The Broken Third (Digitesque Book 4)

by Guerric Haché

  Impact.

  Her shields thrummed opaque white under the strain, suddenly disliking the effort, but she heard the screams of metal being torn apart. Here, now, space was not silent like it was on Union ships. She plunged forward, tearing through steel bones and fluid-pipe wire entrails, gutting the vessel.

  Something exploded. Ada had died once before, and that was more than enough. Time dilation. Shields at 65%. Time to get out of here. The fusion core was somewhere ahead, and she did not want to fly into the fury of a trapped star.

  She dug sideways, bursting out of the hull in a gush of fire and light, and suddenly everything was black.

  Black with points of light in the distance. Shards of metal drifting in the void.

  She spun Cherry around to see the Song of Fire bleeding oxygen fires and crew and debris out into space. Where was that fusion core?

  Ah, Cherry sensed it. There it was. Bright yellow in Cherry’s ghostly vision.

  It was quite an exact understanding of its position in space, actually. She twitched a single fin on Cherry’s right side, and a single little blue hexagon zipped down the line between Ada and the fusion core. What would it do?

  Of course it exploded.

  The world was bright white, the detonation sent wreckage flying in every direction, and for a moment Ada was gently shoved back by debris and explosive gases slamming into her shields. 59%. Then they started recovering, because apparently there was nothing this ship could not do.

  She spun around in space, kicked forward, zooming back through the void towards the Watersmoke . She broadcast to every ship in the vicinity, roaring in triumph. This was Earth. This was Ada Liu. This was her heritage.

  Behind her lay nothing but death and the disappointment of fools.

  Woe betide anyone who tried to fuck with Ada Liu.

  Chapter 15

  Space was so much smaller now, t he Watersmoke just minutes away. Even as she reached out to them, she was grinning ear to ear with the ease of it. It was all the effort of a single thought to speak to them. “Adrall! Open up the hanger bay.”

  His voice wobbled through uneasily. “Uh - yes - of course, Ada.”

  The door opened just quick enough for her to slip in without waiting. Cherry’s fins secured her within the hangar, and as soon as the space had been sealed and pressurized she leapt out into weak gravity and scampered across a strut towards the ship interior.

  Baoji, Elsa, and Turou were all waiting. Elated, she flung out her arms out and managed to grab Turou and Baoji both. “I’m back! I did it! That was - wasn’t that incredible? ”

  It was when they tensed and struggled away from her that she realized something was wrong. She looked at them; if anything, they looked oddly cautious, Elsa especially. “Incredible? Yes, Ada, it is incredible. You just killed at least a hundred people.”

  Baoji was staring straight past her. “What the fuck is that thing?”

  She frowned. “My ship? Listen - they were following Senjat -”

  “They were following orders! ” Elsa was actually angry.

  “They chose to follow him!” Ada didn’t know why she had to point this out to them. “They could have left at any time! They chose him as their leader -”

  “No!” Elsa groaned. “You fucking savage, that’s not how it works! They didn’t choose to hunt you, they were doing what they were told because it’s their job! There are consequences for disobeying orders - they were going to kill me for convenience, what do you think they’d do if you actively spat in their faces? We can’t just run around doing whatever the fuck we want and pissing off when things don’t go our way!”

  Ada felt the heat rising across her face. “That’s literally how I live my entire life , Elsa!”

  “Please, please!” Turou was holding his hands up. “Elsa, Ada clearly hasn’t adjusted to the Union yet. There’s some kind of misunderstanding here about how her culture manages hierarchies -”

  “She’s a rabid fucking wolverine and now she’s got a robot snub fighter that can eat entire fleets!”

  Ada slammed her fist into the bulkhead. “ They were trying to kill us! ”

  Baoji tapped on the glass. “Hey. Hey. Ada?”

  She rounded on him. “What?”

  He nodded into the hangar. “We watched you on the sensors. Ships can’t move like that, can’t bank in space like that, can’t redirect their momentum at a moment’s notice like that. I didn’t even see any thrusters firing. What…” He shook his head and flicked his ears. “How does it do that?”

