Spear of Light

by Brenda Cooper

  Every person she won away from the robots mattered.

  On the air-screen in front of her, all of the ships currently at Star Island Stop were named. There were three Next ships.

  All of them were far larger than the Shining Danger.

  Nayli and Vadim had used her for every kill they’d made for decades. She had clever weapons and hidden speed. Not to mention good electronics—they could pretend to be some other ship in their class easily, which was how they had hidden the Free Men after the attack on Diamond Deep.

  The Free Men had been built to attack stations. The Shining Danger was meant to destroy Next ships.

  Nayli lifted her arm in front of her face, admiring the three tiny pink roses already tattooed on her inner wrist. A tally that she ran for herself.

  This would be harder. She and Vadim had surprised the Next they’d taken so far. Now the robots would be expecting attacks; they probably watched for the Shining Danger or ships like her.

  Still, neither Nayli nor the ship had ever failed.

  A hand settled on her shoulder, heavy and demanding. She turned her face up and drank in a deep kiss. “My love.”

  “Choosing targets all by yourself?”

  “We have a target.”

  It was his turn to laugh. “Tell me about it.” He handed her a cup of hot stim and a food bar.

  She took them but set the food bar aside for now. It was better to hunt hungry. “Thank you. Stupid has been showing me the possibilities. There are three. The Robotic Dreamer is already set up to take off. We won’t catch her. The History of Metal is too big by far. Probably way too fast. But there’s a ship that just arrived yesterday, the Next Horizon. We can take her.”

  His hand roamed the small of her back, leaving a trail of warmth that felt as good as the minty stim tasted. His voice came out ever-so-slightly husky. “So what part of the plan do you need help with?”

  She smiled. “All of it. I’ll take all of it.”

  His hand cupped her belly, and his chest was warm against her back. “Let’s see,” he said. “You plan to dock at the station, pretending to need help. Maybe we’ll even break something inconsequential, just so we look honest. We get the lay of the land, we have a few drinks with our friends, and we arrange to be in a take-off slot right behind the Next Horizon?”

  “Maybe I just fly in as if I’m going to dock, but manage to be so broken I experience a near miss of the station and just happen to drop about ten tons of weaponry on the Next Horizon as I pass her.”

  He raised an eyebrow in exaggerated dismay. “That might damage the station.”

  She smiled. “It probably won’t leave much of a mess.”

  “You could do collateral damage.”

  “So maybe we follow plan number one?”

  He thought in silence for a moment. “Do we have to pick a docked target? Is there one on the wing? Anything coming in?”

  “Good question. Stupid? Any Next ships on the way in?”

  Stupid’s current voice sounded quite small and subservient. “Nothing close.”

  “I guess we follow plan number one,” Vadim said.

  She smiled, toying with him. “You don’t want collateral damage?”

  “Darnal wouldn’t approve.”

  “Brea would.”

  “Why are all of you women so bloodthirsty?” He smiled. “You don’t even like Brea.”

  “I don’t. Plan number one is good. We’ll do that.”

  He tightened his arms around her, reducing the distance between them to less than zero. “So now that that’s settled? I can think of ways to spend the next few hours.”

  She sighed happily. They were always better on the hunt. It was going to feel good to take out a Next ship again. It had been two years since she added a rose to her ever-so-tiny bouquet. She turned to Stupid. “Take the ship. Call me if you have any trouble at all.”

  “Yes Mom.”

  Another thing she had programmed into the AI. She walked over to Round and touched her shoulder. “I’m leaving command for an hour. Stupid is in charge. Watch it and call me if there’s any trouble?”

  Round barely glanced at her. “Stupid will be fine. Rest.”

  Nayli tugged on Vadim’s arm, pulling him behind her and out of the control room. They shared a room with an oversized bed, the sole prerogative of their position that they took freely.

  They used all of the space the big bed afforded them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHARLIE

  Charlie paced the bottom of the Wall, Cricket walking at his side with her ears slightly back and the ruff of her hair a high ridge along her back. It was a long pace. Hope hugged the base of the abomination, and even as fast as he walked it took him half an hour to traverse the whole distance to the point where the city ended at a long, rocky beach. Waves pounded incessantly against the shore, rubbing the rocks together in a low cacophony of slow destruction.

  He stalked back along the Wall, keeping himself between Cricket and the spacers who wandered alongside soulbots, talking earnestly about the nature of eternal life and of death. Here and there, soulbots sat at tables with humans, even though they didn’t need to eat or drink. He watched for Yi or Jason or Chrystal, but the soulbots he saw were all strangers.

  On the other side, Hope gave way to the Mixing Zone. The barrier between the two places was the manned gate. It worked to keep people both out and in, and separated the more robotic-looking Next from Hope. He had negotiated the gate as a detail, with an eye to keeping Manna Springs free of the extra humans the Next had demanded. It was working as well as he had planned. Except that he was on the wrong side of it.

  The gate wasn’t impossible to get through. Nona had managed to get out of it, and then back in and out twice. But she was a recognized diplomat, and he was a fugitive from his own home.

