the words make no sense. “Thousands? Of what? Gone where?”

Gregorius steps forward and looks down at the father-captain. “Not thousands, sir. Just one. The Shrike.”

“That’s a legend…” begins Lempriere.

“Just the Shrike,” continues the huge black man, ignoring the troopship captain. “It killed most of the Swiss Guard and half the regular Pax troops on Equus, downed all of the Scorpion fighters, took two torchships of the line out of business, killed everyone aboard the C-three ship, left his calling card here, and was gone in under thirty seconds. Total. All the rest was our guys shooting each other in panic. The Shrike.”

“Nonsense!” shouts Lempriere, his bare scalp growing red with agitation. “That’s a fantasy, a tall tale, and a heresy at that! Whatever struck us today was no…”

“Shut up,” says de Soya. He feels as if he is looking and talking down a long, dark tunnel. Whatever he has to say, he must say quickly. “Listen… Captain Lempriere… on my authority, on papal authority, authorize Captain Sati to take the survivors of the St. Bonaventure aboard the St. Anthony to round out the crew. Order Sati to follow the girl… the spacecraft bearing the girl… follow it to spinup, to fix its translation coordinates, and to follow…”

“But, Father Captain…” begins Lempriere.

“Listen,” shouts de Soya over the waterfall noise in his ears. He can no longer see anything but dancing spots. “Listen… order Captain Sati to follow that ship anywhere… even if it takes a lifetime… and to capture the girl. That is his prime and total directive. Capture the girl and return her to Pacem. Gregorius?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t let them operate on me, Sergeant. Is my courier ship still intact?”

“The Raphael? Yes, sir. It was empty during the battle, the Shrike didn’t touch it.”

“Is Hiroshe… my dropship pilot… still around?”

“No, sir. He was killed.”

De Soya can barely hear the sergeant’s booming voice over the louder booming. “Requisition a pilot and shuttle, Sergeant. Get me, you, and the rest of your squad—”

“Just two men now, sir.”

“Listen. Get the four of us to the Raphael. The ship will know what to do. Tell it that we’re going to follow the girl… the ship… and the St. Anthony. Wherever those ships go, we go. Sergeant?”

“Yes, Father Captain!”

“You and your men are born again, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Father Captain!”

“Well, prepare to be born again for real, Sergeant.” “But your leg…” says Captain Lempriere from very, very far away. His voice Doppler-shifts as it recedes.

“I’ll be reunited with it when I’m resurrected,” mutters Father Captain de Soya. He wants to close his eyes to say a prayer now, but he does not have to close his eyes to shut out the light—the darkness around him is absolute. Into that roaring and buzzing, not knowing if anyone can hear him or if he is really speaking, he says, “Quickly, Sergeant. Now!”