The Broken Third (Digitesque Book 4)

by Guerric Haché

  Elsa and Ada walked to the back of the ship, finding a broad door open between the ship’s engines. There was just one little box in there, the size of a person’s head, strapped to the floor. “What is it?”

  Elsa shrugged. “No idea. Drugs, precious gems, genetic material, antiques, unlicensed equipment. You want to carry it?”

  Ada extended her arms. “Sure. I’ll just take a peek inside.”

  The soldier hesitated. “He just said -”

  Ada cackled, amused by the shocked look on Elsa’s face. “I know, I know! I can hear.”

  Elsa took a step closer. She looked concerned - not angry, but not particularly at ease either. “Look, much as this Baoji seems like a nice guy, be careful. Smuggling illegal stuff between planets is something people get into for bad reasons.”

  Ada frowned. “You seem to get along fine with him.”

  “Sure. I don’t want him thinking I’m going to throw him to the authorities.”

  “Are you?”

  She shook her head. “Are you crazy? Not only were they planning to kill me, but I co-piloted his ship down here in evasion of military patrols. But that doesn’t mean I trust him not to throw us to whatever criminals he’s got ties to on Chang’e.”

  Ada sighed. This was annoying - for a moment she thought everything was going to be easy. Perhaps paranoia was just the natural state of the Union. “Just watch my back, and I’ll watch yours. Deal?”

  Elsa gave a wry grin, and slapped her on the shoulder. “That’s still my assignment.”

  They stepped back out from behind the ship to where Baoji and Turou were waiting. Baoji was shouldering the pack of pizza boxes on one side, holding some kind of little controller in the other. “Ready to let this thing rip? Tianzhou is that way.”

  Elsa turned and looked at the Cirrus. She nodded, then motioned towards the woods and started walking. “What’s the blast radius going to be like?”

  They all followed, Baoji looking at the ship longingly before stepping into the gnarly forest. His ears flattened a little. Ada could tell that, despite how objectively poor his ship was, it was a thing that mattered to him in some way. “Not sure, but we’ll have about a minute before the reactor blows; too long and it looks suspicious.” He pushed a button on the controller, then tucked it away in a pocket. “One minute, starting now.”

  Elsa picked up the pace. “I’m assuming Tianzhou is all downhill from here?”

  Turou nodded, pointing. “It’s along the valley river. Maybe just a few hours’ hike.”

  Ada looked over to Baoji as he glanced backwards through the dark forest. “Are you going to miss your ship?”

  He looked at her and shook his head. “Sure, but it’s been a long time coming. And that was a hell of a way to go.” His ears twitched a little, and after a moment Ada could hear a low whine start to grow in pitch. “You say you had a ship too, eh? What was she like?”

  “It’s - she’s still out there. I just lost contact. I called her Cherry; she was something called a… deep strike fighter. Fit one person comfortably, two at a stretch. Fast as hell, pretty smart, black with some hot red lines. Six big fins at the back that moved around. Shields nothing could break through.”

  Baoji nodded. “ Weapons ?”

  “So many weapons.”

  “Maybe you should rent one of those tachyon transmitters.”

  Ada smiled. “Yeah, it’s worth a try.”

  “A lot of ships have quality, but it’s the ones you’ve flown that have character.”

  Behind them, a bright orange explosion lit up the dark, flinging waves of splinters and dirt and rocks through the trees, a ball of fire rising high into the night sky.

  Chapter 11

  The hike took almost six hours. Despite their leisurely pace, all but Ada had developed sore feet or tired legs or some other symptom by the time it started to rain. Sheets of grey drizzle curtained the sky, but cloud cover was localized, and at the mouth of the valley the sun was rising, casting light onto the rainclouds from below. The rain-battered towers of Tianzhou, too, still managed to glint in the dawn.

  Elsa, Turou, and Baoji hauled thin, glossy orange cloaks from a pack to cover themselves, but Ada shook her head as Turou offered her one. Chang’e’s rain fell warm and gentle, her suit appeared waterproof, and besides - she hadn’t felt rain in a long time. It was strangely comforting to have a reminder of that rainy coast of Earth.

