by Claudia Gray
No. She can’t afford to start thinking that way. The one absolute way to fail Abel would be to quit trying.
Okay. I can’t get onto the bridge the normal way. I can’t think of alternatives when I’m this panicky and upset. So if I want to get back to Abel quickly enough to help him, I first need to calm down. She laughs once, a brittle sound. Has she ever been this far from calm?
The only thing that would help her would be understanding more of what’s been done to her. She might be able to figure that out in sick bay.
Painstakingly, Noemi works her way up the rest of the corridor, cursing Burton Mansfield or whoever it was who decided sick bay should be at the very top of the Persephone. Although she keeps herself braced against the wall throughout, her speed continues to improve.
Walking is occurring approximately 1.65 times faster than three minutes before, says the intruder in her brain.
At last she stumbles through the doors into sick bay. She sees one biobed—knows she was there not long ago—and memory jolts her, searing her soul:
Akide staring at her, horrified by the blaster in his hand, by what he’d done.
Abel picking her up from the floor.
Telling him to find her in Esther’s star, and then the great onrushing dark—
That would’ve been her death. It wasn’t a bad way to die: not alone, fairly quick, without getting anyone else hurt. After two years of combat duty in the Liberty War, Noemi has seen enough death to know the many ways it can come, and how horrible it can be. A good death is a rare gift, and she feels oddly cheated of it.
But Abel has given her more life, life she intends to use.
Noemi looks at the wall of cryosleep pods. One of the pods is missing, the floor beneath it gleaming with fluid. Soaking-wet scraps of dark green material float in the puddles there—the remnants of her exosuit. Noemi puts one hand to her belly to feel the loose garment of coarse white fabric she wears.
Who put this on me? God, I hope it was Abel. Not that she’s 100 percent ready for him to see her naked yet, but better him than Gillian Shearer. Just the thought of being seen by those cold, clinical blue eyes makes her shudder. She’s been violated enough for one day.
It’s unlike Abel not to have cleaned up the cryosleep pod. He must’ve been rushed, and even upset. More upset than Noemi’s ever seen him. But she can imagine it. The same fear rattles in her chest now.
She makes her way to one of the biobeds and sets it for a standard scan. It’s not 0.7 seconds before the abnormalities begin to show up on the nearby screen. Noemi’s eyes widen as she takes in the dark, too-angular shape within her abdomen instead of her internal organs. Worse is the dull silhouette of something embedded within the lobes of her brain. Scariest of all is the silvery tangle of thin lines that follow her every nerve and blood vessel—the cybernetic nervous system, the thing that makes her less human, more mech.
That’s the part she’d like to ditch. But how is she supposed to get that out?
Noemi lets her head fall back on the biobed and stares blankly at the ceiling. Understanding what she’s become hasn’t calmed her down. It’s plunged her into something as heavy as lead and dark as space.
She closes her eyes in despair, then opens them. Wait. What happened to Darius Akide?
The Elder was on this ship. He shot her from only a meter or two—
—1.689 meters, whispers the thing in her head—
—away from this very biobed. Abel was completely incapacitated at the time. Obviously he got the better of Akide, but how? When and how did Akide leave the Persephone?
Her skin prickles with fear when she wonders if he’s still aboard. He could be waiting in any room, any side corridor, blaster in his hand—
Abel wouldn’t have let that happen, she reminds herself. Still, the mystery of Akide’s whereabouts is one Noemi would like to solve.
The nearest control panel crackles with sound. “Hullo out there! What system is this?”
It’s not a voice she’s ever heard before. Doesn’t sound like Earth authorities. No Remedy warship would greet anyone so warmly. So who is it?
Noemi pushes herself upright. This time she’s able to rise to her feet fairly smoothly. Another few steps and she’s able to brace herself on the wall next to the computer panel. A few quick inputs will reroute communication to sick bay. “This is the free ship Persephone, and you’re in the Haven system.”
