Gate Quest (Star Kingdom Book 5)

by Lindsay Buroker

  Good question. Why would Moonrazor volunteer information to him? Surely, not because he was asking nicely and had compared her to a comic book hero.

  “Is the prince in System Stymphalia?” Casmir asked Asger.

  “The last I heard, Jorg was heading off to meet a princess for a potential marriage his father is arranging for him,” Asger said. “Her family is in that system. Why? Is Moonrazor threatening him?”

  “Sort of. She says they control the gate to the system.”

  “Are you sure she’s not just talking to you in order to locate you through the link?” Rache asked.

  Casmir shook his head, then wished he hadn’t, for his headache intensified. “She knows exactly where we are. She’s prioritizing the Kingdom over some sleazy mercenaries. Her words.”

  “Tell her to come here and call me that to my face,” Rache growled. “Or talk to my chip if she’s too lazy.”

  “Keep your chip offline,” Casmir said more sharply than he intended. But the fear that Moonrazor would attack someone else in the group who didn’t have all the defensive programs downloaded and customized that he did sent fear rolling through him.

  The chips couldn’t be used to control people or anything that dastardly—the chips could only receive neural commands, not send them—but who knew what mayhem she could cause?

  “We’re all offline,” Rache said. “Like you said in the sub. We’re obedient mercs.”

  Asger snorted, then patted Casmir gently on the shoulder. “Put your helmet back on. You don’t look well, and that air is too cold to breathe.”

  The air wasn’t what was trying to put his brain on the fritz. As cold as it was, it was the only thing helping to clear his mind and cool down his fevered body.

  They are simple compared to you, Moonrazor said, switching tactics when she didn’t get a response about the prince. You should accept cybernetic upgrades and improve your human body, or even leave it behind completely and upload your mind to an android form. I’ve read about you. I know you have health weaknesses.

  Casmir closed his eyes, trying not to find that chilling. He remembered the way Rache, after reading about him, had set up the perfect attack to trigger a seizure.

  We have the means to do a number of surgeries here, she continued. Agree to renounce the Kingdom and join us, and I’ll give you a position of power among the astroshamans. You are already known by many of our people who watch the field of robotics. In time, they would be willing to follow you.

  Thanks, but I’m not looking to be followed, just to do the work I love. And I have a family back home. I can’t leave to go to, ah, where did you say you would put the other gate? He tried to toss the inquiry in naturally.

  I did not say. Her dryness came through even with the straight text message. You will find out if you join us, because we will all travel there once the gate is installed. It is not so distant a star system that we will have to wait centuries for a ship to deliver it and set it up. Not that years matter much when you put aside your weak human biology and embrace the machine. Life can become eternal.

  But can you enjoy an orange fizzop?

  You can’t enjoy one of those if you’re fully human. Dreadfully sweet.

  Alas, I fear we have little in common, Moonrazor.

  Do not dismiss my offer. I do not make it lightly. You can retain your human body and join our order. I have suffered no health issues yet, so I remain partially biological. It is simply that most see the wisdom of giving up their frailties or at least enhancing their bodies so those weaknesses are no longer an issue.

  Casmir told himself it wasn’t right to feel wistful at her words, to find them the tiniest bit enticing. Though in his current situation, he didn’t think he could be blamed for it.

  But he couldn’t trust her. She was trying to keep him from disturbing her network and her facility, from helping the mercenaries take the gate. He shuddered at what she wanted to do with it, not only keeping others from studying it but using it in a way that might destroy the existing gate network. What if the astroshamans broke something when they tried to add a new node? What if the network went down forever, isolating humans in their own systems?

  “Pick him up and carry him,” Rache said, and Casmir realized they’d been discussing him. “We have to keep moving. The Kingdom schlubs won’t keep our enemies distracted indefinitely.”

  “They’re not schlubs,” Asger said coolly.

  “Pick him up anyway. You or Zee. I don’t care, but we can’t stay here.”

  Could you not rebuild the gate if we left you a third? Casmir knew that would take longer, and Moonrazor would find it unappealing, but he would be remiss if he didn’t use this opportunity at communication to negotiate. If you let us take two-thirds to share with others who wish to study it, I think I could get both the mercenaries and the Kingdom troops to leave your base alone. I know they’re doing damage.

  Damage to a material place that will matter no longer once we are gone.

  But you won’t be able to leave for decades, right? The closest star system to Stymphalia is twenty years away with known spaceship-drive technology. You need a place to stay until then. Do you want to fight all of humanity because they’re angry with you for stealing their gate? What if your robot ships arrive and install it, but there’s nobody left to go through because humans rose up and annihilated astroshamans? Out of anger and fear and resentment?

  Casmir expected a flippant comment, since she had been indifferent to his words so far, but she did not answer right away.

  Zee hefted him around the waist and slung Casmir over his shoulder. Casmir thought about protesting and saying he could walk, but he let himself go limp. There was so much else to concentrate on. As unmanly as it was, he let himself be carried.

  That is a possibility, Moonrazor finally replied. We will likely continue to have to find new hiding places. We have bases out at the edges of the systems already, far from the suns, where few but mining ships venture, but you are right that it is inconvenient to be hunted.

