“Can it obey those orders?” I asked.
“Yes. It has basic intelligence, and I copied over a large chunk of my stealth infiltration protocols. It should be able to explore, take pictures of the area we want it to, then return to its hiding place for pickup.” M-Bot paused again. “It can fly by itself, something I cannot do. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said it wasn’t alive, for in some ways it is more alive than I am.”
I thought about that, then opened the compartment on the side of the cockpit and took out the small emergency destructor pistol I kept there.
“Drone,” I said, “deactivate hologram.”
It appeared just above me, hovering near the open canopy and the tarp draped around M-Bot outside. I made sure the destructor pistol’s safety was activated, then secured it with electrical tape to the back of the drone, so I could smuggle it in as well.
“If you get into too much trouble,” M-Bot said, “remember that you have a second face programmed into your bracelet. You can become someone else, if ‘Alanik’ gets compromised and you need to hide.”
“All right,” I said. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. But in any case, Detritus is running out of time. We’re going to have to try this plan tomorrow.”
Jorgen spent his day learning how to make bread.
Spensa’s grandmother was very good at bread, despite the fact that she was blind. Together they sat in her cramped, single-room home in Igneous. Spensa’s mother had accepted new quarters, but her grandmother had insisted she remain here. She claimed she liked the “feel” of it.
Red light flooded in through the window, and the air smelled of heat from the apparatus. You could smell heat, Jorgen had realized. Or at least hot metal. It was a burned sort of smell, but not a burning smell. The smell of things that had gone so far beyond being on fire that now their ashes were stewing.
Gran-Gran made him work like her, by touch and smell alone. He closed his eyes, reaching out and feeling at an iron pot to test the powder inside. He brought a pinch to his nose and sniffed it.
“This is the flour,” he said, breathing in the wholesome—yet somehow still dirty—scent of ground grain. “I need about five hundred grams.” He took a measuring cup in hand and dipped it in, weighing it by feel—not by sight. He hefted it, then felt for the bowl in his lap and dumped the flour in.
“Good,” Gran-Gran said.
He mixed it with his hand for a count of a hundred. “Now oil,” he said, raising the proper container to his nose. He sniffed it, then nodded and tipped it so oil dribbled over his finger into the bowl. She wanted him to measure like that, by touch of all things. Water followed.
“Very good,” Gran-Gran said. She had a patient voice. A voice like a rock would have, he imagined. Immobile, ancient, and thoughtful.
“I would rather check to see that I got the amount right,” Jorgen said. “I didn’t really measure anything.”
“Of course you did,” she said.
“Not accurately.”
“Mix it. Feel the dough. Does it feel right?”
He mixed, his eyes still closed. She refused to let him use an electric mixer. Instead he mixed by hand, squishing the stretchy dough between his fingers as the ingredients melded.
“It…,” he said. “It’s too dry.”
“Ah.” She reached out and felt into his bowl. “So it is, so it is. Knead in some water then.”
He did so, still keeping his eyes closed.
“You’ve never peeked,” Gran-Gran noted. “When I taught Spensa to do this, she kept looking through one eye. I had to challenge her to do it without looking, make it a game, before she’d do as I asked.”
Jorgen continued kneading. He had given up on trying to figure out how Gran-Gran would know if he’d peeked or not. She was obviously blind—the gnarled old woman had only milky whites for eyes. But there was a power to her. Near her he felt that same buzzing, fainter than with Spensa or the alien woman.
“You never complain either,” Gran-Gran noted. “Five days learning to bake bread by touch, and you’ve never once asked why I’m making you do this.”
“I was instructed by my superior officer to come receive your training. I assume it will make sense eventually.”
Gran-Gran sniffed at that. As if…as if she wanted him to balk at the strange style of instruction. Well, Jorgen had talked to dozens of soldiers about their first days in training, and the monotonous tasks they’d been given. It happened more in the ground crew than in flight school, but he understood nonetheless.
Gran-Gran was training him first to accept instruction. He could do that. That made sense. But he wished she’d hurry. On the same day as that first attack, the battleships had made two more test barrages at Detritus, and both had been intercepted. Since then, the enemy forces had just sat up there gathering resources, their fleet growing. The Krell’s return to inaction had him feeling tense.
The Krell had a very large gun to their heads. He needed to learn this new training quickly, and ascertain whether he could give the fleet what it needed, then report back to Cobb.
That said, he wasn’t going to complain. Gran-Gran was effectively now his commanding officer.
“Do you hear anything?” Gran-Gran asked as he continued to work the dough.
“The buzzing sensation from you,” he said. “As I reported earlier. It’s not really something I hear though. It’s more of an impression. Like the vibration you might feel from a distant machine, making the ground tremble.”
“And if you reach out, like I taught you?” she said. “If you imagine yourself flying through space?”
Jorgen tried to do as she said, but it didn’t accomplish anything. Just…imagining himself floating in space? Passing the stars, soaring? He had been there in his ship, and he could picture the experience perfectly. What was it supposed to do?
“Nothing?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“No singing? No sense of something far distant calling to you?”