Her answer is a whoop of pure glee. “This is it! This is it! By all the gods, we found Haven!” The screen flickers, patching in visual as well, revealing a shabby ship’s bridge peopled by eight Vagabonds, every single one of them laughing, crying, or both.
It’s a few minutes before there’s any break in the ruckus, which lets Noemi say, “I’m trying to get back to Haven—”
“This is the free ship Altamura, also bound for Haven. Those damned Earthers couldn’t stand in our way for long, huh?”
“No. They couldn’t.” Despite everything, she begins to smile.
One of the Vagabonds points at Noemi. “Listen to her voice. Isn’t that the girl from the audio?”
The stout captain holds out her arms as though she could embrace Noemi through the comm channel. “It is you, isn’t it? The very one who told us about Haven to begin with! Here to guide all of us to our new home.”
“That was me on the signal,” she confirms. “Noemi Vidal of the planet Genesis. I could use some—”
“Told you it wasn’t in the Kismet system,” cries a Vagabond who’s pouring something fizzy out of a bottle into cups for his fellow shipmates. “That Remedy signal wouldn’t steer us wrong!”
The woman he’s talking to is grinning with joy, but she still retorts, “There’s odd things afoot near Kismet. So it wasn’t the Haven Gate. Doesn’t mean it was nothing. And I still don’t trust Remedy as far as I can throw ’em.”
“How many ships are there?” Noemi tries. Maybe if she can calm them down enough to talk about themselves, they might then listen to her.
With a cackle, the captain cries, “Dozens! Maybe even hundreds! We put together a group for this run, and we struck gold!”
Hundreds? Noemi switches the screen to an external view. What she sees isn’t the usual endless void of outer space, but a flotilla of Vagabond ships, each of them brilliant with multicolored patterns. A few plainer, newer ships must be Earth ships themselves—but civilian ships, piloted by humans who are as sick of Earth’s leaders as any colony world.
Noemi’s smile widens. “No. Earth couldn’t stay in our way for long.”
As she watches, another dozen ships appear. Then another. The flotilla is becoming a fleet. Literally thousands of humans are headed to Haven as fast as they can go.
“Altamura,” she says, loudly enough to break through their party, “my autopilot’s malfunctioning. It’s trying to drag me back through the Haven Gate, which is the exact opposite of where I want to go. Any chance you guys could give me a tow?” The autopilot will shut down when a tow beam locks on, as a safety precaution to keep the ship from being torn apart.
“You’ve got it, Persephone! Get ready for a bump.”
Did Abel take this into account, too? Will another of his fail-safes shut down the tow?
No. The entire ship shudders from the impact of the beam, and Noemi tumbles to her knees. Falling down doesn’t even bother her, not once she realizes she’s finally headed back to Haven.
As dozens more ships continue to appear in the space around her, she thinks, Please, God, let us make it there in time.
Abel can’t have long left.
8
ABEL STANDS IN A KIND OF CAGE MADE OF LIGHT—SENSOR beams that periodically sweep different sections of his body, checking and rechecking data. Gillian Shearer stands on the far side of the lab, staring at his readouts rather than at her prisoner himself. Some murderers might do this as a way of dehumanizing their victim, but Gillian never thought of him as the equal of a human.
This is merely caution. Sh
e took his report of damage seriously, which was both wise of her and lucky for him. In theory, more time in captivity should mean more chances for him to escape.
In reality, no chances have yet become apparent. Rather than becoming discouraged, Abel remains focused. He doesn’t need many chances, only one.
One that needs to arrive soon. To be precise, within the next 9.87 minutes.
“Internal wireless capabilities are almost completely shot,” Gillian says. “How did you do this?”
“Genesis forces were under heavy fire in the most recent battle.”
“And you got hit?” She raises one eyebrow, as starkly red as a scar. “I’m surprised you came out as well as you did.”
