“Mike!”
The voice had been shouting at me for a while, but I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t do anything except Shift. It was like endlessly falling.
“Mike!”
Fuck off, douche. Nothing is permanent, anyway. Everything is made of energy. Let me fall.
“Mike, hold on. Hold on. HOLD ON!”
Hands dug into the tops of my arms. My shoulders sloped, hunched, bulged through random permutations of flesh and fur and scales, and yet the hands held on. They grasped my scapula and clavicle, as the bones themselves melted away and came back in different shapes. It was the strangest feeling, and yet not unpleasant. It held my attention, whether I liked it or not. It broke my endless fall.
“Hold on,” I rasped, a command to myself, and to him. “Hold on.”
The trees turned into walls. The autumn foliage turned into rust-colored splotches of blood on the ceiling of the trunk corridor. The hands relaxed their grasp. I looked into Dolph’s face, just like in the old days. His pupils were so dilated there was only the thinnest rim of brown around them.
“She didn’t know what a Shifter can handle,” he said.
“They didn’t flip me,” I said.
“I know.”
57
The St. Clare’s auxiliaries burned for a split second, stabilizing our tumble. I lifted my hands off the controls. “You didn’t leave me much to work with,” I whispered wryly.
Before he collapsed, Dolph had told me that he’d dumped 90% of our reaction mass overboard. That’s what I’d seen sticking to the St. Clare’s sides. That’s where the strange flurry of snow in space came from. Sophia had tried to make Dolph pursue the Minotaur out to the edge of the Cluster … but instead, he had made sure that the St. Clare couldn’t go anywhere.
He had saved the Cluster.
I just hoped he had not doomed us.
I left the bridge, trailing my fingertips along the ceiling, and floated into Dolph’s berth.
Robbie, in wolf form, lifted his head. “He Shifted in his sleep.”
I could see that for myself. Dolph floated in jackal form in the air, limbs weakly splayed. White rims showed under his half-closed eyelids. At Sophia’s command, the maintenance bot had injected him with a dose of new-formulation shabu that would have killed a mainstream human. Dolph had somehow managed to stay functional long enough to intervene in my CS episode. After that, though, his willpower had given out and he’d lost consciousness.
I’d disabled the maintenance bot.
There was nothing we could do for Dolph except stay with him, monitor his pulse, and pray. I believed he was out of danger, but it sounded like he may have had a seizure in his sleep. Because he was a Shifter, the seizure had come out as a Shift.
Robbie floated beside Dolph, holding him down with his forelegs, licking Dolph’s face with his long, pink tongue.
“It helps to bring ‘em around,” he said, in between licks.
“We used to do the same thing in the army,” I said. On scouting missions deep behind the Necro frontlines, we had lived as animals for days on end. Animals bond by grooming each other; they lick and nibble each other’s faces, and curl up together to sleep. It was against regs, but I ended up allowing it in my platoon because it clearly helped my soldiers to deal with their anxiety and fear. “How do you know about that?”
“Where I come from, overdoses ain’t all that uncommon.”
I flexed my fingers and toes, and Shifted. Now two gray wolves floated in the berth, one younger and heavier, one older and rangier. I nuzzled up to Dolph on the other side from Robbie and gently rasped my tongue over his muzzle and around his closed eyes. My tongue picked up flecks of ship dust and grit from his fur, which I spat out. It did me more good than it was arguably doing him, bringing a sense of peace. I caught myself thinking how lucky we were to be Shifters. Comforts were available to us that you’d never experience in human form. The Darkworlders may have kicked our asses in the genetic engineering arms race, but the Transcendence could surely never measure up to the simple relief of being an animal now and then.
If only I could just … just goddamn live …
The TrZam 008 floated around my wolf’s neck, the chain buried in my fur.
It had fallen out of my body when I started Shifting, and wound up lodged in my cracked, deformed helmet. I’d examined the spacesuit on my way to the bridge. The thing was so full of holes, I should have been Swiss cheese. As I shook it out, the TrZam 008 had drifted into my hand.
