The Death of Wisdom Read online

  Thanks, Doc, I thought.

  "There is one more thing, Doc. You'll have to be there when the ship is salvaged, just in case the people who find us don't have a doctor to help woke up the survivors. I'm afraid you're the one person who'll have to be assigned a good berth."

  From her expression, the doctor looked like she might have been ill, but there was only a single lightstick taped beside the side hatch for illumination and I couldn't tell for sure. She did sound deathly tired though, when she answered me.

  "All right. I understand. "

  "Good. If there aren't questions then, return to your stations and let the crew know that I'll be making on announcement. All except you, Hayes. Stay behind for a minute."

  Caught in mid spin with the others, heading for the manual bulkhead hatch, Hayes let himself spin all the way around and then halted his rotation by grasping a chair bolted to the floor. Only when the others were through that hatch, and the hatch was spun shut, did I speak.

  It wasn't over the radio, though. Instead, I pushed across the room until we floated centimeters away from each other, face-to-face, and then I grasped his arms to hold myself there. Discerning that I wanted to touch helmets with him (after sealing our uniforms full-time, we'd token to wearing solid fishbowl helmets that leaked less air), he relaxed and let my helmet fall against his.

  "Top-secret stuff, Coeur?"

  "Top-secret stuff, Darien. First, how soon con you have the berths ready?"

  "As soon as you want. Twelve hours would be nice, to check them over, since I wouldn't want any of the other engineers to know which ones worked."

  "Make it 24 hours. Time isn't that critical yet."

  "Anything else?"

  Indeed there was something else, though I didn't want to say it right out. Darien and I hadn't even known each other until a month before, but we were certainly friends now. Whether it was one of those friendships born of stress, or mutual respect, I don't know, but it had made our work a lot easier. Now it could moke it a whole helluva lot harder.

  "What is it, Coeur?"

  "Darien, look. I'm going to go up to CIC now and tell the computer to moke up the random list. After It makes the list it'll dump it to the terminal in your station and erase any other copy. That way I won't see it."

  Darien was silent.

  "What I need you to promise me is that you won't alter the assignments, even if I draw a bad berth."

  "Couer...look..."

  "Damn it, Darien, you've got to promise me that! It's that, or we don't do this."

  In the shadowy pale light of the lightstick, Darien's eyes were deep in shadow, aged beyond his 26 years and somehow unable to focus on mine.

  "All right," he said finally, looking me in the eye. "I'll do what you say."

  To which I nodded, and released him. It would be best, I figured, if we left it there, so I spun myself around and pushed off the closest wall toward the hatch.

  As it happened, there was no protest from the crew, and they generally agreed with me that the sooner we did it the better. Some of them had begun proposing a system very much like mine anyway, amongst themselves, so there was very little selling to do. If anything, it made me uncomfortable when I was toasted again as the savior of the ship, just as I was when we slipped the Solomoni noose at Carlyle Vii, The last thing a captain should ever care about, I knew, was being popular.

  Still, I was popular, and I became even more so when I ordered the engineers to bring up full pressure in the atmosphere throughout the ship (previously it was only maintained in the galley, temporarily, when we ate) and unlocked the liquor locker for anyone who wasn't on duty. That, ordinarily, was something few captains would ever allow outside of jump space—where most hands had light duty—but hell, most of us were going to be dead soon. If that doesn't call for a drink, what does?

  When, finally, the hour was at hand, Dr. Chang put on her best professional demeanor and led us, in orderly groups of six, into the low berth boy in the bowels of the ship.

  Gleaming white—cleaner than I'd remembered it being before the doc and Darien cleaned it up—it looked first-rate even in the pale beams of our light sticks, and we could almost believe that every inclined tank was fully functional. All the same, I avoided looking at Darien even after I was sealed in Unit 16, and my eyelids grew heavy from the sedative oozing into my arm from an IV drip.

  What I did pay attention to was Gunnery Tech Sturm, who was part of my group of six, joking with a machinist's mote as the doc helped him into Unit 15.

