by Claudia Gray
Abel nods. “As soon as she heard my voice—speaking my words—Gillian would’ve known the truth. But I can’t predict how that truth will make her react.”
The comms come back on with a squeal. “I’m not going to grovel to you people.” She sounds awful—ragged, even desperate. Noemi figures that, by now, she’s reviewed security footage and seen her. There’s no telling what Shearer might do when she’s totally on her own. “You haven’t beaten us. Not yet. We built this structure to withstand attack from without and from within—there are self-destruct systems in place that—”
“Were!” Virginia calls from her place by the door, then coughs again. “Were self-destruct systems in place. Not so much anymore.”
After a pause, Shearer says, in utter confusion, “Who is that?”
“The name’s Virginia Redbird. You may know me as ‘that intruder who’s been crawling around in your ductwork for a couple days now.’ The one you were never sure existed? Though honestly, I don’t think you tried too hard to find me.”
“What is the point of this?” Shearer says with contempt. “Make no mistake—”
“You made at least one mistake,” Virginia interjects. “You know, Gill, I’ve heard so much about you being some kind of genius, but you left a Razer alone in areas where she could tap into central computer systems. So I’m kinda not seeing it.”
“What’s a Razer?” Shearer demands.
Virginia grins even wider. “Let me show you. How about you try activating one of those self-destruct systems you’re threatening us with?” After another cough, she continues, “Just try.”
A long pause stretches out, during which Gillian Shearer says nothing. The total silence strongly indicates that no self-destruction is about to occur. Noemi grins at Virginia, who looks as happy as anyone can when on the verge of passing out.
Finally, over the speakers, comes Shearer’s voice: “I surrender.”
Residents of the Winter Castle begin to cheer and clap. Vinh begins assembling a group to confront Shearer and confine her to her quarters. Another group prepares to go out and speak with the Vagabond groups outside, the first step in forming what will eventually be a unified community. This structure is no longer a “terrarium.” It is free.
Noemi’s comm crackles, and a Vagabond captain says, “We’ve received signals from advance ships. Genesis is trying to summon Consortium vessels to guard them once they enter the Earth system. It looks like they’ll be coming through the Genesis Gate in a matter of hours.”
Damn it! If only we’d gotten a little more time—but Noemi stops herself. Every soldier knows that you don’t fight the theoretical battle you planned on; you fight the real battle at hand. “Got it. The Persephone will be ready to join you ASAP.”
The Battle of Genesis had been one of the greatest conflicts in galactic history. The Battle of Earth may eclipse it. And the stakes are the death of a world.
Turning to Abel, Noemi quietly asks, “Are you ready to leave?”
He pauses. “We should go to Gillian’s main lab.”
“Didn’t you just blow that up?”
“No, I destroyed the core cybernetics unit. We need to go to her individual lab, where she performed work on me.” Abel’s expression is grave. “That’s where Robin Mansfield’s data solid is kept.”
Another Mansfield? Noemi wants to groan. “Why are we going after a data solid?”
“You’ll see,” Abel insists. “Let’s go.”
They both know the way there now. The lab looks almost exactly the same as it did the last time Noemi was there, except there’s no regenerative pod for her, no laser cage for Abel. She glances over at him, remembering that this must be the place where he was thrown out of his own body. A human might be shaken, returning to the location of a trauma. Abel, however, seems undaunted.
He walks smoothly through the room toward a desk, from which he picks up an ornate wooden box. Noemi watches him pull out a data solid—an old-fashioned one, more like the few they still use back on Genesis than the ones she’s seen Shearer and Mansfield use recently. It glows more dimly than the new ones. Abel looks down at it sadly. “Here she is. Robin Mansfield, or what remains of her consciousness.”
“Wait. What? Mansfield was keeping his dead wife in a box?” Noemi has studied ancient Earth literature, including the Gothic, and she thinks this sounds a lot like an updated version of Jane Eyre.
Abel nods, but before he can explain further, they hear Gillian Shearer cry out, “No! Stop!”
