A flicker of a thought—I should have gone with them.
Sanda crushed the thought, ground it beneath a mental heel. Biran would have thwacked her upside the head to know she’d considered it. She was the last of those who’d lived on Ada Prime. It was her job, her responsibility, to survive. To show the would-be Icarions of the universe that Prime was not beaten. To warn the remaining Primes and maybe, just maybe, be a voice of reason. If there was anyone left in all the black to listen. To warn against the dangers of distrust. Of Mutually Assured Destruction.
“Right,” she said, and pulled herself into an awkward flamingo stance. “Right.”
Bero didn’t answer. Apparently he was comfortable enough with human company to realize when people were talking to themselves. Sanda braced herself with one hand against the bed as she tugged open a dresser drawer. She may be the only human left alive in light-years, but she wasn’t alone. Not really.
She reached for a jumpsuit and slipped. The world tipped up and her chin cracked against the corner of the dresser. Novas burst in her eyes and her shoulder jarred as she slammed into the ground.
“Sanda?” Bero’s voice ratcheted up with worry.
“Nothing broken. I’m okay.” She stifled a groan as she flopped onto her back, tested her shoulder with careful prodding. Angry, but not dislocated. A trickle of blood snaked its way down her chin from a split lip. She flexed her jaw, testing its stability. Seemed all right. This one leg shit would take getting used to.
“May I offer assistance?” Bero asked.
She laughed. “You got arms I don’t know about?”
“Not exactly. One moment, please.”
“Bero?”
Damned ship didn’t answer. With a sigh, she heaved herself half-upright and hefted herself onto the edge of the bed. A soft whir purred down the hall, and the door dilated. She craned her neck but couldn’t see anything.
“Stop messing about.” She rummaged in the drawer and grabbed the elusive jumpsuit. She stared. How in the hell was she supposed to get this thing on? Hadn’t the Icarions ever heard of pants? Or, hell, a skirt would be convenient right about now.
Something squeaked by her foot. She glanced down and nearly jumped out of her skin. A tread-footed bot hunkered by the edge of the bed, its camera pointed right at her, its sonar panel eerily like eyes. It extended a long arm straight up and opened the clamp at its end. It bore a startling resemblance to a crutch.
“Uh. Hello?”
Bero said, “This is Maintenance Bot VII. It can answer simple queries regarding its duties with a single beep for no and a double beep for yes. It transferred your evac pod encasement into the NutriBath.”
“Huh. And where are maintenance bots one through six?”
“Assigned to other ships.”
“Figures.” Sanda squinted at the little bot. It looked sturdy enough. Those tank treads were made with some serious grip in mind, and its turtle-like shell had the dull, matte texture of heavy-duty metals.
“I can’t call you Maintenance Bot VII. We’d make it all the way to Atrux before we finished a conversation. I’ll call you… Grippy. Is that acceptable?”
Beep-beep.
“Nice to meet you, Grippy.” She put her hand in its outstretched clamp and stood, wobbling. Grippy was a rock, subtly shifting to account for her center of balance as she wriggled her way into the Icarion jumpsuit. Ash grey and orange didn’t suit her at all, but it was better than stumbling around naked for the next couple decades. Bero may have been an AI, but there was something to be said for basic human modesty.
“All right, Grippy. Let’s get a look at the command deck, shall we? We’ve got numbers to crunch and trajectories to plot.”
Grippy didn’t beep; her statement hadn’t been declarative enough to trip his yes/no routine, but he sensed her moving forward and trundled along at her side all the same. Despite her annoyance at having to rely on assistance at all, she found Grippy a much stabler partner than the squeaky IV stand.
Strength came back to her. It tunneled through her veins and swelled her will to survive, her urge to work the problem. Things were bad. But she had Bero, and Grippy, and her own little grey cells. She could figure this out. She’d live to see real human eyes again.
