Silverfleet and Claypool

Silverfleet landed the cruiser probe in a grand plaza before a grand building. A grand staircase rose from the edge of the grand paved court where she made a perfect landing. Del Cloutier and Elan Klee and Myrrh Melville applauded as she and Claypool and Stelling and Bell descended to the paving stones.

“Nicely done, Halyn,” said Cloutier. The new arrivals stamped about, testing the gravity (which was just a tad above Marelon). Hugs went around, along with small talk and congratulations. “Uh, we did get a few things done during the thirteen days we’ve been here ahead of you, but I guess you’d like to take a quick walk about, stretch your legs?”

“That would be perfect,” said Claypool, while hugging Cloutier, then Klee.

The seven women took a brief stroll under low, rainy-looking clouds through what seemed like a stolen chunk of a classical city. The gravity was a tiny bit low, but the four newcomers still needed to adjust.

“I hate flying that thing,” Silverfleet said, “it’s so clunky. Vanessa’s like a second skin, you know what I mean? This is like one of those paddle boats from when I was a little kid. To think I wanted to fly the big freighters.”

“Stop complaining,” said Cloutier. “You got to move around.”

“That was nice.”

“So as planned, us fighter pilots have all been here for thirteen days already. That means there are thirteen days worth of problems on your hands. Commander.”

“Oh, give me a break. I’m not your commander.”

“You certainly are our commander,” said Elan Klee, “whether you like it or not. So anyway, Meena’s mad at her mother, and Conna’s feeling lonely and worthless, and Vya and Jana are not speaking to each other, which makes it really—”

“No! Stop! Not another word. I’m not going to get involved in everyone’s personal problems. What is it, a fight over parking? Or is it all about Stacy—no, don’t answer, I don’t want to know. We are on the ground. They have to resolve it themselves.”

“Well, in that case,” said Klee, “welcome to lovely Henryopolis. Do you want to know what the planet is like?”

“Please, anything other than the social situation. Tell us about the planet.”

“Well,” guessed Bell, “it’s a ruin, obviously.”

“Yeah,” Klee went on, “but they had some ambition.” They looked up the grand stair to the colonnade before the great building. They could just see the hanging remains of the collapsed roof. The great street ran several blocks surrounded by buildings on the same scale, and in the same state. Beyond that the town vanished into a forest of sumac and lilac and raspberry and other sorts of shrubbery, and behind that pine woods clothed the hills for as far as the eye could see. Beyond where the eye could see, the lame job of terraforming that had taken place here a few centuries ago ran out completely, and the rest of the planet was craters in volcanic rock with dust, ice and mud coating it all. The orange sun had just disappeared over the horizon, and a pale small moon pursued it while another, a bit larger and copper-colored, snuck out of hiding behind the opposite horizon. “We’ve got a sort of a house set up down the street, shall we go?”

“Sure,” replied Silverfleet, wondering to herself what “sort of a house” meant. They ambled down the grand avenue in the sweet evening as the stars turned overhead—and that embarrassing empty spot, the window to nearby intergalactic space, climbed just ahead of the coppery moon.

“So, what’s the day length?” asked Mona Stelling.

“Seventeen hours,” Myrrh replied. “Kind of hard to get used to. The big long days at Yellow Roost were obvious, but this kind of sneaks up on you.”

“Marelon was like that,” said Claypool. “How many moons?”

“Just the two,” replied Klee. “We were baffled about the colony, until Del figured out where the records were. You want to see them for yourself?”

“What form are they in?” asked Silverfleet.

“Oh, those old cubes. Fortunately there’s a semi-working computer. They wanted to leave a record. I guess bas reliefs and hieroglyphs were too cumbersome.”

“Cubes? The 2.4 cm ones? So that puts this place at, oh, a hundred years old, maybe two?”

“Good job, Commander,” said Myrrh. “Henryopolis was founded in 3191 and abandoned in 3195. You want me to tell you the rest, or do you want to see it for yourself?”

“What do you have for refreshments? The CPXX’s replicators aren’t up to snuff when it comes to whiskey.”

“Really? You had a hold full of Yellow Roost redbud, but you didn’t want that.”

“No, and you can fly the CPXX next time.”

“No kidding,” put in Kristin Bell, pushing back a mass of densely curled brown hair. “Having a smoke now and then didn’t make up for being cooped up for three weeks in there.”

“I’m not saying a word,” put in Elan Klee. “Up here.” The seven women turned and climbed a somewhat grand stair of white marble, and at the top of a dozen steps they found a colonnade with heroic statuary lurking in the recesses. At the far end there seemed to be a stair down to the alley behind. Above them, birds rustled around the tops of the pillars.

“Great,” said Silverfleet, “they’ll probably poop on my suit.”

