Kaspar's Box

II: TASK FORCE ELEVEN

“I see him, Leader. He’s lying back behind the asteroid, six o’clock.”

“Very well. I see him. Going to instrumentation mode. Balance of flight, on me.”

The fugitive ship had been hovering just inside a deep rift valley on the dark side of the barren planet with all systems powered down to minimum. It was in fact an impressive feat of flying. The ship was half the size of a destroyer but not engineered for those kind of maneuvers; to set it into a planet so that it hovered only meters above the surface and merged in most sensors with the surrounding rough landscape was not only skillful but also far beyond what such a ship should have been able to do. Whoever modified and maintained the old hulk knew what they were doing, and that in itself made them of great interest to the naval commanders supervising this operation. To take a ship designed essentially for commercial exploration and turn it into a formidable clipper was a skill worth pursuing.

“Agrippa to leader first squadron. Shall we come in and take her with a nullifier?” came a query from their parent destroyer lying well away from these close quarters and asteroid-filled neighborhoods for now as the smaller one-person craft ferreted out the quarry.

“Uh, negative, Agrippa. We’ll flush him out and send him to you if that’s your desire.”

There was a sigh from the larger vessel’s operations commander. “Well, we’re made, so he’s not gonna run for home until and unless he’s positive we missed him, so we might as well take him and get the information the hard way. Go for flush.”

The leader nodded reflexively. “Flight, spread out, and be careful. You remember the last one. We don’t want this thing flipping out and gunning itself full throttle into the star. First squadron, pull around and put yourselves between quarry and inbound. Keep position and do not vary unless quarry moves clearly away. At all times keep between quarry and star. Got that, Alpha leader?”

“Got it. You’ll never let me live that one down, will you? He comes my way, he gets concentrated full forward fire. His shields can’t be that great after this. You flush him, we’ll roadblock and you climb up his ass.”

“Don’t be vulgar, Alpha. Beta, on me. Let’s flush the bastard.”

The squadron’s ships peeled off in precise order and dived on the hapless ship below as if they were somehow connected together or at least piloted by master machines with split-second timing.

The old tramp didn’t wait for them to bracket him with strafing fire; he powered up and gunned it, barely missing tearing his bottom out on the tops of the mountains.

For an old commercial vessel he was surprisingly fast and agile, but no match for the military fighters. They caught up with the fleeing tramp ship before it could even fully clear the planetary gravity well and took up a formation at speeds matching their quarry so that they essentially surrounded it.

“All right, up to you,” the squadron leader called on a wide frequency spread. “Either you cut your engines and follow us or we’ll shoot some holes in you. We’ll try not to kill you but in space you never really know, do you? Your choice.”

“I’m thinking it over,” responded a man’s sour voice on one of the standard emergency frequencies. The voice was raw and raspy, an old man’s voice with a lot of experience in its tone.

The squadron leader shifted to the same frequency and the tactical sounds faded into a more standard open radio back and forth. It was more like they were next to each other and speaking normally. “What’s to decide? Is refusing to pay your just taxes worth dying for?”

“Taxes be damned! You’re blackmailers and extortionists. I’d pay to be protected from the likes of you! Ah, you’re just a bunch of brainwashed drones. Why the hell am I explaining it? Bottom line is I got nothin’ here worth stealin’ ’cept my ship, and that ain’t worth all that much, even in spare parts and fuel rods. Cargo’s empty. I was on my way out, not in. You take my ship I’m no better off than if I was dead, and you don’t get much by takin’ it. So just who or what are you protectin’ me from ’cept maybe starvation?”

“We’ve heard all this before,” the leader told him. “Just cut power and our mother ship will take you aboard. You can make your arguments there. I have nothing to do with the case, I just bring in who I’m told to bring in. Now, we know that there’s more than just you aboard. Even if you wanted to commit suicide, is it fair to take others with you?”

The old man thought for a moment. “Maybe. If their choice is dyin’ or joinin’ the likes of you.”

“We don’t conscript. Don’t need to.”

“Then you don’t know much about your own operations,” the old captain responded, sounding weary and resigned. “You live in a hive like some ancient insects, but you got to renew the gene pool now and then.” He paused a moment, then sighed. “Okay, pull me in. I don’t like doin’ it to the others, but at least I’ll have the satisfaction of knowin’ that at least I’m gonna be your problem for a while.”

The destroyer monitoring the engagement now moved in as the old tramp ship cut power and just drifted, defenseless against all the naval might arrayed against it. Tractor beams fixed on the old ship like a spider spinning a web to ensure that the fly did not escape, and, when secure, the prey was reeled in by the tractor lines until it could be mechanically grappled by arms extending beneath the destroyer.

The old freighter held together well; whoever had fixed it up had known what they were doing, and it had clearly been expertly maintained as well. The fleet, of course, had its entire maintenance and dry-dock sections fully automated, but these people out here in the old colonies were lucky to keep anything running at all, let alone maintaining equipment to service the fruits of their scavenging.

