STARLINER by David Drake

A dozen quadrupeds weighing between one and three tonnes apiece browsed among the reeds. They lurched up on their hind legs as the car overflew them. Each male had a coiled resonator on the end of his beaked snout. They hooted in mournful surprise.

Franz twisted in his seat to look back at the herbivores. “The guidechip said that you had to get much farther from the terminal to see herds like that,” he said. “I guess it was wrong.”

“Well, that’s not surprising,” Oanh said, her eyes straight ahead and her hands clamped like claws on the controls. “Everybody’s wrong except you, aren’t they?”

“Oanh, set her down and let’s talk,” Franz said.

“I don’t want to set down!” Oanh shouted. She turned to glare at her passenger. “And there’s nothing to talk about anyway, since you’ve made up your mind!”

“Love—”

An air plant lowered a trailer from a high branch, angling for an open space in which its fluorescent bloom would be visible to the nectar-drinkers that fertilized it. The car slammed into the flower with a jolt and a splotch of sticky pollen that looked like a bomb-burst on the bow and windscreen.

The tendril, freed of the flower whose weight it supported, sprang up. A coil of it snagged the barrel of the rifle Franz held upright beside his seat.

“Hey!” the youth bellowed. He managed to grab the weapon before the plant pulled it away.

Oanh gave a cry of despair and backed off the throttle. The aircar wobbled downward. They were headed toward a bed of spiky vegetation whose leaves slanted up at forty-five degrees to channel water to reservoirs in the stubby trunks.

Franz started to say something. He decided not to. Oanh advanced the throttle again, adjusted the fan attitude to bring the car to a hover, and landed them ably in a patch of lace-leafed plants shaded by the branches of tall trees. The same tendril that grabbed the gun had snatched Oanh’s cap off and raised a red welt across her forehead.

Franz nestled the rifle back into its butt-clamp. The weapon was part of the rental vehicle’s equipment, like the radio beacon, flares, and emergency rations.

Oanh shut off the motors and slumped on her controls. Franz put his arm around the girl’s shoulders and kissed her cheek because he couldn’t reach her mouth. She twisted to return the kiss. Her lips were wet with tears, and she continued to sob.

A pair of small creatures fluttered and chased one another through the branches above the vehicle. Occasionally a flash of vivid yellow would show through the foliage. Bits of bark pattered down.

Oanh drew back. “You say you have to go,” she said, enunciating carefully. “But you don’t. We’ll be diverting from Grantholm because of the war, so they can’t take you off the ship. And you say you hate the war!”

“The war is stupid and it’s unnecessary,” Franz said. “I knew that before I even met you. But I’m a Streseman, love, and I—have to go.”

“There’s no have to,” she pleaded. “Individuals have to make decisions for themselves. Otherwise there’ll be more blood and more death and everybody loses!”

The contradiction between Oanh’s words and her determination to decide for Franz raised a touch of rueful humor in the boy’s mind, but the expression didn’t reach his lips. She was right, he supposed. And he was right, saying that he had to do his duty, because Stresemans did their duty at whatever the cost.

The whole system was rotten, but Franz Streseman turning his back on ten generations of family tradition wasn’t going to change it for the better.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He leaned toward her. For a moment, Oanh drew further away before she met his kiss. She began to cry again.

An animal whuffed close by. Franz sat bolt upright. He couldn’t see the beast, but it was large enough that he could feel its footsteps on the thin soil. He freed the rifle from its boot and chambered a round.

Oanh wiped her face with her sleeve and switched the fan motors back on. The blades pinged through stems which had sprung into their circuit when the motors cut off. She swung the car steeply upward. A little forward angle would have smoothed the wobbly liftoff, but that would have taken them closer to the source of the noise while they were still at low altitude.

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