“What was the point of all this?” asked Claypool. “It’s like the center of the capital city of a planet with about nine billion people, but this is all there is. I mean, where did people live?”

“Oh, around,” said Klee, “but we live down here.” She lifted an ornate handle on the floor and an oval trap door opened, revealing a stair down. They took it, and after descending twice as many steps as they had ascended before, they came out into a large low room full of couches. Stacy Mackenzie was sitting on a couch with Meena Melville. “Hey, you guys,” said Klee.

“Commander!” the two young women cried.

“Refreshments,” Stelling reminded Myrrh.

“The colony left replicators, too?” asked Claypool.

“Oh, no,” said Myrrh. “They tore everything out but the computer that reads the cubes. My fighter’s parked behind the other couch.” Myrrh walked around to her ship and leaned in to activate the replicator. “Anyone feel like some Myrrh pee?”

“Did you replicate the couches?” asked Bell, throwing herself on one.

“They were here already,” replied Elan Klee. “There’s at least two dozen in oh, five rooms down here. So we each have one to sleep on.”

“Why are you so exhausted, Kris?” asked Cloutier. “After being asleep for a week or two, then cooped up for three weeks, et cetera, et cetera.”

“It must be all the excitement,” said Bell. “At least you have to admit, life on Yellow Roost was relaxing.”

“Sorry we woke you,” said Myrrh, handing a glass to Elan Klee.

“No, we’re not,” said Klee. “All right, here’s a large tumbler of the finest Myrrh Melville whiskey. You too, Claypool?”

“Oh, of course.”

“Anything like beer?” asked Bell.

“Of course,” replied Cloutier. “What do you think Myrrh usually gets from her replicator?”

“I’ll have water,” said Stelling. “Is the local any good?”

“It’s fine,” Myrrh replied. “Most of their well system was intact, though we had to replace a lot of the pipes. It’s a good thing you have me here—my mom wanted me to be a plumber. There’s a tap over by the door.”

“Strange place for a tap,” Stelling replied. “What was this room, anyway?”

“Oh, it was quarters,” said Klee. “We put the tap there because it was the easiest place to get to, and we’ve been sleeping in this building. Anyway,” she said, pulling a dark square fifty centimeters on a side from behind yet another couch, “we have entertainment. The founding of Henryopolis. Shall we have a seat?”

“Oh, sure,” said Silverfleet. She and Claypool sat on a couch, Bell made room for Stelling, and the others found places on the floor.

Klee turned down the lights, picked up a box from the floor and rummaged through it. She picked out a small black cube and put it into a niche in back of the square, and the front of the square lit up. Klee set it on a table propped against the wall so they could all see it.

There was a scene of ships landing, then space-suited pioneers working over this patch of the planet, then unsuited folk and their robots assembling the main street and its glorious buildings, while in the sky, the smiling face of a man oversaw it all and spoke with pride: “And so, on the first of July of the year 3191, the City of Henryopolis was built, verily in a day, and the people entered into the city and made their homes there, and I, Henry, Protector of the people, saw that it was good.”

He went on, of course, but Klee interrupted him, popping that cube out and rummaging in the box for another. “Let’s see—the plan of the city. Oh, this is a good one.”

The Protector’s voice began anew: “The City rises from the wastes. Here we see the Capitol, and on either side of it, the House of Light and the museum of the old times. Across the Grand Avenue, we have raised the Hall of the Struggle to commemorate the many labors and trials that the people went through—”

“We don’t need to hear him, do we?” said Klee, turning off the sound. “The man obviously was a first-class idiot.”

“Clearly he could sway people,” said Silverfleet.

“Oh, he did that,” Cloutier replied. “That’s how the city got here. Well, what part of it that actually got built anyway, which wasn’t even one percent of what Mr Henry had in mind.”

“Anyway,” said Klee, “this is what I wanted to show you.” The view panned across the “city,” which was essentially the same city they saw outside, and then fell back to reveal more city—much more, stretching to the horizon in every direction. It was a Rome that had only fora and coliseums and temples, no slums or swamps or tilled fields. Far off perhaps there were mountains—but every block had a statue of Lord Protector Henry. “See,” said Klee, “the guy had some serious plans.”

“He had some serious issues,” said Myrrh.

“I’ll say,” put in Bell. “And he wasn’t even much to look at. He should’ve put up statues of someone else.”

“How many people were there?” asked Silverfleet.

“They landed with five big ships and two thousand colonists,” Klee explained. “They left from Veldar—my homeworld, but I’d never heard of them, of course. Lots of people leave Veldar, me, for instance. They had a lot of births, too—the population was up to four thousand in 3194, when the fighting broke out.”

“The fighting?” Silverfleet repeated. “But there was no sign of it on the buildings.”

