Chaos Vector

by Megan E O'Keefe

  Lolla took up all of the two backseats—folded down—and pressed up against the front seats hard enough to make inertia-damping foam bulge over the glass. The grey-violet fluid she was suspended in sloshed. Jules blinked, nudging the coffin. A figment of her imagination. There was no air bubble in there—the system would tell her.

  Jules hesitated. The grunt work of getting Lolla into the shuttle was one thing, the only thing she was good at, but the next step relied on half-remembered knowledge from Arden and, if she were being honest with herself, information gleaned from skimming the net.

  The countdown to Rainier’s arrival hit thirty seconds.

  Grimacing, she swiped up the loose set of instructions she’d worked up on her wristpad and sent them to the shuttle’s navigational system. In theory, if the shuttle detected a lost signal from Jules’s wristpad, it would leave Janus and burn for Atrux. It didn’t have the fuel to make it, but it’d ping Nox’s and Arden’s idents the whole way, asking for help. If anything happened to Jules, they’d come. They’d find Lolla. They probably had a better chance of fixing her, anyway.

  She couldn’t think like that. Jules had become what Lolla needed her to be. The science may be way above her head, but she’d find a way. She’d found Lolla. Now she had to save her.

  A text flashed on Jules’s pad from the station’s AI: Rainier is on station.

  Calmness settled over Jules. She shut the hatch on the shuttle and jogged over to the elevator, rocketing up to the level where Rainier kept her office, well away from the research labs. As much as she allowed the scientists to believe that they were funded by the Keepers, Rainier didn’t want her face—the face of Lavaux’s wife—associated. Jules knocked on the door to Rainier’s office.

  “Enter,” she said.

  Every time Jules saw Rainier, a chill shot down her spine. There wasn’t anything inherently menacing about the woman. She was waifish, visibly devoid of muscle though Jules knew full well that her strength didn’t play by human rules. That size was a choice, an intentional deflection.

  There was a sharpness in her face that could have been seen as threatening, but was trendy in the elite circles of Prime. Aloofness was in, Rainier had told her once, and Jules had bit back a smart remark about that extending to their empathy for the lower classes.

  Now, Rainier wore a simple Prime jumpsuit and had her hair pinned back. Jules would have pegged her for any regular, if beautiful, station worker, but knowing what she did about Rainier’s split consciousnesses gave the woman an air of surrealness that had nothing at all to do with the angles of her cheeks.

  “Have we met before?” Jules asked, because she couldn’t resist poking the proverbial bear.

  Rainier’s smile was bright. “Jules, darling, we have not. This instance is new to you, though I promise I haven’t forgotten a thing.”

  “You never do,” Jules said with a touch more bitterness than she had meant to relay.

  Rainier tsked. “Did you think I’d forgotten you, pet?”

  “It’s been two weeks since we brought on Liao. I think the project is lagging.”

  Rainier’s room was a facsimile of what an office should be. Clear desk, net hookup terminal, tablets and charge ports. The tablets didn’t have any fingerprints. What few cables there were never moved from their positions. Rainier sat down in her chair, crossing her legs, and gave the chair an experimental swivel.

  “You collected Min Liao. All of my research says that she will be the stabilizing factor on the team. A natural mediator.”

  Jules suppressed a sneer and leaned her palms on the desk. “None of their prototypes have interacted with the ascended. Whatever they’re doing, it’s on the wrong track.”

  “Oh? And you’re an expert in bionanites now?”

  “Don’t play, Rainier. I can run my own tests.”

  Rainier steepled her fingers in front of her chin. “You’ve been running tests on yourself?”

  “Small ones. Testing to see if the amplifier swarms can send me a signal. I haven’t felt a change.”

  “I see. Perhaps you’ve done yourself damage. It would explain why you were stupid enough to assault Marya.”

  Jules stiffened. “She was snooping around Lolla.”

  Rainier waved a hand. “She could not harm the little one.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  “I’ve told you, I’ve seen this reaction before—”

  “And you weren’t able to fix it before, so you can’t fully understand it.”