  Turou didn’t seem to understand. “You’ll catch a cold.”

  Elsa shook her head. “Don’t think the girl ever gets sick.”

  Ada nodded, looking out towards the city. “From rain? That’s just depressing. Only thing I get sick of are people and places I don’t like.”

  Turou pointed off into the distance. “I think you’ll like the campus. It’s quiet; once we’re settled, you’ll be able to do your research without anyone bothering you.”

  She smirked at the oddly similar word. Campus . “I hope so. How far is it?”

  Baoji answered. “I’ll get you three a skimmer, shouldn’t be more than three hours’ flight.”

  “And who, exactly, will be piloting this skimmer?” Elsa looked skeptical, and Ada bit her tongue. Another problem easily obviated if they just let machines do it.

  As her eyes rolled, she spotted an unusually thick and yellow fungus growing on a tree, and her appetite for something cool and refreshing suddenly stirred. She split a few metres off from the others to wrench it off the trunk as Baoji kept talking.

  “We’ll need to talk to my contact. But he has people - good people. As far as smugglers and dealers go.”

  Elsa raised an eyebrow but otherwise maintained her face. “Fair enough. You know these people better than we do. I - Ada?” Her voice dropped. “Ada, what the fuck are you doing?”

  Ada had just taken a bite out of the fungus; it was pleasantly cool and watery, with an odd, slightly prickly tang. “Um.” She forced the words out around the food. “Eating?”

  “What - what, you just grab random mushrooms out of the woods and eat them?”

  “Yes?” They were staring at her like she was crazy, so she returned the favour.

  Turou frowned. “I don’t - uh - Baoji, is that poisonous?”

  “Turou I’m a criminal, not a savage. I don’t shove random forest things into my mouth.”

  She chewed up the last piece of fungus and swallowed it, not seeing what the issue was. “Then what happens when you’re away from a city?”

  “You bring real food?” Baoji looked at her like she stank. “Food that won’t poison you.”

  She frowned for a moment at poison , then realized it sounded like a word she knew for things that killed crops or animals. Someone at the Institute once fed exotic koaffa beans to a dog, which was apparently enough to kill it. “Right, I keep forgetting you’re like animals.”

  Elsa opened her mouth, but her retort came as a kind of whimper instead. “Whatever. If she dies she’ll probably just get right back up again.”

  The others seemed to shrug and keep walking. Ada wondered, as she chewed, whether they actually did die from eating the wrong things. What if they were just superstitious about stealing from forest spirits?

  “So… that was real?”

  She looked at Turou, unsure of what he meant. “The mushroom?”

  “No, uh, the feed.”

  Elsa nodded curtly. “I was there. I saw it. Hell, you can see how damned weird she is. She’s from Earth all right. It’s not some cover-up.”

  “Right.” He glanced nervously at Ada. “It didn’t look faked, but you never know.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Do people really think I’m not from Earth?”

  “Just rumours.” Baoji glanced at her. “They started as soon as the feed finished. Military grew you in a vat and is using the Earth story to hide the fact they’re genetically engineering humans. An AI cult achieved singularity and created you to replace us. The whole feed was faked and is just an excuse to declare martial law and overt
hrow the civilian government.”

  She wasn’t sure if the bewildering and confusing set of lies were good cover for her or an additional impediment to colonials believing what was really happening. For all that she wanted them to leave Earth alone, ignorance could cause even more problems down the line. “People are stupid. I figured that out a long time ago.”

  Elsa broke her line of thought. “Speaking of people, we’re getting close to the outskirts.” The lush branches overhanging the trail were indeed growing a bit sparser. “Any chance you can cover your face? You’re probably one of the most recognizable people in the Union right now.”

  Ada looked to the rain cloaks they were wearing, bright orange and glossy, and camouflaged her suit to match them with a quick thought. Another now-familiar word the suit could dance before her eyes was Helmet; the uppermost vertebrae rose up along the back of her head and expanded to form a glassy visor around her head.

