“My sensors report nothing requiring immediate attention.”
“Hmm. Just to be safe, we’ll schedule an EVA for full preflight before we ramp up the big engines for the interstellar crossing. I’d hate to slow down because of something silly like a loose bolt.”
“That idea is amenable.”
“You’re talking like a computer again.” She hit the jets, angling herself out across Bero’s body toward the debris field.
“Apologies.”
“Try again, pal.”
“Uh. Sorry?”
“That’s better.”
In the upper right of her HUD, text flashed: :-P
“Oh my god. They taught you emoticons.”
“I had access to the in-system internet.”
“Of course you did. Because what better way to introduce a newly created intelligence to the world than through cat pictures and terrible puns.”
“I rather enjoyed the puns.”
“But not the cat pictures?”
“May I ask you an embarrassing question, Sanda?”
“Those are my favorite kind.”
“Are cats… real?”
She bit back a laugh. “Yes, they are. Rampant on Earth. We humans have loved the furry murder machines since the time of the ancient Egyptians. Loved ’em so much we took ’em with us to the stars.”
“I see. I had thought they might be generated images. I am familiar with fan art and thought that culture would explain their widespread nature.”
“They’re real, Bero. Though don’t ask me how previous generations figured out how to deal with litter boxes in space. Frankly, I don’t want to know.”
The debris field came in close. She adjusted her course, slowing down as she approached the thick fan of rubble bending around Kalcus’s gravitational field. According to Bero, the junk she was looking at now had once been a transport ship of fresh evac pods, bringing supplies from Icarion to one of their many outposts on Kalcus’s moons.
Bero hadn’t said as much, but she could guess what happened. Ada Prime cruisers had spotted the shipment, marked the military insignia, and shot it out of the black. That was the only kind of destruction that left this type of debris trail. Engine malfunctions left either a marooned husk of a ship, or blasted it to tiny pieces. Neat chunks, chewed up but more or less whole, was the work of railguns. Icarion may have dealt the final blow, but Ada’s hands weren’t clean in that war. Not by a long shot.
“Got that arm ready? I’m approaching a promising hunk.”
“Ready,” Bero affirmed.
On her wristpad, the controls for Bero’s extravehicular arm lit up. Sanda rolled, turning so she could see the robotic crane extending from Bero’s body. Articulated in three places, the arm could snatch up just about anything Bero came across. He’d found maneuvering the arm without human input difficult, however. Her own evac pod had the scrapes to prove his struggle. Bero just didn’t have the ability to navigate with precision in tight quarters. The big guy could spot a chunk of space debris thousands of miles out and adjust course to avoid it, but picking it up required primate fingers.
Sanda adjusted the arm, angling it to come in tight on a piece of twisted metal she’d spotted. Somewhere in that slowly spinning remnant of destruction she’d seen the usual cheery Icarion colors, and spotted the faint flash of a red LED. Could be a piece of console, but based on the size, she was betting mangled evac pod. Exactly what she wanted.
The arm jerked to her left.
“Easy,” Bero said.
“I’d like to see you try this.” She eased it around, opening the claw to clamp onto the hunk. It snagged shut, and a green light flickered on her wristpad. Solid contact. She began to ease it back toward Bero’s cargo bay. He opened the doors without comment.
“I got you into the ship in one piece.”
“Did you, now?” She slid the hunk into the open bay, moved it to an empty mag pallet, and activated the magnetic currents underneath. Released, the hunk clicked to the magnets in the floor.
“Your unfortunate injury was not my fault.”
“Is that… Are you being sarcastic, Bero?” A little boost of the jets, and she drifted deeper into the debris field. She stayed above it, keeping an eagle eye to avoid having her tether tangle with any of the smaller bits stuck on the plane of orbit below.
“I learn by imitation.”
“Wonderful.”
“Precisely.”