  Her lip curled. “Do not tell me what I understand.”

  “Then why can’t you fix it yourself?”

  Rainier blinked owlishly. “Do you think I care so much? Oh, pet. I allow you to collect your scientists because resolving the issue of the ascension-agent may be useful to me in the future. It is not my goal. I have very little interest in biological matters.” Her eyes glazed slightly. “My goals lie beyond the reach of your mind, improved though it is.”

  Her face burned. “You don’t care at all. About me, about bringing Lolla back.”

  “‘To care’ is not a concept I find useful,” Rainier said.

  “Then what do you find useful?” Jules snapped.

  “You, pet. This station, your dogged research, and a great many other things.” She lifted her gaze and made such strong eye contact that Jules stepped back. “Marya is useful.”

  “I only cracked her tooth.”

  “And increased her desire for the ascension-agent even more.”

  “So? Give it to her. Then maybe she’ll stop chirping around the place and be useful for fucking once. I don’t know why you bother with her.”

  “Connections,” Rainier mused. “That is a concept Lavaux taught me. It’s how all you humans work, your societies, your squabbles and petty triumphs. Everything about you lives or dies by who you’re connected to, and you hoard those connections jealously. Slam up your walls and wedge others out. Marya is useful to me.”

  Jules’s mouth tasted bitter. “Because she has connections.”

  She lifted her hand and extended one long finger. “Just one, but it matters so very much.”

  “Who?” Jules demanded, face turning red again, and maybe she could control it, but she didn’t care. Her only “connections” were low-level Grotta dealers.

  In telling Jules why she valued Marya, Rainier was telling her why Jules was disposable. If Rainier cut the thread of her life, there would be no great unraveling. No one would even notice.

  “That,” Rainier said, “matters not at all to you. All you must know is that you may not break my toys. Honestly, I thought you would do better. My research points to your species getting along better when paired off. You and Lolla and Marya were meant to be my little sorority sisters.” Her smile was wistful. “I miss having sisters.”

  “Depends on the pairing,” she grated out. “And there are thousands of you for company.”

  “I’ve sent Marya away for a while. It’s just you and Lolla for sororal company now.”

  A tightness clenched her chest. “What does that mean?”

  “Don’t worry. Marya will be back by the morning, but I want you both to cool your heels. I sent her on a mission, not to the grave. Off to earn her dose of the agent.”

  “Something your guardcore can’t do?”

  Her smile was slow. “Something I’d rather not waste them on.”

  “And have you given the GC the agent?”

  Rainier cocked her head to the side. “Why would I do that?”

  “If it works so well most of the time, why not give it to your soldiers? They’d heal faster, perform better. You need more than me.”

  She smiled. “I have more than you, though you cannot see past your own nose. My soldiers do not require the agent. The more of you exist in the worlds, the larger the chance the knowledge gets out. A drop of blood left here, a security camera catching a healing there.” Her expression soured. “This was a lesson Lavaux refused to learn. He wanted all of his inn
er circle turned, the misguided soul. It took me minutes to scrub the visual of his leg healing itself from that video. Minutes.”

  “It is a gift—”

  “And it is my gift to give or withhold. Never forget you stole your strength, Juliella. Never forget I deigned to let you keep it.”

  “Why?” She kept her voice level. Rainier wasn’t something she had any touchstones for. She’d never even dealt with a Keeper, let alone someone who felt comfortable manipulating Keepers. In her darker moments, she wondered if Rainier was even really someone, anyway.

  Jules may not have ever had power, but she understood it. Understood her place in it as only an outsider could. Rainier was keeping her around for a reason. Once Jules had fulfilled that reason, she was a dead woman—and so was Lolla. Secrets like hers didn’t get to stroll out the door after a job well done.

  “Why let me live when you say yourself the risk of discovery goes up with every one of us changed?”

  Rainier’s arm shot forward so quickly that even Jules’s enhanced vision couldn’t track the motion. She grabbed the top of her hand, squeezing enough to make the joints crack but not enough to cause this new body of hers pain.

