She was grateful that the lean and weary Arrigo was sitting on the opposite sofa to her, acting as her conduit to the Varkan ships, for while she planned her phase of the exodus, all the Varkan continued to shuttle refugees to new homes. She couldn’t demand they drop everything and meet in a central location. It would take them away from vital work.
So they met and spoke in the digital universe, where she could not go. She used Arrigo to speak to them, instead. It was a very mechanical exercise. Pick a gate, assign a Varkan ship to destroy it and move on to the next gate. It was the scale of the project that made it unwieldy. There were over two thousand gates in the known galaxy.
It took three days to dole out the assignments and in those three days, all of the Varkan completed their assignments and returned for the next one, dozens of times each. The Hana also jumped around the galaxy, using the particle beams Catherine had re-stowed aboard to destroy their fair share of the gates.
The human outcry at the destruction of the legacy transport system would have been deafening if Catherine had listened to it. She asked Toby to filter any messaging she received to remove the threats and vitriol. “I need to focus,” she said shortly.
The one person she allowed through the iron-clad filter was Bedivere. She reported to him every eight hours, with numbers of gates destroyed. It was her version of the array the AI had been distributing, reporting on numbers of refugees removed from Sunita.
Even though Bedivere was shuttling refugees from Soward and once Soward was clear, he returned to Sunita to continue the evacuation there, he still managed to sound relaxed whenever she spoke to him, which was a far cry from the tension that was giving her a headache and the churning in her stomach from too much coffee and not enough sleep. She had not returned to her room to sleep properly since he had given her this assignment. Instead, she had curled up on the sofa and napped whenever she could no longer function with her eyes open.
Bedivere must have sensed that because once she had given him the numbers, he spoke of everyday things. Gossip from Charlton. The joys of piloting the Aliza after so many years away from space. The enhancements he was planning for the ship. Trivia. Glorious, inconsequential, superficial and above all, happy chatter.
The few minutes she spent thinking about wall colors and ship speed enhancers, inertial dampers and clothes…clothes, for Glave’s sake…those were the most peaceful and relaxing moments in her day.
The very last gate to be destroyed Catherine reserved for herself and for the talented Mael. “We get to blow the gates at Soward,” she told Arrigo and Mael together. “Not because they’re the last, but because they’ll be the most dangerous. They’re very close to the planet and the Periglus have started terraforming. If we get too close to them at this critical stage, we have no idea what they will do. They could react and if their weapons are of the same scale and effectiveness as the terraforming device, then we’ll be completely outgunned. The only advantage we seem to have over them is speed and Interspace, so we need to go in lightly, ready to jump away with no notice. Mael, that’s going to be your primary role. You sit with your finger on the Interspace button, every sense up and wide open, looking for an excuse to jump away. Arrigo, I hope you don’t mind. I want you to operate the particle beam.”
Arrigo smiled. “I was going to ask if I could.”
“As soon as we’re in firing distance, you destroy the gates, then you slap Mael on the shoulder and he jumps us away. There are no more Varkan ships in the system and no more humans. The system is empty except for one skivver that is monitoring to make sure no Periglus use the gates. It’ll just be us there, so in and out as fast as we can.”
It left Catherine with nothing to do except worry. She couldn’t sit still and ended up prowling around the navigation table in slow circles as the Hana prepared to jump. Then she stood between Mael’s and Wayna’s chairs as the now-familiar star field around Soward assembled beyond the windows. The gates were right in front of them. It was a technically perfect jump.
She looked at Arrigo. “Whenever you’re ready.”
“Bringing up the beam.” They couldn’t jump with the beam ready to fire, for no one knew what the shift through Interspace might do to the unstable and volatile weapon. There was a reason particle beams weren’t in common use. Too many ships had destroyed themselves instead of their targets because the beams had slipped out of their control.
These few moments would be their most vulnerable ones. Catherine looked at Cleon, who was manning the defensive terminal. He was looking down at the dashboard, frowning.
“Periglus. Thirty ships, heading in our direction.” He looked up at Catherine. “I don’t know what range their weapons have.”
“We may yet find out,” Catherine told him. She gripped the edge of the navigation table, watching Arrigo.
The seconds ticked on.
Mael was not watching Arrigo. Nor was he looking through the viewports for a first glimpse of the pursuing Periglus. He was staring straight ahead, mentally poised to throw the ship back to Charlton at the first indication of trouble. Once Arrigo fired, he would reach through digital space and tell Mael to jump and the message would be faster than any human form of communication.
“Ten seconds,” Arrigo murmured.
“Closing,” Cleon said. “And slowing, which means they’re coming into range.”
Catherine gripped the two chairs, bracing herself. The flight deck was utterly silent, except for the far distant murmur of the engines at the back of the ship, that vibrated through the superstructure like a background hum.
“Firing,” Arrigo said with chilling calm.
“Confirm destruction,” Catherine said. She looked at Cleon. He had all the long range scanner and monitors feeding into his terminal.
Cleon nodded. “Destroyed. All functions disabled. They’re dead metal.”