A promising glint caught her eye, but it vanished, twisting away behind a larger piece of what looked like scorched flooring. She craned her neck, trying to get a better look. The telltale curve of an evac pod emerged from behind the rubble for a split second, then drifted out of sight again. Sanda swore and focused on her immediate area. Two more likely chunks waited beneath her. She moved the arm in for the catch.
“Wish we could get in closer,” she muttered as she deposited the second chunk into the cargo bay.
“Unwise. My size may disrupt the debris field in unforeseen ways.”
“Can’t calculate all the possibilities with that big brain of yours?”
“Not while running all the operations of the ship, monitoring you, and working on the correct path to Atrux in the background.”
“Oh, is that all?”
“I told you, I learn from imitation.”
She grinned but bit her lip. Three more likely hunks went into the bay, and she was pushing the edge of her tether and the arm’s reach. Whatever else was out here, it would have to wait until she returned to Bero, assessed their finds, and repositioned the ship if need be. She sighed, warm breath misting the helmet. Soft gears whirred as dry air cleared the condensation away. She’d remembered her sweatband this time, thank the stars.
“I suppose that’s it—wait.”
“What is it?”
“Hold on.”
She nudged herself forward with the jets, and her HUD flashed that she’d reached the safe limit of her tether. But she’d seen something. Something flashing. Not red or yellow, not shut down. That glint she spotted earlier, disappearing behind the chunk of floor. That must be it. It was the right size, the right material. And its LED was flashing green. Her heart skipped a beat.
There was someone in that evac pod. Someone still very much alive.
“Are you seeing this?”
“Sanda, do not get your hopes up. That could be a malfunction.”
“It isn’t,” she insisted, though she had no idea why. Certainty filled her. That pod held a human. A living human. Preserved, just as she had been, against the advance of time. Against the chaos of war. Long-term storage in evac pods was dangerous, most died or came out deranged, but she’d made it through. Maybe this person had, too.
Glad for the FitFlex suit absorbing the sweat from her palms, she tapped her wristpad to move the robotic arm in. It blinked at her in protest.
“It’s out of range. Come back on board, I’ll reposition and then—”
“No.” How to explain to Bero? She couldn’t leave this person out here even if she intended on coming back. Couldn’t turn her back on a fellow human. A fellow survivor. Couldn’t just leave them to float. Who knew how long that pod had been operational? Hundreds of years, at least. It could be on its very last leg. Turning back now could mean that person’s death. And, stars and void, but she was desperate for some real human interaction. Definitely couldn’t explain that to Bero. It’d hurt his feelings.
“I think I can reach it.”
“That is inadvisable.”
“A lot of inadvisable maneuvers seem to get done lately, don’t they?” She glanced toward Ada Prime, let her gaze rest on the smear of light that had once been her homeland.
“That’s an Icarion pod,” Bero protested. “An enemy.”
“You picked me up while I was flying Ada Prime colors.” She cranked up the airjets, ignoring the beep in her helmet that told her she was pushing the tether. It tugged at her, tented the back of her FitFlex where it connected to h
er lifepack. Damn. It was just out of reach of the tether, below her. If she could get behind it, push it forward with her jets, it’d be in reach of Bero’s arm.
“I picked you up because you’re the only living being I’d encountered in hundreds of years,” Bero snapped. “Please, do this safely… I can’t… I don’t want to be alone again.”
Bero must have felt about her pod as she felt about this one, only doubly due to all those years of solitude. But she couldn’t let it go. The thought of turning around caused bile to rise in her mouth.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be okay. I promise.”
“Sanda!”
There it was, that fear again. The same paranoia she’d heard when the gasket on ’lock two had blown open. She winced, knowing she was the cause. Knowing she wasn’t going to do anything to alleviate it. Ignoring the panicked flickering in her HUD, she angled “down” and hit the airjets.
The pod rushed up to meet her. She twisted, placing herself directly behind it, the tether so tight it pulled her into it, nudged the pod forward. Green LEDs blinked at her, taunting. Daring her to leave it there, to turn her back for her own safety. Like hell.