  “I built you a maze, my little Grotta rat, and the cheese is your Lolla. Figure it out.”

  CHAPTER 23

  PRIME STANDARD YEAR 3543

  A SPEAKER SPEAKS

  The war room of the Ada Cannery had grown barnacles of garbage. Piles of compostable cups stained with coffee heaped over the top of the trash can in the corner. They’d reached a rate of consumption that the cleaner bots hadn’t accounted for, and while stimpacks were a stabler way to gain an energy boost, Biran—and it seemed his peers—preferred the jittery rush of caffeine. At least coffee flushed out of their systems faster.

  Director Olver had called in the full number of the Protectorate. Hitton, Garcia, Singh, and Vladsen all sported dark circles under their eyes. While they were not directly involved in the peace negotiations with Icarion, they had not been idle. They had their own districts to see to, their own people on edge, breathing shallowly until the final shoe dropped. Biran hoped he, Olver, and Shun could ease some of that tension this day.

  “Congratulations,” Garcia said, catching Biran’s eye, “on the exoneration of your sister.”

  “It took long enough,” Hitton said, arching one brow. “I wonder why? Anford, were our systems that severely compromised?”

  Anford folded her hands together on the tabletop but otherwise remained still. “The files were permanently deleted and never recovered. InfoSec did the best job it could in the recovery attempt.”

  “And yet an anonymous nethead beat us to the punch,” Hitton mused. “And corrected the deepfake without Prime’s gentle guiding hand. Marvelous. Shall we recruit that individual?”

  “This meeting is not about the state of InfoSec,” Olver said, “though we are looking into who corrected the footage before we could.”

  “Perhaps another friendly nethead will come along and tell us,” Singh said dryly.

  “Enough of that,” Garcia said, “it’s done. And no one in this room really believes that the major assaulted Lavaux without cause, do they?”

  Silence hung in the air, stretching tension across Biran’s mind so taut he felt he’d scream if someone so much as tapped him.

  “No,” Olver said firmly. “We do not. While I do not have the pleasure of knowing the major well, I knew Lavaux. He wanted The Light, and would have done anything to take it. Including killing one of ours. I am much more interested in discovering the source of that farce than whoever untangled it for us.”

  “We are looking into it,” Anford said.

  “Wonderful,” Garcia said, cutting off Hitton before she could get another word in. “Now, why are we here, Jian? I enjoy your company, but we are stretched thin at the moment.”

  Biran sat back, letting Olver take the lead.

  “You are all familiar with Keeper Shun.” Olver gestured to her, and she nodded slightly. “While she is one of our finest academy professors, she is also in charge of gate location scouting for Ada. A position which, until recently, lay dormant.”

  “Beg pardon,” Hitton said, “but this system—”

  “Let her talk,” Biran said firmly.

  Hitton pursed her lips at him, spread her hands in surrender, and sat back with an intentional ruffle of fabric.

  Shun cleared her throat. “You are correct, Keeper Hitton, that my position within this system has been uneventful up to this point. But matters with Icarion have pushed us all to new limits. No one here wants open war, am I correct?”

  That, at least, gained enthusiastic nods all around. As much as they bickered, the Protectorate of Ada did not want Icarion’s slaughter on their hands. That knowledge eased something clenched in Biran’s mind. They would squabble, but they would figure this out. They had to.

  “It was suggested to me that I look elsewhere for gate anchor sites.”

  “Suggested?” Hitton asked. “By whom?”

  “Me,” Olver said. “Please continue, Keeper Shun.”

  Shun inclined her head and tapped at her wristpad, putting up a projection of the asteroid. These were a much higher resolution than Anaia’s, the hunk of rock displayed in such detail that he suspected he could zoom in enough to see the frost crystals limning the hulking stone’s back.

  “This is AST-4501. It inhabits a stable, elliptical orbit well within the gravity well margins of our star, and has a mass exceeding the safety envelope by five percent. Its geology is primarily basalt, with heavy iron deposits on the starward end, and shows no obvious sign of fracture. Neither does it tumble. AST-4501, my friends, is a perfect candidate for a Casimir Gate.”

