by Claudia Gray
Noemi takes one step back and wobbles on uncertain ground. It’s not much of a tilt, but she loses her balance completely and topples back into the thick snow. Directly above her, one of Haven’s largest moons is full, occupying almost a quarter of the afternoon sky. She stares up at it, breathing deeply, trying to regather her strength. You’re almost done. Abel’s going to get out of there—the part of him that matters, anyway—and once you’re all safe, you can rest. You can be healed. Abel’s body can be regained later. Just keep going.
“Noemi?” Delphine kneels by her side. “Are you okay?”
“Just dizzy,” Noemi says as she lets Delphine help her sit up, then stand. Her knees feel watery, and pain shoots through her spine as though someone has sliced her nerves, but she keeps her soldier’s reserve on her face. The others have worried about her enough.
“There!” Zayan yells, pointing to the Winter Castle. “There they are!”
Relief proves nearly as overwhelming as her fall. Noemi’s head reels, but she hangs on to Delphine’s arm. Her vision is slightly sharper than before—that thing in her head processing the messages from her eyes in more detail—so she can make out the enormous gray Smasher churning through the snow, its legs folded down into tank treads, its domed head pulled down to minimize any damage from blaster fire, though the green bolts barely scathe it. Abel’s in that thing, she thinks, and it’s so beautiful and horrible and funny that her heart can barely contain it all.
In Abel’s arm she spots a human shape: Ephraim Dunaway, who looks like no more than a doll held in the huge Smasher claw.
Abel holds no one else.
“Virginia?” Noemi says, her voice tremulous. “Do you guys see Virginia?”
Zayan looks stricken. Harriet pulls up a set of distance goggles and peers through them; when her face falls, Noemi knows the answer.
Surely Abel wouldn’t have left the Winter Castle without Virginia unless—
All the white surrounding Noemi turns black. Horror swallows her whole. This time, when she falls, she doesn’t even feel it—just hears the crunch of her body in the snow, and Delphine calling her name from far away. She manages to open her eyes for a moment, but all she sees above her is that enormous moon. It’s not bright anymore. The moon is black, and it’s erasing the sun.
She comes to in some shadowy place, not as cold as before yet still not entirely warm. Noemi turns her head, trying to focus on her surroundings, but it’s difficult.
“Hey, hey, take it easy.” A shape comes close enough for her to make it out: Ephraim Dunaway, wearing his medical scrubs and a worried expression. “Can you hear me, Noemi?”
Her mouth is dry. She has to swallow before she can answer. “Where is this?”
“This is the Persephone. Sick bay. Abel led us here.”
How could she not even recognize the room? She’s been here so many times. She thinks she’s lying on the same bed where Esther died. Abel cleaned that room up for me so I wouldn’t have to see Esther’s blood. That wasn’t programming; that was Abel’s soul at work. Why couldn’t I see it back then?
“Noemi?” Ephraim pulls her back to the here and now. “The Vagabonds turned over a couple of deactivated mechs—they managed to take the mechs down during the fight over the ‘distraction’ ships. Abel’s guided me through extracting what we think is the update that would fix you. Unfortunately, we haven’t really been able to test it—but I think we have to go ahead and try it. Your condition is deteriorating faster by the minute.”
She knows he’s right. The danger to her body and her sanity throbs in every cell. “Okay.”
Ephraim is already preparing some kind of sensors to stick onto her skin. “You’re going to be unconscious for a while, I think. Maybe the better part of a day.”
That’s time they don’t have, Noemi knows—but what else can they do?
The memory of Ephraim in Abel’s Smasher grip jolts her into sharper awareness. “Where’s Abel?”
Ephraim doesn’t look up from his hurried preparations. “In the docking bay. He’s too big to fit in any other part of the ship.”
The rest of her memory catches up, and terror seizes her. “Oh, God. Virginia? What’s happened to Virginia?”
She expects the worst. Instead, Ephraim groans as if in exasperation. “Virginia couldn’t make the exit rendezvous, so she decided to hide inside the Winter Castle and wreck it from the inside. Which is a terrible move if I ever heard of one, but she didn’t give us a chance to argue. We haven’t heard anything else yet.”