Two steps from the door, alarms blared. Great, ear-piercing whoops. Brilliant yellow LEDs sparked to life along the top of the walls, the natural-light simulators dimmed. The door swished shut, the touchscreen alongside it flashed red: CONTAINMENT.
“Bero?”
A tinny female voice, not Bero’s, said, “Breach at airlock two. Breach at airlock two. Breach at airlock two…”
Sanda wanted to kick something but thought better of it before she took another tumble. Space was getting on her nerves.
CHAPTER 7
PRIME STANDARD YEAR 3541
THE BATTLE OF DRALEE ECHOES
Anaia led him, his mind in a haze, to her apartment. He didn’t even register the steps, just a constant low buzzing in the back of his mind. Anaia may have been Lili’s pet gossip, but she had never lied to him. Keeper Shun had never lied to him. Why would they? Why would either of them choose now to lie? There was no gain he could see. Shun had better intel. Anaia must be mistaken. It was the only logical conclusion.
She swung the door to her room open and ushered him inside. Anaia had the same furniture they all did—a single bed, dresser, desk—but it was difficult to find them all beneath the piles of tablets, charts, chips, and smartboards. Her window faced planetside, so that as the station and the planet Ada pirouetted around each other every twenty-six minutes she had a clear view of the average people of Prime. The citizens the Keepers protected.
The dwarf planet Ada swam past her window as he took a seat on the foot of her bed. A gridded mass of lights dotted the planet’s surface. He wondered, guiltily, if his parents had made it back down to their home on the planet for the night, or if they were holed up somewhere in a shelter on the station. He glanced to his wristpad, but it was dark. Only emergency signals could get through for the next thirty-six hours.
“I could be wrong,” Anaia blurted. She paced over to her desk and sat down with purpose, rummaging through a pile of tablets. “I mean, I’m not an expert or anything.”
She toyed with the eye lens on the hobbyist telescope she kept pointed down at planet Ada. Things clicked into place in Biran’s tired brain, his mouth went dry.
“What did you see?”
“Wavelengths. That’s all. Just… pulses of information where there shouldn’t be anything. I can’t decode it. It might even be Icarion, I don’t know. But there’s something broadcasting out there, in the battle site. I’m sure of that.”
Every muscle in Biran’s body tensed. There shouldn’t be anything there except rubble. Unless this was the supposed weapon Lavaux and the others worried about. “Show me.”
She gripped a tablet decisively and woke it up, blue light painting shadows in the hollows of her cheeks. Biran pretended not to notice as she brought up a shell program to backdoor her way into one of the Prime satellites monitoring the space around Dralee. Anaia’s hobbies were her own business, and now that they were officially Keepers, she should technically have access, anyway. Technically.
With a few deft flicks, she brought up the wavelength she’d been monitoring. She flipped the tablet around for him to see.
Biran’s chest ached. His head swam.
Those coordinates. They were well inside the supposed rubble field, and something was definitely being broadcasted out. But it wasn’t encoded—it just wasn’t a signal carrying any variety of information Anaia was used to seeing.
“Varying 540 to 580 terahertz. That’s not an info packet, Anaia.”
“Then what is it?”
“Light,” Biran said, unable to help the warble of hope shaking him to the core. “Green light.”
“From the evac pod status displays?”
Biran shook his head, bewildered. “I can’t think of any other sourc
e.”
Keeper Shun had lied to him.
The next morning, Biran sat on the edge of his new bed, the sheets crisp from the laundry, and stared at the text message left unsent on his wristpad. The chip implant site on the back of his skull itched, though the medis assured him the sensation was only psychosomatic. They had done the procedure that morning, as simple as micro-chipping a pet. Just the whoosh of the implant gun, then the test to see if all the proper information was there.
It was. Lurking in the back of Biran’s skull, that spidery piece of technology held the key to a small portion of the Casimir Gate’s construction. He was, from this point on, an instrument of technology. A Keeper of humanity’s future.
And yet the text blinked, waiting for him to hit send. A needle of a sentence, a seed. A crack in the veneer. A message that, once sent, forever revealed him to have doubt.
