Death of a Starship by Jay Lake Read Free Book Online Page A

mark Imperial
observances, coordinate military actions, and game the financial
system. None of which was particularly his concern. His own
lifetimer chip told Menard and his doctors what they needed to know
about his biological rate-of-aging.
    Aging or not, he was bleary-eyed
and stretched. C-transition always made Menard feel as if he’d been
inexpertly reassembled. Every doctor he’d ever mentioned it to had
sworn the physical reactions were purely psychosomatic.
    After kneeling before his
icon to give thanks to God for his deliverance once more, Menard
mediated a while to bring peace to his heart. Knees aching, when he
was done he found his way into St.
Gaatha ’s ward room. This was another large
space, pillared like a seraglio, with a sumptuous galley and a
vastly ornate coffee engine all brasswork and valves and shining
stopcocks. Someone had thoughtfully bolted a small, plastic
consumer-grade coffeemaker next to it, which gave off an entirely
welcome warm, brown smell.
    Caffeine. He didn’t usually take
coffee, but it would help knit his miserable joints back
together.
    “ Chor Episcopos,”
said Lieutenant Kenneth McNally, sitting at the back of a shadowed
booth. McNally was St.
Gaatha ’s skipper, a young man with a ruddy
complexion and a strangely mobile Adam’s apple.
    “ Lieutenant,” said Menard. His
mouth didn’t feel quite right, either. He fumbled with a stoneware
mug and the little coffeemaker, poured himself a steaming cup. The
scent alone was worth the trouble, but the way the chilly handle
bloomed a little warmer in his palm was comforting as
well.
    “ That monster’s gorgeous, and
worth a small fortune,” said McNally, nodding at the huge coffee
engine, “but it takes two people the better part of an hour to
produce the first cup. Fun at parties, though.”
    Stirring his coffee to cool it a
bit, Menard tried to work that out. “You have parties on
board?”
    “ Representational work. In port,
Chor Episcopos.”
    “ Of course.” He sat down opposite
McNally. “Tell me, Lieutenant. Do you have a position on
xenics?”
    McNally quirked a smile. “I try not
to run into any.”
    That answer woke up his lagging synapses.
“Pardon?”
    “ I’m a Freewaller,
sir.”
    “ Jonah, please,” said Menard, with
a vague wave of the hand. “Freewaller...like the
battle?”
    “ Yes.” McNally grinned. “Local
legend, sir– Jonah. I read your dossier in the public directory.
You’ve spent half your career chasing local legends. Ever been to
3-Freewall?”
    “ No, can’t say I have.”
    “ It’s in trailing space. Give us a
couple of centuries, we’ll be a ghost world somewhere behind the
Empire. But we’re historic. Still important, for now. Shiploads of
tourists coming and going. So many memorials in solar and planetary
orbit we have a uniformed service keeping them maintained and on
station. Funny place, sir.”
    “ So what’s your
legend?”
    “ Asteroids, sir.”
    He’d heard that one a few dozen
times. Ancient ruins tumbling in eccentric orbits out in the Deep
Dark. “Externalists, eh?”
    “ No, not exactly. Within Freewall
space, in the right bars late at night, people will tell you the
xenics fly around in ships fitted out like asteroids.”
    That certainly wasn’t the stupidest
theory Menard had ever heard, but it wasn’t going to win any
prizes, either. “Doing anything in particular? Or just orbiting
with balletic grace?”
    “ Wouldn’t know, sir. I just keep
an extra watch out for rocks when I’m making a c-transition run.
Just in case there’s any moving faster than my ship. Local
superstition, I suppose.”
    Lord, save me from
superstition , Menard prayed. It looks enough like faith to fool the unprepared
mind. “Well, it never hurts to watch for
rocks, I suppose.”
    McNally leaned close. “You
ever get to wondering, read the Ulaan
Ude transcripts. From the battle. Last
couple of minutes, when the Hoxha blew, right before the old Navy struck their
colors to