“It was mostly stunners and other small arms,” replied Klee. “There were some rebellious types, because I guess Henry wasn’t all that likeable under stress, and of course he had to have the best house and some of the others didn’t even have reliable plumbing—but they did little more than get themselves killed.” While she spoke, they were watching the screen, which continued to wander the plazas and streets of that Henryopolis of the mind. “But after the first wave—I wish I could show you the bodies, but they didn’t put any of that into the cubes—the rebellious stuff sank down into more of a conspiracy. I’m sure old Henry knew it was going on—we found out about eleven people who were executed about then—but you can’t get all of them, and you’re bound to get some that were innocent. Anyway,” she said, popping out the glorious future of Henryopolis and popping in another cube, “there was this.”

A woman of middle age, her face drawn and sweaty but triumphant, looked out from the screen. “He’s dead,” she said. She wiped her forehead, and there was a bloody knife in her hand. “I’ve killed him. I’ve avenged Sara and John. I’ve avenged my beautiful daughter and her husband, who—who,” and tears appeared in her eyes but refused to proceed further, “were murdered, innocent, murdered by this—man’s—orders. We’ve avenged all his victims. Show the body.” And the screen swung dizzily down and they were looking at the Great Protector, sure enough dead, messily so. His face was undamaged, but the smug smile was subtly changed.

Klee flicked the sound off again, as the screen showed a line of bodies and a small crowd of tired and well-armed people. “They sort of tried to make a go of it, but within about two weeks there was more fighting. I guess only a few died—I guess they figured out it was pointless. Mom there, the one with the knife, she and most of the colonists took off and headed back to the Zone. I don’t know where—not Veldar, I guess. I’ll bet some of them were still wanted there. That left about twenty Henry loyalists, but after another couple of months they left too. They left this pile of cubes and this computer as a testament.”

“Brave of them to leave her to tell her story like that,” said Claypool, “since she claims to have been the one who killed their guy.”

“Oh,” said Cloutier, “they had their rebuttal. You can look at that if you want. It’s pretty bad. They thought he was so pure and perfect that just having Mom admit she killed him was enough to condemn everyone on her side.”

“Where’d the loyalists go?” asked Silverfleet. “Did they say?”

“One guess,” replied Elan Klee.

“Colfax,” said Silverfleet.

Elan smiled and shook her head, then nodded. “Of course it was already a bustling civilization by then. I’ll bet they fit right in.” She took a long sip of her whiskey, and Claypool reflexively did the same; Myrrh sipped her beer thoughtfully; Kris Bell relit the bong and passed it to Mona Stelling. They silently watched as the smoke curled in the half-dark room, and the screen showed a girl smiling from under a bandaged forehead.

“Well,” said Silverfleet at last, “I guess it goes to show.”

“What, Commander?” asked Jana Crown.

Silverfleet looked around and discovered that the rest of the wing had gathered, watching the screen’s sad testimony or hanging on Silverfleet’s next word. She cleared her throat. “It goes to show,” she went on, “that you shouldn’t follow your leaders too far. You guys all hear me? I’m not your leader except when we’re training or in battle. When we go up against that Central wing that’s looking for us, and we will, every one of you will do exactly what I tell you exactly when I tell you. Right, Conna, right, Elan? You guys know what it’s like in battle. You know what happens when fighters don’t take training seriously.”

“Yes,” said Conna, “my son gets murdered.”

“And I’m sorry, but what’s worse, you might get killed. But I am not your leader when you’re trying to decide which planet to fly to or what to do when you’re having romance problems. As long as you’re ready to fight when the time comes, I don’t care if you sleep with everyone else in the wing. So: call me commander when we’re out in space, but not down here, because down here I’m not the one who decides things.”

“Hear, hear,” Myrrh agreed. “We ran into trouble in the pirates when Sandra started to really think she was the boss. We need to decide things democratically.”

The younger fighters weren’t too sure about this, and looked to Silverfleet for confirmation. She just rolled her eyes. “Well, then, what do we do next?” Elan Klee asked.

Silverfleet looked around, then at Claypool. “We have to move on,” said Claypool. “This is obviously no place to settle long-term. It’s too obvious. There’s no place to hide here—it’s the only planet in the system. There’s hardly any asteroids even.”

“It’s an old system,” put in Klee. “It’s eaten most of its objects.”

“Yes. And those moons aren’t much for concealment, either. And, well, this star’s so big and bright, it’s just too obvious from Yellow Roost. Remember? It was the brightest star in the sky there. Tell me they won’t think, hey, let’s just send a scout out there.”

“So where do you think we should go?” asked Kris Bell.

“Well,” said Claypool, with a reflexive glance at Silverfleet, “I’d like to find a nice big system with a dozen or two planets and lots of asteroids, and then we find some insignificant little moon or planetoid with lots of caves, just like Black Rock, and we go hide down there and keep a patrol out and if they come in, we hide, and if they spot us and come after us, we take them by surprise. But we should go anywhere that’s away from here, and we should go soon.”

