Edge of Dark

by Brenda Cooper

  “It was a perfectly logical choice for Nona to send the ship away. Besides, Gunnar’s nowhere near us. The Bleeding Edge is going to be here in two hours.”

  He hadn’t read Henry as a deserter, so Shoshone must have been very convincing or Henry far more afraid than he’d shown.

  Shoshone continued. “Dinner’s over. You two are confined to quarters.”

  Charlie glanced at Nona. Her face had gone white and her fists were clenched at her side. To her credit, she didn’t say anything.

  He had come to dinner with no weapons other than a knife he always kept in his boot. He looked around. Two of their dinner guests had risen with Shoshone, and they each held a stunner. One pointed at Nona and one at him.

  Shoshone and her two armed minions followed as Charlie and Nona were led back to their rooms. They passed guards at the end of the hallway. “You’ll be comfortable.” Shoshone said. “You can talk to each other, go between your rooms. But you can’t leave your shared hallway.”

  Charlie ignored her. He caught a glimpse of Nona’s face before she was ushered into her room. She looked pissed off. Good. Pissed off was better than depressed. Shoshone led him into his own room and closed the door behind him. He sat down on the sofa.

  “Come here.”

  He recognized the voice, and followed it.

  Gunnar Ellensson sat on his bed. Or maybe hulked on the bed was a better word. Gunnar was so big he took up half of the room.

  Charlie must have looked as surprised as he felt, and as mistrustful. Gunnar gave him a soft smile and said, “Sit down. I’ll explain.”

  “Are you crazy?” Charlie asked. “What are you doing here?” He led the way into the sitting room.

  Gunnar lumbered after him. “Instead of hiding in my station like a good little rich man?” Gunnar asked.

  Anger tightened Charlie’s muscles, the anger that came with fear when he was in danger at home. He decided to treat Gunnar as if he were a pack of tongats. “I wouldn’t expect someone with so much to lose to risk physical travel.”

  “I flew my own ships for the first ten years of my business. Sometimes I still do. You’ve just joined the other ten people in the solar system who know that.”

  Charlie was still trying to parse the idea that Gunnar was here at all. “That’s a lot of risk.”

  “You’re young. When you’re my age, you just might realize that risk is your best friend.”

  Charlie pointed at the door to the corridor. “So is Satyana with Nona?”

  “No. Amia. And I’m not staying. I apologize for that, but you and Nona are far safer here than I am. I’m news everywhere, as well as a target. But I needed to warn you two.”

  “Warn us?”

  “I learned a few things since I sent you out here.”

  Charlie thought a moment. “Maybe we have, too. Like that the woman you told us to find is stark raving mad. Shoshone doesn’t like you much better than she likes us.”

  “She doesn’t know I’m here now. Amia smuggled me in.”

  Charlie raised an eyebrow.

  Gunnar didn’t offer any information on how such a big man had gotten around the station unseen. Charlie thought about the awkward dinner. “She doesn’t have a good hold on her people. Shoshone.”

  “They underestimate her. See that you don’t.”

  A stray thought wound its way out of Charlie’s mouth. “That’s why the ship left. You told it to. I couldn’t figure out why Henry would betray Nona. But he was obeying you.”

  “And I rank Nona.”

  “Even on her own ship?”

  Gunnar didn’t reply.

  Charlie had been angry since he left Shoshone’s table. The anger felt deeper now, more dangerous. “Tell me what you came to tell us.” He pointed at the door and, by implication, at the guards. “This is far more dangerous than I had thought. You lied.”

  Gunnar looked exaggeratedly patient. “That’s why I’m sitting here in the clear in your room.”

  “What ship did you come in on?”

  “A local one. Belongs to the station. It’s gone already—back out patrolling the perimeter.”

  “Is it coming back for you?”

  Gunnar shook his head. “There are some life boats. I’ll get to one in a few minutes and my ship will pick me up. In the meantime, do you want to argue or do you want me to tell you what I know?”

  “First, tell me how you beat us out here.”

