The Empty Warrior (35 page)

The kitchen, unlike the one in his quarters, was obviously well stocked. Delectable scents drifted out over the table from the little galley, reminding O’Keefe of his hunger. Over the counter he could see the splayed metallic arms of a robot; chopping, stirring, and measuring quantities while tending skillets and pans. He had never thought much about where the food came from on board as it had simply been brought to him in his quarters, but now he found it somewhat unsettling to know that the Akadeans had machines for chefs. It was something akin to machines turning out paintings or sculptures; it seemed to deaden the creativity and flair of preparing a gourmet meal.

He leaned over to Pellotte and asked, “Does everyone but me have one of those to cook for them?”

“Oh, my goodness, no!” she said. Moving close enough to him that her breasts pressed against his bicep, she whispered in his ear. “I told you about this. Cyanne comes from a very important family, a very wealthy family. That’s how a pilot and his wife rate quarters like this. The rest of us have no room for any domestic bots. We all eat the fare that the auto-kits crank out. The same things you’ve been eating. You’re in for a treat tonight.” She took a long sip of her emerdal, licking her lips suggestively afterwards, and let the pressure of her breasts linger against O’Keefe’s arm, long enough to give him the distinct impression that dinner might not be the only treat in store for him.

Before that moment, in large part due to the Akadeans’ increasingly obvious belief that he was some sort of dangerous barbarian, he had never realistically considered Pellotte as anything more than a fantasy to be enjoyed as he lay alone in his quarters. Now desire was mounting in his loins to a fever pitch. He took a large swallow of the emerdal and began trying his best to concentrate on mental replays of Joe Montana’s Super Bowl performances, hoping the diversion would douse the fire raging through his body and avoid a potential embarrassment if he was for some reason expected to rise from his chair.

As he sat wrestling with his recently reinvigorated hormones, the robot chef came trundling smoothly out of the kitchen on soft rubber tires. Much to O’Keefe’s relief, everyone at the table turned their heads to watch its approach but remained seated. The machine was laden with trays of fine china, crystal, and silverware; yet it still moved easily around the table and the guests, using its slender body of globes connected by axle-like shafts to bend a thousand different ways. Its many long and multiply jointed arms easily reached over or around the guests to set the table; the robot’s movements so precise that the placing of each plate made absolutely no detectable sound. The machine rolled back to the kitchen but returned in short order with large bowls of salad complete with an assortment of dressings and toppings that it placed in the center of the table. With Pellotte’s help O’Keefe was able to pick out a zesty combination and soon he was delightedly munching away.

He chewed slowly, relishing the flavors in his bowl, and more importantly attempting to emulate Akadean etiquette lest the other guests find yet another reason to regard him as a savage. The table fell largely silent except for small talk and the comforting, domiciliary sound of utensils on porcelain. Meanwhile the robot brought dish after dish to the table until the length of it was completely covered with steaming platters and bowls. O’Keefe recognized some of the fare, like the peppery roast beef in gravy that bubbled with the aroma of garlic, and the spiced potatoes with bacon and cheese. There were other dishes he was sure he had never seen before, but every entrée that was laid out before him smelled perfectly delicious.

As the diners finished their salads and the bowls were taken away, Lindy began the heart of the meal by reaching for the nearest dish and passing it to his wife, who served herself and in turn passed it on to Beccassit. When the Doctor had taken a portion and held the dish out to O’Keefe, he reached for it gingerly, as the vessel appeared to be slick and ceramic while its contents still emitted a substantial column of steam. To his surprise, the outside of the dish was not only cool to the touch, it was exceedingly easy to grasp, almost adhering to his fingers. In its interior lay the roast beef and gravy. He took a healthy serving, filling nearly a third of his plate, and passed it on to Pellotte. And so it went until every dish had made its way completely round the table.