  The three looked up at her with apprehension, and Baoji spoke first. “Holy shit, you look like some kind of sci-fi character.”

  “A what?”

  Turou shook his head. “This is crazy, nobody walks around town with a pod-head like that. Can you do anything else?”

  Ada frowned. “You think me walking around with my apparently-famous face is safer?”

  “The helmet’s fine.” Elsa shrugged. “I’ve seen enough cocky pilots and skimmer jockeys running around with gear on for show. It’ll be safer than having her face visible. But, uh, lose the orange?”

  Ada glanced at the root-churned mud around them and the suit melded to match, gaining glossy splatters and green-brown twists and curls across its material.

  “Holy shit, that’s way too camouflaged.”

  Ada stuck her tongue out at Elsa from behind the helmet. “Look, I don’t know what else you want from me -”

  “That’s too hardcore. Can’t you do something... plain?”

  She frowned. “I think I can only meld it to something nearby.”

  “Keep an eye out for someone wearing the latest fashion.” Turou looked down the path, as though strangers might just present themselves. “It’s too bad it’s so functional-looking. It will be difficult to hide you properly.”

  At this, Baoji flicked an ear and seemed to grin. “I would have told you that if you had warned me you wanted me to smuggle her off of Freyja. Maybe I could have found some freakishly large clothes.”

  Turou frowned at him. “You would have said I was crazy.”

  “And I would have been right.” Baoji patted her on the shoulder. “Worth it for that cold landing, though. Heavens.”

  “I’m glad you think so.” She glanced at Turou. “You could have disappeared, though. Right?”

  “Theoretically.” He frowned, seeming to consider something. “But not really. I had to do something, you know? The Union has done and still does terrible things with its power over people, but all I thought I could ever do is vote. Useless when there are so many people who want the government doing terrible things.” He rubbed the back of his neck, gesturing vaguely in front of him. “This, though. I knew I could do this.” He grimaced. “Even if it turns out to be a terrible idea.”

  Baoji swatted at Turou’s shoulder. “I’m not this for your revolution.”

  “You were the only person I knew who does this! What was I supposed to do?”

  “Call me, I guess.” Baoji grunted as he turned to his device, but Ada couldn’t tell if he was actually upset or just feigning it.

  “Baoji - is there anything I can help you with? To make up for the ship.”

  He blinked at her. “Aren’t you poor and unemployed?”

  She had no idea what those meant, but before she could ask he grinned, and grabbed something from inside his jacket. He tossed the small object at her, and she caught it. It was his pendant - a money coin, maybe? It was still on its string this time, a ragged thing long faded from its original red. “Huh?”

  “Only thing I can think of for an Earth girl. Can you take me there?”

  “Where? I -” She turned the money over and saw that embossed image of a strange building again. She couldn’t tell what it was, much less where on her entire home planet it might stand.

  “My family lived in the city for generations before coming out here.”

  Turou shook his head. “Tourist memorabilia from the early twenty-second century. It was never a real coin, Baoji, it’s a knockoff.”

  “It’s a thousand year-old knockoff that’s been in the family forever. I’d like to see what happened to it.”

  Elsa wasn’t paying much attention to them, but now she raised her hand, eyes still on the trail ahead. “My favourite kind of knockoff. Listen, I think I saw someone further down the trail, so let’s keep the conspicuous Earth chatter to a minimum.”

  Ada tossed the thing back to Baoji, privately suspecting he wasn’t being serious, and kept her eyes on the path ahead. Before long somebody ran into view, a human woman wearing a puffy jacket and oddly thin pants, all brightly coloured. Ada tensed, but the others seemed completely unbothered, so she tried to remain calm as the person ran closer and closer - and then straight past them.

  She glanced back, then up and down the trail. The stranger didn’t seem to be chasing anything, nor was anything chasing her. “What was she running from?”

  Turou’s lip curled. “Heart disease, probably.”

  Her eyes widened behind the one-way transparency of her helmet, and nobody explained. Could diseases actually chase people around? Good gods. These colonials were even worse off than she had thought.