I had hung the chain around my neck the way Pippa used to wear it, as if it were mine.
Robbie saw it. He said, “Don’t look any the worse for wear.”
“I guess it’s lasted a thousand years so far.”
His muzzle wrinkled. “You know, that bugs me. These Darkworlders were doing their thing five hundred years ago, give or take. So how’d they record their Code on a thumb drive from a civilization that vanished five hundred years before that?”
I stopped licking. Stared at him across Dolph’s head. “You know, that’s a very good point.”
A few moments later, I said, “Maybe they found some Urush technology that was still in working order.”
“And they figured out how to operate it?”
“Well, we did,” I said. “Just bribe it with porn from time to time …”
Robbie laughed. I smiled slightly, missing MF more than ever. If he were here, I would have someone to share the responsibility for the decision I must take.
The comms sounded an incoming transmission chime.
“That’ll be MF again.” I flew to the bridge and punched the radio on with a claw.
MF was on the Harnith Po. A Guardian dreadnaught had joined the fray, better late than never, I guess, and chased the Travellers away. In typical Ek style, it had blasted them from a distance of 3,000 klicks with its big guns, and then tiptoed cautiously down into low orbit to hunt for survivors.
It had found a few, including MF and Martin.
The screen showed MF standing on the deck of the Harnith Po. Yes, standing. The dreadnaught loomed against the stars like a double-pointed gem, shaped like two cones with their large ends joined together by a central cylindrical segment. 1.5 klicks from end to end, it was so big that the central segment could rotate to simulate gravity. A nice benefit for the higher-caste officers, and right now, the prisoners.
Guests?
Allied personnel?
I really wanted a bit more clarity there.
“Well, Mike?” MF squeaked. “Have you made up your mind?”
“Yes, and no.” Behind MF, I could see Martin, on his knees, hands cuffed behind his back. Because they knew he was a Shifter, an enormous Ek stood over him with a taser, as well. But his glowering expression projected defiance, not defeat.
I could also see Smith. He wasn’t handcuffed. He stood with his arms folded, nose wrinkled in disgust, although that may just have been the smell on board the Harnith Po.
I said, “What are the views of the Harnith Po’s commander on … this?” I moved so they could see the TrZam 008 nestling in my neck fur.
An Ek shoved MF out of the way. Ze had eight arms. That alone told me ze was the commander of the dreadnaught, even without the mixed salad of gemstones adorning zis uniform.
“My views,” ze boomed, in an almost indecipherable Ek accent, “are as follows. The Fleet are our allies. Together, we ensure the safety of all sapient species in the Cluster. Major General Smith is my brother in arms.”
Major General—so they knew Smith’s true affiliation.
“My views on the so-called Transcendence, therefore, are identical to his.”
That helped a lot.
“I will add only this. My ship’s guns are much bigger than yours.”
The Ek commander stepped away, and I cast my eyes over the composite external feed. We were orbiting Mittel Trevoyvox at an altitude of 140 kilometers. That’s about as low as I could go without committing to a de-orbit burn. The St.
Clare was currently over the nightside. The Harnith Po was a dot over the terminator, 11,000 klicks behind us. The Ek commander talked a good game, but he was staying out of easy range of my guns.
There was nothing else in orbit, except for wreckage whirling high above, where the Rogozhin and several other ships had died.
Smith stepped forward. His eyes seemed to burn through the screen like lasers. “Burden defected.”
“Huh?”
“Before the Harnith Po joined the fight, it looked like we were going to be overwhelmed.” Smith chewed on his lower lip. I guess there was no chaw on the dreadnaught. “Burden seized command of the Alcazar and declared his allegiance to the Travellers.”
“The Alcazar,” I said. “The other delta-wing?”
“Yes. It won’t be improved by pictures of prehistoric gods. Nothing is.”
“Well, damn,” I said. “Guess you can’t work with the Travellers for years, pretending to be one of them, and acting out their ethos, without soaking it up some.”