  Biran held his breath as everyone took in the unremarkable piece of stone, letting the weight of her words sink in.

  “I bring this to you today,” Shun said, “because I seek permission to request greater survey resources from the High Protectorate. The asteroid is promising, but an extensive study must be made.”

  “This—” Olver said, beginning to launch into the short speech Biran knew he had prepared for this moment. The words he and Biran had put their heads together on to stoke the fires of hope in everyone at this table, to rally them behind a future where Ada had two gates, and Icarion and Ada could both prosper under the flagship of Prime.

  “I think not,” Hitton said.

  Biran wanted to throttle the woman, but he used every trick in his repertoire to keep his voice even. “Why on Earth not? Would you scorn a peaceful future so quickly?”

  Hitton met his gaze evenly. “I would scorn a poisoned apple offered from my enemy’s hand. You disguise it prettily, Keeper Shun, but I have my own informants. This asteroid was marked as a gate location by the traitor Lionetti.”

  Sharp breaths all around. Biran pushed to his feet, the chair scraping back, and planted his hands on the table so they would not reach for Hitton. “This is our system’s final hope of avoiding all-out war. Shun has investigated. The asteroid is viable. With the High Protectorate’s resources, we can make sure of that to whatever exacting specifications you desire. Or are you so thirsty for Icarion blood?”

  Her eyes narrowed, but her tone did not change. “I do not desire the extermination of our long-lost cousins, Speaker. Check yourself. Neither do I desire to build a gate in a location that is easily attacked by Icarion. This elliptical orbit, Shun, how close does it draw to that wayward planet as opposed to our own Ada?”

  Shun licked her lips. That was all the notice Biran needed that the news would not be good. “Quite close, astronomically speaking. At the narrowest point in its orbit, Icarion could reach it within two days from their moon base.”

  “You see?” Hitton waved a hand through the air. “Lionetti was seeking work in Shun’s department. No doubt, she planned to discover this boon of an asteroid and bring it to her superiors, who would champion the cause as you all are doing now. Once the gate was built, Icarion would b
reak their supposed peace and sally toward it at the narrow point, securing a Casimir Gate for themselves. You are dancing to her strings, and she’s not even alive to pull them.”

  “The fleet is perfectly capable of securing the asteroid,” Biran said. “Isn’t that right, General Anford?”

  Anford didn’t twitch a millimeter. “I am uncertain. Supply lines would be difficult to maintain if a coordinated Icarion effort cut us off. We do not have the numbers to guarantee security within acceptable margins for that gate. We would have to request more.”

  “More, more, more,” Hitton said. “Little Ada, caught in its little war, is always asking for more. The High Protectorate will not give it to us. And I, for one, will not embarrass myself by bringing this proposal to their table.”

  “Nor will I,” Singh said quietly, her dark gaze locked on the image of the asteroid. “My apologies, Keeper Shun, I know you do fine work, but this is too risky. It is the job of a Keeper, above all else, to keep the gates safe from outside hands.”

  Olver said, “We keep them safe for our people. What have we become, if we put the needs of our people below the safety of the gates?”

  “Icarions,” Hitton said, “are not our people.” She stood, turning to Biran. “If you want to save them, boy, then you must do better.”

  She left the room, and as Singh and Garcia stood sheepishly and filed out after her, Biran’s heart sank with every single door shutting behind them. He let his hands go limp on the table and stared at them. How? How had Hitton discovered the source of the asteroid? Maybe that guardcore in the hall had told her… Or she had clever research assistants working for Shun. That seemed more likely.

  “You should have warned me,” Anford said to Olver in a low, tight voice. “Then I might have had a response prepared. Something tangible. I cannot lie about our abilities, Director. Not when the safety of a gate is at stake.”

  “I had hoped it would not come to that.”

  Anford jerked a thumb at Biran. “Hope is his game. You, Director, know better. Prepare for the worst. Always. Because if you fuckers cannot work this out, it’s my hand on the trigger. My hands covered in blood.”