And how many more such cities waited across the twelve planets?
Wait. Something was wrong.
Ada ran through her memories of the conversation, but they were spotty. “Sanako, did you say -”
“Miss Liu, I need to take a blood sample.” Cheren was looking at her expectantly, with something long and thin and terribly sharp-looking in her hand. Ada’s eyes widened.
“Blood? Why?”
“I need to test for diseases.”
She had already checked her own blood. It was pure, purer than anybody else’s. It made her… her. “I don’t have any diseases.” Ada felt her heart beat faster. She didn’t want to give them blood. What would they do if they had it? They certainly didn’t need it. “No, no blood.”
“Miss Liu, it’s part of the protocol. I need to -”
She turned to Sanako. “Why is she calling me Miss? That’s not my name. Tell her I won’t give her any blood.”
“It won’t hurt.” Cheren pointed at Sanako. “She’ll do it too. Ensign, maybe if she watches me draw blood from you -”
“No!” Ada stepped back, squaring her shoulders. “Not from me.”
Sanako looked distressed, and laid a hand on the doctor’s shoulder. “Can we maybe skip this part? Blood might be sacred to them.”
“I’m sorry, ensign, but the mission’s quarantine clearance protocol is clear.”
Sanako glanced at Ada. “She’s… look, if we try to get blood from her and she stops cooperating entirely -”
“We need to check for bloodborne pathogens.” Cheren raised an eyebrow. “I simply can’t do that without blood.”
“I…” Sanako pursed her lips. “Ada, it won’t hurt. We don’t do anything… bad with it.”
“I don’t care what you say.” She lifted her hand slightly, hoping she wouldn’t have to get herself out of this situation violently. “I don’t mind poking and measuring but she’s not taking pieces of me. Just -” Arguing would just confuse them more, wouldn’t it? “Just, no.”
Sanako groaned and turned to Cheren. “I’m sorry, doctor, but in the interest of getting her to cooperate, I have to invoke my authority as a commissioned officer and ask you to skip this segment of the procedure. You can note my name in your report.”
“As an officer, ensign? ” After a moment of letting the words hang there, Cheren shrugged and put away the thin, sharp object, replacing it with something attached to a wire. “Very well. Ada - I’m going to wrap this device around your wrist. It won’t take any… pieces.”
She contemplated the object for a moment, deciding that if there was any foul play, she could easily slow time and strike out. She let the doctor wrap the thing around her wrist as her mind bounced back to the biggest problem in this conversation so far. “Sanako - you said twelve planets.”
Sanako blinked, and started rolling the names off again as in song. “Yes. Freyja, Athena, Tlaloc, Raijin, Vesta, Caishen, Ishtar, Chang’e, Ganesha, Osiris, Inti, Perun.”
Ah. There it wasn’t. “What about Mir?”
Sanako’s pale golden face momentarily went blank, then Ada watched her face ripple with the dark echo of history’s answer to her question. Mir had been destroyed, just like Earth.
Thunder exploded in her brain. She had to tell Zhilik. His people had abandoned Earth, a planet their ancestors had lived on for a thousand years, in the hopes of returning to Mir. They had to know.
She pulled off the wrist device, snapping it apart to the doctor’s surprised yelp, and lunged for her suit, pressing it back on in a hurry. Sanako raised her arms in panic. “Ada - Ada it was a long time ago. There was - there was a war -”
“Does anybody live there?”
“No. We can’t. It’s irradiated.” Sanako looked desperate for words. “Contaminated? Poisoned? Toxic? We can’t live there. Most animals can’t -”
As the suit finished melding to her body, Ada pointed to the door. She had no idea where the outers were. “They called you - they came here - to go to Mir.”
Sanako was shaking her head. “Mir is dead . Deader than Earth. Ada -”
“Bring me to them.”
Sanako fumbled for her comm, but Ada snapped out a crackle of dark code and yanked the device into her waiting fingers. “No. Bring me now .”