The fighters waited until the target was safely secured and then went in for their own predetermined berths, landing automatically. The pilots sat and waited for pressurization, then their canopies slid back and they got out and jumped down to the deck below. The artificial gravity in the berths was kept low to facilitate their ingress and egress, as their trainers called it.

Each of the military figures wore what appeared to be a skintight blue-black body suit that showed them to be generally squat and muscular people, their muscles bulging as if they were about to burst through the suits. They kept the suits on, and would so long as they were officially on duty; the egg-shaped gold and black helmets were removed and placed on special holders near each fighter. On their mounts they would be recharged, benchmarked, tested and, if necessary, repaired, without ever leaving their perches. They could also be programmed with the specifics of any task the fighters might be asked to do, so that the information would be there right in front of each of them as needed. In an emergency, the crews could be at their fighters in less than a minute from anywhere they were likely to be, and in their ships and ready for takeoff with all that they required in no more than three minutes. They drilled on that constantly.

Only some of the pilots, however, were in that position or needed to drill. More than half the squadron never removed their helmets or suits at all, ever. They were machines.

A mixture of humans and machines had been found to be ideal from the earliest deep-space naval combat vessels. Nobody trusted machines alone to do the job; they could outwit and outfight everybody except a totally illogical human being who might do things they would never expect. The pilots were, however, both genetically and cybernetically enhanced. All were female, though that term had little real meaning for them except that they averaged perhaps twenty percent less mass than the men and had voices that were, on average, quite low but still a half octave removed from the men. Hairless, their breasts rock hard and their sexual organs removed and replaced with semiorganic hormonal regulators, they had no sense of sexuality at all, either to themselves or as regarded anyone else.

It was not any of the pilots who would approach and enter the captured vessel, though. That was a job for a marine squad, mostly huge muscle-bound males, also hairless, and with nothing evident in the groin to suggest sexuality, either. The naval nurseries harvested the eggs and all the sperm it needed, processed them, altered their DNA and designed what was required, far away from those who had been the donors. Like the pilots, adult marines and the other crewmen were basically asexual, and neither knew nor wondered what they were missing.

Not that they were without emotion; that was a requirement of being human. But it was the emotion of camaraderie, of friends and brothers and sisters, nothing beyond. Not that they were ignorant of sex; they simply could not imagine why it was so important or why others did such disgusting things. The marines and the pilots saw themselves not as men and women, but as specialists designed to best do their jobs. And none of them wanted to be or do anything more than what they were; only to advance in rank, authority, power, and respect.

The old captain had called them “drones,” and in effect that was just what they were.

Now the marine squad went down the umbilical cylinder to the entry hatch on the old freighter.

“This is Sergeant Maslovic,” their leader said using a transceiver essentially built into his thick rocklike jaw, although it was invisible to the naked eye and controlled by his own thoughts. “Open your hatch and prepare to be boarded.”

There was a loud hiss and the hatch turned and then opened like the iris of a camera, allowing entry.

Although the marines were armed, they were not expecting a fight. What, after all, could these people do? The worst they could try was to blow up their ship in order to take the larger one with it, and there were energy shields all around to insure that that was not somthing that would be very profitable to do. It would kill the marines, certainly, as well as those aboard the captured vessel, but little else. The marines did worry about this, but their officers above had plenty more marines if they lost these.

The two lead men in the squad entered on either side, stun-type sidearms drawn, and flanked the sergeant as he walked confidently in, his own weapon holstered and not even unstrapped.

The marines wore suits quite like those of the fighters, but the color of dark mud, and while the squad had on light protective helmets the sergeant hadn’t even bothered to put his on. Since he couldn’t stop anyone from killing him nor would that thing protect him from a shot, he saw no purpose to it here, and once they’d secured the ship and prisoners and were marching their captives to Legal, the proper uniform would be no helmet anyway.

The captain of the tramp met him just inside the entranceway. He was not only old, he was perhaps the oldest man Maslovic had ever seen. Gray-haired, with a stringy, dirty gray beard, his skin had the look of ancient parchment and he stood slightly stooped in spite of a clear effort to look military himself. He wore a simple black flight jump suit that looked older and more wrinkled than he was, and some boots that had last been shined before the Great Silence.

“I’m Captain Murphy,” the old man introduced himself.

“Sergeant Maslovic,” the marine responded, looking around. “Sir, by authority of Combine Naval Code seventy-seven stroke six two I take command of your vessel. Where are your crew?”

The old man chuckled. “Crew? No crew. Don’t need much of a crew for this scow, Sergeant. I have some passengers, though.”

“We monitored three. Please have them come forward and then we can all go up to the Legal Officer.”

“Well, now, we might need some help in transporting two of them, I think, although I’m not at all sure you’ll understand why without diagrams.”

“Sir?”

“This way, Sergeant.”

Maslovic gestured for the guard to be posted at the airlock and the rest of the squad to fan out through the captive ship and begin to search and inventory it, then followed the old captain.

The ship stank. Body odor, oils and lubricants—it was hard to isolate the sources of the stenches, but it was not exactly a ship that would pass inspection in naval life.

The captain punched a panel and an interior hatch slid back, and Murphy gestured for the sergeant to enter.