Noemi feels a wave of relief—Virginia’s not dead!—but then is worried all over again. What in all the worlds does Virginia think she can do from inside the Castle?
But then Ephraim’s pulling a mask over Noemi’s nose and mouth, the air turns sweetly strange, and it suddenly seems like a very good time to go to sleep.
When Noemi awakens again, she instantly knows her treatment is over and that it went well. She feels better than she has in weeks—better, even, than she did when she was last fully human. Blinking away her grogginess, she props herself up on her elbows. The motion comes easily, and the shooting pain along her nerves has vanished.
She’s still in sick bay, wrapped in blankets on a biobed. In one corner sits Harriet, paging through something on her dataread. The colorful ribbons woven through her braids strike Noemi with their vividness, which makes her realize her eyesight has become even sharper. What other abilities might have been enhanced by her cybernetic nervous system, now that it’s fully integrated with the rest of her? The thing attached to her brain still speaks, but instead of screeching data at her, it’s a soft whisper, one she can tune into or tune out as she chooses. Her body is no longer at war with itself. It has fully become—
What it was meant to be, she thinks. What I was meant to be.
Harriet catches sight of her. “You’re awake! Thank goodness. We were starting to wonder if that update hadn’t done the trick after all.”
“Where’s Ephraim?” Noemi says, propping up on her elbows.
“He’s back down on Haven, helping with the medical efforts down there. He’s been checking in every few hours.”
If Ephraim’s “down” on Haven…“Where are we?”
“Parked on one of the larger moons in this system. The Winter Castle sent out a few scout mechs, and we thought it was better to get the Persephone out of range. How do you feel?”
“Good. Pretty great, really.” Noemi sits up straight before she asks, “Have we heard anything from Virginia?”
Harriet’s face falls. “Not yet. But the Winter Castle hasn’t said they’ve caught her either. For sure Mansfield and Shearer would’ve tried to use her as a bargaining chip if they had her in custody. Maybe she’s lying low.”
Maybe. Noemi wishes there were some way to know for sure.
Harriet must see how afraid Noemi is for Virginia, because she says, “Abel’s still down in the docking bay. Maybe you should say hi, if you’re feeling up to it?”
Being with Abel seems like the only real comfort in the worlds. “Good plan.”
Noemi slips on a robe over her medical gown and heads down the long corridor to the docking bay. When she steps through the air lock, the bay looks much as it did before—much of its space taken up by the huge gray bulk of a Smasher sitting within. The difference is, this time the Smasher turns to her.
“Harriet told me you were awake,” Abel says. His new voice is flat and metallic, not human at all, without much expression. Knowing him as she does, though, Noemi senses the feeling behind it. “It’s good to see you again.”
“I wanted you with me. Of course you couldn’t come; you wouldn’t even fit through the door, but—I wanted you anyway.”
Abel hesitates, then holds out one huge claw. Noemi wraps her hand around one of the “fingers,” hoping his sensors are sharp enough to feel some of it.
“I’m sorry I had to leave Virginia behind,” he says. “She never came close enough for me to talk with, m
uch less bring along.”
“I know. There’s nothing else you could’ve done.” She takes a deep breath, her mind full of memories. At the moment she thinks of the first night she and Virginia sat up together, talking under the string lights in the Razers’ hideout. That was when Noemi realized that behind all her slang and bravado, Virginia Redbird was really very lonely.
“She can’t survive down there long,” Noemi says quietly. “Even if Virginia can keep from getting caught, she hasn’t had the Cobweb protocol. Haven’s environment is toxic to her. In another couple of days, she’ll collapse.”
Abel nods; the hinges beneath his domed head creak. “I don’t imagine it’s much consolation, but—Virginia knew the risks. She made her own choices.”
Tears well in Noemi’s eyes, and she wipes them away with the back of her free hand. “I wish I could hug you. I wish I could burrow down in your arms away from everything, just for a little while.”
