by Claudia Gray
Gillian pays no attention. “Initializing,” she says, and—
The room goes gray. Then it vanishes, not into blackness but into memory. Light seems to blaze in front of Abel, meaningless until he realizes where he is: back in the basement laboratory in London, the place where he was born. He can feel the pink goo dripping from him, remember the faint itch of his skin as his neurons came online.
Another flash of light—
“There you go,” Mansfield says, watching Abel tentatively begin pedaling a bicycle. “Let’s see those reflexes at work.”
Balancing is a more complex skill than his programming suggested it would be, but Abel can do it. He pedals faster, then faster, until he’s zooming down a hill. This is… this must be what humans call fun. Maybe his creator could come up with a way to allow mechs to fly—bioengineered wings, perhaps—
Light swirls around him again, dizzying in its intensity.
Amid a raid by the German authorities, Captain Renault says, “I am shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!”
At that moment a waiter appears at his side. “Your winnings, sir.”
Renault easily replies, “Oh, thank you very much.” Abel laughs out loud.
“You’re learning how to respond to narratives,” Mansfield murmurs. “Good, good.” His hand flicks toward the screen, turning off Casablanca as though there could be no reason to continue. Abel is disappointed, but makes plans to sneak up here at night to watch the rest of the movie.
Light. Movement.
“Captain Gee?” Abel floats in zero gravity, pushing the comm panel within the equipment pod bay for the fourth time. “Dr. Mansfield? The air locks have closed. Power is offline to the pod bay.”
The small windows in the bay reveal the greenish flash of weapons from the furious space battle being waged just outside. The Daedalus has been hit—Abel can deduce that if nothing else—but how badly? Is Mansfield dead? Directive One blazes bright inside him, demanding that he go save his creator, but he can’t.
One more shudder, and the ship goes dark.
Light again, and the contrast nearly overwhelms him.
“What are my orders?” Abel says, looking down at the girl huddled on the floor, a nearly spent blaster clutched in her hands. She has tan skin and chin-length black hair. Her wide, dark eyes stare up at him as if she doesn’t dare believe him. He doesn’t mind. Humans sometimes require long periods of time to understand transitions his brain comprehends at once.
Besides, it’s pleasant to see a human again after so long, even if she is a soldier of Genesis. Pleasant to talk again. And soon, perhaps, he will even be spoken to—
There’s another flash of light, but this one is different. Abel feels as though his memories have become less real, more remote, mere fragments of color in a constantly turning kaleidoscope. He can catch glimpses—kissing Noemi in zero-G, leaping with her across a snowy crevasse in the wreck of the Osiris—but he can’t inhabit them any longer.
His memories are being removed from his body.
The body that is no longer really his.
Someone’s there with him, in his own head. Abel can’t see or hear anything, yet he senses another presence. Maybe this is what it’s like for humans, when they “just know” somebody has walked into a room behind their back.
Father, Abel thinks.
Hello, my boy.
Light flashes again:
Standing in the basement laboratory and seeing Model One A sit up for the first time. As the gestational fluid drips away, he’s able to make out the mech’s features—features so very like his own, when he was young, though perhaps a bit more handsome. Satisfaction flows through him as he sees his masterwork, his future—
Light.
“Don’t do this,” Robin pleads. She’s become so frail these past few months, almost skeletal; it hurts to see her like this. Although she tries to push the diodes away, her hands are too weak to manage it.
He doesn’t want to think about how she’s hurting. He doesn’t have to. He has another plan.
“You’ll wake up in a whole new body,” he promises. “Even if it takes me my entire life, I promise you, I’ll find a way to bring you back.”
“Please, just let me go,” she groans, but he ignores her. He has work to do.
The kaleidoscope spins again, but this time the fragments are unknown to Abel. They must be memories belonging to Burton Mansfield, but he’s losing his ability to even see them, much less make sense of them. The only physical sensation he has left feels vaguely like floating.
