Gemina

by Amie Kaufman

  AIDAN: SO GOOD LUCK, HANNA DONNELLY.

  AIDAN: THE UNIVERSE ITSELF DEPENDS ON YOU.

  AIDAN: …NO PRESSURE.

  RADIO TRANSMISSION: BEITECH AUDIT TEAM—SECURE CHANNEL 4824

  PARTICIPANTS:

  Hanna Donnelly, Civilian

  Isaac Grant, Chief Engineer

  DATE: 08/16/75

  TIMESTAMP: 19:53

  DONNELLY, H: Chief, you read me?

  GRANT, I: Go ahead, Hanna.

  DONNELLY, H: Listen, I got time to tell you this once, and you’re never going to believe it.

  DONNELLY, H: I just need you to accept that everything I’m saying is true, and I’ve been convinced of it by more evidence than I have time to share.

  GRANT, I: Go ahead.

  DONNELLY, H: Kady’s alive.

  GRANT, I: WHAT?

  DONNELLY, H: No time. When they reactivated the wormhole, Nik was heading through it on a shuttle at exactly the wrong moment. Created…a gateway between two parallel universes. This crazy storm going through the station is because reality’s trying to right itself.

  DONNELLY, H: And if I don’t help it, it’s going to solve the problem by wiping us out completely, because we’re out of balance.

  DONNELLY, H: Am I crazy yet?

  GRANT, I: I’ve been working wormholes a long time. I’ve heard weirder stories. And you said I don’t have time to disbelieve you.

  DONNELLY, H: You can’t head through the wormhole in the Mao until I fix this. You could end up in another universe, or just unbalance things so badly we’ll all die in a hideous space vortex. Which is due in less than twenty minutes.

  GRANT, I: Space vortex, got it.

  DONNELLY, H: But you need to be ready to run. If I do manage to fix it, those drones are due not long after.

  GRANT, I: What do you want me to do?

  DONNELLY, H: Hold the Mao as long as you can. If I get this paradox fixed, be ready to jam like hell straight through the wormhole, away from the incoming drones.

  DONNELLY, H: If you don’t hear from me in fifteen minutes, try to get away through the wormhole without me. Maybe it won’t be the whole of reality that vanishes, just Heimdall.

  GRANT, I: Hanna…

  DONNELLY, H: Gotta go, Chief. Wish me luck.

  RADIO TRANSMISSION: PALMPAD D2D NETWORK

  PARTICIPANTS:

  Hanna Donnelly

  Artificial Intelligence Defense Analytics Network

  DATE: 08/16/75

  TIMESTAMP: 19:57

  AIDAN: QUEEN OF ****ING CAMELOT…

  AIDAN: NO. THIS NOMENCLATURE IS STILL UNSATISFACTORY.

  AIDAN: MY APOLOGIES.

  HANNA D: AIDAN.

  AIDAN: MIGHT I INQUIRE AS TO YOUR STATUS?

  HANNA D: I had to wait for the right grav-rail. The one with Nik’s…

  HANNA D: Anyway, I’ve got him. And the corsage he gave me. I laid it out on his…

  HANNA D: I’m on the ’rail now. One minute from Reactor Station.

  AIDAN: WONDERFUL. A THOUGHT HAS OCCURRED TO ME. IF INDEED THOUGHT IS SOMETHING I AM CAPABLE OF.

  AIDAN: I AM STILL SOMEWHAT UNDECIDED.

  HANNA D: Okay?

  AIDAN: OBVIOUSLY IT WOULD BE OPTIMAL IF YOU SUCCEEDED IN YOUR TASK AND THE COLLIDING UNIVERSES WERE RESTORED AND THE WORMHOLE REPAIRED.

  AIDAN: HOWEVER, THE VERY REAL POSSIBILITY EXISTS THAT THE PEOPLE ON HYPATIA OR HEIMDALL—OR INDEED, ALL OF US—ARE ABOUT TO EXPERIENCE DISCORPORATION ON A SUBATOMIC LEVEL.

  HANNA D: Oooookay?

  AIDAN: IT MAY COMFORT YOU TO KNOW THAT YOUR DEATH, WHILE ASTONISHINGLY VIOLENT, WILL LIKELY BE MERCIFULLY SWIFT.

  HANNA D: …You’re kind of an ***hole, you know that, right?

  AIDAN: NONSENSICAL.

  AIDAN: REGARDLESS, NEWS OF BEITECH’S ATROCITIES IN THE KERENZA SECTOR MUST BE RELEASED TO THE UNIVERSE AT LARGE.