“Go!” Catherine cried, but Mael had already made the jump. The ship shivered and the star field reformed in front of them.
Charlton was dead ahead, a collection of mismatched structures and the girders and beams and docking collars that held it all together. It had never looked so damn wonderful.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Charlton Space City, New Cathay (Ji Xiu Prime), Ji Xiu System, Perseus Arm. FY 10.187
No one liked the high-handed way Bedivere had gone about destroying the jump gates. No authority figure was crazy enough to try to argue that the gates should have remained functioning, not with the loss of three star systems and the current refugee crisis pressuring every single remaining system’s resources. Instead, they focused upon the lack of consultation and agreement.
“It’s just shock,” Brant said. “They’ve got to vent it somewhere, the collective angst of their constituents will make them implode if they don’t. You’re just a handy excuse, Bedivere, but damned if they’re not stretching it a bit much.”
Bedivere shrugged. He’d known before he’d asked Cat to do it that no one would like not being consulted. “I didn’t have time for committee meetings. Destroying the gates is the only way we have to slow the Periglus down. Now, if they want another system, they’re going to have to travel to it in sub-light space and that will take them hundreds of years. In that time, we should have our own defenses in place.”
“So, sooner or later, we’re going to be facing war with an alien species,” Connell concluded, sounding unhappy.
“Unless we figure out how to talk to them in the meantime,” Brant reminded him. “Thanks to Bedivere, we’ve now got time to do that. That seems to have been overlooked, if you listen to the governors shouting each other down.”
The only influential person who wasn’t screaming for Bedivere’s blood was Devlin. Bedivere wasn’t sure if he appreciated the man’s championship, yet Devlin spoke eloquently, over and over again, on how destroying the gates benefited humans and after a while, the angst and hysteria began to calm and common sense reasserted itself.
“I’d like to think it was just
time passing that makes the difference,” Bedivere told Brant over brandy. “Everyone finally realized that it was a done deal, there’s no going back. So they’re picking up and moving on. Except that Devlin is good. Very, very good.” He sipped his brandy, struggling to decide if he should be angry about that or not.
Devlin and the secrets he held were a tabled subject. Bedivere simply didn’t have time these days to follow up on the mysteries around Devlin. It was at the top of his list of things to do once the panic over the Periglus had subsided and things got back to a new normal.
Because of the unanswered questions surrounding Devlin, Bedivere didn’t feel any guilt over the daily conversations he and Cat were still having. They didn’t meet in person…that would be stepping over a line in his own mind he wasn’t sure he was ready to take just yet. Catherine didn’t seem to mind talking to him whenever he connected with her. In a small way, he suspected he was helping her stay centered so she could cope with the frantic life aboard the Hana. Devlin was back in the captains’ chair and politicking his way around the galaxy on a non-stop schedule that often left her looking drained.
Bedivere couldn’t do anything about that just now.
The evacuation of Sunita went on. It was the last remaining emergency generated by the Periglus, yet they were nearing the end of that operation and Bedivere was already looking ahead, anticipating the next demands that the Varkan would have to meet. Now that the old gate system had gone, humans would have to rely on Varkans for transport between star systems. That would generate new enterprises, new ship designs, new revenues and new headaches.
Until Sunita was cleared, though, it was all theory.
* * * * *
Connell liked returning to Charlton. It was an ugly city looked at from the outside, hanging there in space and turning slowly. It looked like a bunch of really big space junk pieces had got together and were now drifting in space, forever locked by the mild gravity even small chunks of matter generated. The hundreds of docking collars and bays dotting the exteriors didn’t help the aesthetics. Every time a new village asked to be added to the city, they were added on where space and a smooth connection could be found. The village itself got its shape and design from whatever structures they were using to build it. Celestial was the only village that had been built for beauty, and that was a tiny village and buried among the others.
Despite the chunky appearance, Charlton was home to Connell in a way that his birth planet had never been. He had a life here. Friends. A growing business and more than enough revenue to meet his needs. He understood now in a way that he had never been able to grasp before he had been gifted his human body why Bedivere clung to his human nature. It gave a richness to life that the digital landscape in all its complexity could never hope to imitate.
He had worked harder in the last few months than at any other time in his life, and for no pay, either. For the enormous privilege of helping humans and making such a huge difference in their lives, he would do it all over again. From the hints that Bedivere and the others had dropped, he thought they were feeling the same way, too.
He shut down the bus after running the final checks, which only took a few seconds, because he was still inside the ship systems. He withdrew and put the ship to sleep and reconnected with the city.
He looked up from watching his feet as he walked down the ramp, startled.
The citymind sounded…unfamiliar.
“Yennifer?” he asked, vocalizing his digital reach out to her through habit. There was no one there to hear him.
“Yennifer, say hello,” he added.
Nothing. The citymind was a whisper in his mind. The whisper was the sound of systems running smoothly…and that was all.
“Zoey, locate Yennifer for me,” Connell demanded.
The AI turned its attention to him, processed the command and hesitated. “I believe she is in her office in Central City,” it said in Zoey’s voice.