“My ability for self-repair is considerable,” Abel points out. Both of his previous two statements were factual, but neither was relevant. He has no intention of telling Gillian what he was able to do at the Battle of Genesis—how he reached out with the machine side of himself and stopped Earth’s mechs from attacking Genesis forces. Instead, they destroyed one another. That ability has proved dangerous, and Abel’s unsure the circumstances will ever be dire enough for him to do that again. But if Gillian ever learned the full truth, she would no doubt launch into other tests and experiments equally painful and even more hazardous.
However, that might buy him more time.…
“It doesn’t surprise me that your non-wired communications overloaded. They’re a generation out of date.” Gillian’s fingertips fly over her console as she speaks. Still she doesn’t look up. “That’s really the only way in which you’re outdated, Model One A. You don’t come close to Tether capability.”
“Tether capability?” Abel frowns. “I’ve never heard of this, and I’ve been studying cybernetic advancements.”
Gillian shrugs. “Nobody much talks about the Tether. It would be like—like designing the fastest spaceship known to humankind and talking about the color of the chairs. Tether tech is simple. It’s functional. It’s… invisible, the way the best technologies should be.”
“Is it hardware or software?”
“Both, in a manner of speaking,” Gillian says. “AI systems designed to communicate wirelessly usually have immense storage for complex signals, plus the bandwidth to handle Tether-coded signals. You know, ships, massive mainframes, remote-intercept data solids, that kind of thing. Mechs, however, don’t have that bandwidth or that storage. So they require certain hardware, which you lack.”
Abel feels almost offended. “I’ve never noticed any lack.”
“Only machines programmed to analyze communication would ever notice the difference. Well, other machines and my father. So we should get that taken care of before we do anything else.”
How perverse of her to keep saying “we,” Abel thinks. As though I were cooperating.
Gillian steps closer, a small silver cylinder held within her fingers. “I can do the hardware update manually. Fortunately we don’t have to open up your cranium; it’s easiest to just go up the nose.”
Easiest for her, she means.
The following few minutes are incredibly uncomfortable. Abel feels the cool metal being pushed up his nostril, then the burst of pain as it begins moving through the membranes that seal off his brain. Blood wells up anew, trickling from his nose and staining Gillian’s glove. He can taste it in the back of his throat. A human undergoing this would either panic or pass out, probably both, before their inevitable death. Abel simply forces himself to think about something else. Something more pleasant. Which in this case could be nearly anything in the galaxy.
What he chooses to think about is Noemi’s getaway. By now she should be at least halfway to the Haven Gate. She should also have regained some basic motor control, which means she’ll also have tried to rescue him and found his fail-safe message. At this very moment, Abel calculates, there is an 86.39 percent chance that Noemi is absolutely furious.
He imagines her fury, and smiles.
“That felt good to you?” Gillian gives him a look as she strips off her bloody gloves. “It shouldn’t have.”
“It was bearable,” Abel says. He swallows another gulp of blood as she squirts a medi-gel up his nose to seal off the worst of the bleeding.
“Good. Time to test it out.” She taps in a command on the console, then pauses. “Anything?”
“No.”
“I’ll know if you’re lying.”
“Then you should know that I’m not.” Abel “hears” nothing, receives no data.
With a scowl, Gillian turns back to her control panels, studying readouts for a clue as to what might’ve gone wrong. Surely, with her expertise, she’s more than capable of simple hardware installation. Apparently she erred this time, but she’ll get it right soon. So this delay seems unlikely to last long.
Stall, he thinks. It is his one productive option.
So he asks, “Are you certain Professor Mansfield’s consciousness was fully preserved?” It would be especially galling for his soul to be destroyed to make room for another if that other is unable to function.
“Oh, yes.” A flicker of dismay remains on Gillian’s face, but she must not be that worried, because she’s already getting back to work. “We’ve been working on consciousness storage for a long time, you know.”
“At least since my creation,” he says.
She laughs. “Long before that! There wouldn’t have been any point to you otherwise.”