“Sergeant, meet my passengers,” the old man said with a trace of amusement in his tone.

Maslovic entered what was clearly ordinarily the captain’s cabin and stopped. For a moment, he really did feel confused. Three women were inside, one in a reclining chair, one in the bed, and a third in a straight-backed utility chair bolted to the floor.

Maslovic had seen many colonial women before, but there was something odd about these. They were disproportionately fat, but not all over. Just in the…

He suddenly realized their condition and why Captain Murphy had been so apprehensive about them and yet amused to introduce them to him.

All three were hugely pregnant.

He suspected that these people would be going up to the cruiser. There was nobody here who could deal with them like this.

It was two kilometers long and looked like it had been assembled by a horde of drunken babies. Nonetheless, the Thermopylae was actually as functional as a socket wrench; in its time, its design fought wars, conquered rebellions, ran down smugglers and brought would-be dictators to heel. Its birth name was the CNC Thermopylae, the initials standing for “Combine Naval Cruiser.” Its armament was and continued to be more than formidable; it could incinerate the average solid rock planet, vaporize a path ahead of it through the densest of asteroid belts, and its defensive shields could withstand blasts from a ship of equal or lesser capabilities.

It did not, however, have many light armaments; instead, it carried a series of externally docked fighter squadrons in what were known as “pods” and, in four equally spaced “hangars” around its midsection, it carried and could quickly launch a like number of destroyers, each with formidable weapons of their own, each with their own single abbreviated pod of defensive fighters. The destroyers could use a wormgate on their own, as could the cruiser; the fighters had no such equipment aboard and were dependent for interstellar travel on the bigger ships even as they were dependent on the smallest for the first line of defense.

For all that, they’d had relatively small human crews when the Great Silence came down and all the wormgates leading to the old Combine and Mother Earth suddenly became inactive. Most of the systems were fully automated; the only ones aboard the large vessels were those who had to make the command decisions that it was felt no machine should be permitted to make and those who represented the human race in its projection wherever that force was required. Ultimately, it was the lowest and least of them that proved essential to remain essentially human. It was discovered, by long and rueful experience, that you could make the perfect soldiers out of robotic arts but so could the other guys. Stalemate was not the objective of a military projection; so long as machines of equal capabilities faced off, though, that’s what happened most of the time.

And that was why the pilots and the grunts, supported, of course, by the best in robotics, but not governed by them, remained.

The Thermopylae had exactly one hundred and sixty pilots in four squadrons with three hundred base personnel supporting them when she found herself orphaned from higher command; beyond those few was one division of marines divided into four regiments of eight forty-person companies each. Six hundred and forty men and women, with twice that in support, all of whom were also rated to replace anyone in the combat division if needed. The command staff included the small complements on each destroyer, the naval commanding officer, the cruiser’s captain and small support staff, and a fleet admiral. In all, far fewer than two thousand souls.

That had changed, but not as much as might be expected. More were needed in a fairly steady stream because of the time it took to evaluate and train competent personnel to replace what might be lost or what might be needed as a reserve, but wholesale expansion would have meant the end of the division as it drowned in a sea of consumers of limited resources.

Cut off from home, adrift in a sea of stars with no way home and no longer a clear mission nor view of its place in the universe, such ships as this either disintegrated or found a new purpose, new mission, and new identity. Military always had their own separate culture, their own feeling of “us” and “them” even in the best of times, and that had been reinforced after the Silence.

The Thermopylae, part deliberately, part without even realizing it as events and culture swept it along, became its own small world, its own society, its own unique nation and culture. Its power and isolation from higher command assured that it would be able to do so and make it stick; the rest came from the ancient human ability to justify to itself almost anything it wanted to do.

It saw itself as the law, the only law left in its more limited cosmos. It continued to safeguard what commerce was left, and to enforce order on the forces of chaos, anarchy and greed that always rode in to capitalize on any misfortune. Most of the other ships did the same, almost as a sense of duty, a matter of honor.

There were, of course, a few that went over to the other side and became the enemy, and those, too, ships like the Thermopylae sought out to battle and possibly destroy.

Nothing, particularly such a valuable commodity as security, was ever free, though, and with no taxing authority to finance it and no controlling government to set its worth and limit its reach, the ship quite naturally took a percentage of whatever was produced by those whom it protected. This was its just share for keeping the defenseless in business, and it was necessary for all the luxuries, necessities, repairs and consumables that such a military unit required. It did not make them universally loved in most places when they priced their own value and service at a rate much higher than their “clients” considered reasonable, proper, or possible, but the ships projected power that no one else could equal. There were no debates; the ships either were paid what they wanted or they took it.

To many if not most of the people on the planets throughout the old colonial sector, and the struggling commercial vessels that tried to keep them supplied and viable as working societies, it was increasingly difficult to tell the protector from the folks they were being protected from.

And now they had collected a bit more than they bargained for.