“You could—but it wouldn’t offer the same psychological comfort.” Abel peers down at his massive metal body. “Humans need the touch of other humans. I can’t give you that.”
“Just for the time being,” Noemi insists. “We’ll get your body back somehow. We have to.”
“It may well be a matter of galactic significance.” Abel may have a little Mansfield ego in him, because he seems to enjoy counting these points off: “Genesis will destroy planet Earth, and billions of lives along with it, if the Bellum Sanctum strategy is not stopped. The strategy cannot be stopped unless the core disruptor is de-powered. The only way to cut power to the core disruptor is by shutting down the engine. Shutting down the engine would be dangerous if not fatal to a human, so only a mech can do it. Genesis doesn’t use mechs, and Remedy’s are breaking down, which means the only mech available to shut it down is me. However, my current body wouldn’t even fit through the tunnels to the engine controls.”
Noemi thinks hard. “I don’t suppose Mansfield and Shearer are too worried about any of their friends or possessions on Earth. The other colony worlds will make them rich buying Mansfield Cybernetics mechs all on their own. So we can’t talk them into handing your body over for the greater good.”
“Highly unlikely,” Abel agrees. “Mansfield could potentially shut the engines down himself, now that he has mech-level dexterity, but he would be extraordinarily unlikely to accept that risk, even for the benefit of billions of others.”
“Selfish bastard,” Noemi mutters.
That makes Abel cock his head. “Burton Mansfield’s parents, Charlton and Ann, were married at the time of his birth, and for that matter at the time of his conception. However, in the metaphorical sense, your statement is true. He is a very selfish bastard.”
It sounds like Abel’s reporting the results of a data analysis. Noemi would laugh if the situation weren’t so dire.
Instead, she forces herself to concentrate. “So, we have to steal your body back, whether by stealth or by attack. Which plan has the best chance of success?”
“Uncertain. I’m afraid I don’t have the same computational capacity at the present.” Abel’s flat metallic voice sounds almost apologetic. “While I have enough memory in this Smasher unit to contain my consciousness, I can’t simultaneously run high-level calculations.”
“And I’m not quite enhanced enough for that, am I?” Noemi wants to groan. She’s too mech to live on Genesis, but not enough mech to save Earth.
“Merely in general terms,” Abel says, “another assault on the Winter Castle seems inadvisable, at least until our tactical situation has changed. At this time, we have only ourselves and our minimal weaponry, and our only allies are Vagabonds on Haven, who don’t have the resources to break through the Castle’s security.”
Noemi’s gut drops as she realizes how right he is. If Genesis knew what we’re trying to do, they’d send starfighters to blow the Persephone to atoms. We tried to tell Earth we’re helping them, but as far as we can tell, they’ve ignored us. Cray, Kismet, and Stronghold have their own problems, and besides, there’s not enough time to negotiate with three different planets.
As for the Krall Consortium, they betrayed Abel and sent him to what they thought would be his death. They can’t trust Dagmar Krall.
Can’t trust Dagmar Krall, she thinks again. Would any members of the Consortium agree?
Abel continues, “There is, of course, the chance that your earlier warnings to Earth have borne fruit, and they will manage to mount an effective defense against the Bellum Sanctum device. But given Earth’s intransigence in the past, I suspect they were not convinced.”
Slowly Noemi says, “When Krall sold you out, did she hide her actions from the rest of the Consortium?”
If Abel’s jarred by the change of topic, he shows no sign. “Upon consideration, I believe she did. Few ships were in the vicinity when I was handed over to Genesis custody.”
Loyalty matters to Vagabonds. Oaths have meaning there. Promises are meant to be as binding as law. “The other Vagabonds wouldn’t like finding out one of their own had been betrayed, would they?”
“Even Krall herself didn’t like it,” Abel says. “My mech status did not seem to affect her judgment of me, or the other Vagabonds’ either.”
“That’s not quite where I’m going with this.” Noemi drums her fingers along her leg, excitement brewing as her idea takes shape. “I think I might have a plan.”
“You do?” Abel sounds so puzzled. Later, maybe, she’ll be thrilled that she finally got a step ahead of him.