That stings—and yet, he sees the logic of it.
She continues, “Father first became interested when Mummy became ill. He’s always hoped to find a home for her. Someday, we will.”
Gillian’s gaze turns toward a wall of devices and components—a memory storage unit here, a metal knee joint there. One item on the shelves is different from the others: a box of ornately carved wood. He ought to have noticed it before. The box is large enough to contain a remote-intercept data solid, the kind of thing Mansfield uses to contain a soul.
“Your father managed to preserve the consciousness of the late Robin Mansfield,” Abel says. “He could do it perfectly that long ago?”
The brief cheer on her face fades. “Not perfectly,” she admits.
“How do you know that? How do you know she’s stored at all?” Consciousness transfer is probably Mansfield’s single most brilliant achievement, and it’s the one Abel has deliberately refused to learn about. It is, after all, the way he’ll die.
Gillian replies, “We tried developing a written interface, but she couldn’t respond to that. So I suggested—I was a girl, understand—I suggested a Ouija board.”
“A… Ouija board.” Abel tries to imagine Burton Mansfield stooping to this, and can’t. Yet it must’ve happened.
“We magnetized a planchette so Mum was able to move a cursor on the board. She spelled out words, and answered yes-or-no questions.” Gillian isn’t looking directly at Abel any longer; this part is harder for her to remember. “Mummy got some of the questions wrong, and some of what she said made no sense. So, obviously, there’s been consciousness damage, or incomplete storage. But it is her. She’s in there.”
“But you have no Inheritor mech for her, nor can you build one,” Abel says. For an Inheritor to take on someone else’s consciousness, it must be created using genetic material from that same person, taken during their youth. This is something Mansfield didn’t discover until Robin Mansfield had been dead for decades.
Gillian shrugs, trying to come across as casual. “We’ll have to come up with a different solution for her. But we will. Soon the whole family will be together again.”
She thinks she’ll get them all back: her mother, her father, and Simon, the young son she lost only a few months ago. The first attempt at loading Simon’s consciousness into a mech body ended tragically; the body wasn’t fully developed, and nobody had prepared the child for the shocking transformation. Simon couldn’t understand what had happened to him—and his resulting terror and anger had contributed to fatal malfunct
ions. Surely Robin Mansfield would be even more confused, if her damaged consciousness is still capable of a state of mind that could be called confusion.…
Abel realizes he’s trying to solve Mansfield’s problems instead of looking out for his own safety. Directive One still has its power.
“Dr. Shearer, we have a proximity alert,” intones the voice of a Queen mech, through one small speaker that must connect this lab to the Winter Castle’s central security. “We’ve detected multiple ships on planetary approach.”
Gillian gapes with shock. She takes two steps from the console, staring up at the speaker as though it were the source of the problem and not the messenger. “That can’t be right. How could anyone possibly—what are you grinning about?”
Abel continues to grin. “Did I not mention that Noemi informed the entire galaxy of Haven’s existence more than a week ago?”
“What?”
“Millions of people from Earth, Stronghold, Kismet—even the Vagabonds—they’re all looking for a new home,” he says. “The kind of home they might have on Haven. Although we did not give them the specific coordinates of the Haven Gate, the search would’ve been intense, and has now been successful. I’d predict at least hundreds of ships are on their way here now. Within days, there’ll be thousands. Even tens of thousands.”
Cold fury in every syllable, she says, “This world is ours.”
“You should tell that to the overwhelming majority of its population, as of a few minutes from now.” Abel’s never been so polite, so crisp, so formal. Puncturing at least one of Gillian Shearer’s ambitions feels richly satisfying. He reminds himself to study human concepts of revenge. “By tomorrow, the Winter Castle may be no more than a small town. That would give you the approximate authority of—a mayor?”
Gillian mutters a word so obscene that Abel’s been programmed never to repeat it, then dashes out the door. She leaves him alone, unguarded.
His one chance has come.
9