  She kept quiet as the city slowly came into view, and more and more strangers crossed their path. She saw people of both species leading pets along with them in the woods - dogs she recognized, but there was another animal she didn’t know, a slick-furred thing that looked like a giant ferret with a robust jaw, skittering aggressively between bushes and under logs. She wondered if that was the mirran rhask, but that was the kind of question no colonial would ever ask out loud, so she stayed quiet.

  When the city streets were in sight, cutting off the forest so suddenly and deliberately, the three colonials simultaneously reached for the various devices they kept around their bodies. Somehow, the silence was quieter now that they were reading, and after a moment she cleared her throat.

  “What’s the plan?”

  Elsa shook her head, looking to Ada and Turou. “Once we’re on the streets we should be clear. Nobody pays attention to stranger conversations on the sidewalk; it’s too busy.”

  Ada hefted the pack with Baoji’s mystery cargo in it, trying not to look like the kind of person who invites attention or commentary. They crossed from edges of the forest, surprisingly busy with people undeterred by rain, and stepped into the city proper.

  The towers of Tianzhou stood sharp against Chang’e’s vast planet hanging in the sky like a great gibbous moon. The city streets between the towers were bustling not with vehicles or bikes but with people on foot, large and loud in numbers, mirran and human alike with animals in tow here and there.

  “We’re in the city. Where now?”

  “Give Baoji a second. Look around.” Elsa spun her finger around in the air. “A few hours after we left Freyja, somebody else leaked that audio too, then more military plans about possible invasions of Earth. Stuff that just about proves what you said at Starcast. There’s been rioting, protests, the whole mess. The military is trying to crack down before it escalates. ”

  What had Sanako said - the recordings hadn’t been sent by anyone? The machines had sent it themselves?

  Baoji nodded gruffly at the streets. “Full curfew on non-emergency vehicles.”

  Ada glanced around, understanding then that the absence of cars wasn’t normal for Tianzhou. She stumbled along with them through the increasingly dense crowds, turning in surprise when Turou tapped her on the bicep. “Humon claimed responsibility for that attack.” Turou held up his device. She snatched it from him, focusing on t
he tiny flat screen to escape the crowds.

  As if it were not enough to poison our food and medical systems, military leadership has long been investigating the growth of genetically modified human slaves and soldiers in secret facilities. Now this stranger Ada Liu, purportedly from Earth, may well end up giving them the keys they need to bring about their eugenic future.

  Ironically, she has also provided the public with perfect proof of something we have been saying for decades: genetic modification is an unnatural practice that can only lead to catastrophe. Her monstrousness is an unavoidable consequence of our incessant hubris and our misguided belief that we can make ourselves better. We mourn the loss of the brave souls who tried to stop her, and we mourn what will befall our communities if she is not stopped, her corpse burned to ash before fascist “science” gets its hands on it.

  She heavily slapped the device back into Turou’s hands, trying to steady her voice and failing. “Where are these people?”

  Elsa still glared at her. “Keep it down.”

  “Nobody knows who they are.” Turou shook his head. “The military would hunt them down.”

  “These people - this kind of people - they made the technophage.” She tightened her fist. “I saw them, Turou. I saw their memories. I killed one of them myself. I need to figure out where these fucking people come from so I can stop it from happening again on Earth.” She split open a grin behind her visor. “And kill them all.”

  Elsa glanced warily at her, but Turou was frowning. “People? I thought the technophage was a Haint weapon.”

  Ada stared at them for a moment before realizing they didn’t yet understand the whole story. “Humans on Earth put it together, tested it, released it. They had help from something in the colonies called Shade. What is that?”

  Elsa shook her head. “Ada, you’ve seen us - nobody here has that kind of biomedical tech even today. Back then half of us were living under domes.”

  Baoji suddenly stopped leading them through the streets, though, and turned with a pensive look. “You said Shade? Like a shadow? Umbra Ex Machina means shadow from the machine.”

  Turou and Elsa exchanged wide-eyed, upset glances Ada wished she had the context for.