  Ada frowned. She didn’t know, but she shot Elsa an angry glance that hopefully communicated just how much better a topic this was. “I don’t know. Cherry?”

  Cherry knew what she wanted and spoke directly from her suit. Perhaps she knew the local language through that connection, too. “Thrust technology was discarded by Earth shipwrights in 2327 when -”

  Elsa crossed her arms. “What now, then? Ada, there was a whole other Union fleet here to arrest Ashur. He was apparently not acting with presidential authority; the whole thing was illegal. We could have been fine. What is the military going to do now that you turned a battlegroup into slag?”

  Ada scowled at her. “They’re going to be terrified of me. Cherry, could we take out the rest of the fleet?”

  Cherry responded happily. “Yes. Destroying the carrier currently stationed outside the local jumpgate as well as its escort would not put us at significant tactical risk.”

  “See?” Ada grinned with her teeth.

  “Tactically.” Cherry’s voice remained cheerful, despite what Ada knew was an impending correction. “If the Union has access to antimatter warheads, an antimatter bomb on the kilogram scale detonating at the edge of weapons range could be enough to disable my shields and destroy my hull. Alternatively, there are strategic and political complications that could arise from aggressive action. These are difficult to determine without more data and a thorough analysis.”

  Baoji was shaking his head. “How did it get here so damned fast? From Earth? That’s not possible. Was it following you?”

  Cherry spoke up for herself. “I travelled here directly from Earth. Transit time was approximately nine hours, of which eight was spent recovering energy between jumps.”

  “That’s impossible . You can’t - did you say jumps? Did you deploy your own wormhole? ”

  “I did not. Warp travel distorts spacetime to -”

  Ada held up her hands. “Woah, okay, stop.” She waited for them all to look at her. “Look, maybe I only should have killed Senjat. Too late. Elsa, do you think we should talk to whoever is in that other fleet?”

  “Derksen and Derrat.” Elsa had not uncrossed her arms. “They originally promised to debrief us and let us go. Before you killed scores of service personnel.”

  Cherry interrupted. “Ada, I believe a certain Admiral Derksen of the Empress hailed me specifically, after the engagement. We may want to respond.”

  Ada blinked. The Empress - Zhilik was on that ship too. And Sanako. What if they were being held hostage? She glanced at the others and they watched her intently. “Okay. Let’s hear it.”

  Felisha Derksen’s voice chimed through Cherry’s connection to the suit, and Elsa let out an uncomfortable sigh through her nose. “Ada Liu?”

  “That’s me.”

  There was a tense pause on the other side of the communication line. “You just destroyed a sizeable Union battle group. Yesterday the government started processing a law that recognizes Earth as a sovereign state with which we currently -”

  “Spare me the shit, Felisha.” Ada turned away from her companions, not sure where to look at the disembodied voice. “What do you want from me?”

  She could almost hear Felisha pursing her lips. “This will make things politically difficult. But the presidency is insisting we move forward. They would like you to sign a treaty formally establishing diplomatic recognition between the Union and Earth. Their representative can explain more when you doc
k with the Empress .”

  “What’s a treaty?”

  She could hear Felisha’s exasperation. She said something muffled, not directed at her, and suddenly Zhilik was on the line. “Ada. Are you alright?”

  She laughed into her own language. “Did you see the fight? I won!”

  “I saw. I meant emotionally. This is not Earth. Wars are not fought the same way by the same sorts of people.” He seemed to cough. “A treaty is an agreement to recognize each other as equals. A promise not to harm you or steal from you or invade Earth, more or less.”

  That made a lot more sense. She flashed a smile at her companions, then realized they hadn’t understood her native language. “Fine, tell her I’ll agree. I can fly over there soon.”

  “I look forward to seeing you. I believe Admiral Derksen needs to -”

  Felisha’s voice clipped in quickly. “Please come here and leave your paranoia at the door. We’ve seen what you can do when cornered and have no intention of provoking you or your ship. When you arrive Ensign Oshimi will escort you to the meeting.”