She placed both hands against the back of the pod, FitFlex warming to keep her palms from freezing to the metal, and hit the jets. Sanda lurched forward, and the pod twisted upward—she hadn’t been dead center. She slapped one hand higher up and hit the jets again, bringing the pod back down, accelerating it through the debris field, wincing as bits of scrap bounced off its front and flung away.
“Hang in there,” she said to her unknown passenger.
She gave it one last hard burst, thinking to set it on its path then grab it with the arm. She was in range now. Must be.
Something jerked on her suit.
She yelped as it wrenched her sideways, flinging her away from the plane of the debris field. Her vision spun, HUD struggling to stabilize, and for one delirious moment she thought she saw Ada Prime, whole and glowing, in the distance.
A tug yanked on her back, something tore. Then she was free. Drifting. White stars crowded her vision, her body’s own making.
“Sanda? Sanda!”
She shook her head. “I’m here. I’m okay. What happened?”
“A piece of hull cut your tether.”
She looked. The tether drifted, twisting on conserved momentum, one frayed end tickling the space just above the debris field. She swallowed. She’d been shorn loose. She checked her airjet reserves. Low, but enough for a steady drift back to Bero. Of course, her momentum meant she was currently drifting away from Bero. She jetted forward, leaning to streamline herself. Not that there was any measurable resistance in the vacuum of space, but it made her feel better.
“I’ve got enough air to make it back,” she assured Bero. Nerves made her talk. Made her stifle a giggle. “The evac pod?”
“In range.” He didn’t bother hiding his bitterness.
“I’m okay, you know.”
“Despite your best efforts to the contrary.”
Touchy spaceship. But Bero’s grumpiness couldn’t dampen her excitement. She’d caught it. The pod was in reach, and after she jetted in close enough to maneuver the arm and get them all inside, she was about to meet someone new.
The first living face she’d seen in over two hundred years.
INTERLUDE: CALLIE
PRIME STANDARD YEAR 3541
SIX DAYS AFTER DRALEE
At 0500 hours Ada Prime’s favorite newscaster, Callie Mera, exited makeup and took her seat behind the wide grey desk that cut off her lower half and gave the guys in graphics somewhere to put breaking-news tickers.
It hid her legs, which she didn’t like. She didn’t spend two hours every morning working her muscles into a quivering mass so that a heap of a desk could keep them out of view. But it also hid her feet when the nerves kicked in, and her heel started tapping, and the sound guys were always too polite to complain when they had to filter out the machine-gun staccato of her stimming. So she couldn’t complain, really. She had it good, like the rest of Prime’s citizens. Medical care, education, food, shelter, and a job she enjoyed.
So what if she leaked out around the edges of her perfect mold sometimes. So what.
She tapped through a few files on her wristpad until she found her notes for this morning’s interview. There was no point to her reviewing them. She’d gone over them a half dozen times the night before, and again in the autocab on the way into the station. But the motion of scrolling, and the practiced crease of concentration between her brows, kept the crew from trying to talk to her before the show started.
She didn’t like talking unless a camera was rolling. The crew thought she was a cold fish. Stuck-up, full of herself. Maybe she was. But when the cameras weren’t rolling, her mind wandered, and when her mind wandered the tics kicked in, and then the stutter came back, and eventually her bosses would wonder if maybe she wouldn’t stutter on camera one day, too.
So she didn’t talk to the crew. And they thought she was a bitch.
It was better that way.
The studio door slid open at exactly 0530. Callie picked her head up and put on her lights-camera smile, raspberry lip gloss and ethereal pink rouge doing half the work of making her look friendly. She knew it’d be the Speaker. He was always on time.
Biran Aventure Greeve was a hand width away from having to duck under the door as he entered the studio. Makeup swarmed him, dusting mattifying powder across his nose and up to his forehead, twisting his dark curls back off his temples with wax so they’d look intentional. He put up with it all, smiling and sidling his way through the polite chatter of acquaintances destined to remain at a distance. Within fifteen minutes, he took his seat beside her, folding those long fingers together across the top of her desk.
