Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

sessions every day. If my future self had
forgotten about that, something had gone wrong.
    But now the gunner was looking at me intently. I became aware I
was rubbing my thumb down my cheek. I dropped my hand and turned my
face away.
    Captain Dakk was standing before me. ’Recognition. You’d better
get used to that.’
    ’I don’t want to,’ I groused. I was starting to resent the whole
situation.
    ’I don’t think what you, or I, want has much to do with it,
ensign.’
    I muttered to Tarco, ’Lethe. Am I that pompous?’
    ’Oh, yes.’
    Dakk said, ’I think we’re organised here for now. I’ll come back
later when I can start thinking about damage control. In the meantime
we’ve been ordered to your captain’s wardroom. Both of us.’
    Tarco said hesitantly, ’Sir - what’s a Sunrise?’
    She looked surprised. ’Right. You don’t have them yet. A Sunrise
is a human-driven torpedo. A suicide weapon.’ She eyed me. ’So you
heard what happened in the Fog.’
    ’A little of it.’
    She cupped my cheek. It was the first time she had touched me. It
was an oddly neutral sensation, like touching your own skin. ’You’ll
find out, in good time. It was glorious.’
     
    Dakk led us back through Kard’s officer country. Commissary Varcin
met us there.
    Here, the partitions had hastily been taken down to open up a wide
area of deck that was serving as a hospital and convalescent unit.
There were crew in there in all stages of recovery. Some of them were
lying on beds, weak and hollow-eyed. Many of them seemed to be
pleading with the orderlies to be put back on the Torch despite their
injuries - once you lose contact with your ship in a war zone it can
be impossible to find it again. And many of them asked, touchingly,
after the Torch itself. They really cared about their living ship, I
saw; that battered old hulk was one of the crew.
    An awful lot of them sported ponytails, men and women alike,
apparently in imitation of their captain. Very non-Doctrinal.
    When they saw Dakk they all shouted and cheered and whistled. The
walking wounded crowded around Dakk and thumped her on the back. A
couple just turned their heads on their pillows and cried softly.
Dakk’s eyes were brimming, I saw; though she had a grin as wide as
the room, she was on the point of breaking down.
    I glanced at Tarco. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
    Among the medics I saw a figure with the shaven head and long
robes of the Commission. She was moving from patient to patient, and
using a needle on them. But she wasn’t treating them. She was
actually extracting blood, small samples that she stored away in a
satchel at her side.
    This wasn’t the time or place to be collecting samples like that.
I stepped forward to stop her. Well, it was a natural reaction.
Luckily for me Tarco held me back.
    Commissary Varcin said dryly, ’I can see you have your future
self’s impetuosity, ensign. The orderly is just doing her duty. It’s
no doubt as uncomfortable for her as it is for you. Commissaries are
human beings too, you know.’
    ’Then what - ’
    ’Before they went into battle every one of these crew will have
been injected with mnemonic fluid. That’s what we’re trying to
retrieve. The more viewpoints we get of this action, the better we
can anticipate it. We’re ransacking the ship’s databases and logs
too.’
    Call me unimaginative. I still didn’t know what unlikely chain of
circumstances had delivered my older self into my life. But that was
the first time it had occurred to me what a potent weapon had been
placed in our hands. ’Lethe,’ I said. ’This is how we’ll win the war.
If you know the course of future battles - ’
    ’You have a lot to absorb, ensign,’ Varcin said, not unkindly.
’Take it one step at a time.’
    Which, of course, had been my own advice to myself.
    At last, somewhat to my relief, we got Dakk away from her crew.
Varcin led us down more corridors to Captain Iana’s plush
wardroom.
    Tarco and I stood in the middle of the carpet, aware of how
dinged-up we were, scared of spreading Spline snot all over Iana’s
furniture. But Varcin waved us to chairs anyhow, and we sat down
stiffly.
    I watched Dakk. She sprawled in a huge chair, shaking a little,
letting her exhaustion show now she was away from her crew. She was
me. My face - reversed from the mirror image I’d grown up with. I was
very confused. I hated the idea of growing so old, arrogant,
unorthodox. But I’d seen plenty to