“I do,” she says slowly. “I think it’s time the Vagabonds of the Consortium learned just what Dagmar Krall’s capable of.”
32
HARRIET’S MESSAGE IS PURELY TEXT:
There’s never been any official “Vagabond Code,” but if there were, it would say that we stick together. We can’t trust Earth, and we can’t trust any grounders to understand our way of life—so we have to be able to trust each other. Among Vagabonds, our word is our bond. Or at least, that’s how it used to be. Dagmar Krall doesn’t seem to think so anymore.
Ask around—anyone who was on the Katara that day will tell you that Abel, captain of the free ship Persephone, was initiated into the Krall Consortium.
But then Krall sold him out to Genesis.
She’ll tell you she did that for Genesis’s sake. For the alliance. For the survival of the Consortium itself. But what kind of “alliance” forces us to betray our own? Who’s really in charge here? Does Dagmar Krall intend to turn our Consortium into simple cannon fodder for Genesis?
If you’re better than that—if you’re still loyal to your fellow Vagabonds—come to the Haven Gate. We claim the right of challenge!
As political rhetoric goes, Abel thinks, it’s not bad. It both stokes anger and touches upon the Vagabonds’ core values, while gracefully omitting the information that Genesis wants Abel for a crime he did in fact commit. He wonders whether, in a slightly different lifetime, Harriet might’ve ended up in politics. Her message is marked only for Vagabond vessels; it will start with those in the Earth system and then be spread by them through the one unstoppable communications relay in the galaxy: gossip.
Zayan’s message includes video. He stands on the Persephone bridge, dressed in vibrant Vagabond clothes, head held high as though he did this every day.
“Dagmar Krall’s betrayal of one of our own is a betrayal of us all. When we swore oaths to the Consortium, we swore to protect every Vagabond within it. Not to protect Genesis—to protect each other. These promises don’t seem to mean much to Krall anymore. All Consortium ships are hereby summoned to the Haven Gate, inside the Haven system. We claim the right of challenge! If the Katara fails to appear, Krall has forfeited—and we will choose another leader, one who remembers the meaning of a promise!”
Zayan’s delivery isn’t as polished as Harriet’s text, but the message is even more pointed. This one will be routed through regular comm relays, which means even isolated Vagabonds, those
beyond the reach of the Consortium, will see it. Abel thinks a few of these ships will arrive at the rendezvous, too, if only out of curiosity.
The “right of challenge” has only ever been ceremonial, according to Harriet and Zayan. It’s mentioned in the oaths new Consortium members take—Abel remembers that much—but it was almost a joke between Dagmar Krall and her followers, a promise that she wouldn’t turn into a tyrant.
This joke is about to become uncomfortably real, at least for her.
For lack of anything else to do, Abel reviews these messages repeatedly, from the docking bay, the only part of the Persephone his new, bulky body will fit into. He isn’t uncomfortable—the Smasher form is impervious to pain—but he’s getting rather bored.
When he was trapped in the equipment pod bay all those years, he entertained himself as best he could with his considerable internal resources. He replayed Casablanca over and over in his head, the perfect memories as good as watching it on a screen. He reviewed great works of literature stored in his databanks. He ran different battle simulations for many famed historical Earth conflicts, from Thermopylae to World War IV’s climactic Siege of St. Louis. Mathematical proofs, various plans for helping his creator escape cryosleep, composing formulae for thirty-dimensional spheres—it had occupied Abel’s mind reasonably well.
Which is to say, it wasn’t nearly enough to fill thirty years of isolation. It was enough to keep him from going mad, no more.
Abel has company to talk to this time—especially Noemi. But the humans on board can’t spend all their time chatting with him; they have a ship to run. Which means he’s stuck down here, profoundly bored.
The problem is that he installed enough memory in this Smasher to contain his consciousness—but only barely. There’s no surplus, nothing for him to use on such elaborate mental pursuits. He’s uncomfortably aware that even the slightest memory degradation in this unit will result in serious and probably permanent damage to his mind.