  “I have ships that are faster than Nona’s. The Savior was built to explore, not defend.”

  Something in the look on Gunnar’s face reminded Charlie that he had decided this man was an enemy long ago. “Why did you come to see me instead of Nona?”

  “She’s being watched more closely than you are. Besides, Nona would be a lousy poker player.”

  “Is Satyana with you?”

  “She’s back on the Deep, orchestrating the Council’s response to this mess.” Gunnar put a hand up to forestall more questions. “Here’s what I came to tell you. This station has been working with smugglers from the Edge for a long time.”

  Charlie frowned. Bad news.

  “I didn’t know that when we decided to send you here. Amia suggested I get here before the Edge ship. I am only a third-owner of this station. Shoshone works for all three of us. She managed to see that we each had our interests met for some time. Our needs weren’t conflicting, and everyone paid her well. Do you understand the setup?”

  “Meaning, do I understand that you could get into a lot of trouble for associating with smugglers? Who are the other owners?”

  “We’re all traders.” Gunnar stood up and paced, his bulk filling the small room. “One of the other two builds ships. Maninara. Amia doesn’t think Maninara works with the pirates. I’ll be using one of her ships to get away. I’ve reserved one for you two, as well. It’s small but it can get you out where we can pick you up.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s number seventy-five. Can you remember that? Nothing can be written down. All of the Satwa’s systems should be considered compromised.”

  “By who?” Charlie wanted to know.

  Gunnar was frustratingly good at avoiding hard questions. “The third owner traffics in robots. Zin Grey. His story has always been that he created robots designed to work autonomously this far from the sun. The High Sweet Home was a client of his, for example. But Amia informed me he’s been trading with the ice pirates for the past fifty years. Illegal. Apparently it made Zin and Shoshone both very rich.”

  Charlie wished Gunnar weren’t pacing, so there would be room for him to pace. “So the Edge has been smuggling robots into the inner system?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Amia told me she doesn’t know either. They’ve been taking bots from here out to Edge for years. Lots of them. She says that’s the biggest trade by far.”

  “Why would the trade go that way?” It seemed to be just plain wrong. Trading with any being outside of the Ring of Distance at all was so illegal that Shoshone could be locked up forever if she were discovered. The crime might even taint Gunnar by association, or touch Charlie and Nona.

  Gunnar stopped just in front of Charlie. “I don’t know. It must go both ways. We found more Next on the Deep, and other stations are reporting them, too.”

  “There are robots on Lym that shouldn’t—perhaps—be there.”

  Gunnar cocked his head. “You’re certain?”

  “Almost. Someone I knew well died to tell me that.”

  “I’ve got to go. Don’t write anything down. Don’t message us. Just learn what the Next want, then get away. We’ll find you.”

  “Will you try to find out if the Next are on Lym?”

  Gunnar hesitated. “I won’t protect Lym over the Deep.”

  Bastard. Or over Mammot went unsaid. “Just tell me if you learn anything. That will be enough.”

  Gunnar nodded, ever so slightly. But he promised nothing. “Keep your head down, and make Nona do that, too. Keep her safe. Satyana�
��s worried.”

  Maybe that alone explained why Gunnar was way out here. But he wasn’t offering to take Charlie or Nona to safety.

  “Tell Nona everything I’ve told you, but only in your rooms and when you’re alone. Don’t even tell Amia. Tell no one but Nona, and only in this room or her room. Amia assures me that all the rooms here are privacy shielded. Talking is the safest way to communicate. Get away when it seems right, and one of my ships will be waiting for you.”

  “But you don’t think we should leave now?”

  “I suspect there will be a role for Nona yet.”

  Bastard. Charlie said nothing.

  “Stay here,” Gunnar told him. “Don’t move for three minutes.”

  Gunnar left the main room and went into the bedroom.

  Charlie waited, expecting him to come back out. When he didn’t, Charlie looked for him. There was no sign of the big man. The floor was hard, so there weren’t any footprints to serve as clues.