Again, save for the well-deserved compliments concerning the food, the meal passed devoid of conversation of any significance. Everyone was more concerned with sating their appetites. Pellotte had not been mistaken; this was indeed a treat. The repast was the best that O’Keefe could remember having enjoyed in years, and certainly the best he had had since finding himself aboard
Vigilant
. When he finished his plate, which was well before anyone else despite both the heaping volume of food he had laden over the china and his best efforts to consume it slowly, he poured himself another glass of emerdal and relaxed, the glowing warmth of the liquor penetrating every fiber of his frame. It was the first alcohol he had ingested since the night of the Vazilek attack, and it felt wonderful. Shortly, the others began to finish up and poured drinks of their own as the Lindys’ automaton servant rolled in and began to clear the table.

When the dishes were gone and everyone possessed a drink, the captain unexpectedly and abruptly addressed O’Keefe. “Mr. O’Keefe,” she began, “I’m very pleased that you were able to attend this evening. It gives me the chance to ask your advice about a certain situation we have encountered, something I hadn’t the time to address at our first meeting.”

“You want
my
advice?” O’Keefe asked, his voice thick with suspicion and incredulity. He turned to face her directly for the first time since he had entered the room.

“Of course. Why do you think we came all the way to your world? To see the sights? No, we were seeking information, and that makes your opinions quite valuable to us. Your home is unique in its own way. Of the few planets that did, before the Reunification, devolve into violent confrontations between rival factions, your people are the only ones to survive. Despite your fearsome weaponry and propensity for wholesale destruction, you seem somehow capable of putting an end to your hostilities before destroying yourselves. It is that ability that we came to study, as we have been forced into something resembling one of your conflicts ourselves, as you duly noted in our conversation the evening before last. And since the perpetrators are nearly impossible to arrest; they have proven to be extraordinarily elusive; we seek a way to reach a more cordial relationship with them. We seek to end the antipathy.”

“I take it we’re still talking about those Vazileks, the people who damaged this ship and damn near killed me?”

“That is exactly of whom I speak.”

“And you want me to tell you how to make…” O’Keefe hesitated. They had no word for peace. Why would they, he thought. Without war, the concept of peace did not exist. “How to restore normalcy,” he concluded.

“Yes, that’s it exactly. Tell us how your people would ‘restore normalcy’ in such a situation.”

The paranoid part of O’Keefe—the little voice deep in his gut that was never entirely silent—urged caution. He shouldn’t tell these people anything about anything. But the emerdal had loosened his inhibitions as well as his tongue, and the little voice went unheeded.

“Well, I’d love to help you out,” he said with an ironic laugh, “but I’m pretty much operating in the dark here. I mean, it was only yesterday that my nurse,” he nodded to Pellotte, “gained permission to speak frankly with me. If you want me to analyze your strategy you are going to have to stop being so secretive about everything and tell me what’s going on, give me some background.”

“Colvan,” the captain said, startling the Exec. “You’re our resident history buff. Why don’t you bring our abber—,” the Captain grimaced ever so slightly, “ah, our friend, up to speed on our current situation?”

Busht sat suddenly straighter in his chair, collected himself, and then began. “I have no idea what you have been able to learn since your arrival, Mr. O’Keefe, so I’ll simply give you a short version of a very long story.” Condescension coated his enunciation like honey. “Human history is divided into two epochs, called pre-Cataclysm and post-Cataclysm respectively. The second epoch begins with the destruction, roughly forty thousand years ago, of the Akadean sphere and the splintering of the remnants of humanity. This epoch is divided into two periods as well, the Reunification and the Expansion. The Reunification denotes those millennia when the remains of scattered, pre-Cataclysm civilizations struggled to regain contact with one another and once again form a unified society. The goal of reunification was achieved, with a few notable exceptions such as your Earth, nearly thirty thousand years ago with the formal ratification of the Principles of Cooperation, followed several thousand years later by the Union Constitution. The year the constitution was enacted is considered as the beginning of the Age of Expansion, although significant colonization did in fact occur before even the Principles were signed.