Alarmed, Noemi turns to see Shearer dash into the room. Two men run in behind her; Noemi recognizes them as Winter Castle residents who volunteered to take custody of their former leader. Apparently they’re not doing a great job. Probably they wanted Shearer to hand over data, and instead they’ve given her another crack at Abel.
Although Noemi gets her blaster ready, Shearer simply skids to a stop in front of Abel and pleads, “Not my mother. Not my mother, too. You wouldn’t do that to me. Would you?”
There’s nothing left of the zealous scientist, or the domineering would-be dictator. Gillian Shearer has left all that behind. Noemi sees the little girl within this grown woman, the one who’s lost so much and can’t bear to lose more.
Abel’s reply is kinder than Shearer deserves. “While in a disembodied state, I was able to communicate with the remnants of your mother. Her memory patterns have significantly degraded.”
Shearer swallows hard. “You—you can’t be sure of that.”
“I can, and I am,” Abel says gently. “I’m sorry, Gillian. I would never unnecessarily take human life, or even destroy human consciousness. But you have no way to resurrect your mother, now or in the foreseeable future. Her consciousness has deteriorated to the point where she has only the remnants of her former personality. This will be difficult for you to hear, but you must understand—she’s lost most of her memories of you.”
The sound in Shearer’s throat is so mournful that Noemi can’t help pitying her—at least, about this.
“Your mother asked me to explain her wishes,” Abel says. “She wanted you to destroy the data solid… to let her go. If you refused, I was to do it instead.”
He holds out the data solid. Both his face and Shearer’s are painted bluish by the solid’s dull gleam.
Abel concludes, “What do you want to do?”
Shearer sobs once. “I can’t. But if you—if you could—”
Instantly, Abel makes a fist, crushing the data solid in his hand. The dim blue light within it goes dark.
“Good-bye,” Shearer says, staring down at the remnants. “Good-bye.”
Noemi and Abel leave Shearer with the Winter Castle residents, all three of them working together to retrieve data from the lab. There’s no more sense that Shearer is a prisoner; she seems to be cooperating. Maybe, Noemi thinks, now that she’s free from her father—maybe Gillian Shearer might finally do some good.
It seems like a reach. But anything’s possible.
Abel’s been silent since crushing the data solid. Noemi ventures, “Are you all right?”
“I’m functional and capable of productive action,” he says.
It’s an honest answer. Processing Mansfield’s death—the final death—that’s probably going to take Abel a while. Years, maybe a lifetime.
But Noemi knows Abel well enough to know that he can put his own pain behind him when he must. This is one of those times, because they have a new battle to fight.
Once Abel and Noemi are back on board, the Persephone joins the convoy of Krall Consortium ships heading back toward Earth. The journey out of the Haven system takes place at top speed. Newly repaired as the Persephone’s engines are, they’re able to move at overdrive velocity most of the way. Still, hours tick by, hours during which the core disruptor gets closer and closer to Earth.
Sure enough, once they’re able to scan with long-range sensors, she sees the Genesis war fleet. It’s small—ramshackle, even, with spacecraft decades out of d
ate—but these few ships are more than capable of protecting the enormous core disruptor. That alone would leave anyone in terrified awe.
The core disruptor is an ugly thing, never designed for anything but brute utility. Shaped like a rectangular box, with different metals bolted and fused at various junctures, it is a ship without beauty, without windows, without air. Gaps in its boxy structure reveal the faint glow of the enormous engine within.
That engine has the power to drive this box straight to the planet’s core, unleashing seismic vibrations that will rip Earth apart.
The engine I helped them retrieve, Noemi thinks bitterly. The engine Abel risked his life for, on behalf of planet Genesis, which wants to execute him.
Genesis got this from us. We’re going to take it back.
“Time until the Genesis convoy reaches Earth?” she asks.
“Four hours, eighteen minutes, twelve seconds,” Abel replies. Despite everything else going on around them, it’s so good to hear him being so precise again, in his own voice.
It’s not so good to hear how quickly the core disruptor will reach Earth. “Time to intercept?” Noemi says.