“I can hear Gilly,” Mansfield says. It’s hard to tell whether he’s talking to Abel or to himself. There’s not much difference anymore. “Can’t see her yet, but I can hear.”
Abel can’t hear or see. He’s floating away from anything he’s ever seen, or felt, or known.
If a mech has a soul, can that soul go to heaven? Abel’s never had any personal interest in an afterlife, but he wouldn’t mind heaven. If heaven exists, Noemi will be there someday. He’s sure of that. He would so like to see her again.
She was the best part of his life.
“At last,” Mansfield says. This time, he’s unmistakably speaking to Abel. “You’ve found our fate at last. Why did you fight it for so long? Wouldn’t it have been better to just give in?”
“No.”
That’s the last Abel can say. He isn’t floating anymore. He isn’t anywhere anymore. A great blackness envelops him within and without, neither frightening nor comforting, because it is all there is.
He has been evicted from his own body. That ought to be death…
…but somehow it is not.
27
BELLUM SANCTUM IS EATING NOEMI’S BRAIN. OR BURNING it. Consuming it, anyway, until she can hardly think about anything else.
There’s nothing worse than knowing a disaster is coming while having absolutely no idea how to stop it.
“Tell the media!” Virginia suggests as she prepares a small vial of nanotech fluid that—in theory—might help keep Noemi’s breakdowns at bay. She wants to be as functional as possible before the Apollo Acestor takes off. “Say, hey, Genesis, your Council’s leading you straight to hell! Or does the Council control the media?”
“They don’t. We have a free press. But who’s going to believe me?” Noemi settles herself onto the Apollo Acestor’s small biobed. “As far as most people on Genesis are considered, I’m not even human anymore. They wouldn’t trust me if I pointed out the sun is in the sky—much less if I tried to tell them about something like this.”
Ephraim takes the vial from Virginia, pops it into a syringe, and injects it into Noemi’s arm. It doesn’t hurt, save for a faint cold sting. “Why can’t your Captain Baz report it? They’d believe her, right?”
“Not now that she’s violated military security. If anyone found out what she’d done, she’d be considered an oath breaker. On Genesis, we don’t look kindly on those.” Noemi senses the fluid course through her; internal sensors track its passage, which seems like unnecessary information, almost creepy to know. More welcome is the return of her balance. Although Ephraim and Virginia warned her that the nanotech fluid is only a temporary fix at best, she’s grateful for any break in the misery.
“So, you have a free press, but nobody’s going to talk to that free press, because nobody’s going to listen to anybody they don’t want to believe anyway,” Virginia says. “Am I getting the picture here?”
“Unfortunately.” Noemi’s heart sinks. Is Genesis nothing like the world she grew up believing in?
Then Ephraim says, “It’s not so different on Stronghold—or on Earth, or Cray, or anywhere else. Humans in general tend to hear only what they want to hear, and nobody wants to hear about a damned doomsday weapon.”
Okay, so, Genesis isn’t awful. Humans are awful. Noemi sighs. Maybe she should be glad not to be entirely human anymore. Maybe Abel’s arrogance is more like common sense.
Maybe Abel can
help.
Abel was the one individual in the galaxy capable of turning that engine back on. Turning it off again might not be as dangerous—but it is hard to be sure. He’s certainly the only one who’s had substantial experience with the engine in the past couple of decades.
From the moment Noemi learned she was an exile from Genesis, she’s known she wanted to find Abel again. In some ways they parted badly—she shouldn’t have said that, about him making decisions for her, and she suspects he took it as something far uglier than she intended.
But she believes in Abel. She trusts his love for her. Above all, she can count on him to do the right thing.
So once the Apollo Acestor has left Genesis, they need to find Abel. However, she also needs a plan of her own. It’s a big galaxy, Abel won’t know she’s looking for him, and locating him might take more time than Earth has left. What can she do?