  He’d gone from having the run of Lym to being trapped at the base of an invading force’s wall. The Mixing Zone was probably reasonably safe as well; Lym’s native humans avoided it. The town he grew up in, and the ranger station where he’d worked all of his adult life weren’t safe. If he escaped and went to live in the wild and anyone truly wanted to find him, they could. Besides, Manny needed him. And anything could happen to Cricket if he died.

  So he paced, and he thought while he paced.

  Finally he stood and stared out at the waves, hugging his torso to keep warm in the offshore wind that chapped his cheeks. The crash and swell of the waves rocked him back and forth, allowing his mind to wander as if he were as free as the water or the wheeling seabirds.

  If he couldn’t get out, he needed someone who could. Maybe a number of someones. Hope itself felt close and crowded, so he messaged Amfi and waited for her to find him.

  Sitting on the beach with Cricket, it was easy to imagine he was free. The tongat seemed happy, curled around his back, with her nose working the wind but otherwise relaxed.

  He was lost in contemplation of the shield where Nexity met the ocean when Amfi came up beside him, standing close so that they could hear each other against the waves and wind. “I wonder how the water gets through the shield? See how it seems to slow for just a moment, but then slides through? There’s the smallest ridge of water right at the edge, where it seems to hesitate before the incoming tide grabs it.”

  She squinted at the water. “I see it. The barest barrier, only it isn’t even really that. I wonder if fish can pass through?”

  “I don’t know. Birds avoid it.”

  She looked up. “So I see.”

  The Wall was constructed at an angle that didn’t allow them to see into the Nexity. “I wonder if any boats have been able to see anything?”

  “As far as I can tell, the inside of that Wall is the greatest mystery on the planet. Satellites can’t capture it. It just shows up as a blur, or a blank spot, depending on the technology.”

  Yi and Jason knew what the city looked like, but they didn’t answer questions about it. He turned toward Amfi, assessing her cond
ition. She had caught her hair back in a brown and red scarf this morning, one that complemented the brown shirt she wore. She seemed to be moving all right. “How is your ankle?” he asked.

  “It’s healed.”

  “I need someone to go out and tell me more than Manny’s getting.”

  She shot him a knowing glance. “Is Manny asking this?”

  “No. I am.”

  A larger than usual wave threatened to wet their feet, and they danced back. “Then I’ll go. I want to be free of this place anyway.”

  “Me too.”

  She gave him a sympathetic look but had the grace to keep her silence.

  He slid an arm across her shoulders, and they stood with the cold wind chilling their faces. Her loyalty was a gift in a time with few good things. “Will you check on Nona and then go to the station? Maybe see how Gerry is and what she knows? And come back?”

  “Didn’t Nona call you yesterday?”

  “She’s a diplomat. Everything she does is recorded. Last time she was here, she told me things in person that she hadn’t told me in calls.”

  Amfi smiled. “I’ll make sure she’s safe for you.”

  “Stay away from Ice Fall Valley, at least if there’s any rumors of the rangers still being there. And stay away from Kyle.”

  She watched him with quiet regard, as if suggesting that he hurry up and stop telling her what to do.

  “Take Losianna. It’ll be safer if there’re two of you.”

  She didn’t answer and he had run out of things to tell her, so he stood watching her, feeling awkward.

  She broke her gaze from his and looked out over the ocean. “Losianna doesn’t want to leave.”

  He frowned. “It can’t be love, you know. You should take her with you.”

  She didn’t answer him for a long time. “If she’ll go.” She picked up one of the uncountable stones on the edge of beach and threw it. It quickly became invisible. “There are many kinds of love.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  NAYLI

  Nayli and Vadim stood across from each other at a table in the Captain’s Arms. The bar was notorious for only admitting people with captain’s tattoos or uniforms. Nayli had been a captain three times and was often a co-captain, but didn’t tat her ships. Vadim had gotten her in as his wife.

  They drank flavored water that no one but the barkeep would recognize as completely free of alcohol, sharing a plate of fresh steamed vegetables from the station’s gardens. Expensive. But worth it.

  Nayli was both pleased and annoyed that the bouncer hadn’t recognized them. Of course, she wore a khaki pantsuit with her hair up in a loose bun instead of her signature black braid on black clothes. They had chosen a bar because the Next didn’t drink.

  Vadim leaned over and whispered into her ear. “Maybe the table behind you?”

  She turned slowly, catching two couples out of the corner of her eye. “Why them?”

  He shrugged. “Instinct.”

  They were hunting for news and opinions. She didn’t see anything she liked better for it, a few single men and an overly tall woman with bright silver hair. “Sure.”

  They introduced themselves as Adam and Alia. They had broadcast the Shining Danger as a moderately successful trader named Anderson’s Sky, so they talked about a trade mission between the planet Mammot and a string of stations that could logically lead them here. The others were all from a high-class cruising ship, and busy complaining about their passengers wanting to change the itinerary now that the Next were loose in the Glittering. The actual captain was a swarthy woman with an armful of tats, and the other three were all watch captains in the bar on her sufferance. They appeared to be buying her beer and she appeared to be accepting.

  “Did you hear about the city going up on Lym?” one of the women asked Nayli. Her words were only slightly slurred, but her eyes and cheeks were bright with alcohol.