His hazel eyes crinkled when he smiled, the dusk of his skin hinting at the long-ago Ecuadorian heritage that most of Prime shared. He looked good next to her on camera. She thought he’d look good next to her in bed, too, but she liked to keep things professional. At least for a while.
“Right on time,” she said, pretending to put away her notes. “As always.”
“I could never keep you waiting,” he said with all the easy charm of a man who spent his days shaking hands and his nights smiling lovers into his arms. Callie envied him that ease. If she could be half so calm when a camera wasn’t pointed at her, she might have passed the aptitude test to be a Keeper herself.
Maybe that was why she felt a perverse urge to crack his facade.
“How are you holding up, Speaker Greeve?”
The crinkles around the corners of his eyes sagged, and he reached up to rub his chin, nails scratching against day-old stubble. Underneath the desk, she heard the fabric of his slacks rustle as the fingers of his other hand coiled against his knee. There. That was why she liked him. Not the cute curls or dreamy eyes. The anxiety that lurked beneath the surface, if one were patient, or cruel, enough to scrape away at his veneer.
“I’m holding on to hope,” he said, forcing a smile as he skirted right around a straight answer.
“That’s all any of us can do,” she said, tracking the time out of the corner of her eye. One minute to air. “Ready?”
He tried to smile hard enough to reach his eyes again but couldn’t. “Ready,” he lied.
Perfect.
Callie turned to camera one, smiling bright as could be. “Gooood morning, Alexandria-Ada! I’m your old friend, Callie Mera, here this morning with a special guest, the Speaker for the Keepers, Biran Aventure Greeve.”
She swiveled her hips in the chair so that her body would point toward him while her arm rested on the desk surface, making it easy to swing her face back to camera one in an instant.
“Please,” he said, blushing slightly as he glanced away from her intense eye contact. Good. She always got more fan mail when she could make him blush. “Just call me Biran. I’m happy to join you again this morning.”
“I’m sure you mu
st be very busy, but I and all of Ada appreciate you taking the time to keep us in the loop on the situation.”
“Well,” he said, sitting up straighter as he leaned into the role. “I am the Speaker. My primary job is keeping the public informed of the unclassified side of the Keepers. I’d be a poor Speaker if I avoided cameras.”
“Ha-ha,” she fake-chuckled just well enough to fool the audience, if not Biran. “I, for one, thank you for making yourself available to the people. Not all Speakers have been so forthright in the past.”
Biran looked into camera two. She’d thrown him a softball, and he was clever enough to snatch it out of the sky. “It’s true, past Speakers have not made nearly as many public statements as I have, but past Speakers were not dealing with a nation in a state of war. It’s a troubling thought, I know, and the safety of our people is always foremost in my mind. Communication could not be more important right now. Between the Keepers and the citizenry, and between Prime and Icarion.”
“You speak of the diplomatic convoy.”
“I do, I do.” He nodded solemnly. “We lost many lives in the Battle of Dralee, but not all, and those heroes who stood firm against the aggression of Icarion deserve our every effort to retrieve them.”
Biran wouldn’t know it, but at this moment the guys in graphics would slap up a picture of his sister—Sanda Maram Greeve—right along his face on all the screens of those watching. The family resemblance was made-for-TV obvious.
“Is it true that we do not yet know which of our soldiers survived that battle?”
He closed his eyes. Pain pinched his shoulders forward. Biran opened his eyes.
“It’s true. We don’t know. And I know what you’re asking—I do. You want to know if I’m doing this for Sanda. For my sister. I won’t lie to you, Callie, just like I won’t lie to our people. It started out that way. I want my sister home. But I want all our heroes home, too. And if she’s not in that group—if Sanda’s not a survivor—well… Well then at least I will have brought someone else’s sibling, someone else’s loved one, home, wouldn’t I? And isn’t that worth every risk in the universe?”
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