  "You know," he said, "if we were Imperial Marines, we'd probably think a 58% unit casually rate was pretty good."

  "Hey," the machinist's mote said, "don't let Lucan's INI hear you say things like that."

  Whatever comment came after that escaped me. I closed my eyes and a general warmth suffused my body.

  * * *

  It was only by the jostling sound of commotion around me that I knew time had passed. I did not know, however, know how much time had passed until I realized that every single voice was unfamiliar.

  "Blood pressure's good," I heard a man say. "I don't think we'll need a stimulant."

  "Yes, she's coming around, "another man said. "Suppose we should tell her about the note?"

  "Give the lady a chance to wake up, Snowball. She might be disoriented."

  Other voices, meanwhile, chattered in the background, full of a youthful exuberance that I didn't associate with a grizzled salvage crew.

  "Check this log, Bugbear. 1123."

  "Yeah, she's an old ship. Suppose they knew how trashed these low berths were?"

  "Hey, keep it down you two, this one's coming around."

  That was the man standing closest to me. This friendly looking fellow's nostrils were the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes, though his black ballistic cloth suit seemed to confirm my worst fears of what would happen.

  That we'd be awakened by agents of Solomani Security.

  Closer inspection, though, revealed that his uniform did not sport the cross-hairs symbol of the Solomani. Rather, he and his four mates in the low berth boy wore a figure on their chests that showed a fon-like nimbus of light extending from a rising sun.

  "Good afternoon," he soid, and I suddenly realized he was feeling for the pulse of my wrist. "My name is Victor. Are you Coeur D'Esprit?"

  I nodded, and suddenly all the strangers were congregated around me—two women and three men. The oldest among them looked to be the one taking my pulse, though he didn't look much over 30.

  "How long?" I croaked.

  "75 years, captain—assuming you went under in 1123."

  "Good Gaia...did...did anyone else make it?"

  "Four," Victor said. "Bulgakov, Rand, Po, and Van Dorn. We woke you up first, though, since the log identified you as the skipper."

  I closed my eyes. None of the command crew hod made it, or the doctor.

  Or Darien.

  And then I remembered something strange that I'd seen, but somehow hadn't noticed. Each low berth had its number clearly marked on its lid, but Unit 16 was well off to my right—the unit I'd been assigned to.

  Someone had moved me after the IV sedative took effect.

  "Who was down there?" I asked, "in Unit 16?"

  Sheepish looks were my immediate answer, though Victor wasn't shy about answering.

  "It looks like that was Darien Hayes," he said. "Anyway, he left this note in his unit."

  The note, printed on heavy plastic paper, was short and to the point.

  TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: PLEASE NOTE THAT LOG DATA FOR UNITS 16 AND 23 ARE REVERSED.

  FOR COEUR: SORRY. THOUGHT THE FUTURE COULD USE YOU MORE THAN ME.

  "Your friend must've had a lot of faith in the future," Victor said, moving in to brace me as I sat upright in my berth.

  "Yeah," I mumbled.

  Though, strangely, I wasn't sad.

  Seventy-five years before, I laid down in a coffin, and I would have died.

  But l didn't. I
didn't, because someone who'd been my friend for a month had taken that coffin and let me live Whether he was smart, or brave, or dumb—well, I don't know. But he did it, and now I was here.

  To serve a future I never thought would come.

  "Soy," I said, putting down the note. "Who are you people anyway?"

  "We're from the Dawn League, Captain," Victor said. "A small coalition of worlds in the Aubaine Subsector—or, I guess you'd know it as Nicosia Subsector."

  "What about the Imperium?" I asked stupidly, as if that thing that had always been in my life must still be around as well, "There is no Imperium, Captain. That's been dead almost as long as you've been asleep."

  "So what took its place?"

  Bemused smiles answered thot question.

  "Nothing took its place, Coeur. As near as we can tell, every direction we've looked—we're surrounded by dead worlds and wasteland. Still, some of us think we might be able to put it all back together again—the right way—which is why we're out here. Your ship is full of gear that we don't have a lot of bock home, though the main resource we could use didn't survive your trip too well."