Ada had stood on top of that ziggurat and watched as their only home was destroyed around them. They had come to the stars looking for an unbroken past to heal their present, and so had she. She had lived with them, eaten with them, helped them along as they had helped her. She wasn’t going to let some stuffy colonial soldier parrot the news at them or keep them in the dark.
She stormed out into the hallway, faced the ladder leading into the ship, and - stopped. Shit. She had no idea where she was going. She turned around to see Sanako, supremely uncomfortable-looking, right behind her. “Sanako, will you help me find Zhilik?”
The ensign looked like she was in way over her head, but nodded. “Your friend? The mirran? I - of course. I know where the Earth mirrans are, just follow me. But Ada - please don’t tell them. Not yet. They need to be ready.”
Ada was determined to tell them at the soonest possible opportunity, but she nodded anyway. She tried running over ways to break the news in her head as she followed Sanako, climbing down the ladder into a deeper part of the ship, but there were no good ideas. It was terrible news no matter which way she looked at it, and though it was ancient history to these colonials, she knew the crushing immediacy it would have for Zhilik and his kin.
When they reached the outers, holed up in a broad, windowless storage area near the shuttle bay, her eyes scanned the crowd for Zhilik. He was nowhere to be found, but another familiar face did appear - Arshak, the doctor who had helped her with the equipment needed to manipulate and solve the technophage. The outers’ furry face split into a familiar toothy grin when they made eye contact. “Ada Liu! I am very glad to see you - we would not be here without you.”
Ada was relieved to be able to slip into a more familiar Earth tongue, though she couldn’t force herself to sound very happy. “Arshak! I’m glad you made it. I’m looking for Zhilik. Where is he?”
“On the far side of this floor. They are running medical exams. Jhoru is with him, translating.” Arshak’s ears twitched nervously. “They have not told us much, but it sounds like we have reached another star system. Are we approaching Mir?”
Ada bit her lip, and rested a hand on Arshak’s shoulder. “No, we’re heading for a colony called Freyja. We’ll reach it in around two days. Arshak, I really need to see Zhilik.”
The doctor nodded, but flatted her ears in well-founded unease. “Very well. Come.”
The ensign followed her anyway, glancing between her and Arshak, trying to sound calm. “That’s a very different language, Ada. How did you learn ours so quickly?”
Ada only absently realized Sanako hadn’t understood the exchange. “You talk like the old machines on Earth.” At that, Sanako’s eyes widened. Why? She should ask later; right now she was in no mood for colonial foibles.
As they rounded a bend in the storage area, Ada saw several of the outers being tended to by white-clad doctors like Cheren, most of them mirran - the same species, even if they were separated by a thousand years of time and cultural memory. There were also mirrans dressed like Sanako - guards, perhaps. “Sanako, who are those?”
She peered. “Other ensigns. Ada -”
“Zhilik!”
He was sitting with Jhoru, who was being examined by a doctor. One of the mirran soldiers approached and he quickly descended into colonial patter with Sanako, but Ada rushed past him.
“Zhilik, I need to talk to -”
Sanako grabbed her arm, pulling her towards the mirran soldier. Her voice was not as steady as she might have liked. “Ada, this is Ensign Orrosk Derrat. His aunt is Admiral Izha Derrat, who is -”
Ada flapped her hand at them. She knew a distraction when she saw one. She rounded on Zhilik and stepped closer, leaning down
towards his triangular ears and speaking in her own native tongue. “Zhilik, Mir was destroyed. Centuries ago. There’s nothing left.”
For a brief second, he froze. Jhoru had clearly heard her as well, but held still for the doctor with admirable calm. The sudden silence between the three of them apparently spoke volumes to both Sanako and Orrosk; she muttered what might have been a curse, he simply gaped openly at them.
After a painful moment, Zhilik shook his head, then took a deep breath. “Ada, do not tell the others yet.”
She glanced between him and Jhoru, whose ears were flat as she stared at Ada. “What?”
“This is terrible news, but clearly there are mirrans who survived. We will learn -”
“You need to understand!” She glanced around, and other outers nearby were starting to pay attention. She dug through her brain, trying to weave together the outers’ own native words. She had picked up enough of it for this simple task. She hissed the words under her breath. “Mir is dead. There is no Mir.”