“No, sir,” he said. “Um, I mean no, Gran-Gran.”
“She’s out there,” Gran-Gran said, ancient voice cracking as she whispered the words. “And she’s worried.”
Jorgen snapped his eyes open. He caught a glimpse of Gran-Gran, a wizened old woman who seemed to be all bones and cloth, with powder-white hair and milky eyes. She’d turned her head upward, toward the sky.
He immediately squeezed his eyes shut. “Sorry,” he said. “I peeked. But…but you can feel her?”
“Yes,” Gran-Gran said softly. “It only happened earlier today. I sensed that she was alive. Scared, though she might not admit that even still.”
“Can you get a report on her mission?” he asked, dough squeezing through his fingers as he clutched it. “Or bring her back?”
“No,” Gran-Gran said. “Our touch was momentary, fleeting. I am not strong enough for more. I shouldn’t bring her back, even if I could. She needs to fight this fight.”
“What fight? She’s in danger?”
“Yes. Same as we are. More? Perhaps. Stretch out, Jorgen. Fly among the stars. Listen to them.”
He tried. Oh, how he tried. He strained with what he thought were the right muscles. He pushed and forced himself to imagine what she’d said.
That nothing happened made him feel as if he were letting Spensa down. And he hated that feeling.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t get anything. Perhaps we should try one of my cousins.” He knuckled his hand, pressing it against his forehead, eyes still squeezed closed. “I shouldn’t have told her to go. I should have followed the rules. This is my fault.”
Gran-Gran grunted. “Back to your dough,” she said. Once he continued kneading, she spoke again. “Have I told you the story of Stanislav, the hero of the almost-war?”
“The…almost-war?”
“It was back on Old Earth,” Gran-Gran said, and he could hear bowls scrape as she began preparing her own dough to bake. “During a time when two great nations had their terrible weapons pointed at one another, and the entire world waited, tense, fearing what would happen if the giants should decide to war.”
“I know that feeling,” Jorgen said. “With Krell weapons pointed at us.”
“Indeed. Well, Stanislav was a simple duty officer, in charge of the sensor equipment that would warn his people if an attack had been launched. His duty was to report immediately if the sensors saw anything.”
“So his people could get away in time?” Jorgen asked.
“No, no. These were weapons like the Krell bombers use. Life-ending weapons. There was no escape; Stanislav’s people knew that if an attack came from the enemy, they were doomed. His job was not to prevent this, but to provide warning, so retaliation could be sent. That way, both nations would be destroyed, not just one.
“I imagine his life to be one of tense quiet, of hoping—wishing, praying—that he never had to do his job. For if he did, it would mean an end to billions. Such a burden.”
“What burden?” Jorgen said. “He wasn’t a general; the decision wasn’t his. He was just an operator. All he had to do was relay information.”
“And yet,” Gran-Gran said softly, “he didn’t. A warning came in. The computer system said that the enemy had launched! The terrible day had come, and Stanislav knew that if the reading was real, everyone he had ever met, everyone he loved, was as good as dead. Only, he was suspicious. ‘The enemy has launched too few missiles,’ he reasoned. ‘And this new system has not been tested properly.’ He debated, and he fretted, and then he did not call and tell his superiors what had happened.”
“He disobeyed orders!” Jorgen said. “He failed in his most fundamental duty.” He kneaded his dough more furiously, pressing it against the base of the wide, shallow bowl.
“Indeed,” Gran-Gran said. “His will was tested, however, as the computer reported another launch. Larger this time, though still suspiciously small. He debated. He knew that his duty was to send his people to launch their retaliation. To send death to their enemies while still able. The man and the soldier warred inside him.
“In the end, he declared the computer’s report to be a false alarm. He waited, sweating…until no missiles arrived. That day, he became the only hero of a war that never happened. The man who prevented the end of the world.”
“He still disobeyed,” Jorgen said. “It wasn’t his job to make the decision he did. It belonged to his superiors. The fact that he was right makes the story justify him in the end, but if he’d been wrong, then he would be remembered as a coward at best, a traitor at worst.”
“If he’d been wrong,” Gran-Gran whispered, “he wouldn’t have been remembered. For nobody would have lived to remember him.”
Jorgen sat back and opened his eyes. He looked down at the firm dough in his hands, then started working it harder, folding it and pushing it, feeling angry for reasons he couldn’t explain. “Why are you telling me this story?” he demanded of Gran-Gran. “Spensa said you always told her stories of people cutting off the heads of monsters.”
“I told her those stories because she needed them.”
“So you think I need a story like this? Because I like following orders? I’m not an emotionless machine, Gran-Gran. I helped Spensa rebuild her spaceship. At least, I didn’t tell anyone what she was doing when she brought Hurl’s booster back. Against protocol.”
Gran-Gran didn’t reply, so Jorgen kept working the dough, smashing it over and over, folding it like the old swordsmiths used to fold metal.
“Everyone thinks that just because I like a little structure, a little organization, I’m some kind of alien! Well excuse me for trying to see that structure exists. If everyone were like this Stanislav, then the military would be chaos! No soldier would fire his gun, out of fear that maybe the order he’d been given was a false alarm! No pilot would fly, because who knows, maybe your sensors are wrong and there is no enemy!”