“I can’t even see who you are through all that fur,” Smith said.
“It’s me.” I frowned. “And Sophia?”
I knew that she had escaped from the St. Clare, in my spacesuit. That was who we’d seen exiting the airlock. She hadn’t stayed to make sure Dolph was dead. She was only interested in going after the Transcendence.
“Need you ask? Jon picked her up. He took her with him. Those two …” Smith’s voice faded. I almost felt sorry for the man. He was reliving the decades-old betrayal by his two best friends. “He also picked up Ijiuto.”
“That’s bad news,” I said.
“You’re telling me. The Alcazar is nearly as fast as the Minotaur.”
Smith wasn’t saying so, but I could put two and two together as well as the next person. We had lost.
As Pippa had said, the TrZam 008 was not the only place the Transcendence code existed. She also had it in her head. And Sophia knew where Pippa and Justin had gone, to a near approximation, thanks to the St. Clare’s scan … and Rafael Ijiuto.
Now, a trajectory is not the same thing as a destination. And course changes are possible even during FTL. But based on that initial trajectory, and the Minotaur’s reaction mass and life support specs, Sophia would be able to narrow it down to a relative handful of worlds.
Then she and Burden would just have to search all of them.
I’d be the last person to underestimate that pair, especially with the firepower of the Traveller organization at their backs. The odds were good, in my estimation, that they’d locate the runaways before the Fleet could.
Then the genie, as Smith put it, would really be out of the bottle. All hell would break loose.
“So,” I said, twisting my neck to make the TrZam 008 float free on its chain, “I guess this doesn’t really matter anymore.”
Smith’s eyes tracked its movement on the screen. “Your mission has not changed,” he grated. “Recover the device, and destroy it.”
He was clinging to the mission as a bulwark against reality. He was wrong, and I was right. The little device no longer mattered … except to me.
Here around my neck I held the cure for IVK. Not a possible cure, a proven one. If, by guile or persuasion, I could retrieve MF and make him read it for me … if I could get home and get to Dr. Tierney’s lab … no, Dr. Tierney had been arrested. Any genetic engineering lab, then …
The sword hanging over my head would be lifted.
I’d have my life back.
I would live to see Lucy grow up.
I had never wanted anything so much in my life as what I now held in my hand.
Smith didn’t like my silence. He said brusquely, “You have no options! You’re virtually out of reaction mass. You could attempt a landing. On Mittel Trevoyvox. What then?”
I could run. Hide. Try to make it back to New Abilene-Qitalhaut. Pray that Justin’s genetic engineering lab wasn’t ruined beyond repair.
Pray that the Harnith Po didn’t shoot me down as I de-orbited.
With Dolph and Robbie, who did not have IVK, as helpless passengers.
Martin abruptly shouted, “Fuck’s sake, Mike! How many times I gotta tell you? Don’t let them have it!”
His Ek guard silenced him by clouting him in the face.
“Either give it up,” Smith growled, as I floated paralyzed by indecision, “or we shoot you down here and now!” He leaned in close to the screen. “The device gets destroyed either way. But my way, you get to go home to your daughter. Your way, you don’t … or maybe you do, but she won’t be there anymore. Your choice.”
My choice.
I made it.
58
Half an hour later, the Harnith Po overhauled the St. Clare. I eased up to the docking area on the Ek dreadnaught’s slowly spinning cental segment. Magnetic grapples shot out, clamping the St. Clare in place. The heavy thunks that travelled through the hull sounded like a trap closing.
From the bridge, I watched a flexible transit tube extrude from the Ek ship’s truck-sized crew airlock. It narrowed at the end, like an elephant’s trunk, and fastened itself over my starboard airlock.
Robbie joined me in the arterial corridor as we waited for the seal to be completed. Both of us were back in human form, dressed in whatever rags we could find.
The external pressure light turned green. I crawled into the airlock chamber and opened the outer hatch.
I had my .22 in my other hand.
Warm air rushed in. Smells of plastic, disinfectant, and Ek.