“For our ships, three hours, fifty minutes, nine seconds.” Abel brings up various charts to frown at. “Earth appears to finally be sending up defense vessels. They’ll intercept the Genesis forces in three hours, nineteen minutes, twelve seconds.”
“The core disruptor will be almost all the way to Earth by then!” Noemi feels like tearing her hair out, though it’s currently too short to tear. Earth didn’t heed any of her warnings. Probably they didn’t realize the threat until the core disruptor and its convoy came through the Genesis Gate.
The Genesis forces include a large number of ships from the Vagabond fleet, including some vessels allied with the Krall Consortium. Because of this, their first plan is for Dagmar Krall to try to intervene peacefully.
(“We’ll be able to draw off plenty of ships,” Dagmar Krall promised during the strategy meeting. “The question is how many. Being able to settle on Genesis—that’s a prize even the most loyal Consortium member would be tempted by.”)
If enough ships abandon the battle, then Earth might be able to put up a fight. If they do, maybe Genesis will retreat, buying them time.
But Noemi doesn’t think it’s likely. The Elder Council has hidden the truth about the Bellum Sanctum device because they must know that most of the people on Genesis would never approve the use of a doomsday weapon. Now that weapon has been exposed to hundreds, if not thousands of Genesis soldiers. Not even military confidentiality will keep them from spreading the word of the core disruptor. The truth will out.
In other words, if the Bellum Sanctum weapon isn’t used today, it can’t be used at all. Noemi thinks the Council is determined to use it no matter what.
“Okay, so, now what?” Virginia says. She’s still wearing a band of medication-release ampules around one arm, but her energy has returned. True to form, she immediately wants back in the thick of things.
Noemi’s gaze travels across the Persephone bridge, taking in Harriet and Zayan back at their stations, Ephraim in medical scrubs still wrinkled from his hard work on Haven and in their sick bay, Virginia sitting meditation-style in a seat while wearing the pineapple pajamas, and Delphine, who hadn’t intended to come along for this battle, but hadn’t had time to leave before they took off. She quivers with nervousness, so slender and jittery that she reminds Noemi of a fawn.
Above all, there’s Abel, once again himself, more beautiful to Noemi than he’s ever been before.
They all found one another by chance. Regardless of how different they all are, they wound up at this place, in this moment, because each one is committed to preserving lives and liberty throughout the galaxy. As different as they are, every single one is a person worthy of trust. Profound gratitude washes through Noemi.
If this is the ultimate battle, she thinks, I’m so glad these are the people by my side.
“Okay,” she says, pulling herself together, “time to strategize.”
Abel must’ve been waiting for a chance to show off his analytical skills, because he immediately begins, “Our principal difficulty is that there are three separate sides in this battle: Earth, Genesis, and our own. There is an eighty-nine point zero four percent chance that both Earth and Genesis will treat us as an enemy. Our fleet is the smallest of the three.”
Noemi paces the bridge, thinking hard. “So we take a page from Remedy’s book.”
Everyone else on the bridge looks confused, except Abel, who brightens. But he lets Noemi explain.
She continues, “Remedy doesn’t have a huge fighting force. So they undertake smaller attacks—”
“Terrorist attacks,” Delphine mutters, before turning to Ephraim and hurriedly adding, “No offense! I know that’s not everybody in Remedy. Just a lot of somebodies.”
“No offense taken. But Noemi’s not talking about terrorism. She’s talking about guerrilla warfare.” By now Ephraim is nodding. “We don’t fly in there like one big fleet. We break up. Individual ships with individual missions against targets from Earth and from Genesis.”
Harriet’s seen it, too. “As a fleet against another fleet, we lose. Especially against two other fleets! But any individual ship on our side might be able to take out a ship on theirs.”
“Not us specifically,” Virginia specifies. “What with having no weapons or shields or anything. But that’s why we brought the Consortium in on our side. Right?”
