"Banishment," Yarrun replied. "There's no other penalty possible."
"The nearest exile world would be Mootikki, right?"
"It's the only one in this sector."
"Mootikki… ninety percent ocean, and semi-sentient water spiders that eat anything with a pulse?"
Yarrun nodded. "That's Mootikki."
Pause.
"A cakewalk," I said. "Wouldn't faze the greenest cadet."
"We've seen worse," Yarrun agreed.
A long silence trickled by. My palms were sweat-moist behind me as I leaned them against the wall.
Yarrun finally spoke softly. "Are we going to do it, Festina?"
"The High Council is sending us to a planet that has killed who-knows-how-many teams already. They are providing us with no information, not even a standard AOR summary. They've put us under the command of a man who is clearly unstable, possibly senile, and certainly ignorant of the principles of exploration. To all appearances, they are dispatching us to die just to rid themselves of an embarrassment. What's a few bruises compared to that?"
Yarrun, in a whisper: "We'll need witnesses."
I pointed to the door in front of us. "If we go for Prope and Harque while they're in the infirmary, Dr. Veresian and the admiral will see everything."
Another long silence. At last, Yarrun said, "We'll just shoot them with stunners, won't we?"
"Of course," I replied. "We don't really want to hurt anyone, do we?"
Weapons
Stunners were Landing weapons, intended to stop alien animals without killing them. They fired an invisible cone of hypersonic white noise, intended to disrupt electroneural activity for two and a half seconds. Sometimes, the shock stopped whatever was trying to eat you; sometimes, it didn't. On a human, a single stunner blast caused about six hours of unconsciousness followed by a vicious bitch of a headache, but it did no true physical damage.
Every Explorer longed for a more powerful weapon now and then; but the matter was out of our hands. The League of Peoples utterly forbade lethal weapons of any kind on board starships, and as far as anyone knew, the ban had never been broken. No one could say how the League did it… although there were rumors that the races known to humans were merely the tip of the League iceberg, that there were far more advanced and mysterious creatures who simply hadn't bothered to contact us. It was suggested that these creatures watched us invisibly, maybe even living amongst us without being seen: gaseous things or sentient patterns of radio waves, monitoring our actions or even our thoughts.
Certainly, the League seemed to pick up intentions clearly enough. After all, you can kill a person with almost anything, from laser drills to a plain old brick; but the League permitted such things to pass freely through their quarantine, because they weren't intended as weapons. On the other hand, if you had murderous thoughts about strangling someone with your shoelace… Well, if you had murderous thoughts at all, you'd never leave your home planet ever. Somehow, the League simply knew.
Always.
It was disturbing when you thought about it — like magic. Any sufficiently advanced technology, et cetera.
Our Assault
When I took my stunner from the locker in the Explorer equipment room, the butt felt oddly cold and metallic. I had seldom touched the pistol with my bare hand — on a Landing, we wore tightsuits covering our whole bodies. Even on a planet with good atmosphere and temperate climate, there were a thousand reasons to remain sealed off from the environment. I couldn't remember the last time I had touched a stunner ungloved.
Yarrun and I exchanged glances at the door of the infirmary. We hadn't said a word since we left to get the weapons. Now he smiled… a hideous sight. I nodded and palmed the ENTER plate.
Inside, the air smelled of disinfectant. Dr. Veresian had drawn Harque and Prope into his office, and was talking to them in a low voice. The admiral sat without pants in an examination chair, drumming his fingers on the arm-rests.
Prope turned at the sound of our entrance and saw the stunners. "Is there some problem, Explorers?"
"In a manner of speaking," I said. "We're unhappy with this mission."
"That's understandable," she replied. "It's an open secret that Explorers have been Lost on Melaquin. But the order came directly from the High Council."
"It seems foolish to throw away our lives for no reason." I raised the stunner. "What would you do in our position?"
Prope calmly lifted a hand. The ghost of a smile played about her lips; maybe all her life she had been waiting for a chance to show how relaxed she could be at gunpoint. She turned to Harque as if there were no weapon trained on her. "Lieutenant, what's the punishment for a primary offense?"
Harque quoted the regulation with a smirk. "The offender shall be set down on an approved exile world with no less than three days food and water rations, two changes of suitable clothing, and a knife whose blade does not exceed twenty centimeters in length."
"And what is the nearest exile world, lieutenant?"
"I imagine it would be Mootikki."
"But suppose I were shot by a stunner and was unconscious for a few hours. Another hour to convene a court martial, perhaps two hours to go through the formalities… Where would we be then, lieutenant?"
"Not far off Melaquin."
"And Melaquin," Prope said, turning back to us, "is also an approved exile world."
"That's not in the registration catalogue," I objected.
"There's a lot that isn't in the registration catalogue." Harque grinned nastily.
I tried to keep my face steady, but my stomach had been carved hollow with one sweep of an invisible scythe. The captain put on the look of a big sister who's caught you playing with yourself. "My orders from the Council mentioned that some Explorers try to… waive this sort of mission in various ways; but all the loopholes have been plugged, believe me. You two can choose to be banished to Melaquin as criminals with little more than the clothes on your back, or you can land as Explorers with all the preparation and equipment the Jacaranda can muster. Now if you want to fire, go ahead. It's five o'clock in the morning, and I could use the sleep."
Yarrun's hand touched my wrist, lowering the stunner for me. In a moment, he took my arm and nudged me out the door. As it closed behind us, I could hear Harque snicker.
Yarrun said, "I'll take the stunners back and lock them up."
I put an arm around his shoulder and squeezed lightly. "It was a childish plan anyway."
He slipped away and walked off slowly, tapping the guns against his thigh with every step. I slumped back against the bulkhead and tried not to think of how good it would feel to plunge my fist into someone's face.
Admiral's Escort
Admiral Chee poked his head out the infirmary door. He still had no pants on, just blue boxer briefs.
"Are you a guard?" he asked.
"No."
He slipped into the corridor with an ostentatious attempt at stealth. It was unnecessary — I could see that the people in Veresian's office had closed the door, leaving the admiral unattended.
"I'm not supposed to be out here," Chee said with great satisfaction. "They thought they could stop me by stealing my pants." He raised a hand to his mouth and blew a raspberry salute back toward the infirmary. "It didn't work, did it? And do you know why? Because I'm an admiral and people are more embarrassed seeing my ass than I am showing it. Watch."
He spun around and hiked up the back of his shirt to give me a better view of his skinny flanks. Reflexively, I flinched and the old man cackled with glee.
"Rank hath its privileges, Ramos! I'm not embarrassed and you are. You're blushing something awful… one side of your face, anyway."