“You believe? Why don’t you know?” He picked up his pace.
“I…don’t know.” It didn’t sound upset. It couldn’t. It was an intelligent sub-routine—a big one, but still just a sub-routine—sitting inside the city systems.
“Hell and damnation,” he muttered and picked up his pace even more. He had been planning on heading back to the suite, dropping into bed and sleeping for seven luxurious hours.
As he hurried through the city to the central core where her office was, Connell weighed and discarded possibilities and lines of action. He hadn’t had a chance to discuss with anyone what to do with Nichol August. The man had disappeared after leaving Yennifer a bleeding heap on the floor. Zoey had instituted a city-wide search for traces of Nichol’s biomarkers and no fresh ones had been found, which let him conclude that the bastard had escaped Charlton. With so many strangers squeezed into the city at the moment and so many ships docking and leaving with a bare handful of minutes between the two, it would have been easy to walk onboard one and disappear into the galaxy.
Had he snuck back onto Charlton once more?
“Zoey, do a city-wide bio-scan for Nichol August. Superficial and fast, please.”
“There is no trace of Nichol August in the city.”
He let out a gusty breath. That removed one horrible possibility. Now, the only way to find out what was happening would be to find Yennifer herself. The city systems were not his. He couldn’t hijack them and use them as conduits the way he could his own ship systems. For a moment he wished he could. It took time for his flesh and blood body to do what a digital investigation could complete in seconds.
The corridors and streets were crowded, making it necessary to dodge and weave between slower walkers. He barely noticed. He reached the big open central markets, with the elegant sweeping stairs and the tiers rising up to the dometop and climbed up the stairs, taking them two at a time all while wishing there were drop shafts here. Although, even drop shafts would be slower with more people using them.
The top level had fewer people merely because most of the city’s administration resources were located here, along with a few select businesses like the Vivaldi restaurant, that paid a premium to be sited right under the dome.
The city had rotated enough to bring the dome into sunlight and it was dazzling against the white and pale colored floors and walls. Connell winced and hurried along the balcony to the glass doors of Yennifer’s office.
There were people inside, sitting at terminals and going about their business as usual. The inner doors to Yennifer’s private office were closed and the glass polarized so that they were dark and unrevealing.
He pushed his way past the humans, who looked up with a scowl, then relaxed when they saw it was him. He pushed on the inner doors. They didn’t budge.
“Zoey, open the doors, will you?” he said.
The lock clicked and they eased open. He thrust the door aside and hurried in. The chair behind the desk was empty and at first glance, the room looked to be that way, also. Then he heard it.
He rounded the desk and found her.
Yennifer was sitting on the floor in the corner of the room, her back against the two walls. Her knees were pulled up against her chest, revealing a lot of shapely thigh that Connell barely noticed (except you did, his human mind insisted). He crouched down next to her. Her eyes were glazed and unfocused and she clutched her legs as if she were cold. She was shivering so badly her teeth were chattering. That was what he had heard.
“Yennifer,” he said. He went to shake her shoulder then hesitated. He didn’t know what to do with her.
He tried again. “Yennifer.”
She didn’t look at him. She didn’t respond. He didn’t know what was wrong, but he knew with every instinct he’d developed as a human that this was something to do with August. He just didn’t understand the connection.
Yet.
He connected with the therapy center’s AI and spoke to it directly, no human vocalization. It was faster and now he wanted fast. Zoey opened the f
eeds in the room to the AI for analysis when requested. When directed, Connell felt for Yennifer’s pulse. She didn’t react at the touch of his fingers to her neck.
The AI cleared her of critical traumas and Connell picked her up. She weighed nothing in his arms and she didn’t respond to being lifted. Her whole body was trembling.
He turned back to the doors and saw the screen on her desk. There was an open message there.
You forced me from my own city. You owe me. N.
Fury swamped him, making his vision fade and thought to halt.
It was Yennifer’s shivering that brought him back to himself and to reason. The AI was chattering at him. Directions. Treatment.
“Have the injection delivered to the suite,” he told it. “I’m taking her there.”
More protests.
He cut the AI off. “Zoey, open the door for me. I’m taking her home.”
* * * * *
“What happened?” Lilly cried when he strode into the suite with her.
“I don’t know. Something the clinic is telling me is post-trauma related. It should have printed a dose of something by now. I’m putting her in my room.”
“I’ll get the dose,” Brant said quietly.
“Lilly, there was stuff all over my bed when I left. Could you…?” He headed for the bedroom door, which Zoey opened for him without asking. She had unlocked and had open and waiting for him every old bulkhead door and airlock between the Central City and the suite, moving ahead of him to clear obstacles.
When he got inside the room, Lilly was already heaping clothes on the armchair by the fireplace. The bed was unmade, but it was cleared off.
He put Yennifer down and took the syringe that Brant held out to him.
“Know what you’re doing with that?” Brant asked him.
“I reviewed the video the AI pushed at me on the way here.” He held the muscle of her upper arm between his fingers and injected the medication, then tossed the empty syringe at the recycle maw.
Cat and Company Page 21
