Lifeline

Tired of standing by the walls, Commander Rurik strode out into the crowd, smiling and clapping his crew on the shoulders. He filled the room with his presence, his charisma. The party suddenly seemed sincere. Rurik had brought with him two dark bottles of brandy.

“Georgian brandy? How did you get that up here?” one of the women asked.

“Not Georgian brandy. Real French brandy.” Rurik smiled and lowered his voice. “And don’t worry about how I got it up here.”

Pouring right and left with both bottles, Rurik offered tastes of his brandy until it was all gone—too quickly for most of the people.

As the alcohol seeped into their bodies, restraint dissolved away. After all, they didn’t need to be in good shape for duty the next day.

The people began talking in louder voices, some growing brash and daring, saying things they had never risked speaking before. Some bemoaned the loss of the Grand Experiment of glasnost and perestroika and complained about the harsh backlash, but the Soviet return to conservative isolationism had never quite succeeded because the world economy was too tightly woven.

A few people scowled at the political criticisms, but Rurik knew what types of men and women they really were. He had pegged them long ago. They didn’t worry him anymore.

The people sat around in small groups. One woman put on a disc of Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, booming the music into the conversation.

Off in a corner, some people compared snapshots in pocket holocubes; others swapped stories, argued over who had the most beautiful spouse or children. But each person looked terribly frightened, and trying to keep distracted from the fear—though it always seemed to keep coming back.

Anna Tripolk joined in conversations herself but drifted from group to group, as if unwilling to become too deeply involved. Rurik watched her, and she kept looking up to meet his eyes. She smiled, looking twenty years younger in a single flash. Anna felt for him, he knew, and he showed her all the affection he could. Rurik was certain he did not love her, though she did prove an interesting secret companion during the night periods.

Tripolk looked lost and empty away from her research. She couldn’t seem to find the heart for the feigned cheer the others somehow managed. Rurik knew she felt more saddened at the loss of her life’s work than from anything else.

Her life’s work.

These last few weeks had destroyed most of their dreams, strained them to the breaking point.

The last coded orders had come up more than a week before, in the heat of battle, when Earth’s house of cards was toppling down. The Kibalchich’s political officer, Cagarin, had insisted on viewing the orders with Rurik. And because of Cagarin’s connections, Rurik could not turn him down.

“You must destroy Orbitech 1” Cagarin kept harping on him, repeating the insane orders. “Or must I do it for you? My authority supersedes your own.”

Rurik had had enough of the man. “You are just a minor administrative functionary. Your eleven cronies here are equally nondescript. Do not try to threaten me, Cagarin. Your basis for power has vanished like everything else. I am commander here!”

But Cagarin refused to play along. He raised his thick eyebrows. “Do you wish me to relieve you of your command?”

Rurik sighed, crossing his arms over his chest as if he were speaking to a misbehaving child. “The orders did not specify when I was to act. I plan to carry them out—but only when all the other people on the Kibalchich are out of the way.”

He paused, staring at the other man. “Have you not thought what the others might do when they learn of the orders against Orbitech 1? These are scientists, not military troops! Would you like to watch them all revolt? You would bear the brunt of their anger, I fear.” He raised an eyebrow, but Cagarin remained silent. “Give me time. It is too late for immediate vengeance. We will carry out the instructions, but when I say the time is right.”

Cagarin thrust out his lips in a pouting expression. “I will remain awake with you.”

Rurik made a condescending smile. “If that is the penance I must endure.… We are supposed to have two monitors anyway.”

Now, at their end of the world party, six workers had gone to the zero-G command center at the hub of the Kibalchich’s torus. Inside, they had turned the largest external dish antenna toward Earth and begun making calls.

One of the communications engineers tapped into the microwave transmission bands, and together they spent hours trying to call friends they had known. No one answered. They called numbers at random. They laughed and drank and tried again, but the joke had worn thin by the time they finally broke through to a still-functioning recording in French. No one had the slightest idea what it said.

“Someone must still be alive! We know the War could not have been completely devastating.”