“We have to figure out some way to warn Earth,” Noemi says. This is treason, and every word of it stings. But Bellum Sanctum is treason, too, and infinitely worse—because it betrays every principle her world was founded upon. “The Vagabonds call me ‘Vidal of Genesis.’ So people out in the galaxy already know my voice. So maybe Earth’s leaders would listen to me before they threw me in jail. And maybe they can figure out a way to stop this thing.”
Virginia and Ephraim exchange looks across the dim, cramped sick bay. Finally, Virginia says, “I’d call that our best plan, if it weren’t our only plan.”
Noemi hops off the biobed, grateful to feel semi-functional again. “Then let’s get moving.”
The next few minutes pass in a blur of systems checks. All three of them are double-checking the docking bay, when the thumping of footsteps on the gangway makes them all look up. Harriet Dixon and Zayan Thakur rush in, and even in the shadowy bay, she can see that they appear worried.
From the air lock door, Ephraim calls, “You guys coming along? Thought you were settling here for good.”
“That’s the plan,” Harriet says in a rush. “We still hope we can settle on Genesis someday, but that’s not why we’re here.”
Looking grave, Zayan says, “Abel’s in trouble.”
“I was getting to that!” Harriet protests.
“Wait, wait.” Noemi steadies herself with a hand against the wall. The urge to find him again spikes within her, almost painful in its intensity. “What do you mean, Abel’s in trouble? Did he try to come back to Genesis?”
It feels good to think he might’ve risked everything to be with her again. It shouldn’t.
“He didn’t try to come back. He’s being forced to,” Harriet says. “See, Vagabonds know other Vagabonds. We help each other out with deep space repairs, information about routes, that kind of thing.”
Zayan cuts in. “We know a guy who knows a guy who knows someone on the Katara. And the word is that Dagmar Krall gave Abel a place in the Consortium, but Genesis realized he was hiding with them, and the Elder Council demanded that Krall hand Abel over at once, to face trial on Genesis for Akide’s murder. Otherwise their alliance was over.”
Noemi’s voice shakes as she concludes, “And Krall chose the alliance.”
They’re going to bring Abel back here to kill him.
I will never let that happen.
But Harriet surprises her. “No. I mean, yes, Krall chose the alliance, but another friend of ours who mines on the outer reaches of the Earth system said that the Genesis ship transporting him ran into trouble and is broadcasting throughout the whole system that another ship stole their prisoner.”
“You mean Abel escaped?” Noemi’s relief at the thought outweighs the flash of disappointment that she now has no excuse to find him again.
Zayan shakes his head sadly. “Nope. He didn’t escape. Remedy took him prisoner instead.”
“Abel’s not having a great week,” Virginia says.
The joke falls flat. Noemi doesn’t care. What is going on?
“I don’t understand,” Ephraim protests. “Remedy is allied with Genesis! We’re not their enemies, at any rate. So why would anyone who belongs to Remedy attack a Genesis ship to get Abel? Nobody in Remedy has any motive to do it.”
“Someone clearly does.” Noemi straightens as the pieces fall into place in her mind. “There are Remedy members trying to survive on Haven. A lot of them need medical treatment.”
“How is that a motive for Remedy to go after Abel?” Virginia says.
“Think it through.” For days, Noemi has felt off balance, confused, unsure. But now she’s absolutely certain, and as horrible as the situation is, at least she finally knows what’s happening, and what she has to do. “There’s only one person in the galaxy who wants Abel in custody more than Genesis does. Only one other person who’d put a price on his head.”
Virginia’s eyes widen. “Gillian frickin’ Shearer.”
Harriet covers her face with her hands; both Zayan and Ephraim groan. It’s all too clear what’s happened to Abel—and the terrible fate he’s about to face.
“We have to get to Abel, as fast as we possibly can,” Noemi says. Her own fate doesn’t matter now. The danger doesn’t matter either, because Abel can be in no greater danger than he already is. But that doesn’t mean she can forget everything else. “The fastest way back to Haven is through the Earth system, and we were headed there anyway. We can warn them about Bellum Sanctum on the way.”
“Bellum Sanctum?” Zayan asks. “What in the worlds is that?”