Captain Kim had always been a hardware man. He’d begun as an ensign overseeing robotic systems and repairs, gone up through the ranks, eventually commanding a destroyer and finally being selected by the destroyer captains to take over full command of the cruiser Thermopylae after its previous captain had reached the final stage of promotion, one of the three rotating Fleet Admirals, who were no longer bound to their bodies but were integrated with the great ship. Command at that level was always split, since the power any of them wielded was close to absolute, but the price was more than just becoming cybernetically wedded to the cruiser; demands on the human brain in that configuration were hard, particularly at the ages when they were integrated, and so Fleet Admirals, even rotating as they did, tended to wear out after only twenty or thirty years.

Captain Kim loved being the captain. He’d been the captain now for over twenty years and it was in every way the ideal job, the position to which he’d been born and bred. A man totally without personal fear, or so it seemed; the only nightmare he had other than running into something that would cost him his ship was being promoted to Fleet Admiral.

He was not, however, quite prepared for the likes of Captain Patrick Murphy.

They could not have seemed more opposite had they planned their meeting. There was Kim, a tall, muscular man with shiny pale skin and a uniform that somehow was so clean and perfectly tailored that, even on the captain, it looked as if it had never been worn; and Murphy, hairy, with cracked and burnt complexion, a uniform that looked far too worn almost to being worn out, and a kind of aura that suggested that flies should have been buzzing around the old man’s head.

Kim looked at the old freebooter with some disgust, but finished reading the console in front of him before formally acknowledging the other’s existence. Finally, he looked up, leaned back, and asked, “You were once a priest?”

Murphy laughed. “I hadn’t expected that one to be first out of your mouth, Captain. Let’s just say the Vatican in any incarnation and I haven’t been on speakin’ terms in a long, long time, and I ain’t heard much from God lately. No matter what they say on Vaticanus, I am convinced that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are somewhere on the other side of the Great Silence. Still, it’s a useful identity at times, I admit. People tend to trust a priest, dumb as they are.”

“Such as handing over their daughters to your care?”

Murphy found that even more amusing. “Ah, yes. Irish and Mary Margaret and Brigit, I suppose you’re talkin’ about. No, they aren’t with me because their families trusted me with ’em. They’re with me ’cause they all paid me good to get ’em as far away from their families as fast as possible, all of ’em havin’ got themselves knocked up, as it were, and unfit on pleasant little Tara Hibernius for regular lives after that. Or, that’s their story, anyways. Me, I got to wonder why anybody, particularly folks what can afford even the likes of me, would get themselves accidentally knocked up when it’s a simple monthly pill or potion and you don’t have to worry about that unless you want to. Me, I think they got themselves knocked up so’s their parents would have to pay their way someplace else. To avoid the disgrace, y’see.”

Kim shook his head. “No, I don’t see.”

“Ah, you navy types,” Murphy sighed. “You make yours in bottles after the computer mucks with ’em and you then throw away the equipment like it’s an appendix or tonsils or something else disposable. Meanin’ no offense, but you folks are raised almost like machines in a nice, sterile, controlled environment where there’s no real questions ’cept maybe how far in rank you’ll get. That’s the trouble with you military types. You just got to follow orders.”

“That is a problem in your eyes?”

“Sure. No lying, cheating, stealing, no con men, no deception or sin to speak of. Kind of permanent adolescents who think being bad is sneakin’ off and havin’ a forbidden beer or a funny joke not to let the toilet flush. The culture these girls come from is different. It was founded by folks who wanted a simpler, more primitive life, one devoted to the soil and the soul and to their misbegotten nostalgia for traditions and culture that not only are long gone, they probably never were. Lots of colonies like that out here once upon a time. That’s why so many of ’em are in trouble. So they work the land in the ways their hardscrabble ancestors did back on the Aud Sod, or at least a kind of traditional working excusin’ the robotics and chemistry and all, and the fact that they eat like pigs with what they grow rather than starve and never once knew the meanin’ of the word ‘famine.’ But, never mind. It’s a whole world of fifth-generation play actors who really think they’re livin’ the simple life and that makes ’em clean of spirit and closer to God or somethin’ like that. A land where all the boys and girls are conscious virgins and all the marriages are perfect and there’s no unhappiness. And they gather at the pub and they drink pints of perfect dark stout and they sing authentic fake Irish folk tunes and they play the pipes at weddings and funerals and everybody’s the perfect Catholic saint.” He stopped for a moment and saw Kim’s blank stare. “And you don’t have a bloody clue what I’m talkin’ about, just like them legal and psychologist folks, do you?”

“Not exactly. I believe in plain speaking and being straightforward.”

“Indeed? Well, it’s hypocrisy, Captain. You know the word? One of dozens, maybe hundreds of worlds where everybody pretends to be what everybody else thinks they should be but nobody really is. And these girls’ parents, they got fed up with it but they got noplace else to go. So they create a situation where the girls can’t remain hypocrites and they ship ’em out to someplace where maybe they got a chance at a life.”

“And you accused us of being thieves, I believe? What you are saying sounds both insane and quite sad. What are these young women to become with no family or friends and new young mothers without resources? It won’t do, Murphy. A good story, but it just won’t do. We may not burden ourselves with the old ways of reproduction, but I know enough to know that at the first evidence of pregnancy any of them could have taken a simple pill and had done with it.”