  The transmission clicked out, and Ada remembered what Cherry had said about reaching here from Earth in nine hours. That was a long time, but not nearly as long as Union ships seemed to take to get anywhere. Baoji thought it was impossible - but it clearly wasn’t. Her ship had never lied to her.

  She turned to her friends, laying her hands on Elsa’s shoulders. Ada wasn’t sure why she would be so defensive of people who were working to kill her, but that was something to wonder about another time. “I’ll be back in a bit, and we can talk about this.” She winked at Baoji. “And we can compare ships, eh?”

  Baoji hissed, laughter tinged with despair. “Doesn’t sound fair. Nine hours? Without a gate?”

  Turou glanced nervously between her and the hangar. “Does your ship have any data on Earth’s history since the technophage happened? I would love to ask - if possible.”

  Ada nodded and patted him on the shoulder. “I’ll see what I can find out. Be back soon.”

  Gravity was weak but not completely nonexistent, so she bounded back through the hangar before climbing into the cockpit. As Adrall got the hangar ready to open again, she thought about that.

  “Cherry? While you were up there, did you… watch Earth? Did you know what has happening?” Did she know what Isavel was doing?

  Only superficially. My sensors were focused on the orbital space through which any threat to the Elysium crystal would have to travel. All I can tell you is that there were no catastrophic events in the general vicinity of Hive, Glass Peaks, or Campus after the Union ships left.

  She swung the ship out of the hangar, curving through space neatly and zipping off towards the Empress in the distance. Well, so much for that. She could travel back… but nine hours? She needed to take care of of business here, make sure Elsa and Turou and Baoji were safe and wouldn’t be hurt on her account. She couldn’t just disappear for an eighteen hour round trip, not counting the time she spent running around Earth looking for… anyone.

  She had time, and now she had the means. She would get around to it. “Okay. Cherry, you’re way more advanced than anything in the Union, aren’t you?”

  Yes. My analysis of active hardware in the system suggests they have only modest quantum computing capabilities on larger vessels, and do not used advanced computational algorithms or artificial intelligences. They are, to put it bluntly, almost two entire generations of computational paradigms behind Earth. They are likely unable to solve many of the more challenging problems of quantum or string physics, information consciousness theory, bilateral matter-energy transformics, multidimensional metamaterial construction, or synthetic neurology.

  “Hm. After a thousand years.”

  Yes, this does seem unusual. Naïve projections of technological development suggest they should be far in advance of Earth. I cannot yet account for the difference.

  As she cruised through the black, she tried to sieve through her memories. “They mentioned a few hundred years of war with something called Haints that almost killed them all. They outlawed artificial intelligences to protect themselves against Haints in the future. They’re weird about genetics too.”

  This could account for some of the apparent stagnation. Artificial intelligence is a powerful compound multiplier for data analysis and task automation. Applied genetics and genomics were critical to many areas of advanced computation and materials science on Earth, as well as providing tremendous agricultural and healthcare gains that significantly improved health and reduced labour inputs required to avoid human suffering, allowing a higher percentage of labour to be invested in science, among other fields.

  Ada sighed. “Okay. Well, maybe we can get them out of the rut.” The Empress was far ahead, several hours’ flight for any Union ship. Cherry was already cruising along quickly, but Ada knew this was still a languid pace. “Let’s show off.”

  She pushed, feeling the ship’s movement as though it were her own, rushing forward through the void with nothing to stop her. She barely felt like she was moving at all, with almost no points of reference that weren’t tens of thousands of klicks away, but the Empress and her escort formation were slowly getting larger and larger.

  Ada let her mind go blank as she flexing its fins, feeling around the weapons and shields at leisure this time. It was a whole second body, and even with that deadly dance still fresh in mind she wasn’t yet fully used to this again. Her entire being seemed to expand whenever she interfaced with the ship - not unlike what happened when she connected with a wraith, but without the terrifying spectre of death.