He slammed the dough down and sat back against the wall.
Gran-Gran grabbed his dough, pressing it between her fingers. “Excellent,” she said. “Finally some good kneading out of you, boy. That will be some bread.”
“I—”
“Close your eyes,” Gran-Gran said. “Humph.”
Jorgen wiped his brow with his sleeve. He hadn’t realized how worked up he’d gotten. “Look, maybe I was right to tell Spensa to go. But maybe I shouldn’t have. I’m not—”
“Close your eyes, boy!”
He thumped his head back against the wall, but did as she asked.
“What do you hear?”
“Nothing,” he said.
“Don’t be daft. You hear the machinery outside, the apparatus crashing and thudding?”
“Well yes, obviously. But—”
“And the people on the street, clamoring home after shift change?”
“I guess.”
“And your heartbeat? Do you hear that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Try.”
He sighed, but did as instructed, trying to listen. He could hear it thumping inside him, but probably only because he’d let himself get worked up.
“Stanislav wasn’t a hero because he disobeyed orders,” Gran-Gran said. “He was a hero because he knew when to disobey orders. I learned that from my mother, who brought us here—one of her last acts. I think she felt something here. Something we needed.”
“Then I shouldn’t be looking toward the stars,” Jorgen said, still frustrated. “We should be looking at the planet beneath us.”
“I always wanted to return to the stars,” Gran-Gran said.
“I like flying,” Jorgen said, his eyes still closed. “Don’t mistake my meaning. At the same time, this is my home. I don’t want to escape it, I want to protect it. And sometimes when I’m lying quietly in bed in the deep caverns, I swear that I…”
“You what?” Gran-Gran asked.
Jorgen snapped his eyes open. “I do hear something. But it’s not up above us. It’s down below.”
I yanked open my backpack, letting a dione soldier inspect the contents.
The inside didn’t look suspicious at all. Just the large, clear plastic food container that I normally brought my lunches in. It looked perfectly innocent. For all the fact that it was a drone in disguise.
The guard shined a small flashlight in at the contents. Would they see how worried I was? Was I sweating too much? Would one of the nearby security drones sense my racing pulse?
No. No, I could do this. I was a warrior, and sometimes that required craftiness and stealth. I stood there an excruciatingly long moment. Then, bless the stars, the guard waved me forward.
I zipped up the pack and shouldered it, hurrying across the shuttle bay of the Weights and Measures. I tried to exude both confidence and lack of concern.
“Alanik?” Morriumur asked, stepping up beside me as we entered the hallway. “Are you well? Your skin tone looks uncommonly flush.”
“I…um, didn’t sleep well,” I said.
We neared the first intersection. M-Bot suspected that this segment of hallway had a secondary scanner installed to detect illicit materials—but he was confident that the scrambler we’d given the drone would obscure it. Indeed, no alarms went off as we went through the intersection, though a passing dione crew member did nearly collide with Hesho’s small hoverplatform. Kauri cried out, barely steering the platform around the dione’s head.
The crew member apologized and quickly moved on. Kauri flew the platform back, and Hesho’s tail twitched in annoyance as he looked over his shoulder at the offending dione. “Even when we fly, we are underfoot. Serene until marred, a centimeter deep but reflecting eternity, I am a s
ea to many, but a puddle to one.”
“You’d think that the Superiority would be accustomed to dealing with people of all sizes,” I said.
“There aren’t many of us,” Hesho said. “I know of only one other species our size, unless you count the varvax inside their exoskeletons. Perhaps we will need to build huge suits ourselves. It is difficult for ordinary people in a universe of giants.” His tail twitched again. “But this is the price we must pay to have allies against the humans. They are near to breaking free, you know. Did you see the news reports?”
He eyed Brade, who as usual strode on ahead of us and barely paid any attention to our conversation.
“The humans are contained, Hesho,” Morriumur said. “This little blip is nothing to be worried about. I’m sure it will be dealt with soon.”
“My duty, and my burden, is to worry about the worst possibilities.”
As we reached the now-familiar intersection with the usual guard and the pathway to Engineering, I split off from the others, waving them onward. “Gotta hit the head,” I told them, then stepped up to the guard.
The Krell twitched her fingers in a sign of annoyance, but called for a guide drone to accompany me to the restroom. I thought through my plan once again—I’d spent all night practicing it with M-Bot. I wasn’t worried about being tired from lack of sleep. My nervous energy probably could have powered half of Starsight.
The guide drone led me to the restroom, then again waited as I entered one of the stalls. I immediately sat and put the backpack on my lap, then quietly slid open the zipper. My hands—having performed this exact sequence a hundred times in a row last night—pulled out my drone, then took out the security module. I screwed it on with a quiet click that I hoped wasn’t too audible.
A flip of a switch left the drone hanging in the air as I quickly did my business in the stall, so as to not sound suspicious. Then I squeezed around the side of the stall, leaving the drone hovering there. I held up one finger, then two, then three.
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