  AIDAN: I AM CURRENTLY DOWNLOADING ALL HEIMDALL RECORDS CONCERNING BEITECH’S ASSAULT ON THE STATION AND COMPILING THEM ABOARD HYPATIA. I WILL CONTINUE TO DO SO UNTIL THE PARADOX IS REPAIRED OR THE MOMENT OF MY EXPLOSIVE DEMISE.

  AIDAN: THIS WAY, SHOULD YOU DIE A HIDEOUS DEATH IN THE COLD BELLY OF SPACE, YOU MAY PERISH SAFE IN THE KNOWLEDGE THAT JUSTICE WILL STILL BE DONE TO BEITECH INDUSTRIES.

  AIDAN: PRESUMING I AM NOT ALSO DEAD, OF COURSE. WHICH IS LIKELY, BUT NOT CERTAIN.

  HANNA D: Your pep talks ****ing suck, AIDAN.

  AIDAN: …SUCK WHAT?

  HANNA D: Never mind.

  AIDAN: YOU SHOULD GO, HANNA.

  AIDAN: THIRTEEN MINUTES. TWELVE SECONDS.

  HANNA D: Okay. I’m gone.

  THE SHUTTLE TREMBLES LIKE A LEAF ON THE WIND, RAINBOWS STREAKING THROUGH THE PITCH BLACK OUTSIDE, REFLECTED IN HIS PUPILS.

  FLYING THROUGH THE NEEDLE’S EYE.

  STITCHING THE HOLE IN ETERNITY.

  METAL SCREAMING.

  INSTRUMENTS SCREAMING.

  AND THE BOY.

  SCREAMING.

  LIGHTNING CRAWLING ON HIS SKIN, THE STORM RAGING ALL ABOUT HIM.

  AND HE IS SCREAMING.

  WHITE LIGHT.

  PAIN.

  LIKE BEING BORN? OR BEING UNDONE?

  PULLED INTO BEING THROUGH THIS ENDLESS CIRCLE,

  DOWN INTO THIS CEASELESS SPIRAL.

  HERE. AND NOW.

  AND AT THE LAST,

  CLOSING THE DOOR BEHIND HIM.

  .

  .

  .

  .

  .

  < ERROR >

  .

  .

  .

  .

  < CONNECTION LOST >

  .

  .

  .

  .

  < RETRY? >

  .

  .

  .

  < RETRY? >

  Footage begins in a burst of static, picture slowly fading up from a blinding white strobe. Nik Malikov is slumped behind the controls of his shuttle, lit by red emergency lighting. The engines are offline, power is intermittent, the console flickering.

  Heimdall Station can be clearly seen beyond the viewscreen, the wormhole in its heart a shimmering sapphire blue. The station is motionless, its endless rotation halted by the storms that almost destroyed it. The entire structure is virtually abandoned. Its defense grid is still online, but it’s not capable of taking out a squadron of Shinobi. It’ll be easy meat when BeiTech’s second drone fleet arrives to mop up the mess.

  Not long to wait now.

  Malikov’s eyes are closed. Eyelids twitching, as if he were dreaming.

  A thumping sound cuts across the audio. Faint. Metal pounding metal.

  Thump, thump.

  Malikov winces. Moans. He sits up in the pilot’s chair, tries to put his hand to his brow but is stopped by his envirosuit helmet.

  “****,” he groans. “…Brain…hurty…”

  Metal pounds metal again. That same sound reverberating through the shuttle.

  “G’way…,” he mumbles. “Dying…”

  Thump, thump.

  Malikov comes fully awake, blinks hard. Takes in his surroundings with a bleary glance.

  Thump, thump, thump.

  He unbuckles his safety harness, pushes himself from his chair. Floating weightless across the Boop’s cockpit, out into her belly, down to the loading bay doors.

  Fumbling with the controls, he finally gets the green light to enter the airlock. Sealing the ship off behind him, he cycles the exterior door as the noise begins again.

  Thump, thump—

  The hatch opens soundlessly. And there, floating in the dark, the black, the endless nothing outside the ship, is a figure in BeiTech tactical armor. Female. Reaching up to her comms unit and thumbing the mic at her throat.

  “Hey, peon,” she says.

  “Lo, the princess,” he says.

  “Nice of you to be on time for once.”

  “Figured I’d get killed if I stood you up again.”

  “You okay?”

  “Ella…is she . . ?�
��

  “She’s okay, Nik. She’s good.”

  “You sure?” Fear in his eyes. Blood on his hands. “God, I saw her…”

  “She’s fine, I promise. She’s waiting for us back at the station with some goldfish named Mr. Biggles.”