Murphy sighed. “I was afraid I couldn’t make you get it,” he said, trying to find an alternate way in. “There are no such pills in God’s country. It’s a monstrous crime to even possess them. Oh, sure, it’s done, but in their own way, their culture and their parents’ culture is as rigid to them as your military culture is to your people. These girls got pregnant in that culture, they were dead. The only way out for them was to give themselves and their children to the church and become nuns. ‘Missionary work’ is the euphemism that’s used to explain where a young woman went. Oh, they have birth control, although it’s illegal, but something went wrong. They shouldn’t all have gotten preggers from a roll or two in the hay. So, either the families wanted them out or the church was short on nuns. Maybe both. But, given the choice of the nunnery or me, they took me. And I was takin’ them to one or another place where they could have some kind of support and future. A place or places where it simply wouldn’t matter. And that’s when you stepped in.”

Captain Kim shook his head in disbelief. “I still believe you are not telling me the truth, or at least not most of it, but I’m not here to judge you nor to save the souls of young women. But I do know that you’ve been running all sorts of elaborate contraband back and forth between these benighted worlds in this sector since I was a lieutenant, and you knew that there was a fee to be paid, and you have a very long history of not paying that fee, Captain Murphy. In fact, you’ve run from and successfully evaded Navy collectors for the past several years now. I don’t care what you do or what you run to these poor people down there, but I do care that you have decided to work outside our system. We can’t have that, Murphy. This fleet depends to a large degree on our fees and levies. There’s no more spare parts for critical systems, and nothing to make them. Keeping things maintained and running costs an increasing amount of money. If everyone doesn’t pay their share, then this fleet will simply grind to a halt, impotent, unable to do its mission.”

“And what mission is that, sir, if I might be so bold as to ask?”

“Protection! Pirates raid and steal from traders both honest and dishonest like yourself all the time, and they don’t care if they kill. Legitimate trade alone keeps those colonial planets running, even at more basic levels, since they have the same problems with parts, supplies, and repairs that we do. Billions of people depend on things they can’t grow or make, or whatever getting to where they’re needed. We’re the only ones keeping it working. The only ones who could keep it working. You know that, Captain.”

“I know you say that, probably even believe it,” Murply responded. “But it’s a losing battle even if you do it honestly. Piracy and political and religious fanaticism are rampant and getting worse as things grow harder for people here and supplies run down. You not only can’t stop it with this little independent navy of yours, you hardly even try. You spend all your time collecting your fees even while those characters invade whole colonies, raping and looting. Since I think you have a strong code of honor, I don’t think you even see it, but I don’t know anybody who doesn’t hate you and fear you. They can’t tell the difference between you and the bad guys, Captain. That’s what I mean about being machines. You have a system that’s blind to reality and you still go through the motions and justify your actions even though they’re entirely motivated by self-preservation urges having nothing to do with your so-called ‘mission.’ You just keep doing it because that’s what you’re programmed to do.”

“I don’t think we’re quite as soulless as you make us out to be. I admit we can do less and less and things are going down and that we’re like a small child holding up the collapsing wall and getting more and more tired as we do so and the weight of the wall comes down on us, but what is your alternative? Lose all sense of duty and honor, quit, watch it fall from a drunken amoral haze or some drugged stupor and say the hell with everybody? That’s your problem, Murphy. You’re so busy looking at us as machines that your total loss of faith prevents you from looking in the mirror and seeing what I see here before me now.”

“Indeed? And what is that?”

“An empty suit. A dead man who doesn’t have the sense to know he’s already in Hell. So what am I to do with you, Murphy? You and your… cargo?”

The words had little effect on the old man, but he felt he had to defend his pride against this martinet. “That’s Captain Murphy, sir!”

“Captains have ships,” Kim replied. “And you don’t, Citizen Murphy. Not any more. We will fumigate that scow and then take it to the nearest salvage yard and trade it for something we can use, even though its trade value isn’t all that much. We can’t do much to or with you, though. You’re too old and too much the physical and mental corpse to have any value, and you are a deficit if we keep you around as a consumer of our resources. But since you haven’t done anything to us that would warrant execution, we’ll probably simply drop you penniless and stark naked on the first planet we come across and see if you can start from scratch.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Murphy responded, although inside he was seething. “And the girls?”

“We haven’t decided on that yet. I have all my staff recommendations here, but I’m not about to make any decisions until I’ve personally interviewed each of them and made up my own mind. Why do you ask? Do you really care what happens to them? Or is it that you didn’t get full payment until you delivered them?”

“I ain’t no buyer and seller of human flesh! Them girls paid for their passages and I’m responsible for ’em until they get where they were goin’. What are you gonna do, you starched bald bloodsucker? Take their babies as your taxes?”

“I hardly think their babies would be of much use to us. It is far too late to genetically enhance them, and we begin with raw sperm and raw egg. No, Mister Murphy, I rather think I’ll speak with them and then decide. They are not on our account books, but are, shall we say, left in the lurch by your actions. So unless you want to give me an account somewhere that will cover your back and present taxes and levies, I think you are out of the loop. You are dismissed and confined to quarters for now. Avail yourself of the facilities there. For God’s sake, at least take a shower.”

