THE RISING: VOLUME 1 OF THE FLIGHT ENGINEER (Version 2.0) James Doohan This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. Copyright c 1996 by Bill Fawcett and Associates All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form. A Baen Books Original Baen Publishing Enterprises P.O. Box 1403 Riverdale, NY 10471 ISBN: 0-671-87849-2 Cover art by David Mattingly First paperback printing, November 1997 Distributed by Simon & Schuster 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 Typeset by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH Printed in the United States of America \X1CHAPTER ONE\X1 "And what happened then?" the bartender asked eagerly, her eyes shining as she leaned close. "Why, then I died," Commander Peter Ernst Raeder said, voice solemn and low. "0oooh!" She whapped him playfully on the shoulder with the towel she usually carried over hers. "Watch the vid. I've got a bar to clean." He sighed and thumbed the controls: *Flick* "I want you, Vorn!" "But, Lyriea, I have a wife, children!" "You don't want them, Vorn . . . you want me./" "I pity you, Lyrical For not knowing that there's a world of difference between wanting and loving!" *Flick* "Genuine anthracite from Earth. Formed millions of years ago of actual living matter, this glittering stone can be yours for just . . ." *Flick* "Ssssiiiiiinnnnn! Oh, we tried to save them. Our fallen brothers and sisters. We sought them out and reasoned and pleaded, but they wouldn't hear us. And so we turned our backs and fled them and the carnival of EVIL. They wouldn't leave. They sold to us a place they thought was a desert. But we knew that we would make it a paradise! "And yet . . . temptation was waiting for us. Yes, even here, with only our brothers and sisters beside us. In the place we sought redemption there lay a serpent . . . whispering of wealth . . . of pow-errr. We could buy our paradise, we need not build it. There was so much we wanted and the means was right there. In an almost unlimited supply of fuel. And we fell. "They wanted it! They would pay any price .... And we fell. We sold them our precious resource, we let them build their factory platforms, peopled with their own technicians. And WE helped them spread the black stain of sin across the stars. WE gave them the means to rrrrraaaappppe . . ." "Uh. D'ya mind if I change that? When the Mollie Interpreters start talking about rrrraapppe like that I get nervous." Raeder chuckled and handed over the vid control to the bartender. They'd been flirting mildly since he'd sat down. She seemed to approve of his black-Irish good looks, and he didn't object to her cuddly caramel-colored prettiness. And it was a very pleasant way to pass the time as he sat waiting for transit orders. He looked around. A big square room, the light level was just fight, lightened by beveled mirrors scattered around. The booths were roomy and comfortable looking, and the tables were big enough to accommodate your elbows as well as your drink; even the bar stools made you feel welcome. Golden oak accented the bar along one side with a genuine brass foot-rail--spacers were finicky about things like that-and signed holographs on the wall. The older ones were mostly Survey Service types; the people who went out and found new systems, or died trying. Lately it was fighter pilots and gunners and Marines shipping out to fight the Mollies. The Oblaths Bar of Cape Hatteras Naval Spaceport was a gem of its kind. Of all the gin joints in all the bases in all the world, Raeder thought in a Bogart voice, why did I have to walk into this one? This is what a bar is supposed to be. He sighed. Eve only been here once and I already know I'm really gonna miss it, he thought wistfully. But he wasn't going to miss the hospital, with the grueling hours of physical therapy, and he was eager to get back to work. The bartender flicked to a sports contest, which broke his reverie. The wall dissolved into a montage of shapes and thuds and groans, with the roar of a crowd in the background. Colorfully clad behemoths charged into each other at full speed, emitting spectacular grunts and growls. It was a variation on football, played without the ball. The big men pushed each other down the field to the goal-posts, grappling and gouging. The viewpoint jiggled and blinked as it shifted from one helmet-mounted camera to another. They watched for a moment and then turned away in mutual disinterest. "Why did we ever get into a war with those fanatics?" she asked him in exasperation, referring to the program she'd just flicked away from. "I mean if the Mollies wanted to separate from the Commonwealth, why the hell didn't we just say, 'So long guys--good riddance' when we had the chance? I mean, really?' She rolled her eyes in disgust. "Apparently you've never heard of anti-hydrogen, hon." Peter took a sip of his beer. "Be awfully