  He’d have to figure out how Gunnar got away later. Before that, he needed to check on Nona.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Nona

  Nona managed to hold her anger close until after the door closed behind her, with Shoshone on the far side. How could the woman confine her?

  How could Henry James have left?

  She knew Henry disagreed with her; she knew she hadn’t made any real effort to become his friend. She’d been—at best—a capable captain. In spite of that, she hadn’t taken him for a deserter.

  “Shoshone can be a real bitch when she wants to be.”

  The voice startled Nona.

  A woman sat casually in a big chair in the corner of the suite. She was tall and willowy, with a typical spacer’s short haircut. Her hair was as dark as her eyes, with a bloom of light blue at one temple—a look that must take some effort to maintain. Nona braced and took two deep breaths, fighting for calm, then stuck her hand out, trying to offer something more personable than the livid, raging anger that filled her. “I’m Nona.”

  “Nona Hall. I know. Gunnar told me to expect you.”

  Nona still hadn’t quite recovered her composure. It took a moment to pull the name Gunnar had given her free of her tangled and pissed-off mind. “Amia. You’re Amia.”

  “That’s right. And you have a temper.”

  “Not usually,” she snapped. “Just since people started abandoning me and locking me up.” Her hands shook.

  “Are you mad at Shoshone or at yourself?”

  “Who the fuck do you think you are?” Nona snapped.

  “Take a few more deep breaths.”

  Nona forced herself to stand still and do just that. Amia was here, behind the guards, just like Nona. At any rate, the woman didn’t deserve to be cussed at. “You’re right,” Nona said. “I’m sorry. I’ve never been locked up anywhere before, not for anything.”

  Amia smiled. She stood up, or maybe unfolded would be a better word. The top of Nona’s head ended under Amia’s shoulder.

  Amia pointed at the captain’s insignia on Nona’s chest. “You’re used to being in charge.”

  That made Nona laugh. “Not really. I’m actually kind of new at it, and given that my ship flew off without me and I’m in here now, I suspect I’m not very good at being in charge yet.”

  Amia shrugged. “These are strange times. The bogey man’s coming to get us.”

  Nona didn’t have anything useful to say about that. “How did you end up in here?”

  “Shoshone knows I’m Gunnar’s primary information source. She’s still pretending to support Gunnar, but you shouldn’t believe it.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t believe anyone anymore.”

  “I usually don’t.” Amia smiled.

  Nona didn’t know what to make of her. Amia had gone from probing questions to being nice in a suspiciously short time. “What do you know about the pirates?”

  “They aren’t.”

  “Pirates?”

  Amia sat on the bed and stretched, slowly and deliberately. She had the flexibility to clasp her arms behind her back. “They’re not that. Not usually anyway. Once in a while they take a ship that’s stupid enough to come near the Ring.” She flattened her torso against the bed between her legs, a move Nona would fail at completely. “But what would you do if you were starved and someone put a tray of meat in front of you?”

  “They eat the ships?”

  “They learn from them. They use the energy and the metals and the knowledge that’s there.”

  “Is that what they did to the High Sweet Home?”

  “They destroyed it.” Amia sat back up with her legs folded under her. “Nothing is wasted way out here.”

  “I think they killed my best friend,” Nona offered.

  “They don’t care. I’ve seen their representatives here a time or two. Maybe I’ve even seen the Next themselves. You can’t tell, you know. We all have robots. But there’s a coldness about them, a way they’re distant. Like they’ve gone so far beyond us they don’t care about us anymore.”

  “So what do they care about?”

  “Power.”

  “Power? Like over people?”

  Amia laughed. “No. Power from the sun. Raw materials. They’ve built a whole thriving world—more than we know, I think, more than we know. They built all of that beyond the Ring, and now they want more.”

  “Are they mad at us?” Nona asked. “For banishing them? Mom always said she didn’t think so. She met one once, said it sacrificed itself for her and dad and Ruby Martin.”

  “I know that story. I don’t believe it.”