Murphy gave him a sour grin. “I don’t think I can afford your water bill,” he responded, turned, and started to walk out. Just before he reached the door, though, he stopped and turned back towards the captain. “Only one thing will I give you, sir. Don’t put ’em together. Mix ’em up. Keep ’em separate. Otherwise you’ll mightily regret it.”

“What? What are you talking about, man?”

“The girls. Keep ’em apart. I’m pretty sure they’re only dangerous when they’re together, and I guarantee you they’ll be bored to death on this antiseptic platform.”

“Why in the name of heaven should we worry about those… ladies?”

Murphy grinned. “Well, you’ve been warned.” He gave the captain a smirk and a half-hearted salute and turned and exited.

The captain shook his head in wonder. This was a ship that could destroy a planet. There was simply no more secure place in the known universe. He didn’t appreciate the old boy trying to play mind games with him.

Another officer emerged from behind a panel near the captain’s seat. Commander Sittithong looked close to the captain’s age but she had aged less well than he.

Kim turned and looked over at her. “That man is hiding something.”

Sittithong nodded. “Probably a lot, sir. But I doubt if we could tell truth from lie even with our best interrogation systems. I’ve seen his like before. Pathological. Whatever he’s spinning, he believes—at least when he’s spinning it. To get down to the core and learn the truth would probably destroy his mind. His sort made great spies in the old days.”

“Indeed. I’d like to crack that nut, but for something like back taxes it’s not something I could justify to the Admiralty and would certainly be beyond regulations. Perhaps we’ll learn more from the young ladies. Perhaps you should question them, or at least the first one, while I duck out of sight. They might feel more comfortable.”

“I doubt that, sir. Still, if you want to try, I can take the first, then if I have no luck you can take the second, and perhaps both of us will take the third if that doesn’t work.”

He nodded and got up. “Good idea. I confess that I am going to find dealing with them to be most uncomfortable. Compared to our ways, it is almost as if dealing with an alien species.”

Sittithong shrugged. “I am not much closer to them than you in that, but let’s see.” The thought of actually having a man put his thing inside her and squirt fluids up into her insides, and maybe for the result to be a baby actually growing in there was enough to make her shudder, she who would have thought nothing of charging into a nest full of pirates with only a sidearm. It was all so… ugly. And messy. And to be controlled by hormones that overrode rationality was almost unthinkable to her, as it was to the other naval personnel. Like most, she thought of “ordinary” humans as closer to the animals than to the purity of mind and body the military way represented.

Still, she’d dealt with a lot of them, both men and women, in her time, and even though she couldn’t remember dealing with pregnant young women, she was certainly ready to give it a try.

As the captain settled in on the chair behind the partition, Commander Sittithong took the command chair and pressed a small disk on the thin, crescent-shaped desk in front of her. “Send in the first woman. No preference. Any one of them will do.”

The door across from the exec slid back and a young woman entered, looking not just hesitant but downright scared.

Murphy had stood, but there was a thin, rigid but functional chair facing the command chair. “Please have a seat if you like,” the commander said as softly and as friendly sounding as she could manage.

“Uh, yeah. Thank you, Mum,” the woman muttered, and sat. She looked no more comfortable sitting than standing, but apparently it was better than nothing.

The screen area of the desk lit up with the complete files and digest of the initial interview with this young woman. “You are Irish O’Brian? Your true name?”

“Yes, Mum. Me folks thought it sounded good, and I’m certainly Irish.”

Sittithong realized that the young woman wasn’t making a play on words; she meant it.

“You are…” Good lord! “… seventeen standard years?”

“Yes, Mum. But I’ll be eighteen next March.”

The commander quickly adjusted to the stock military calendar. “Then you were only sixteen when you… became pregnant?”

“Aye, Mum. Old enough, it seems, though the old superstitions said it was too young and couldn’t be done on the first time. Guess they were wrong ’bout that.”

O’Brian had a thick accent that was related to Murphy’s but was much, much more pronounced. Sittithong guessed that it was the Irish dialect, whatever that meant.

The infobase picked up her mental query and gave her the details on a thin frame to the right of the personnel record. Some small island on Old Earth. A nationality, as it were. The planet the girl was from, though, was Tara Hibernius, a midway colony near the border beyond which they could no longer go. The colony had been established by a group of wealthy conservatives who wanted to found an agricultural society based on an idealized vision of an ancient state of their native land that probably never existed in the first place.

The pattern wasn’t uncommon, particularly in the early days of colonization. In fact, such things had been encouraged. The irrational revolutionary nut cases with money and influence and possibly fanaticism as well could be bled off by giving them a chance to prove their ideas, and if you had a wealthy enough benefactor or group, then the Confederation hadn’t even had to shell out much to set the places up. When the dissident and the dangerous actually paid to take themselves out of your society, how could you not help but ease the way?

