“I am deeply sorry for your loss, Commander,” I say gently.
“Thank you.” She clears her throat. “I will get over it. So . . . when I saw your unit number for the first time, it reminded me of something from old Earth history. They added that /R designation for Refurbished, which is what triggered the association. SPQR. The Senate and People of Rome.” She smiles slightly into my video pickup. “My remote ancestors were Roman legionaries, you know.”
DiMario is an Italian-derived patronymic, meaning “son of Mario.” The name strongly reminds me of Marius and Cinna, the Roman consuls to whom Julius Caesar was related, by birth and by marriage. Indeed, legionaries were known for centuries afterwards as Marius’ mules, for the massive reforms he instituted in the armies of Rome. My commander bears a proud lineage. When I tell her so, she seems pleased.
“If you don’t mind, I think I’d like to call you Senator,” she says quietly.
The name she has chosen bears the hallmarks of an apology, carrying as it does the connotations of venerable age, wisdom, and deep cultural respect. The name delights me.
“I would be honored to have you address me as Senator, Commander.”
She smiles again. “I’m glad.”
“I am receiving ship’s signal, Commander. Brace for drop into sub-light.”
Our transport shudders with the transition from hyper-L to sub-light speeds. Braking thrusters fire to slow our forward motion further. “Contact with the CSS Aldora established,” I relay. “Ship-to-ship transfer will commence as soon as we have matched velocities and closed to feasible transfer distances. The Aldora is firing thrusters to halt centrifugal spin. Prepare for weightlessness.”
My commander nods, flicking her gaze across my data screens, watching as the two transports fire thrusters to match velocities and trajectories, making the ship-to-ship transfer possible. Both transports jockey cautiously toward one another under the control of precise computer guidance systems. This data is shared with myself and the other Bolo unit preparing to disembark. My sensors detect the jerking motions as rotational spin halts, then resumes in tiny bursts as the navigational computers match with the Aldora, lining up their respective cargo bays for transfer. Weightlessness returns. My treads are held fast in the clamps of the heavy lift sled on which I rest, preventing me from floating away from the deck. The sled itself is anchored directly to that deck. I receive the ready signal.
“Preparing for ship-to-ship transfer,” I relay. “Cargo hold depressurizing for evacuation.”
Alessandra DiMario nods. “Thank you, Senator.” Her fingers close against the padded armrests of the command chair. I understand her increased stress. Such transfers are hardly routine, even under computer guidance. I have never experienced such a transfer before, nor have I spoken with another Bolo unit which has accomplished this type of maneuver. The engines of the heavy lift sled on which I rest rumble to life, vibrating my treads. During a combat drop, I maintain full control of the sled, but in an operation this ticklish, I will allow the sled’s computers to maneuver us, using data feed from the Cheslav and the Aldora.
The Cheslav’s immense cargo doors slide open, exposing my war hull and those of the other Bolo units in this bay to hard vacuum. This does not bother me and my command compartment is hermetically sealed, protecting Captain DiMario. But when the cargo sled releases its mooring grapples and propels my war hull into open space, I experience a surge through my psychotronic circuitry that can only be interpreted as nervousness. I have experienced many orbital combat drops, sliding out of transport-ship cargo bays on heavy lift sleds exactly like this one—but always with the immense bulk of a planet directly beneath us.
Interstellar space is incredibly vast.
And disturbingly empty.
The ship in which we have traveled, far larger than my war hull, shrinks to a comparative speck of matter against the black depths waiting outside the cargo hold. My commander draws air in sharply, gaze glued to my forward data screen. The cargo sled fires thrusters and we proceed forward, ponderously. The CSS Aldora lies on a direct line-of-sight trajectory from our cargo bay. The sled fires its engines in short bursts, sending us toward the waiting transport. We approach rapidly, drawing another sharp breath from Alessandra DiMario.
