Expendable - James Alan Gardner [10]
The admiral finally got his own package open and pulled out a sheet of paper…paper made from trees. I supposed that admirals were too exalted to receive orders by viewpad like the rest of us.
Chee shouted, “Aha!” as he looked at the paper sheet. “I didn’t decide this. Orders direct from the Admiralty High Council. Can I countermand those?”
Yarrun and I busied ourselves examining the deck at our feet. Harque swallowed hard and answered, “No sir, you can’t.”
“Oh well,” Chee shrugged. “Maybe some other time.” He folded his orders into a paper airplane and threw it wobbling across the room.
Yarrun whispered to me, “I have a nasty suspicion. Ever been to Melaquin?”
“What do you mean?” I whispered back.
Before he could answer, Prope shut her viewpad with a crisp click. She had a far too satisfied smile on her face. “We’re going to Melaquin,” she said.
Under my breath I muttered, “Oh shit.” But Yarrun only nodded to himself.
Melaquin—The Official Story
Melaquin (AOR No. 72061721)
Third planet in the Uffree system.
Orbital survey data: CLASSIFIED.
Explorational data: CLASSIFIED.
Historical data: CLASSIFIED.
Official status: INAPPLICABLE.
—Excerpt from the Admiralty Object Registration Catalogue, distributed by the Admiralty to all sciento-military personnel
Melaquin—The Unofficial Story (Part 1)
I first heard of Melaquin from a dying prostitute on the Fringe World He’Barr. She had taken a knife under the ribs in an alley fight and happened to collapse against the door of my dormitory room while wandering in a daze. I watched her bleed to death on my bed over the course of an hour and a half.
“Guess I’m on my way to Melaquin,” she had said. I wasn’t sure I heard her correctly—she was slipping in and out of coherency with no discernible transition between lucid speech and babble—so I asked her to repeat her words. “I’m on my way to Melaquin,” she said. “That’s the planet of no return. You know?”
I shook my head.
“Hell of an Explorer you are,” she wheezed. “It was an Explorer who told me. They send you there when they want you gone forever and never coming back home to the blue blue sky pulling black curtains over the little baby boy. He saw me watching and smiled, a great big smile with all his teeth out, like black black curtains…”
While she rambled, I keyed up the registration catalogue and requested details on Melaquin. There was no information to be had.
In time, the woman fell silent with her eyes closed; I wondered if she had finally died. I got up to check her pulse, but she heard me coming toward the bed and shrank away. “You sure you didn’t call the cops?”
“The who?”
“The police. The Civilian Protection Office.”
“You asked me not to call them.”
“I know. That doesn’t answer my question.”
“I didn’t call them.”
“Good.” She coughed, and a trickle of blood dribbled from the corner of her mouth. She licked her lips as if she couldn’t identify the taste. “I’m an Opter.”
“I guessed.”
“I’m opting to die.”
“Yes.”
She looked at me with a sly smile. Her eyes kept losing focus. “You don’t understand this, do you?”
“I’ve read about Opters,” I said. “Your religion claims that any attempt to prevent death is an affront to your god’s will.”
“You don’t understand.” She let her head flop back onto the plastic sheet I had put over the pillow. Her breath slid softly in and out, gradually slowing.
For a while, I watched her stare blindly at the ceiling. Those blind eyes gave her face an ecstatic radiance that annoyed me. Radiance always did.
“Can’t you close your eyes?” I asked.
“Why?”
“I don’t like the way you look.”
“You don’t want to have to close them for me,” she said with scorn. But she did close her eyes. After a while she said in a