Tara Hibernius was only two wormgate jumps from Vaticanus, too. Strict and very conservative Catholic society. So Murphy might not have been stretching the truth about the place. They might well have imposed technological limitations on the average citizens there just to keep them isolated and their lifestyle mandated just so; this allowed for a cultlike society where people lived in ignorance of what else there was in the universe, the founders’ ideal. Back to the land, back to the simple life—it was consistent.

But paying an old reprobate like Murphy to get your pregnant daughter off to some distant planet where she’d be totally unprepared to live wasn’t consistent. Some of these cults killed their sinners, but this seemed neither an act of excommunication nor of loving desperation. It made no sense at all.

The computer-aided psychology report on any of the three was no more help. Except for a strong sense of deception, the physiological results were totally contradictory and so were the stories.

“Why were you on Captain Murphy’s ship instead of staying back on your native planet?” the exec asked her.

Irish O’Brian shrugged. “It beat the alternative, Mum.”

“Indeed? And what was that?”

“Bein’ burnt up with the baby and all, Mum.”

“The people of your world would have burned you alive?” The exec would have sounded more shocked if she actually believed that it would happen.

“Oh, yes, Mum. Me and me sisters.”

“Sisters? I don’t see any relationship here.”

“Oh, it’s a different kind of relation, that,” O’Brian replied, sounding casual and innocent. “Sort of sisters in the soul more than in the blood. They’d already got the other ten of us, y’see, so there wasn’t no doubt but what they’d do to us.”

“They burned ten other young women? You saw this?”

“Yes, Mum. Didn’t hav’ta, though. When any one of us goes, well, the others just sort of know, y’see.”

“No, I don’t see, I’m afraid. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Well, Mum, it’s like this. The Old Country, it was united by a prophet who married off a daughter of the line of Judah to King Brian. That was at the old Tara, which is why that’s a part of the New Country name, y’see. They think they have the direct authority of God, and the Church is their instrument.”

Were all these people totally insane? “What does all that have to do with anything, my dear?”

“Well, y’know, we don’t exactly get along with God, y’know. We ain’t been all that impressed with his side, y’see.”

This was going nowhere. The exec did, however, notice one thing that she hadn’t before. “Um, that necklace you’re wearing. Is it some family thing, or a gift, or some sort of religious medal?”

The girl ran a long finger down the slender golden chain around her neck which ended in a large stone of some sort, emerald in color but looking somehow different, and certainly rough.

“Well, ’tis of our beliefs, Mum.”

“May I look at it?”

The idea seemed to frighten the girl, the first real rise the exec had gotten from her. “Please, Mum. It’s not good for you to touch it. It’s just a stone, but it’s very important to me. Please don’t make me give it to you!”

Sittithong thought for a moment. What the hell, they weren’t getting anywhere. “Very well, calm down.” She sighed and considered where to go from here and didn’t get very far. Finally she said, “That will be all for now, citizen. Please exit and wait until we’ve spoken to your companions. We might well want to talk to you all again after this. Unlike Captain Murphy, you haven’t committed any criminal acts as far as we’re concerned.”

“So long as you don’t send us back to our deaths, anyplace is fine, Mum. We’ll get by.”

Yeah, sure. Seventeen, pregnant or with an infant, little possessions, no money or credit, no education, no skills. Oh, you’ll cope fine.

When O’Brian was gone, the commander called, “What do you think, Captain? You want to take the next one, or me?”

“I think these people are all lunatics,” Captain Kim replied. “I’ve been looking over the initial examinations and interrogations of all three and that’s about what we can expect from the other two, it appears. I’m not sure whether it’s worth losing any more time or sleep over this.” He got up and came around to the exec, who rose and yielded the chair to the captain. “Still, let’s see what comes of this, if anything. I don’t want to be hasty here, and we’ve got procedural problems.”

“Indeed. Most people in their circumstance will tell us where to drop them off.”

“Let’s take the other two together and see if we can make any sense of this.” He pressed a point on the desk signalling the marine outside. “Send in the other two together now.”

“Aye, sir,” was the response, and the door opened and the other two girls entered. Like O’Brian, neither seemed particularly awed by the room nor the presences within it, nor noticably concerned about their situation, either. If anything, the best either officer could sense was mild indifference to their situation.

The captain and exec looked them both over. They looked around in a bored sort of way but did not return the stares.

To the right of the captain was a short and somewhat chubby young woman with light brown hair and bright, almost impossibly blue eyes. To her right, his left, stood a taller, more striking figure with long blonde hair that was unnaturally pure and golden yellow, a sexy stance and baby face with lips that seemed to form an impertinent but sexy pout even when at rest, and strangely unnerving hazel eyes. The fact that this one was as pregnant as the others did not in the least diminish her radiant sexuality; even the neutered officers knew what she radiated and could sense it.

The exec went over and whispered to the captain, “Sir, doesn’t it strike you that these girls, all three, seem unnatural somehow? The colorations are natural according to the medical exam, yet have you ever seen eyes or hair of those colors in nature on any planetfall?”