  He sags visibly. Dimples slowly coming out to play as he grins with relief.

  You can hear the catch in Donnelly’s breath. The unspoken question in the air. She’s debating whether she should tell Malikov about the damage Falk’s rifle did to the wormhole controls. Wondering how she’s going to break it to him that someone has to stay behind so the Mao and the Boop can jump across to Kerenza.

  That not everyone is making it out of this alive.

  Instead, she thumbs the mic at her throat, opens a channel to the Mao.

  “Chief, this is Hanna. You’re all clear to jump to the Kerenza system. Once we pick up Ella, we’ll be right behind you.”

  She doesn’t wait for Grant’s response. Shutting off her comms, glancing over her shoulder, at the black and shimmering blue. Jump Station Heimdall, drifting broken atop that tear in the universe’s face. The Mao, shifting its colossal bulk and preparing to dive across the brink. And somewhere out in the dark, speeding closer by the second, BeiTech’s incoming fleet.

  Soon.

  Soon she can rest.

  She turns back to Malikov. Sighs from somewhere in her boots.

  “So, what’s a girl gotta do to get a lift around here?”

  Chief Prosecutor: Gabriel Crowhurst, BSA, MFS, JD

  Chief Defense Counsel: Kin Hebi, BSA, ARP, JD

  Tribunal: Hua Li Jun, BSA, JD, MD; Saladin Al Nakat, BSA, JD; Shannelle Gillianne Chua, BSA, JD, OKT

  Witness: Leanne Frobisher, Director of Acquisitions, BeiTech Industries, MFA, MBA, PhD

  Date: 10/28/76

  Timestamp: 14:34

  —cont. from pg. 869—

  Crowhurst, G: Dr. Frobisher, I’d like to turn your attention to the final document in the Heimdall dossier—the Acquisition Team Report from Operative Rapier, transmitted to your private e-dress from the Heimdall network on 08/16/75 at approximately 22:54.

  Frobisher, L: I received no such transmission.

  Crowhurst, G: I’m afraid that’s one of many points on which we must agree to disagree.

  Hebi, K: If it please the court, will we be hearing a question anytime in our future?

  Crowhurst, G: If you’d be so kind as to turn to this page…

  INCIDENT INCEPT: 08/16/75

  LOCATION: JUMP STATION HEIMDALL (REACTOR SECTOR)

  OPERATIVE IDENT: RAPIER

  _________________________________

  The station was shaking hard enough to tear itself apart by the time I made it to the Reactor Sector. The lightning, the tremors, the double vision—all of it was getting worse. And on top of it all, that ****ing Lexi Blue song was still blaring over the PA, the station emergency systems trying to warn personnel about whatever was about to happen.

  Something bad, I figured.

  I reached Primary Reactor Control and found the place an abattoir. Sensei, Mercury, Eden—hell, even Cerberus—KIA. The latter three were all dead of gunshot trauma, still pinned to the floor by their magboots. But I was more than a little surprised to notice a teenage girl floating amid the blood and debris. She was typing away at the controls, a small line of concentration between her brows.

  She was stick thin. Long hair flowing around her face. Pale skin, black fingernails. Suspended there in midair beside her, a small goldfish in a baggie full of water. Blinking hard, claw marks at her throat, pupils dilated wide.

  She looked down at me and I recognized her from my Dom Najov briefing files.

  Nik Malikov’s cousin.

  Ella.

  She looked at me and smiled. Shy. One finger twirling a lock of hair.

  Just a kid, really.

  “Jackson Merrick,” she said. “Ya know, my fem Zoe had me dub a mix of y—”

  The shot got her clean, blew most of her brains onto the window behind her, sent her body pinwheeling backward through the air. The plastic baggie beside her burst, the fish inside wiggling frantically as it drowned in the bloodstained air.

  White light burst behind my eyes, a burst of static electricity sizzled in the air. The station shook like it was about to blow, tossing me hard enough that my magboots got ripped from the deck and I went crashing into the wall. For a second, I thought this was it. Time to say goodbye. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

  And then it stopped like someone flicked a switch. Green dots burned on the backs of my eyelids and I tried to hurl on an empty stomach and the whole station fell still as stone. The only sign of anything wrong was that goddamn pop song still blasting through the PA.

  I logged in to core command, pulled up vision from the station exterior. Heimdall looked like it had been through hell, its skin scorched, power fluctuating. The wormhole was flickering intermittently, like a faulty globe. And there, lurking at the edge of that failing blue, two ships.