The language switch alarmed Zhilik enough that he immediately stood. “Ada, please, do not -”
She shouted out into the hold, her tongue and lips twisting and growling around the words. “Mir is dead! There is no Mir!”
The effect was instant. A silence rippled outward among the outers, and into the silence fell gaze upon gaze, all sliding back to its source, to Ada. Sanako was breathing shallow behind her, whispering in the colonial tongue. “Ada, please tell me you didn’t -”
Murmurs, at first. Then words, spoken clearly, questions hurled, cries, shouts. The entire hold rumbled with the shattering of hundreds of dreams at once. There was no homeworld. There were only other places, other castoffs, other fragments of the past. There was no home.
“There are twelve worlds!” Ada shouted the words at them. “But Mir is gone - all there is -”
Zhilik took a step towards her, and for once he looked displeased. “They are not listening, Ada. They cannot , now that - ”
A hand was tapping her frantically on the shoulder. Sanako. “Ada - Ada, please give me my comm -”
She handed the device back and turned to stare around the scene. People were shouting - shouting at the mirran and human soldiers standing around them. Sanako and Orrosk were shouting into their comms in two different languages.
It was loud. Far too loud. A sense of dread crept over her, as Ada wondered what, exactly, she had expected to happen. She hadn’t expected anything. She just had to say it.
Sanako grabbed her and pointed at Zhilik. “Is he in charge?”
“What? I don’t know, I don’t think -”
“What about the translator?” She was pointing at Jhoru. “Ada, we need to talk to someone in charge -”
“Fine, yes, them.”
The mirran ensign Orrosk gestured, and suddenly they were all being escorted away. Nobody was touching them, but the soldiers’ body language made clear Ada, Zhilik and Jhoru needed to move. They didn’t go far, turning into a small and mostly bare storage room that had the benefit of a door. Orrosk shut it behind them and Sanako rounded on Ada, breathing heavily through her nose, visibly trying to control her language.
“Ada, this is going to cause problems -”
“I don’t care.” She crossed her arms and looked at Jhoru, knowing the linguistically gifted outer should be able to understand at least some of this as well. “Explain what happened.”
“Fine. Yes.” Sanako crossed her own arms in response. “We need to explain it to someone , now, so they can explain it to the others. In your own terms.”
“Okay - Zhilik, questions? Or else I’ll ask mine.”
Zhilik sat unhappily on a crate that was bolted to the floor. “How did they receive our transmissions if Mir was... destroyed? We specifically sent the messages to Mir.”
She looked back to the colonials. The other soldiers had stayed outside, leaving Sanako and this Orrosk Derrat alone with them. Orrosk’s ears looked panicked as Ada translated. “Mir. If it was ruined, how did you get the signal from Earth?”
Orrosk glared angrily at Sanako, as though it were her fault Ada had trampled into this, and for a moment Ada pitied Sanako whatever scorn she might get for no fault of her own. He answered her directly, though, in an accent little different to Sanako’s. “We have satellites orbiting Mir, watching it. Unlike Earth , Mir isn’t surrounded by a giant battlestation that blasts anything that comes close. Some of our satellites received your message and started re-broadcasting in every direction.”
“What?”
“The satellite.” Sanako looked frustrated. “It just broadcast your message in a bubble, every direction!”
That fact was the least interesting thing about this. “I don’t care about that. What’s a satellite?”
Sanako covered her eyes briefly and winced. “Machines in orbit around a planet. They just have sensors and comms, no people.”
Ada translated that back to Zhilik and Jhoru, but Jhoru wasn’t going to let that be enough, asking the colonials directly in a reasonable approximation of their language. “How was Mir destroyed? What does that even mean, if the planet is still there?”
The two colonials exchanged glances and squirmed uneasily, but Sanako was quick to speak. “There is a lot of… history. The planet is uninhabitable. Deadly. The technical details aren’t important, but it will probably take another five hundred years before anything bigger than insects can live there.”