  Why choose to ostracize yourselves? Why leave the Twelve Systems? Is there not a place for you here where you can be happy?

  You are naive.

  If we’ve failed to accommodate you… Casmir wasn’t sure what we he meant. The astroshamans didn’t have a presence in the Kingdom, so he wasn’t speaking of his own government, though surely their disapproving attitudes about core changes to humanity couldn’t help anything. Perhaps something could be done. Negotiations. Treaties. Just because you’re choosing to make modifications to your bodies doesn’t mean you’re any less human. There should be a place for you here in the Twelve Systems.

  We are different. Humans don’t like what’s different. I think you know this. You are not like those around you.

  It made him uncomfortable how well she seemed to know him. There shouldn’t have been that much about him available on the System Hydra public network. Little more than a bio and some of the papers he’d published should have been transmitted beyond System Lion. Unless she had another source.

  I am different, but I have a place where I belong. There are people who are comfortable enough in their own skins not to feel threatened by that which is different. Assuming different doesn’t set itself up in the position of enemy.

  Human beings are very good at creating enemies, Moonrazor replied, whether different sets itself up to exist in that position or not. Different is always a target.

  If that’s happened, let’s change it. We can work at being more accepting of astroshamans, and perhaps some of your people could work at being benevolent ambassadors who help people realize you’re not a threat. Newly appointed President Nguyen is hosting talks with government representatives from this system right now. If you went in peace to discuss finding a place where your people could be comfortable, they might be open to listening. I could go with you.

  If he survived the Plague… and if Jager’s minions didn’t haul him back to Odin by his ear.

  W
hile your soldiers take the gate.

  They’re not my soldiers. They kidnapped me. Also, my desire is as I said, for the gate pieces to be divvied up among all who want to study them. The astroshamans could certainly keep a portion of them.

  Generous of you.

  Casmir exhaled slowly, struggling for patience—and an argument that would work—when he was hot and flushed and thirsty and sick with his head pounding.

  Unfortunately, I doubt you have the power to make the deals you’re proposing, she added. Though I am beginning to wonder if you’re responsible for the legion of ships now orbiting our moon.

  It’s true that I don’t have power—I am a simple robotics professor—but if you voluntarily surrendered the gate to share with others, except for a few pieces you could keep to study, the various governments would realize they owed their acquisition to you. I’m positive they would all prefer to have a piece of the gate, rather than see it leave our systems forever.

  Perhaps, but if they are able to one day build their own gates, then our new system might simply turn into the next system humanity invades. We do not wish to be followed, Professor. We have tried to find a place here, and we are done trying. We are better than those who squabble like the apes they still are. We have risen above that. We seek to leave humanity behind when we go. To take all of those who embrace the next evolution and not to be pestered by the savage animals who do not. Further, it would take much longer if we had to build a new gate from scratch, using a single piece as a model. Each piece, as we have already learned, has a different function. They are not interchangeable, and they are not simple. To place this gate in another system would be a much shorter path to our goal. We already have a ship prepared and ready to start this mission.

  A chill went through Casmir’s fevered body, as he realized that time may not be on their side. Time definitely wasn’t on his side.

  Once all the astroshamans travel through the gate to our new chosen system, we will deactivate it once again, leaving humanity here to its own squabbles, and we will create our own civilization and never worry about irrational human beings again. I give you one last chance. Stop fighting me. Let us take care of these intruders—if there are some that are close to you that you want spared, I will allow it—and join us. Your family will be welcome to come. All those who embrace the astroshaman way are welcome. We care nothing of origins or color or language or religion, only that you agree that this is the logical next evolution for humanity and help us pursue it.

  Another rumble went through the base, barely noticeable since Casmir wasn’t standing on the floor now, but it spurred fresh cracks in the ice. Someone cursed as a fissure several inches wide opened in front of him. Other mercenaries hopped over it without a word.

  “Let me know if you want your helmet, Casmir,” Asger said quietly.

  He was walking behind Zee, keeping an eye on them. On him.

  “In a minute,” Casmir murmured, his cheek pressed against Zee’s cool back.

  He was so hot, so miserable, that the temptation to put aside his human body for another alternative was real in that moment. A lot of the astroshamans did mind transfers into android bodies, so Moonrazor probably did have a workshop here capable of performing that operation.

  He shouldn’t trust her, but what if she meant what she was offering? What if this was a way to continue on, to live? In a sense. He would be like Kim’s mother or Viggo. Alive but not human, not really. Not anymore.

  He knew he’d lose much of what made him him if he put his consciousness into an android body, but what if he was about to lose all of that anyway? What if there was no cure to the Plague other than to have all of his mitochondria altered, something he highly doubted could be done on the Osprey, much less down here in the middle of nowhere. Would he survive the trip out of here and back to Tiamat Station?

  If he did undergo the transformation, what would his parents say? What would his rabbi say? Casmir remembered a sermon from his childhood explicitly forbidding cybernetic enhancements for frivolous reasons, and this went far beyond enhancements. But prosthetic and cybernetic replacements for failing body parts were allowed. If it was clear he’d been dying, might replacing his entire body be permissible? Or would he live on in that form only to be a pariah in his own community?