I locate the open bay toward which our sled’s computers are guiding us. The Aldora is a far smaller ship than the Cheslav, but the cargo bay doors are ample to admit my bulk. We slow on final approach and drift forward gently. The massive doors slide past as we enter the waiting bay. Our sled fires lateral thrusters to jockey cautiously sideways, out of the open doorway, and we settle carefully toward a waiting set of mooring grapples. A vibration clangs through my treads as the grapples take hold and winch us down, mating us solidly with the deck. Three point nine minutes later, Captain Roth and Unit XPJ-1411 enter the cargo bay and moor themselves to the deck beside us.
“Welcome aboard,” a cheerful voice greets us. “Communications Officer O’Leary here. As soon as we restore pressure to the hold, we’ll escort you up to the wardroom.”
“Thank you,” Alessandra responds. “I’m looking forward to a full debriefing.” She breaks contact as pressure returns to the cargo hold and the ship fires its engines, re-establishing centrifugal spin as well as forward momentum. “What a relief,” my commander mutters as the artificial gravity of spin settles her firmly into the command chair once more. “I hate freefall. At least I hadn’t eaten lunch yet, so there was nothing to bring up.”
I have never understood the biological predilection for motion sickness in freefall. In the privacy of my thoughts, I suspect I am fortunate this is so.
“Well, Senator,” my commander sighs, slapping releases on the command chair’s restraints, “for better or worse, we’re on course for Thule.”
For better or worse . . .
I draw comfort from the similarity of my commander’s observation to human marriage customs. We are, indeed, committed. To one another as much as to the mission. As my commander climbs out through my hatch and joins Captain Roth on the Aldora’s cargo deck, I am hopeful about the altered situation between us.
I watch her move briskly across the deck, where a lift similar to the one on the Cheslav opens to reveal a uniformed welcoming committee. As the lift doors close again, I find myself hoping—fervently—that the upcoming mission will not add to the burden of combat stress my commander has already experienced.
We are heading into the unknown. And if there is one thing my long experience of combat has taught me, it is that the unknown is often far deadlier than the well-known and understood, however stressful that well-known situation might be. It is not a comfortable feeling.
So far, nothing about my return to duty has been.
Chapter Eight
If Chilaili’s winter nest had lain any farther from the valley where Bessany Weyman’s nestmates had built their home—even as far as Icewing Clan’s migratory summer nests—she would never have made it. As it was, a journey which should have taken her an easy day’s walk, at most, instead took nearly twenty hours of bitter struggle with the wind and the stinging snow at her back. She kept to deep forest as much as possible, for the trees helped break the worst of the screaming wind and prevented the snow from piling quite so deeply. It was at least possible to walk through the heavy stretches of forest. When she came to open stretches that had to be crossed, Chilaili got down on her belly and crawled, presenting as little of herself as possible to the maddened fingers of the wind.
Even so, one particularly strong gust picked her up and flung her nearly fifteen yards before she slithered to a bruised and scratchy halt. She landed in a deep drift piled up against a tangle of underbrush where the forest closed in, again. She lay shaking for long minutes, getting back her strength and her courage, then crawled deeper into the trees before she dared standing up again. After that, Chilaili swung out of her way to avoid stretches of open ground, aware with every fiber of her battered being just how lucky she was to have survived that screaming gust of wind.
It was utterly imperative that she reach Bessany Weyman’s nest before darkness fell again. Chilaili’s winter coat was thick and her subcutaneous layer of fat provided extra insulation, enough to allow her to thrive in the deepest cold of winter, but the wind was so fierce, it effectively dropped the temperature to the lowest ranges she could tolerate. She would not survive a night exposed to this wind and the deeper cold of darkness.
Drifts were already twice her height in places, forcing her to swing wide of easier paths time and again. The constant shrieking of the wind deafened her so greatly, she didn’t even hear the snap and crash of trees brought down in the storm. She was beyond hoping none of them crushed her. She had to focus every ounce of her strength on putting one foot in front of the other, probing with a long stick for sudden drop-offs buried beneath the snow. As the long day wore exhaustingly on, Chilaili’s strength faded, frightening her. She struggled on, unable to do anything else.