“So for well over thirty thousand years a unified mankind has been spreading its influence over more and more of the galaxy. The ideological underpinning of the expansionist policy is to make impossible another disaster of the scope of the Cataclysm, where very nearly the whole of humanity was destroyed by a single event. We seek to restore the glory of past human civilization while avoiding the pitfalls that ensnared our ancestors. Because of this policy, it at one time had seemed that nothing could stop the human race from spreading across the whole of the galaxy.

“But about five years ago a freighter did not return from a routine voyage to a colony on the outer rim. Message drones were dispatched to the colony to inquire as to the vessel’s whereabouts, but none of the missives were ever answered. At last the police frigate
Restless
was sent to investigate.”

As Busht mentioned the
Restless
O’Keefe saw a short display of empathy between the Captain and Pellotte, a nearly imperceptible exchange of glances, which only someone cued to their shared bereavements would have noticed. If the exec saw it, it did nothing to slow his narrative.

“A few months later a drone arrived at police headquarters. The messages within detailed the fate of the
Restless.
When the ship reached the Aloris colony, it was found to be devoid of human life. There was much destruction and everything of value had been looted. The previously dispatched, outward bound drones were recovered; their messages never having been accessed. As the investigation proceeded, four ships of unknown origin appeared and proceeded to fire on the
Restless.
When it was certain the frigate could not escape, her captain launched his own drone, sending it back to headquarters. Nothing more was ever heard from the ship or the crew.

“At first it was assumed that we had unknowingly impinged upon the space of an intelligent, technologically capable species of which we had been previously unaware. Since it was clear they resented our intrusion, the Union evacuated the area, the decision being made to expand in other directions. However, the depredations continued. More colonies, colonies closer to the heart of the Union, were set upon and devastated while sightings of strange ships poured in from wider and wider swaths of the galaxy. Each time these ships were approached they refused communication and disappeared beyond the light barrier.

“Finally a force of three police cruisers patrolling an area very near where other colonies had previously been assailed came upon a weaker group of smaller ships belonging to the aliens. They were in the process of attempting to raze yet another outpost. The perpetrators resisted arrest, and in the ensuing melee one of their ships was destroyed, another disabled, while the remainder fled. The disabled ship refused orders to stand down, self-destructing rather than facing justice. One of our cruisers was heavily damaged by the blast.

“However, they had been far from completing their work on the planet’s surface. There were many survivors scattered about that had escaped capture. They told a tale of mayhem, murder, and abduction committed not by an angered and unknown race, but by a motley mixture of beings; including cyborgs, robotic creations, and even hybrid creatures—genetic creations of animal flesh with near human intelligence, their bodies augmented with mechanical implants and attachments. But the most alarming facet of the story they related was that many, if not most, of the attackers had been human. The wreckage the aliens left behind was probed, and human DNA, DNA not belonging to the colonists, was discovered, verifying the inconceivable accounts of the survivors. According to those survivors, the criminals called themselves Vazileks and were utterly ruthless, seeming to actually enjoy the spree of enslavement, torture, rape, and murder that they initiated upon their arrival.”

Busht’s countenance changed as he spoke. Where before there had been scorn and derision for O’Keefe in his words, now only revulsion showed in his demeanor. He gazed across the room at nothing, his mien reminiscent of the “thousand-yard stare” O’Keefe had become so familiar with in Vietnam. Suddenly it occurred to him that this was not a secondhand account. Busht had been a witness to this atrocity. Perhaps everyone in the room had seen it. O’Keefe thought it a good bet that
Vigilant
had been one of the three cruisers that had caught the killers in the act.

“Naturally, the discovery that humans were among those behind the attacks caused great consternation in the legislature as well as in the High Council,” Busht continued. “There was no comprehension of how intelligent Homo sapiens could sanction such abominable conduct. More data was needed. After much debate, it was decided to send a scientific expedition to study firsthand the only other known concentration of humans to exhibit similar behavioral traits. Thus you,”
an aberrant barbarian
, words Busht did not use but that O’Keefe could read plainly on his face, “have through random chance been brought to us, and now sit at our dinner table.”