  "What's that?"

  "Your crew. I know you might have some strong opinions about—whatever faction you were with—but there isn't any Rebellion anymore. If you can adjust to a loose federal government instead, we could sure use your help. "

  I had to laugh, despite the death all around me.

  "Mister, I could tell you what I think about the Third Imperium, but you wouldn't think I was a lady after that."

  Which prompted a smile from Victor, and an extended hand which I shook.

  "Welcome to the future, Coeur. Somehow, I think you'll fit in."

  In classroom 11A of the Hiver Technical Academy, a murmuring buzz of conversation rose from its 24 students, though none could hear it. Bunched in groups of four around their tabletop tactical simulators, each young man and woman was attuned to the traffic in his or her own headset, and therefore oblivious to both the cawing of seabirds above and the serious cast of their instructor's face at her desk beside the forward lectern.

  Bunched in groups of four around their tabletop tactical simulators, each young man and woman was attuned to the traffic in his or her own headset, and therefore oblivious to both the cawing of seabirds above and the serious cast of their instructor's face at her desk beside the forward lectern.

  In a gray dress tunic, with her brown hair worn short and her eyebrows drawn down above her dark brown eyes, Coeur D'Esprit was already severe in appearance, though her frown of the moment was not directed at her students. Rather, it arose as she studied the commencement address of Commandant Calway on hec computer's transparent viewscreen (angled up, like a HUD, so she could keep an eye on the class), less because of any defect in the writing than because she could have told the truth and said she was too busy to read it.

  Like buttering up the commandant's going to get me space duty again. Oh well...

  "Exploratory Service graduates of this Class of 1201, we are entered this day into the dawn of a New Era. You are the first class to graduate this institution as members of the Reformation Coalition Exploratory Service, and you will build that future where today there is ruin and desolation... "

  Good Gaia, Coeur thought, you sound like you're running for office.

  " ..Yet in this hour of celebration, we should not forget those who went before us. Some will say that the Dawn League was an error, and that only force will bring order to the frontier. We have not reorganized, however, to conquer the universe, for we have neither the numbers nor forces to do so..."

  No, no, no, Couer remarked to herself, tagging that entire paragraph for revision. Whatever you do, don't highlight our weaknesses in a public address.

  "... Rather, consider yourselves a positive force for change. Where friends will listen, you shall aid them; where worlds will open trade, you shall open embassies. But where thugs and brutal dicta ton hold sway with terror and relic weapons, you will not hove patience. Our allegiance is not to ourselves alone, but to all who will live in that world that will rise from the ruins..."

  Yeah, that's better, Coeur thought, though the fidgeting of her students distracted her before she could finish the text. By the clock on her table she knew that the students would just be reaching the nastiest part of their final exam, and she switched her computer screen to a simultaneous view of all six tabtetop simulators.

  Exercise 61C began simply enough, but the students correctly expected trouble on the last of the hour's three exercises. Manning the conn, fire control, helm, and engineering of a Victrix-class sloop, each group was first faced with the challenge of gas giant refueling, and then the nasty surprise of two vampire destroyers waiting in ambush as they powered out toward jump point.

  Hiding in the cloud-tops of the simulated gas giants, the destroyers got off simultaneous fire from their meson guns either before they were detected or before the students could do anything about it. Though the groups didn't know it at the time, the damage to each sloop was identical—loss of maneuver power, fire control, and communications.

  The preferred course for most groups—three out of six—was to abandon ship in lifeboats, though the vampire ships frustrated this by firing on the lifeboats as well. At least one student commander, with the appropriate callsign Blowtorch, stood his ground though he couldn't aim his weapons properly, and the unpredictable Oriflammen Snapshot blew her ship up rather than let it be captured. Among all the commanders, only Gyro survived, despite the hesitation of a crew that made it clear that a hazardous misjump was not a popular choice.

