Zero-Option | Page 2

been inhaling
smoke for a few hours. Or shouting. Probably from the drugs, he
thought as he settled into the lone seat across from her. He knew the FS
Confederation had just returned from a raiding mission deep inside
Unity space. He'd seen the scars when he'd come in from Earth orbit on
board the flitter. Black blemishes, peppering the surface of the white
hull like some sort of fungal disease. Laser blasts, mostly, though there
was evidence the shields had had to absorb more than one hit from
anti-matter torps.

Jhordel absently rubbed at her neck, revealing a red, perfectly
symmetrical 'hickey' beneath the high collar of her jacket. He had
expected to see it, but still a chill ran through him. He found himself
probing self-consciously at the side of his own neck, running his
fingertips over the bump that was still there, where a few weeks earlier
he'd borne his own such mark. For spacers it was like a badge of honor,
which they wore proudly wherever they went. It was the mark of the
spacers. And on those who did the deep runs, it was essentially
permanent.
Jhordel's was such a mark, showing signs of recent exposure to the bite
of the 'pumps.' It looked as though it might bleed; and that said much
about the battle she and her crew had just been through. A rough one,
he ventured. They would have been hooked into the system for long
cycles, bound to those horrid metal leeches that attached to your neck
as though they were part of your flesh, sucking blood from you and
pumping it back in. On the return the blood was rich with oxygen and
primed with a virtual pharmacopoeia. All necessary, if you wanted to
stay alive while the g-forces within the ship—despite the gravity
dispensators—reached extremes that would render the unprotected
human lifeless in seconds.
He shuddered when he recalled what it felt like, and wondered how
they could do it, time and time again. He had never grown used to it,
despite his many jumps; but men and women like Jhordel went on
doing it again and again, running the ship while being crushed into the
cocoon of bladders that surrounded each, and kept conscious by a
battery of drugs and mechanisms that left one sick and sore and feeling
like the living dead long after the fighting had stopped. They went out
there into the deeps of space and rained down destruction upon the
enemy without complaint, seemingly oblivious of the incredible forces
that threatened life itself, treating such threats as though they were
simply a fact of life, and enduring the ghastly nightmare of pain that
was almost routine on a fighting ship. He supposed that spacers became
accustomed to such things; but he never could, having spent much of
his life rooted to one planet or another.

Now that he looked more closely, he could see the slight bruising
around the captain's eyes, and recalled looking at his own face in a
mirror after one particularly long skirmish. He hadn't recognized
himself: bloodshot eyes, puffy flesh, the bruising—as though he had
taken part in a drunken brawl. It had been frightening the first time, and
after that he had never been anxious to look again. They must have
been in a long battle, he thought, given that they'd already had a few
days to recover.
"I've sent in my report to Intelligence," Jhordel observed, at last
glancing up from the com-link cube and addressing him directly.
"I'm not here about the report, sir," he said. From where he sat the
script in the cube was backwards, but he'd become quite adept at
reading from this vantage point and knew she was preoccupied with
data concerning the welfare of her ship. Natural enough after a return
from battle, he mused to himself; and she doubtless didn't appreciate
that Admiralty seemed little concerned about it.
She eyed him warily. "We've just spent three months out patrolling the
line," she said. The 'line' was the Pomerium Line, a semi-official
boundary between Federation and Unity space. "We're back in port less
than a day and Admiralty tells me I have to be ready to sail within a
six-shift, but doesn't tell me why." Her eyes narrowed, an unspoken
accusation.
It took Imbrahim a moment to recall that a six-shift was forty-eight
hours: six eight hour periods.
"My patience is thin, Commander, so I suggest you tell me why you're
here. Since it's not about the report, I assume it has something to do
with this mad rush to get us back out there again."
He ran his tongue over his lips and drew a breath. "Orders, Captain," he
said. He reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew a file-chip, handed
the small