  Before long she was approaching the carrier, an even more massive version of the cruiser, a tower that bulged into a trio of fused towers halfway down its length; those must be hangars. Everything was dull grey and utilitarian, and she imagined her black fighter, with its red slashes and gently undulating fins, must look odd silhouetted against it.

  An unfamiliar voice directed her to one of the hangars, indicated by a number painted on the hull where a small section of the hangar had opened up for her. She moved in to dock, but Cherry informed her the docking mechanisms were incompatible, so she simply grabbed onto the docking arms with the ship’s fins.

  “Stay put and stay in contact.”

  Yes, Ada.

  As the hangar pressurized, Ada noticed a familiar face peering through a door on the far side of the docking arms. Sanako.

  Ada leaned forward. “I think we can trust them, but don’t let your guard down, and don’t let anyone interact with you or damage you. Feel free to threaten them if you need to.”

  Very well.

  The hangar air was soon breathable, and Sanako stepped inside. She looked… wrong, somehow. One of her arms was stiff, and as Ada climbed out of the cockpit she could make out still-healing bruises across the side of her face. She trembled a little as Ada reached her.

  “Holy shit - Sanako, what happened?”

  Sanako stuck her chin out. “After Freyja, I was taken in for questioning.”

  Ada looked her up and down. Questioning . She may be a savage, but she understood that euphemism. This was her fault. Shit.

  She looked away, trying to think of what to say. Apologize? That wouldn’t do any good. Offer revenge? “At least I killed the bastard.”

  Sanako blinked. “Yes. And his crew. I had friends on that ship.”

  Ada blushed. “Well, I, uh… I did what I had to do.”

  Sanako continued giving her a blank stare for long enough to make Ada fidget, then turned around and started walking and talking at the same time. “We have a Minister of Foreign Affairs now. He’s waiting for you in a conference room a few floors down. Please follow me.”

  Ada tried to bite down on her defensiveness and scrambled after her. No friendly chatting, then. Colonial crewmembers stepped aside to avoid or stare at her. They looked scared.

  She had just torn apart a cruiser. They probably should be.

  Ada, I a
m detecting unusual broadcasts from the planet. The gas giant - not its moons. They appear to be incoming and outgoing, and are heavily encrypted. Should I attempt to break the encryption?

  From the planet? They must have bases there, or ships kept in reserve. Ada kept her eyes ahead, stepping into an elevator with Sanako. Maybe this ship was too big for ladders. If they won’t notice, yes.

  They are encrypted using complex quantum algorithms I have never encountered. This will take time. I will continue to monitor the system for other unusual activity.

  She stepped out of the elevator with Sanako, followed the injured ensign through the halls, and soon stepped into a modest room with a window onto distant, tiny Chang’e Major. Three people were present - Felisha, the mirran admiral Izha, and a tall, brown-skinned human with a square jaw and a broad smile. He reached out his hand as she approached, and she grasped it and shook it, as colonials seemed wont to do.

  “Ada Liu, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” He didn’t seem nervous or intimidated at all, even though she was by all measures taller and more dangerous than he was. A good actor, then. “My name is Deptha Charaka. The presidency recently appointed me Minister of Foreign Affairs. Right now, that means dealing with Earth.”

  Ada raised an eyebrow. “Dealing?”

  “Quite literally, yes.” Deptha was still smiling. “We’ve got a treaty here - it’s written in very plain language, and the presidency has already signed it. I can read it for you.”

  He was holding out, quite literally, a piece of paper.

  “No, I can read.” She grabbed it and found the most familiar text, with three other blocks of languages that presumably all said the same thing. She read it out loud. “The Colonial Union hereby reaffirms its recognition of the planet Earth and its Dominion within the Sol system, as defined in Appendix A, as a sovereign state separate from the Colonial Union. All citizens, as defined in Appendix B, of the Earth Dominion will receive second-class rights under the Colonial Citizenship Act while in Union Space. Until formal bureaucratic relations can be established, it is assumed that Union citizens visiting the Dominion will be granted equivalent rights by Dominion authorities.