  Nayli took another sip of her not-drink. “Nexity, right? Do you think the robots will take over all of Lym?”

  “Six of our passengers want us to let them off somewhere where they can go see it. I guess it’s amazing to watch it grow, a wall as tall as our ship is high gone up in weeks, all created from the stuff of starships and all of it glittering with diamonds.”

  “Don’t believe everything you hear.” Nayli took another sip of her overly sweet drink. “Besides, I kind of like the idea of Lym being low-tech.”

  Vadim said, “I saw it once, when I was a teenager. We were there delivering a load of supplies, and my parents bought me a three-day educational pass. It’s beautiful. There’s mountains as big as the Diamond Deep and animals that can kill people.”

  “I’m not sure I’d like that,” the woman said. “But I hear the new city is breathtaking.”

  Nayli bit her tongue. “What about the rest of your passengers?”

  The man beside her finished his drink and called for another. “They’re all over the place. I met two yesterday who want to become Next, three who just want to see Nexity because they’re curious and another one who wants us to hide somewhere until ‘it’s’ over.” He shrugged. “Rich people. Half want to run into danger and the other half want to make sure we have enough supplies to survive a space war they’re certain is coming.”

  The captain joined the conversation in a haunting, sad voice. “There’s one woman who just sits and watches the news all day, taking notes. When she sleeps, she does it in the news lounge.”

  “You have a whole lounge for news?” Vadim asked.

  “We do now,” the captain replied. “Our usual mission is to have fun, and now we’re watching twenty different alert lists.”

  Nayli’s sympathy for the captain went up a notch. They stayed through another round but didn’t gather much other useful information until an old friend tapped them on the shoulder and drew them away from the cruise captains.

  Paol Held looked quite pleased to have spotted them. He led them out of the Captain’s Arms and into his private quarters before he used their real names. The old room had been painted and repainted, decorated with at least thirty pieces of framed art, most of them pictures of ships. Ships at war, ships at rest, and in one of them—if you knew where to look, and Nayli did—a picture of the Shining Danger right after they had shot down their biggest Next kill ever, a smugglers’ ship called the Dark of the Night which had been bringing rare metals to the Next a decade before they crossed the Ring into the Glittering. She remembered that kill. It had been one of those rare completely straightforward jobs where they had simply outgunned their target and dropped two bombs that blew unrecoverable large holes in the side of the ship.

  “So, I have you slotted where you asked,” he said. “Are you going to do what I think?”

  “You can’t possibly think anything,” Vadim said.

  “Drink?” Paol offered.

  “No.”

  “You are then.”

  “We never said such a thing,” Nayli said. “What’s happening out here?”

  “There’s three or four ships’ worth of crew that are raring to join you. And I suspect there will be more. We’re putting it out to as many as we can.”

  “But no one’s telling the Next?”

  “How would I know that?” Paol shrugged. “They’re canny, they are. They come in here looking innocent and not doing any kind of ordering around and anything, but you know better than to question them. It’s uncanny.”

  Nayli laughed. “Are they canny or uncanny?”

  Paol sighed. He ran his fingers through his sandy red hair and looked downright unhappy. “They’re all of that. Seductive bastards. It’s important that we get them now. Fast.”

  “We know,” Nayli said. Chrystal had almost seduced her into a wrong belief, but Paol didn’t need that story. “How long until we leave?”

  “Two hours. Can I take you around to meet some of the people who want to fight for you?”

  Vadim frowned. “I know you trust them all, but we can’t afford for
the Next get a hint that we’re here. We’ll meet with your top two or three recruits.”

  Paol looked thoughtful. “Maybe the top four? Would that be okay?”

  Vadim and Nayli shared a long glance, and Vadim nodded. He was always the most cautious. “Yes,” Nayli said. “But no more, and don’t tell them why they’re coming.”

  Paol left, returning in less than an hour with four people: Two women and two men. Three had an arm full of captain’s tattoos. All of them were hard-eyed. One woman was more modified than the Shining Revolution liked, with synthetic arms and hands.

  Nayli watched Vadim work them, asking question after question about how they felt about the Next and what they wanted and whether or not they would be willing to kill for the ideal of pure unaltered humanity. She catalogued the micro-expressions playing across their faces and noticed the smallest nuances of body language and tone, paying particular attention to the woman with the synthetic hands.

  She signaled Vadim with the use of particular phrases when she concluded there were no spies among them.

  He stopped.

  Silence fell for just a moment, and Nayli asked the final question. “Are you willing to die for an idea?”

  The overly modified woman flinched.

  Nayli made sure that Vadim noticed before she accepted their individual answers, all assurances that they would be willing to die for the Shining Revolution, willing to die for humanity. Willing to die at Vadim and Nayli’s command.

  They left. When he returned, Nayli told Paol, “The redheaded woman who flinched gets no more information. Tell her thank you, and tell her we liked her. Keep her hopeful. The others will be fine.”

  Vadim added, “Thank you for your work gathering support.”

  “It’s easier than it ever was,” Paol said.

  “We appreciate your loyalty.” Nayli planted a kiss on each of his cheeks, and they left.