Ada’s eyes narrowed. They weren’t just summarizing - there was something here they disliked talking about. She needed to know what. “ Who destroyed Mir?”
Sanako clasped her arms as though it were suddenly cold in the room. It wasn’t. The fur on Orrosk’s head rose a little and he flatted his ears again, but he spoke this time, and there was a note of fear in his voice. “We don’t know for certain who attacked Earth and Mir. After the Armistice the colonies were independent and the homeworlds were blockaded. But soon after Earth and Mir went silent, the sixteen original colonies were attacked too.”
“Sixteen? I thought -” Ada’s eyes widened at the implication. “Oh gods.”
Sanako nodded solemnly. “They somehow got through our jumpgates and used them to invade our systems. Their flagship completely glassed one of the original colonies before we knew what was going on. The Union destroyed all its jumpgates to stop them from reaching other systems, but that also cut Union planets off from one another. And they kept coming anyway, pushing whole fleets and new jumpgates into our systems at sublight speeds. It took them decades for each one, but they kept coming.”
Both Sanako and Orrosk looked cowed and nervous at this inherited memory.
“Two more colonies were glassed, and the smallest one collapsed on its own after being cut off. Terraforming failures. Half our population died one way or another. Most of the planets weren’t even finished terraforming, and we had these… things attacking us. They stopped, eventually, but we were barely alive, and after the last enemy ships were gone it took us two hundred years to get back on our feet and reestablish interstellar travel, and another two hundred to really stabilize all the planet ecologies. They pushed us to the brink of extinction.”
Sanako looked at Ada, biting her lip.
“We call them Haints.”
Chapter 2
Ada was glad for the window. There was something soothing about watching ships slide across distant stars almost fixed against the dark. She had been granted a few hours to sleep and had taken them gladly - she wasn’t sure when she’d get another chance. Then Sanako had come to bring her to this windowed room with words assuring her everything was fine and a tone telling her it really wasn’t.
The colonials were unhappy with her stirring the midden, and their leaders had decided to “meet” her. She wasn’t sure what they were - they might be admirals or admiralty or even officers . She held her locator stone to her palm with her thumb, pressing each other finger against it in sequence, waiting.
When the door n
ext opened, it did so for two people who did not impress her. An older human man with dark brown skin and a crooked, hawkish nose, and alongside him a brown-and-black striped mirran woman. They wore matching, blocky pattern of greys and dark blues, clothes differing only to account for their different body structures They sat down across from her in silent synchrony. The greatest difference between them was that the anger obvious on the human seemed absent from the mirran.
Sanako cleared her throat and pointed to the human. “Ada Liu, this is Admiral Senjat Ashur, two stars.” Titles that meant nothing to Ada. “And this is Admiral Izha Derrat, two stars. They’re jointly in charge of this expedition.”
With the same title, they must be equals; Ada opened her mouth to address the mirran, given the nature of the disturbance. But it was the human who got the first word out, his voice slow and drawling as though he were stupid enough to think she were stupid.
“Ada Liu. That’s your name?”
She turned from Izha to this Senjat and nodded, resting her arms on the table. “Yes.”
“We should have kept an eye on you.” He leaned back. “We barely paid attention when you climbed onto our ship and now look at you, running around sending the refugees into a panic. What are you trying to do?”
She thought it was obvious. Maybe he was stupid. “Tell them the truth.”
“You hurt them, is what you did.” He glanced at Izha Derrat, who made a silent gesture Ada couldn’t interpret. “Well, let’s talk truth. What do you want? I don’t want you causing any more trouble.”
“Trouble?” Ada scowled. Who did he think he was? “I’m here to learn. I need to know what happened to Earth, so that -”
“Some genetically engineered pathogen broke out, the AI on that station went haywire and started killing people, civilization collapsed.” He made a repulsive face and flapped his hand dismissively. “Nothing you wouldn’t expect from that kind of meddling. So what? It’s been a thousand years.”
She blinked at some of the odder words, but she got the distinct sense he did not know or care about the details of the Fall. “Did you defeat the Haints?”
The Broken Third (Digitesque Book 4) Page 2