“Oh, we are in an entire vortex of trouble, my friend,” Virginia replies. “Explanations later. For now, just go with it.”
Noemi hardly hears any of this. Her mind’s racing too fast, fueled by desperation. “We’ll send a message in the Earth system. Multiple messages, to every government center on Earth, and the offworld bases. We’ll even warn the mining stations near the asteroid belt. We can do all of that on our way to the Haven Gate. And we’ll make sure they believed our message when we check in on our way back, after rescuing Abel.”
She knows it might not be that easy. If there’s already been time for the news of Abel’s capture to have reached Genesis, then there’s surely been time for Gillian Shearer to have wiped Abel’s soul.
Still, she has to try. Even if there’s only one chance in a million to save Abel, Noemi has to give him that chance.
When she lifts her head, she sees that same conviction reflected in every person around her. Abel means more to her than to anyone else here—but he means a lot, to everyone. They all want to rescue him. They’re all in this together.
Harriet and Zayan exchange glances before Zayan says, “If you think you could use a couple of extra hands—”
“We’re leaving immediately,” Ephraim says. “It’s going to be crowded, but if you’re ready, let’s go.”
“We’re ready,” Harriet says, clasping Zayan’s hand.
Virginia hurries into the ship; no doubt she’s headed to choose her ideal spot on the bridge. Harriet and Zayan follow. Noemi hears Zayan mutter under his breath, “I told you we should’ve packed some clothes.”
They fly through the Earth system at top speed, launching beacons and sending signals every chance they get. The Apollo Acestor isn’t as fast as the Persephone, and it doesn’t have as many signaling options, but this is the only ship they have. That makes it the only chance Earth has.
The only chance Abel has.
I’m coming, Noemi thinks over and over, between message packets, between dizzy spells. Please hang on. I’m coming as fast as I can.
The waiting might be easier if she felt like her warnings were getting anywhere. She’d like to think that they’re doing some good. But if anyone from Earth attempts to answer their messages, the Apollo Acestor gets no sign of it.
“I don’t like this,” Ephraim mutters as they soar toward Neptune and the Haven Gate. “Noemi—I know how important saving Abel is to you. It’s important to me, too. That doesn’t change the fact that saving Earth has to be our priority.”
/>
“I agree.” Noemi keeps staring at the viewscreen, as though the power of her concentration could move this ship faster. She feels as if she could push it past the speed of light. “But if Earth won’t listen to the messages, how much more luck do you think we’d have in person?”
“You’ve got a point.” Ephraim sighs heavily. “I hope to hell they’re listening.”
The cold horror of suspense doesn’t dissipate until they reach Neptune, where, amid the frenzy around the Haven Gate, the Apollo Acestor slips through easily. They’re not bothered on their way through the system or landing on the planet either. At least we caught a break there, Noemi thinks. We deserve at least one.
She’d known that settlers were descending on Haven, but she hadn’t realized how quickly they’d organize into, well, cities. The Apollo Acestor lands at a makeshift pad, with several individuals apparently hard at work already. A young man with an Afro hurries up with a dataread in his hands and a grin on his face. “Welcome to Haven! We’re helping people get settled—trying to spread everyone around—”
“That’s a great idea,” Virginia says as they all hurry off the ship, hyperwarm jackets sealed against the cold. “But we’re just visiting.”
He blinks. “We already have tourists? Wow.”
“Not that kind of visit.” Noemi adjusts her holster, feels the reassuring heft of her blaster. “We’ve got to get into the Winter Castle. More to the point, we’ve got to get someone out of it. And this time, I’d rather not have to fight Queens and Charlies the entire way in.”
Although the young man still looks flummoxed, he directs them to the “hospital,” a hastily put-together place, not unlike the triage stations sometimes set up on base after especially devastating battles. Apparently the head of the hospital handles negotiations with the Winter Castle.
That’s mildly surprising—she still doesn’t understand how these “negotiations” work—but Noemi gets the shock of her life when she sees who one of the volunteer nurses is.
