Expendable - James Alan Gardner [132]
My eggs.
“This is stupid,” I said aloud. “I lost Yarrun and Chee and Oar, and I’m overjoyed over some eggs?”
But I was. I had not quite lost everything. Not quite.
The Stars
The door chittered and Admiral Seele walked in. Doors open for admirals, even if you don’t give permission to enter.
“You’re awake,” she said. “Sorry for being abrupt, but we were wasting time.”
“So you shot me. Just what I’d expect from an admiral.”
“No,” she replied. “A true admiral would have ordered someone else to shoot you. I’m still an Explorer at heart.”
I had to smile in spite of myself. Then a sobering thought hit me. “You don’t really intend to take me back to the Technocracy?”
“If you prefer,” Seele said, “I can drop you off at a Fringe World. Admirals can order course changes on a whim.”
“You can’t drop me anywhere but Melaquin. The League will kill me if I try to enter interstellar space. I’m a murderer.”
She lifted her eyebrows.
“I am,” I insisted. “I killed my partner. And I would have killed Jelca if Oar hadn’t beat me to it.”
“Festina, I can’t believe—”
“Believe it,” I snapped. “I’m a dangerous non-sentient. And now that I’ve told you, your life is on the line too. If you let this ship leave the Melaquin system, we’ll both be snuffed out.”
“Then we’d better go to the bridge,” Seele said quietly.
She led me out the door and down the hall, up a companionway and through the hatch leading to the bridge corridor. There, we passed a man wearing Social Science green and he saluted…first the admiral, then me, although I only wore the skirt and top built from my tightsuit. He must have thought I was a civilian, and civilians on Fleet vessels were almost always dignitaries of some kind.
“Admiral on the bridge!” someone barked as we entered the bridge proper. A few people snapped to attention; most remained at their posts. Protocol is one thing, but duty is something else—even vacuum personnel knew that.
“Captain Ling,” Seele said to the man occupying the captain’s chair, “could you please activate the view screens?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He twirled a dial and the main screen brightened to reveal a starscape. It was no different from any other starscape you might see. That’s why view screens are almost always turned off, except to impress visitors. No FTL ship navigates by sight. Running with the screen active would simply distract the crew from watching more important things: the gauges and readouts that gave solid information instead of useless scenery.
“Now, Explorer Ramos,” Seele pointed to the screen, “what do you see?”
“Stars,” I answered.
“Captain Ling,” Seele said, “what is our current distance from Melaquin?”
Ling gestured toward the navigator. The navigator said, “9.27 light-years, ma’am.”
“Are we in interstellar space?”
The navigator’s eyes widened slightly. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Out of any star’s local gravity well?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Thank you,” Seele said. “As you were.”
She turned and stepped back into the corridor. A moment later, she took me by the dumbstruck arm and pulled me after her.
“You see?” Seele said in a gentle voice. “Whatever you did, you aren’t non-sentient. The League is never wrong about these things. We’re alive and we’ve reached interstellar space; therefore, Festina, you are not a murderer.” She gave the ghost of a smile. “It’s almost as if God has personally declared you innocent.”
The Admiral’s Story
Back in the cabin, I told Seele everything. This time was different from when I confessed to Jelca. Then, I was trying to connect with him, partly to reach his sanity and partly to reach mine. Now, I was trying to connect the facts: to see the chains of cause and effect, to understand why the League had incomprehensibly given me a reprieve.
Seele said nothing as I talked—no attempt to make me admit that Yarrun’s death was an accident, no easy comments on what I should or shouldn’t have done. She simply listened and let me tell the story.