I pointed the .22 at the person in front of me.
Smith.
“The device,” he said, steadily. His own weapon stayed holstered. Credit where it’s due, the man was no coward.
“You’re gonna have to come and get it,” I said. “And bring my crew.”
He’d anticipated this. He edged aside in the tube, and Martin floated past him, scowling and subdued, with a rainbow-hued black eye and a bandage on his bald dome. MF came next, goggling hopelessly at me.
Robbie held one of our Fleet rifles on Smith as he descended into the trunk corridor. I let one Marine follow him, but shut the hatch on the rest of the Eks and humans in the transit tube. “One, no more.”
“It’s almost like you don’t trust me,” Smith said.
“No shit,” I said. “This way.” Grabbing Martin, I led the two Fleet officers back to the engineering deck. Robbie brought up the rear with the rifle.
Back amidst the tangle of coolant pipes, I flipped on the lighting. Martin seldom turned the lights up back here, probably to hide how filthy he let the engineering deck get. It even shocked me. There was moss growing on the walls. The AM containment ring took up most of the space. I led Smith and his companion to the other side of the deck, which was Martin’s workshop.
We had the basic tools necessary for in-flight repairs: a hydraulic press, a small sintering furnace, and a lathe.
“Power her up, Marty,” I said, motioning at the lathe.
As the machine whined up, I took the TrZam 008 out of my pocket and fixed it into the work piece holder.
Smith’s eyes followed it hungrily.
Last chance.
I drove that thought from my mind. I’d already used up my last chance, on the day when I killed Timmy Akhatli.
I sealed the transparent hood of the lathe to collect the scurf—and then paused. “Water.”
“What?”
“I want water. Tell your Ek friends to hook up their hoses and give me enough water to get home.”
Smith sighed, but he spoke into his suit radio. We all waited in silence until Martin confirmed that the Harnith Po was pumping water into our tanks.
“Some extra LOX wouldn’t hurt, either,” I said. “And food. I guess it’ll be Ek stuff. We won’t die of it.”
“What’s the idea, Starrunner?”
“Let’s just say I don’t trust you.”
“All right, you can have your consumables.” He gave the order and th
en growled, “Get on with it.”
I made him wait until the consumables were on board. Then I started the TrZam 008 spinning, and moved the tool bit up to it.
“Start filming,” Smith said to the Marine.
“Yes, sir.”
The tool bit dug into the ancient device. The TrZam 008 may have lasted a thousand years, but it couldn’t stand up to the high-speed steel cutting tool. Shavings spat off in short spirals. MF moaned and flew away to hide in the corner behind the AM ring. Even though he feared the Transcendence, I guess it still hurt to see something as old as himself destroyed.
Over the whining of the lathe, I said to Smith, “I guess I got you wrong.”
“Huh?” His gaze was fixed on the crinkles of Urush metal hitting the inside of the hood.
“I thought maybe you didn’t really want it destroyed. Thought maybe you wanted it for yourself.”
He flashed a rictus-like smile. “You’re getting me mixed up with Jon and Sophs. They’ve decided their personal interests are more important than humanity. They’ve sacrificed their own humanity, whether they know it or not. But I swore a goddamn oath, with my hand on the Bible, and I will never waver in my commitment to protect our species.” His hands were raw balls of knuckles.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Sorry?”
The lathe stopped spinning. The TrZam 008 was a half-centimeter stump. It turned out to be black inside.
A series of heavy clunks vibrated the ship, followed by a slight but distinct sensation of thrust.
Smith and the Marine grabbed handholds, swearing.
“You’re coming home with us,” I said. “Just in case you had any ideas about, oh … blowing us away as soon as you got back to the Harnith Po. Or anything like that.”
I figured that with the mission complete, we would be dispensable. I wanted a chance to change Smith’s mind about that. Maybe kidnapping him wasn’t the best way to go about it, but as he had said himself, I was out of options.
I flew forward and hit the intercom. “How’s it looking?”
Dirty Job Page 36