Doubt in his masters. Doubt in the organization he’d striven so long to join.
Anaia had checked the data, again and again. Green lights shone in the rubble of the Battle of Dralee. Evac pods winking back at Prime, asking to be picked up, to be sent to safety. His sister may be one of them. Even if she wasn’t—his throat caught—the others deserved rescue, not abandonment.
But for that to happen, he had to make waves. Had to let the senior Keepers know he’d uncovered their lie. For they had lied to him, though he barely believed it. Garcia, Lavaux, and Shun… Even Shun. She’d scoffed at Icarion hiding a planet-busting weapon in the rubble, but she had sat with false sympathy on her face and told him there was no hope: All the pods had been lost.
There was a slim chance the military was keeping the existence of the lights from the Keeper elders, but some dark part of Biran’s heart knew that answer was too easy.
Biran didn’t have the answers, but he could make them give them to him. First, he had to let someone else know. That person should have been Sanda.
He hit send on a group text message to his dads.
Biran: There are green lights in the rubble.
Graham: What?? Is this official?!
Biran: No. Bosses won’t acknowledge.
Ilan: … Are you sure?
Biran: Have my own data.
Graham: Son… Data can be interpreted a lot of different ways. Have you talked to them?
Biran: I intend to. Right now.
Graham: Cool your heels first. It’s fresh, and it hurts, I know…
Ilan: Why don’t you come planetside for a while? We miss you. <3
Biran: I can’t. I need to find out what this means. [deleted: I thought you’d understand.]
Graham: We want to know, too. We do.
Biran: [deleted: then why won’t you…]
Ilan: The director will figure it out. Come home.
Graham: Ilan will cook you his terrible chili.
Ilan: My chili’s famous!… But he’s right. Take some leave. Come home.
Biran: I love you both.
He closed the channel before they could talk him off the ledge. It was only natural for them to second-guess his conviction. They trusted the system they lived in, and they hadn’t seen the data he had. Hadn’t lain awake at night asking themselves why the director hadn’t found the same data, too. They were afraid he was about to make an ass of himself in front of his boss. Probably he was. But he had to try. Had to ask. Somewhere a computer would flag his conversation for HR to review. If he left it at that, he might get called in for counseling. Might even get sent down to his dads for that leave they wanted him to take.
But he wouldn’t leave it at that.
He wore an old suit, the dark brown creases worn but holding on thanks to the talents of the local laundry. His new house had come with a whole new wardrobe—sharp and crisp—but he didn’t want the seniors to think he was putting on airs.
At the threshold to his new home—his Keeper residence—his stomach finally bottomed out. His palms sweat. Nausea gripped him in icy hands, and for a moment he thought he’d have to run to the toilet. Biran flicked his gaze to a small collection of family items the decorating crew had nailed to his foyer wall, and zeroed in on one picture: Sanda, on the day they promoted her to captain of her gunship. Her grin wide, prideful. One arm slung, protectively, around Biran’s shoulders. She’d always looked out for him. Made a career of it.
His turn.
The ride from his home to the Cannery passed in a blur, the litany of what he intended to say the only thought rolling through his head. Everything else was rote. Dropped off—say thank you to the drivers. Through the front door—greet the receptionist. Pass security—hellos exchanged.
And then he was standing before the director’s desk, in the director’s office—a mythical place, as far as it had concerned student him.
“Keeper Greeve.” Director Jian Olver came around the desk to shake his hand and pull out a chair for him. “Our young rising star. What can I do for you? A drink?”
Biran had only seen the director from afar until this moment, but up close he was not surprised to note that the man had allowed his wrinkles to “come in,” as the saying went, stamping his age around the corners of his eyes. He kept his steely hair cropped tight, a holdover from his days in the military. Biran dared to hope that his old allegiance may make him sympathetic to what Biran had to say.
“No, thank you.” He waved off the offer of some dark gold liquor and sat straight, affecting more confidence than he felt. “I’m here to talk about Dralee.”