  Casmir knew he should be contemplating the larger picture—the gate and its impact on all of humanity—not just his own woes, but with his body making him miserable, it was hard to think about anything else but his illness. His impending death.

  A tear leaked from his eye and froze on Zee’s back.

  Another explosion sounded in the distance.

  Your decision? Moonrazor asked.

  It occurred to him that if she was negotiating with him, it might be because she was worried. She might fear she didn’t have the resources to fight off both parties.

  He wasn’t sure how to use that to his advantage, except to hint that he might be open to her offer. Maybe she would relax her guard and tell him more. The problem was that if he learned more, he might be more tempted.

  Casmir licked his lips. Can you create a loaded droid here? If I chose that fate?

  Yes. We do it often. Convince your people to stop bombing us to ensure our workshop isn’t damaged.

  Let me talk to my friend, he thought. My very good friend. She is one of the people I would not wish to leave behind.

  That was true, but he highly doubted Kim would volunteer to become an astroshaman with him and fly off to another system. How would she get coffee beans for her espresso maker there?

  Speak with whomever you wish. I am not stopping you.

  No, but you and your bots have been attacking me.

  We will give you a respite, so long as you don’t take any more of my defenses offline. You truly are wasting your talent as a teacher.

  Casmir found the comment puzzling. What better occupation could there be? All he said was, I will only act to defend myself.

  So be it.

  16

  Kim paced the aisle of the submarine, worried, angry, and feeling useless. She, Yas, the pilot, and a single mercenary were the only ones who’d been left behind. She kept glancing at the seat Casmir had vacated, angry with Rache for taking him, angry with Casmir for going, and more than the rest, angry with herself for throwing a hissy fit and staying in that office instead of hugging Casmir before he left and telling him to be careful.

  She didn’t think the disease would escalate so quickly that he would die before the team got back to the submarine, but they could die out there for all sorts of other reasons. The whole party could be wiped out by the astroshaman defenses before they made it fifty feet inside. And she would have let Casmir go without saying goodbye. And Rache… she didn’t know how exactly she felt about him, especially since her anger was boiling over everything else right now, but she would also regret it if he died without her having said goodbye.

  She even regretted not saying a farewell to Asger, who’d become something of a friend through their various sparring practices. They didn’t have anything except their desire to stay fit in common, but she would be sad to lose him.

  “Damn it, Yas,” she said when her pacing took her by sickbay as he stepped out and she almost crashed into him.

  He held his hands up. “Sorry.”

  “I’m not mad at you,” she said, realizing she had sounded snippy about the near-bump. No, she was snippy about this whole situation.

  “Are you sure? Because it sounds like you are.” He smiled, but it was fleeting. He was probably worried too.

  “I’m mad at him.”

  He lowered his hands. “I know. If it makes you feel better, he could also contract the Great Plague.”

  “That wouldn’t make me feel better. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”

  “Ah, I wasn’t certain how much vitriol you felt toward him currently.”

  Kim shook her head. “He’s probably already had it anyway.”

  “I don’t know if
that’s true or not. He’s one of many of my mercenaries who doesn’t show up for physical exams, even when I request it.”

  “Are exams optional in mercenary outfits?”

  “They’re not supposed to be. I may have to talk to Rache about enforcing that.”

  Kim doubted a routine exam would have analyzed a person’s various antibodies regardless. “It does seem like he would have gotten it before, since he’s been traveling all over the Twelve Systems for the last ten years. It could have been a fluke that Casmir ran into it his first time out of System Lion, but the records tell us that it exists in pockets and does show up from time to time, occasionally finding someone descended from a nomad or rebel who didn’t allow his or her mitochondria to be altered. Mitochondria are passed on through the mother, so it would depend on her ancestors.”

  Yas rubbed his chin. “I saw it in the hospitals of Tiamat Station a couple of times. Our station is such a hub that it gets traffic not only from all over System Hydra but from people coming to visit from other systems.”

  Kim paused to consider the ramifications of what she’d proposed. “If Rache has had it and survived it—it seems like all the immune amplifications he’s done and his overall good health would have given him better odds than most—he would have antibodies against the virus and be immune to a reinfection, right?”

  “I’d have to check the literature, which is unfortunately not available to me as long as we’re buried down here without network access, but I believe that people who did survive rarely caught it again.”

  “Since he and Casmir are genetically almost the same, it might be possible to borrow some of Rache’s antibodies and inject them into Casmir.”

  Yas nodded. “That might help him fight it off more quickly.”

  “Now I wish I’d asked Rache if he’d had it instead of yelling at him.”

  “You weren’t yelling; you were talking sternly.”

  “That’s how I yell.” Kim went back to pacing. “You don’t have a blood sample of his along, do you? I tested his mitochondria back on Skadi Moon, and I tested him for a lot of diseases, but I don’t think I looked for antibodies to the Great Plague. I got distracted by his unaltered mitochondria. And since hardly anyone gets the Great Plague anymore, at least in the Kingdom, why would you look for antibodies?”