hard to run the Commonwealth without it." Though he could understand the question. The Mollies are so obnoxious it seems insane to actually fight to keep 'era around. She wrinkled her pert nose at him. "Don't bother me with reality when I'm grumping about Mollies. It's not polite. And why are they Mollies, anyway? They sure don't like women, so how come they're named after my favorite aunt?" "It means Mission of Life Lived in Ecclesia." Raeder watched her take that in; she shrugged the corners of her mouth down in disapproval. "Ecclesia..." she muttered. "Sounds like a digestive disease. Something with gas." Peter snorted, then took her hand in his left and said earnestly, "My dear, I'm sorry to tell you this... you have ecclesia. Could you please leave my office before you explode." She exploded in laughter. She was pretty when she laughed. Her eyes sparkle, Raeder decided. "What's it really mean?" she demanded, bringing one shoulder forward coquettishly. "Ecclesia? It means an assembly or church." Oddly, his knowing the answer seemed to intimidate her and she withdrew shyly. Having the right answer too many times in a row seems to do that to people, Peter thought in resignation as he watched her walk away. He hated it when it happened with pretty women, though. He pursed his lips. Maybe it's for the best. Be awfully inconvenient to meet the love of my life in the Oblaths Bar at this point in my career. His new orders had been cut and he'd be leaving Cape Hatteras Naval Spaceport just as soon as the shuttle pilot arrived to hand them to him. And who knew when, if ever, he'd see this place again. Peter grimaced wryly and very carefully picked up his drink with his left hand, glaring at his right. I hate that thing. The best prosthesis medical science could provide. It looked just like his real hand had. Which was why they took three-dimensional holegraphs of every soldier's body, so that if you were careless enough to lose part of yourself they could come up with a mechanical duplicate. But it ached still, and it was virtually numb. The techs had said that once he got used to the signals from the neural interface there would be more nuance--more of a perception of heat and cold, hard and soft, though never the sensitivity of his real hand. And he was still learning to control it. Peter could see the sparkle of tiny slivers of glass from where he'd shattered the first beer he'd been given. He'd been brooding, had a flash of temper, and pop! he'd been picking glass out of his palm. Raeder sighed and shook his head, remembering what his physical therapist had said. 'Whatever you do, Raeder, for the first few months, anyway, don't go into the bathroom mad." The worst thing about the prosthesis though, the thing that made him hate it, was the fact that it couldn't properly interface with a Speed's computer. A pilot dropped his gloved fingers into receiving cups that plugged him directly into the ship's AI. The inside of the glove was filled with sensors that registered every muscle twitch, analyzed blood pressure, and the chemical content of your sweat, to make the Speed respond like your own body. The machine aimed its weapons and took direction from the position of your eyes, but it was your hands that determined if those weapons fired and where and how fast you flew. The prosthesis lacked the subtle control needed, and the chemical component was nonexistent, which meant that half the controls on the ship wouldn't respond as they should. Which meant he was grounded. His dark brows came together in a frown. It still bit deep and felt like the amputation of something even more vital than his right hand. Yeah, he thought glumly, why couldn't we have just let the Mollies go when they told us they were leaving? He shook his head and smiled ruefully. Even the most fervent and naive conscientious objector knew the answer to that one. Because without anti-hydrogen there's no commerce between systems, and with no commerce between systems, Commonwealth civilization would be a fond memory in less than a year. The Commonwealth had tried to offer a garden planet to the Mollies in exchange for the desert they'd bought way back when, but their theocratic rulers, the Interpreters of the Perfect Way, had refused. Foaming at the mouth and denouncing humanity all the way back to Adam, I believe. Because, just to prove God had an ironic sense of humor, the Mollie cluster proved to be the only place in human-explored space that contained large amounts of anti-hydrogen, naturally suspended in a magnetic matrix material. In the century or so since then, the old synthetic plants had shut down, their dribble of expensive fuel swamped by the flood of cheap, abundant power from the mining platforms. Commerce boomed. The Commonwealth became united as never before--and very dependent ...
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