A frown creased the old man’s face—false concern, Biran guessed—as he took up his plush leather chair and scooted forward so that the desk was the only distance between them. “Military briefings are open to all Keepers every morning at 0600 sharp. Other than that, if you’d like to request grief counseling…”
It was the first time Biran had heard the word grief spoken so plainly. He swallowed back a sudden surge of thankfulness. Director Olver had always painted himself as a patriarchal figure—distant, but open to discussion. Biran knew full well that many of the students and junior Keepers availed themselves of his open-door policy, but Biran had never been one of those. He’d had his own fathers to seek counsel with. He had told himself he would only infringe upon the director’s time if it were truly, truly important.
Now, he wished he’d had more practice talking to the director. Fear constricted his throat. The fabric of his wristpad dilated to allow the sweat pooling against his arm to evaporate. He rubbed his hands together, digging deep for strength. Sanda. This was for Sanda.
He forced himself to swipe up the right data set, and turned his wristpad for Director Olver to see. It’d taken hours for him to scrub the information so it couldn’t be traced back to Anaia.
“Thank you, Director, but that’s not why I’m here. I have discovered information that our people may not be getting from the military,” he began, warily, watching the director to gauge his reaction. Nothing. Not even the twitch of an eyebrow. He’d locked himself down. “Over this spread of coordinates,” he continued, though his throat grew drier with every word, “there is evidence of unnatural wavelengths in the vicinity. Faint, but present. Green lights, Director, from evac pods. At least six, that I can tell, but with more sensitive equipment—”
“Where did you get this?”
“My own observations, sir.”
The director’s eyes narrowed, and Biran drew his wristpad back, as if the director’s scowl alone was enough to damage it.
“You don’t understand what you’re looking at. That data is corrupt.”
“With all respect—”
“The data is corrupt. Our people have confirmed that there are no evac pods broadcasting in the rubble zone. Am I clear?”
Biran swallowed. “Yes, sir.”
“Good.” He leaned back in the chair with a sigh. “I know it’s hard to accept, Keeper Greeve, but that field has been swept over by the best tech we’ve got. There’s nothing out there, and if there is something broadcasting, it’s Icarion trying to lur
e us in close for an ambush.”
Biran nodded, reading between the lines: Our people are out there, but we’re impotent to get to them and we don’t want the populace to know.
“I understand, Director.”
The director eyed him from beneath thick, neat brows and nodded to himself. “Is there anything else you need, Keeper?”
“No, sir.”
The director pushed to his feet, and Biran mirrored him. A handshake, a pat on the back, all the usual platitudes, and he was out in the hall alone, reeling, but this time Anaia was nowhere near to lend him a shoulder. He was on his own. Just as Sanda, drifting through cold space in a coma, was on her own.
But she didn’t have to be.
So Icarion might have a weapon. So what? Prime’s were bigger. Her people stronger. Biran would not let his sister die in the vacuum of space because some old men were too scared to take a risk. He doubted the people of Prime would disagree with him.
He was prepared to stake his life on that.
CHAPTER 8
PRIME STANDARD YEAR 3771
TRYING TO SURVIVE DAY TWO
Bero!” She glared at the ceiling. “Turn that alarm off, for Christ’s sake!”
The siren and the tinny voice silenced, but the lights stayed low and the LEDs made the whole ship look jaundiced.
“Please remain in quarters. The situation is being controlled,” Bero said.
Sanda looked pointedly at the locked door, the bot holding her upright, and the speakers neatly hidden in the walls. “Who, exactly, is controlling the situation?”
“You cannot go out there,” he snapped. Actually, full-on snapped at her. Sanda’s jaw dropped open. Icarion wouldn’t have programmed their precious AI for surliness, would they? But then, they were supposed to be emergent personalities, trained through life experience, just like regular infants. There was no telling how emotionally young Bero was. No telling what traveling the star system for a few hundred years with only Grippy here to talk to had done to his neural circuits.
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