“Well, in this case,” said Elan Klee, “how about that next star?”

“The one on the edge of the emptiness?” asked Jana Crown.

“Well,” said Silverfleet, “it’s not exactly the last thing before there’s nothing. There are more stars out beyond, just not very many. There are halo objects.”

“But there’s no star to jump to from there,” said Claypool. “Which might be okay, actually—we could rendezvous out in the darkness and they’d never find us.”

“And that system does seem to have several big planets,” Bell put in. “We got a pretty good picture of it on the cruiser probe’s sensors. It must have lots of moons and asteroids.”

“Okay,” said Silverfleet, “we get some sleep and then we leave this planet in, oh, fifteen hours, headed for the last star in the galaxy. Any objections?” There were none. “I guess that’s a vote, eh, Myrrh? Two more things. One, we might just happen on our way out to meet some girls on their way in with Central markings. We haven’t had a chance to train together. So I’ll send the Marelon maneuver book to all of you, and we’ll just try to keep it simple. We need two wings, mine and Claypool’s. Suzane, who do you want?”

“Oh, you pick.”

“Okay, you get Elan again as your second. Mine is, oh, Myrrh or Del, which?”

“Del,” said Myrrh. “I’m tail.”

“Good enough,” said Del.

“My last second got killed at Marelon,” Silverfleet pointed out.

“I was your second,” said Claypool, “at Black Rock and Three Star.”

“And you’re now Wing Commander. Okay. So I get Del second, Myrrh tail, and Jana, Bell and Stelling. You get Elan second—”

“Conna tail,” said Claypool.

“And Stacy, Vya and Meena. Everyone okay with that? I hope so, because out there I am your commander.”

“That’s one thing,” said Myrrh. “There were two things. What about the other?”

“Oh, yeah. I’m not flying that bus again. We’ll put four of you in it and if there’s a fight, you’ll just leave it coasting and join your wings. Let’s see, who should be the crew of the cruiser?” She pretended to think for a moment. “I know. How about Stacy and Jana and Vya and Meena? You guys are already pretty familiar with each other’s moves.”

“But Commander!” several of them cried.

“Are you talking to me, the civilian on the planet that doesn’t know anything about what anyone’s orders are and doesn’t want to know about your personal problems, or me, the commander in space whose word goes without question?”

“It’s all right,” said Myrrh, glaring Meena into submission, and Stacy by her side. “It will be most therapeutic for them to be cooped up for a few weeks.”

Twelve hours later, the cruiser was already off and ambling to lightspeed, and the other eight fighters were ready to take off. Silverfleet, Claypool, Klee and Cloutier stood beside their ships and looked out at the city in the morning. Now they could see the life returning: grasses pushed between stones, lichens spread, birds twittered above their nests and lizards chased bugs on the stairs. Most of the fighter pilots paused at the top of the steps; Silverfleet and Cloutier got to the bottom and stood in the street.

“Halyn,” said Cloutier softly as they faced away, “what do you know about your Claypool?”

“Well, she’s not the pirate type,” said Silverfleet.

“I’m not saying this right,” replied Cloutier. “I’m just trying to get a handle on her.”

“She’s very reliable. She’s an excellent fighter pilot. As you know. Killer instinct.”

“Yes, and she didn’t actually kill me. I was honored.”

“You should be.” They looked back over their shoulders: Claypool, standing at the top of the stairs, smiled as she and Myrrh looked out across the landscape; Claypool made some sort of clever remark and Myrrh laughed. “Funny to see them together,” said Silverfleet. “Now I see what you’re asking about Claypool. She’s not a Central Starfleet grad, she never did the Academy, and she was never a pirate, so what is she? Well, she was trained on Enderra. She’s a fencer, by the way.”

“A fencer?”

“She must be from some sort of wealth. I guess her father died in a floater accident.”

“Poor little rich girl,” said Cloutier. “Had a bit of sorrow. Made her a better person.”

“You hardly ever meet such an overachiever,” said Silverfleet. They smiled at each other and turned back to the building. “Other than you, of course.”

“You’re the overachiever, freighter pilot.”

“It’s a nice planet, really,” Bell was saying.

“But so lonely,” said Claypool. “This little spot of life on this big muddy planet, and this one planet in this whole system, and then the edge of the stars, so close.”

“I’ve been here longer than you guys,” said Elan Klee. “I’m damn sick of it.”

“Yeah,” Cloutier agreed, “it’s time to leave the ghosts in charge.”

“We’ll leave the birds in charge,” said Silverfleet, “just like at Yellow Roost. Let’s go. Maybe the next system will turn out to be the haven we’ve been seeking—or at least, home for a while.”