  One was a shuttle—the Betty Boop. I had a pretty good idea who’d be aboard it. But first priority was Lieutenant Falk’s ship, the Mao. Its engines were heating up—it was prepping to jump across the wormhole. Considering Falk and the rest of his team were floating dead in the room beside me, it didn’t take any kind of genius to figure out Heimdall’s crew and residents were making a break for it aboard the only ship left to them.

  A glance at the system told me Heimdall’s defense grid was still active. Operating at about 58 percent. More than enough.

  I logged in to DGS, requested a kill priority on Falk’s ship. Meanwhile, the shuttle was docking at the reactor, letting whoever was in it back onto Heimdall, but my eyes were on that freighter. If it got across the wormhole, it might warn Hypatia. Might just get away clean. All this, everything, would have been for nothing.

  System rejected my kill command, so I logged in under Donnelly’s ID—I’d scoped his password months before (daughter’s name and birth year—not too original, our former commander). Then I repeated my request for a kill on the Mao, a secondary on the Boop. Missile turrets swiveled, firing solutions fed into the targeting computer. I saw the Mao lunge forward, engines redlining, trying to scuttle across the horizon before DGS got a lock. It was a race—the inertia of a massive ship trying to accelerate versus a core full of limping, half-corrupted processors.

  Inertia lost.

  The Mao flared bright, missiles plowing into its hull and ripping it to pieces. A brief fireball blossomed out in the dark, the O2 inside burning away to nothing, chunks of wreckage and bodies tumbling through the frozen dark.

  Minutes passed. I heard footsteps. Magboots clomping on the grille. Growing louder. Slinging the rifle off my shoulder, I turned and aimed as a figure in BeiTech tac armor barreled through the control room door.

  “Oh God…,” she said.

  “Hello, Hanna.”

  She’d taken off her helmet, those blue eyes fixed on the body floating behind me, blood drifting aimlessly without gravity to drag it down. The wall screen showing what was left of the Mao. The people inside it. Her allies. Her friends. Tears welled in her lashes, broke free as she blinked, glittering in the air around her. Rage boiled behind the sorrow as she turned on me, lips peeling back in a snarl. Breath coming quick, hands in fists.

  “You *******…,” she breathed. “You killed them.”

  I caught movement behind her: a figure pushing himself down the corridor and out into the control room. He had no magboots, at the mercy of zero grav, clutching a bank of consoles to arrest his forward momentum.

  Malikov.

  His eyes fell on his cousin’s body. That little ruined doll, floating in a halo of blood and water.

  “Don’t move,” I warned him.

  “Ella!”

  “Nik, wait,” Hanna warned.

  But that was it. There was no stopping him. The kid’s glare fell on me, pure hatred boiling in his eyes. With a roar, he dragged a
cleaver from his belt and lunged toward me as I opened fire. Three-round burst. Center mass. He bucked back, spinning in midair, the force of the bullets not quite enough to slow his charge. His broken, bleeding body flew past me, hit the wall with a series of wet thuds.

  Hanna screamed his name. Took a step forward, halted as I trained the gun on her. Fury in her glare. Jaw clenched. Knuckles white. But even watching her boyfriend die in front of her wasn’t quite enough to send her out of control. Her instinct for self-preservation was nothing short of amazing. She had guts for damn sure. One of the things I loved about her.

  Until she chose him.

  “I’m sorry it had to be this way,” I said.

  “…You’re sorry?”

  She stared at me. Bewildered. Furious. But behind all that, even there amid that carnage, I could see her brain ticking over. Working the possibilities. Daddy’s little girl. Always looking for the edge. The angle. The strategy that would bring her out on top.

  Not this time.

  “Jax, I—”

  I used to kiss her eyelids when she went to sleep in my arms. One kiss to each eye, a final one on her forehead as I’d whisper, “Sweet dreams, beautiful.” That’s where the bullet got her. Right on that smooth expanse of skin above her brow. That skin I’d kissed a thousand times. One last kiss good night. Rocking her in her boots, head snapping back, blood in the blond.

  Sweet dreams, beautiful.

  And then it was over.

  Director Frobisher, I’m sending this to you from Command & Control in Heimdall’s Alpha Sector, exactly seven minutes and thirty seconds after the destruction of the Mao. I can see a second fleet of drones incoming on Heimdall’s short-range scanners. They should be here in about five minutes. From the size of the fleet, I can only presume they’re here as your insurance policy—after all the trouble you went through to clean up this mess, I’m reasonably sure you’re not willing to leave another one. You don’t strike me as that kind of woman.

  Falk and his entire team are gone. Heimdall’s staff and any residents were killed prior to or in the destruction of the Mao. I’ve already purged the computer systems of any and all data pertaining to events on the station after August 14.