  Afterward, there was much grumbling, though it died away as Coeur assumed the lectern. At 1.75 meters, Coeur was tall for a woman, and actively used her fully erect height to command attention in the classroom.

  "Well, all right," she said, "I'll admit I pressed you a little hard on that one. However, you'll be glad to know that that was an actual historical situation. You'll also be glad to know that all of you passed this examination, based on your reaction times and decisions as assessed by the computer."

  Bodily sighs answered her.

  "Questions?"

  One individual raised her hand: Snapshot.

  Snapshot was not the only non-Aubani in the class— there was a sprinkling of Fijans, Nimbans, and Schalli as well—but her brash Oriflammen character had certainly singled her out during the year. An exceptional student on Oriflamme, she was transferred to higher-tech Aubaine to complete her year of post-graduate studies, though Coeur had scarcely believed she'd graduate with all her demerits for insubordination.

  "Snapshot?"

  The young woman ran a hand through her short, wavy red hair, then stood stiffly.

  "Red Sun, I am curious. I am not familiar with such an engagement as 61C from my reading."

  "It's not a literal adaptation, Snapshot. The incident occurred before the Collapse."

  "If I may, sir, what was the resolution of the incident?"

  "The ship got away, obviously, or I wouldn't have been able to reconstruct the scenario."

  "With her jump drive, sir?"

  "Yes, with her jump drive."

  "I find that hard to believe, Red Sun. The sloop was less than five diameters from the gas giant."

  Coeur smiled.

  "Ordinarily, I'd be inclined to agree with you, Snapshot. Only, that was my ship that was fired upon, and I gave the order to engage the jump drive."

  Students who had focused on Snapshot, pondering what crazy thing she'd done with the simulator, suddenly snapped their attention toward Coeur. Snapshot, meanwhile, sat down, still staring at Coeur 'That it really happened is important," Coeur said to the class, "because there are lot of things out there— vampires, pirates, defense fleets—that aren't going to think twice about bushwhacking you the first chance they get. Now I'm not saying you should flip on your jump drive every time you get in trouble in a gravity well—nine times out of 10 that'll get you dead or thrown so far off co
urse you won't be able to reach fuel—but what I am saying is you better stay sharp and have your options ready before you get in trouble..."

  It was then, as Coeur paused, that she saw the double sliding doors at the rear of the classroom open. A Hiver— all but its prime limb hidden behind the seated students—softly padded in and took up a position toward the rear of the class, quietly regarding her with its six eyestalks. Just from its prime limb she couldn't tell who it was, but it wasn't like any of the pacifistic Hivers to spend much time around her tactics class, and her curiosity was piqued; crisply, she abbreviated her farewell-and-good- luck speech.

  "...which is the whole point of this class. But you're a smart bunch of kids and I think you'll do all right. If there are no other questions, I'll just remind you that your quarter grade reports will be posted on the internet by this evening, and I hope you do well...out there. Dismissed."

  Though this was hardly a civilian college, the Exploratory Service college of the Technical Academy wasn't a Marine boot camp either, and most of the students inevitably wandered forward to ask about the ambush Coeur had alluded to earlier. This she had hoped to avoid—since a lot of good friends had died back then for no good reason—but she did not have the excuse of another class to prepare for after this last one of the day, and besides, it was not her policy to avoid being honest about her past or the validity of her lessons. Since the Hiver appeared to be in no hurry to step forward, Coeur entertained her students' questions for the better part of 20 minutes before they finally left—clued in to her impatience by her data-disk straightening and document shuffling.

  Even after they had left, though, and the Hiver approached her desk, she was unable to place him among those she knew. Not unlike starfish in their six-limbed radial symmetry, Hivers were among the most alien of xenomorphs in human experience. Mute, for instance, and devoid of emotion as humans understood it, but they were just as individual as humans and could be distinguished by personality and appearance. Looking for such a quality in this individual, Coeur noted the random pattern of spots on its rubbery skin—evidence that it was probably over 40, middle age for humans and Hivers both.