Shiva Option

A fresh stab of grief ripped through him. So much grief. Grief for all the men and women who'd never gotten off of Riva y Silva at all. Grief for Amos Chung . . . and for Jacques Bichet and the other shuttle passengers he knew were still sitting in their seats, still waiting for their turn in the queue. Still waiting, when the dead man without a transponder had already been launched because he was so "important" to the war effort.

The charge stopped firing, and his hands moved mechanically, without any direction from his brain as he unstrapped from the seat. He thrust it away from him almost viciously and watched it go pinwheeling slowly off across the cosmos. There was a huge, ringing, silent nothingness within him-one that matched the infinite silence about him perfectly-as he watched, as well as he could through his damaged visor, while the seat vanished into the Long Dark that waited for him, as well.

Strange. Strange that it should come to him like this, in the quiet and the dark. Somehow, he'd always assumed it would come for him as it had for Andy, in the flash and thunder and the instantaneous immolation of matter meeting antimatter. In the fury of battle, with the men and women of his farshatok about him. Not like this. Not drifting forever, one with the legendary Dutchman, the very last of the farshatok who'd pla

His vacsuit had never been intended for extensive EVA. Its emergency thrusters' power and endurance were strictly limited . . . and they showed another yellow caution light in his HUD. It made no difference, of course-not for a single, drifting human in a vacsuit with no transponder-but he reached for the thruster controls, anyway. The life support of his damaged suit was undoubtedly going to run out soon enough, yet it was important, somehow, that he exercise one last bit of self-determination before the end.

He tapped the control panel lightly, gently, almost caressingly, and the thrusters answered, slowing his own spi

When the end came, he would choose a single star he could see through his damaged visor, fix his gaze upon it, and watch as the darkness came down at last.

Somehow, Irma had managed to punch out in time.

She had no idea how. Nor did she have any true memory of the death of the faithful little fighter which had served her so long and so well as it ate the Bug missile. Now, as she tumbled through space, amid the horror of vertigo, she clung for her sanity's sake to the thought of the extremely powerful transponder every fighter pilot's vacsuit contained.

Actually, a pilot's suit had a number of goodies that went beyond the standard models that everyone aboard a warship wore in combat-and not just its greater capacity to absorb body wastes before overloading with results best not thought about. For one thing, it had a considerably more powerful thruster system than a standard suit.

That thought drove through her brain at last, and she forced control on herself and used the thrusters to stop the tumbling. Then she shut them off. No need to waste the compressed gas. She had nowhere in particular to go. If anything was going to save her bacon, she told herself philosophically, it was the transponder, not the thrusters. Not that it was likely to. She'd probably survive for the short run, for the battle had receded, turning into a distant swarm of fireflies. But that had a downside: no one was close enough for her half-assed helmet com to communicate with, and the odds of anyone coming close enough to pick up even her transponder signal were slim, to say the very best.

So she simply drifted. There was nothing else to do. She drifted for a long time. Eventually, she stopped looking at her helmet chrono. Periodically, she took sips of the nutrient concentrate the suit's life support system dispensed, with no great enthusiasm-the stuff would keep you alive, but it tasted like puke. Mostly, she let her mind wander listlessly through the landscape of memories.

Then, after some fraction of eternity, she spotted another vacsuit.

Somebody from the shuttle, maybe? she wondered. If so, he's probably dead already.

But if he isn't . . . That's a standard vacsuit, but from this close, I ought to be able to pick up even its dip-shit transponder code. Assuming it was transmitting. So it must not be. And with no transponder, he's got no chance.

Without further thought, she maneuvered herself into the right alignment and activated her thruster pack.

The gas was nearly gone when Irma was still about fifty meters short of the other suited figure. She cut the thrusters and let herself coast onward. She managed to snag the other suit en passant, and they tumbled on together in a clumsy embrace for a few seconds before she was able to use the last of the gas to halt the sickening motion.

Well, that's just dandy! No more thruster.

Irma brought her helmet into contact with the other's for direct voice communication with a certain resentful emphasis. She gazed through the helmet visor, but whatever this poor bozo had been through, his suit hadn't gotten off unscathed. It was so badly scorched she couldn't even make out the rank insignia, much less the name which had once been stenciled across the right breast, and there were spatters of what had to be blood daubed across it. The enviro pack didn't look any too good, either, although at least the external tell-tales were still flashing yellow, not burning the steady red of someone who would no longer need life support at all. Even the visor's tough, almost indestructible armorplast was heat-darkened. She could barely see into it at all, but she caught the impression of open eyes, looking back at her, so at least the guy was alive and conscious.

"You all right?" she demanded.

"Yes, more or less." The answering voice was badly distorted by the transmitting medium of their helmets, but it sounded a little old for regular space crew. Not weak, or shaky. Just . . . like it ought to be accompanied by gray hair.

"Thank you-I think," it went on. "You must be a fighter pilot, from the looks of your suit."

"Yeah-Lieutenant Commander Irma Sanchez, commanding VF-94. If," she added bitterly, "there's any VF-94 left to command."

"So you have a chance of being found, by someone tracking your transponder. And now I have that chance, too. Yes, I definitely thank you, Commander. By the way, I'm-"

"Can the thanks, Pops," Irma cut him off rudely. "I just pissed away my ability to maneuver-not that it was doing me much good. And before that, I'd gotten my fighter blasted out from under my ass to save that shuttle you were on. So don't thank me, all right? I wasn't doing you a favor. I was just being stupid-as usual!"

The old-timer didn't seem to take offense. Instead, the poorly transmitted voice only sounded thoughtful.

"VF-94 . . . yes, I seem to recall. On Hephaestus, right? And aren't you the last of the human squadrons to have non-human pilots?"

"We were. We had an Ophiuchi pilot-a damned good one. But he's dead now."

For no particular reason, the reminder of Eilonwwa knocked open a petcock which had been holding back a reservoir of hurt, and now it poured out in a gush of rage.

"He got killed just like everybody gets killed who deserves to live! Like my lover-we were in the Golan System, when the Bugs came, do you know that? He stayed. So did the parents of a little girl I took with me in the evacuation. And now they're Bug shit! Do you understand that? And now I'm in the goddamned fucking military so I can kill Bugs. I've killed them and killed them and killed them, and there's just no fucking end to them, and I'm fucking sick to death of it!"