  The story was so much a part of Nona’s history, she didn’t know what to say. Of course it had happened. “She did sacrifice herself. But that was after she killed some of my mother’s friends. I always got both parts of that story. Mom made sure I didn’t believe the pirates were good or evil.”

  “I’d believe that part. The idea that they killed. You see, the trick is to stay hidden. They don’t hate us at all. We might as well be asteroid dust that someone tracked into their solar system. If we get in the Next’s way, they’ll incinerate us.”

  “So if we went out beyond the Ring, they’d just move in, and they wouldn’t come after us?”

  “Yeah. Like that.” Amia went quiet. “But we won’t. First, we’d never survive. We’re flesh, and we haven’t done much engineering for the dark cold of nothingness past the Ring. Shoshone isn’t going to abandon Satwa. Gunnar’s not going to abandon Mammot.”

  “And Charlie’s not going to abandon Lym,” Nona whispered.

  “Who’s Charlie?” Amia asked.

  As if he’d been listening for his cue, Charlie opened the door. “That’s Charlie. He’s an ambassador from Lym.”

  Amia’s expression suggested that Charlie wasn’t quite what she had been expecting. Nona had to admit that he looked uncomfortable in his party clothes, and a little more like a ruffian than most of the men she’d met out here or knew from the Deep. He also had a really strange look on his face right now, as if he struggled with disbelief.

  Maybe he’d never been locked up either.

  They exchanged introductions, and then Charlie said, “Amia, will you excuse us? I need to talk to Nona alone.”

  Amia didn’t look at all surprised by his request.

  When the door closed behind her, Nona looked over at Charlie. “She thinks we’re going to die. She thinks we’re all going to die.”

  Charlie crossed the space to her and folded her in his arms. He warmed her almost immediately and she found herself melting into him, tears running down her face. He was smart enough not to tell her it would be okay, but to just hold her. He was trembling, but far less than she was.

  After a while, neither of them trembled anymore.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHRYSTAL

  Chrystal focused almost all of her processing ability on a virtual yellow cube in front of her, reaching out to bat it into place next to another yellow cube.
The images fused and floated in front of her as if they were one piece. Yi was up to three. She used a simple swatting gesture to send the next piece that materialized in front of her to block one of Yi’s red pieces, and at the same time Jason sent a blue block into her string of two yellows, which disappeared into thin air. She grunted and re-focused.

  The goal of the game was to create strings of at least three similar blocks of your own color while keeping the other two from doing the same. Three or more stuck together and couldn’t be destroyed. The person who built a whole wall first won. As easy as it looked, the game would have been impossible in her old body. She wouldn’t have been able to hold her hands up and keep them dexterous for so long, not with nothing but air to rest them on. But this body didn’t even tremble with the effort.

  The game posed an interesting challenge, but Chrystal wasn’t really enjoying it. Part of her attention remained split on the upcoming docking. She hadn’t seen a human since they . . . since their bodies died. Were killed. What would it be like to see Nona? Would they let her see her right away?

  Yi had looked distracted for the last hour, and he was losing the game. Chrystal was certain both that he wanted to say something and that he would only do so in his own time.

  Jason muttered about the game as he played, calling out colors and verbally telling himself what to do. Annoying, all the more so because he was winning.

  A screen on the far wall displayed the positions of all known ships and stations in the vicinity at all times. The Satwa had just begun to show on the screen, a small dot in the right hand corner. She switched the view to one of the screens on her wearable so she’d have better track of it, setting an alarm for an hour before they actually approached.

  Yi elbowed her. “Is there anyone inside?”

  He meant inside of her, the way their teachers occasionally seemed be under their skin or cohabiting with their brains. She shook her head. “I think I’m clear.”

  Yi glanced at Jason, who nodded, made a final flourishing move, and won the game. “Sure, let’s try again.”

  Braiding had begun to feel like a mysterious power out of a comic instead of something they might actually be able to do. She didn’t want to spend more time on it. “We have to get ready for the station.”