“Exactly.” Noemi points toward the viewscreen, where the distant Genesis fleet is displayed as mere sensor blips. “We don’t try to beat them all down. We just try to accomplish two key objectives. One, we destroy one or more Damocles ships, in order to keep the Earth fleet from wiping us out. Two, we stop the Genesis fleet from using the Bellum Sanctum core disruptor.”
Zayan interjects, “Won’t Earth help us, once they see we’ve turned on Genesis?”
“Maybe,” Noemi says. “But there are Consortium ships with us and with Genesis. Earth command may not understand what’s going on until it’s too late to change their strategy. We have to proceed as though we’re on our own.”
“The Persephone needs to take me within range of the core disruptor.” Abel stares at the viewscreen. Maybe he’s already plotting trajectories. “I’ll leave the ship in an exosuit and propulsion pack, enter the disruptor, and shut off the engine.”
Virginia raises her hand. “Quick Q. Are you sure you can do that without vibrations turning you to shrapnel?”
“No. But we have no other choice. Better to act as soon as possible, before the core disruptor mechanism is fully activated. That way I only have the engine to deal with.” Abel continues speaking, so smoothly that Noemi would once have thought he wasn’t affected. Now she knows he’s trying to make this easier on the others—and on her.
She chimes in, “Meanwhile, I’ll attempt to board a Damocles ship to set up a self-destruct. If some of the Damocles are linked to each other, there’s a chance a self-destruct on one ship could set off a chain reaction. Even if it doesn’t—that’s one less Damocles Earth can use to threaten the rest of the galaxy.”
Virginia shakes her head. “Whoa, whoa, one big problem with this plan. When we boarded the last Damocles, the mechs inside were in stasis. They won’t be this time.”
“No, they won’t,” Noemi says. “However, there shouldn’t be any mechs inside the Damocles at all. They’ll have been deployed for the battle. If everything goes according to plan, I’ll be out of there before the mechs would be sent back in.”
Her eyes meet Abel’s. They both know how rarely everything goes according to plan. It would be easier, maybe, for her to remain on the Persephone throughout the fight.
But Noemi won’t. She can’t. She has a real opportunity to take out one or more Damocles ships. No matter what happens in this battle, if Earth retains all its Damocles, they’ll still try to dominate the worlds of the Loop. The balance of powe
r in the galaxy can’t be altered unless some of those Damocles are taken out.
Noemi isn’t going to fight only to survive. She’s fighting to win. To change the galaxy forever.
Ephraim sighs. “I don’t know how much help I am in combat, but I can keep trying to talk with Remedy ships in the Genesis convoy. If I can convince even a handful of them to desert, that might be useful.”
As Noemi nods, Delphine adds, “I actually don’t know that I’m any use here at all? But I’ll try to contact my family on Earth. They know people in some high places. Maybe they could spread the message about what’s really going on, and reveal that we’re actually trying to help them.”
“Nobody listened to me when I tried to warn Earth before—but maybe your family will have better luck,” Noemi admits. At this point, a warning doesn’t make much tactical difference, but it’s enough that Delphine wants to do her part. Besides, Noemi reminds herself, you never know what small action will change the course of a war.
“Do we want to know the odds of our getting out of this alive?” Virginia asks.
Abel hesitates, then says, “There are too many variables for an accurate estimate.”
Zayan slumps in his chair. “That bad?”
“That’s not what matters in battle,” Noemi insists. “You have to be ready for any event. Any sacrifice. You have to steel yourself.”
A long pause follows before Harriet faintly says, “Okay.”
“And you claim I’m terrible at comforting people.” Abel rises to his feet, looking at each of their friends in turn. “For the time being, we’re all safe. The rest of you will remain aboard the Persephone, which is swift enough to remove you from danger if the battle plans go awry. Regardless of any scenario, the odds are in favor of your survival.”
Noemi notices that Abel didn’t look at her, or include himself by saying “our” survival.
“Got it,” Harriet says, brightening. “And yeah, that was definitely better than Noemi’s ‘pep talk.’”
When Noemi glances sidelong at Abel, she sees him looking smug again. It’s never been more endearing.