She had a point, the captain reflected. Still, the fact that these girls were the product of some sort of genetic manipulation wasn’t extraordinary, only the superficiality of the tinkering. No humans had truly natural genetic lines any more, hadn’t for a couple of centuries at least.

“Ain’t you cold without no hair?” the brown-haired girl asked, looking at the exec.

“Isn’t it a bother to have to maintain all that hair?” the exec responded, used to the way dirtballers thought of service people.

“All you folks look kinda creepy to us,” the girl came back. This would be Mary Margaret McBride. The other, the blonde and sexy Brigit Moran, said nothing.

“People and lifestyles are different all over,” the captain told the girl. “You haven’t been off your world before, it’s clear, or you’d know that.”

“You mean folks elsewhere all look like you?”

“No, just military people. But there are other differences, quite a lot of them. None of us have much choice about that part.”

“Why not?” McBride asked, apparently quite sincere in the question.

The exec tried to rescue the captain. “Look, all that’s beside the point. The only thing we are trying to decide here is what to do with you. You wouldn’t like it here, I don’t think, and you would just be in the way of what we do.”

“That’s easy,” McBride said. “Just put us off on any world with folks who look and act more like us. We’ll get by.”

“You might at that,” the exec admitted. “The trouble is, you are very young, you have no experience outside a very primitive culture, and your—condition, let us say, makes it hard for us to just do that. We must make sure that you will not suffer or die because of what we do.”

“Why?”

It was such a strange question in that context that it threw the exec for a moment. Finally it was the captain who answered, “Because our ways include a code of what’s right and wrong and that would be wrong. Still, if you had friends or relatives on another world we might be able to arrange for you to be with them. Do you have any family like that?”

“We got some family of sorts most everywhere,” McBride assured him. “But not like you mean, I don’t think. Honest. We’ll be okay anyplace you drop us so long as the folks there ain’t like, well, you, for example.”

“Sounds like we should just arrange to get you back home to Tara Hibernius,” Commander Sittithong said flatly. “That might solve all our problems.”

Both girls seemed suddenly quite agitated. It wasn’t fear in their eyes, not exactly, but it was clear that this was the one thing that bothered them. “No, you can’t make us go back!”

“Never!” repeated the heretofore silent blonde in a high breathy voice.

“Perhaps a convent, then, on one of the developed colonies,” the captain suggested thoughtfully. “We could live with putting you in the custody of your church.”

“Convent? Our church?” McBride seemed to be suppressing a laugh. “No, sir. Not them folks. We don’t fit in with them a’tall.”

The captain noticed the necklaces the two girls wore around their necks, quite similar to the one worn by the first girl. He was going to ask about it, but then decided not to, at least for now.

“Well, those are the only two choices we’ve come up with. If you won’t tell us your stories of why you were on Murphy’s ship and why you are fleeing your native world, then we can hardly make any third decision.”

McBride was having none of it. “You’re just like them!” she responded angrily. “No, you put us back on our ship and let us go on, or you put us off on a big world with lots of folks. You better!”

The captain found this almost amusing. “We’d better? That’s usually followed by some sort of threat. We’d better or what?”

“You just better, that’s all! Can we go now?”

The captain looked over at the exec who gave a slight shrug.

“Why not?” he replied. “There’s little to be gained from this. You and your companions will have adjoining cabins and you must stay in them, together if you want, or not if you like, or in the lounge that will be nearby. Marines will be posted to make sure you don’t go start exploring and get into trouble. I’m going to have to take a look and see how long it’ll be before we’re within range of Tara Hibernius, and that’s that.”

“You won’t send us back!” McBride said flatly. “You won’t!”

“I will do what’s in the best interest of all of us, and you’ll have to accept it. Now, go. The sergeant outside will show you all to your quarters.”

Mary Margaret McBride looked at Brigit Moran and the two locked eyes and resolute expressions for a moment. It looked quite childlike. Still, they both turned in almost military fashion and stomped out of the room.

The captain sighed. “In the old days, I was a guest for a time at a private resort where military and trade representatives gathered to discuss policy. Many brought along their families in the old style because it was such a nice holiday spot. Many of their young children would act like that on occasion. I recall one small boy who did not want to stop swimming and go inside with his mother. He threw a loud screaming fit, one so awful I thought they would have to call the medical personnel, and it was only after a while that I realized I was watching unbridled and unchecked emotion. Finally, he threatened to hold his breath until he turned blue. He tried to do so, too.”

“Sir?”

“I half expected at least the talkative one to threaten the same thing just now. I hope our medical computers have full data on pregnancies. It may be necessary at some point to sedate them, and I should not like to be responsible for harming the child within.”

The exec had less experience with the masses of humanity in their standard forms and found the whole thing more unnerving.

“I don’t know, sir. Sedation might be quite advisable. In their mental state they are as much a threat to themselves as to anyone. I shall be happy to see them leave.”

“I agree. Have them continuously monitored. Put an experienced security person on them, too. I don’t want a computer deciding what is and isn’t aberrant behavior.”

“Aye, sir.”

The captain looked down at his desktop screen. “It says here we’ll be close enough to shuttle them back home in sixteen days. Let us pray that we can hold out that long!”