Sam’s eyes narrowed on the map. “Energy, maybe. Power sources. Relics.”
Ada’s eyes lit up. It was a curious thing, and she might be able to use it someday. She smiled, finding the ship’s secrets more interesting than she had anticipated. She kept searching through its systems as it cruised towards its destination.
Eventually, moving between the various pathways in search of a way to find living things, Ada found something that looked promising. It displayed the same colour patterns Cherry had when scanning for human and animal shapes, and there was a large orange-yellow blob in Campus. The forests themselves were a constantly shifting haze of smaller, dimmer yellow points of light, and a few other spots here and there that Ada knew to be human villages lit up as well. There were even a few dimmer shapes in the water, sea creatures that did not let themselves be seen at the surface.
“There.” She smiled. “Life!”
They exchanged glances, and Tanos quickly picked up the conversation. “Is there any cool stuff in here, Ada? Any relics we can carry around with us?”
She thought about it. “There are a few storage compartments with stuff in them I haven’t bothered to look at yet. I’ve been mostly busy trying to figure out the ship itself. There’s a lot of code in this thing, let me tell you.”
There was something tense in all their body language, but they seemed to have accepted what was going on. She relaxed a little, not feeling the need to fight it off. Sam tapped her finger on the machinery in front of her. “Ada, would you ever like to see the thousand worlds?”
Ada blinked at her. They were really all over the place. “I don’t know - sure, I guess. Why?”
Sam glanced at the other two. “There’s actually still one ghost walker left, you know. Running around on this island, actually.”
The news took her aback - she had heard there were three, at some point, but it had never occurred to her to wonder what had happened to the third one. She frowned. “Wait, what for? Do they know it’s over? The war, I mean.”
Sam shrugged. “I think some of ours headed up there to tell him. I haven’t heard anything, though. It’s not like we’re very organized anymore.”
Ada sat down on another of the chairs and leaned back, thinking about it. The thousand worlds… She might want to explore them. She had heard all sorts of stories, of course, and she was curious. But tracking down a ghost walker who would surely be on the run by now sounded like a chore, and she wouldn’t have time for that if she was trying to look out for the safety of Campus.
As she was lost in thought, the ship barked something. “ Dào le! ”
Startled, she realized from the map that they were at their destination - a seemingly insignificant point in the vast strait between the island and Glass Peaks, at a distance where she was confident she could use the ship’s weapons. She took a deep breath and nodded, standing up.
She felt around in the Chengdu ’s controls, pushing the ship up towards the surface. She felt the ship accelerate under her feet, rumbling gently as it rose. Then the texture of the ascent changed, and the warship suddenly slowed. The distant sound of water sloshing reached her ears. She had reached the surface. Good. Time to get some fresh air.
“Ada?”
She didn’t want to fight with them. She just wanted to get this over with. Ada walked out of the control room, and with a mental tug the map followed, closing in on Glass Peaks itself as she went. The map was the best way of firing the weapons she had found - looking down on the city from above, as though she were sitting in Cherry’s cockpit. Firing cannons like this was oddly abstract and impersonal, but it would have to do.
She heard the others follow her as she reached a narrow set of stairs at the rear of the ship. A door snapped open at the top, letting in a waft of cool, salty night air. She stepped out onto the ship’s topside as saltwater rushed off the Chengdu ’s smooth, dark surface. Her suit’s black boots thumped against the ship’s hull as she mentally yanked at the ship’s cannons, bringing them to bear on the side of the ship that faced northeast. They unfolded from the hull like metal mouths, opening to hum with deadly power as their bluish lights scintillated across the gently rolling ocean. She would let them sing soon enough.
Tanos rested a hand on her shoulder. “Ada, are you sure about this?”
“I’m sure.”
Zhilik sounded doubtful. “You seem calmer. Perhaps we should wait until we are certain.”
Certainty. She shook her head, pointing at the map. She just had to think the command, place a marker, and the Chengdu would fire. It was easy.
It was easy to find certainty in the looks of anguish on the outers’ faces as they gathered their dead - dead who would never be reunited in the afterlife with their loved ones. Dead who were forever gone, reduced to a brute reminder of the mortality of the bereaved and everything they cared for. She remembered how Kseresh had spoken to them as they gathered their dead, promising his people safety and salvation when they received an answer from that distant star - a star that had so far remained silent.
There may well be nothing left out there, either. Perhaps all the galaxy was just one huge sea of lost memories and collapsing worlds.
Certainty. Ada dragged her eyes across the map of Glass Peaks, looking for the tallest towers to bring to the ground first. All the world was turning to ruin anyway, sooner or later. On a scale of centuries, today would make little difference to anyone.
Tanos laid a hand on her shoulder. “Ada, you know Isavel is in that city.”
Her hand paused in the map. The salt water sloshed peacefully against the side of the ship. She turned to glance at the others, barely illuminated in the night. Zhilik was holding onto the doorframe, clearly not liking being so close to the ocean. Sam was looking at her, and though it was hard to see the details of her face, she seemed to be calm.
Isavel was in Glass Peaks.
Of course.
She glanced at the map and set her targets, one by one popping little red markers into the ghostly image of the bridge that ran over the inlet into the heart of the city. The others watched her closely. Too closely.
“I’ll block off their main docks, so they’ll have a harder time sending out boats. And it’ll scare the shit out of them.”
Sam reached over for her shoulder and squeezed it. Ada tried to ignore her, and flexed the mental muscles connecting her to the Chengdu ’s cannons.
The Chengdu hollered its answer in light, each cannon thumping as it fired, vibrations climbing through Ada’s feet and coiling around her spine. Huge bolts of hard light sailed through the night towards the city, blue brilliance blotting out the stars and the slowly creeping dawn.
The warship fired and fired again, each successive blast infusing the water around them with light, the ship thrumming with the barrage. Again and again she let her mind focus on some part of that bridge, or the pillars supporting it, and the ship followed as fast as it could, blasting the targets with almost pinpoint accuracy from at least ten klicks away.
Isavel was in the city. Of course Isavel was in the city. She couldn’t just… shoot randomly into a populated area like that. She needed to be careful.
She stopped selecting targets, and as the Chengdu ran through to the end of its list it fell silent. The bridge, if the map was accurate, had collapsed and blocked off the entire inlet. Ada couldn’t see smoke rising against the night sky, but the people in the city must have seen and heard the blasts, so close to their homes.
She felt remarkably... scared.
Why did it matter that she had almost hurt Isavel? She owed the other woman a debt, yes, but that wasn’t it. Certainly that wasn’t why Tanos had thought to remind her of that fact.
Sam cleared her throat. “What about the city?”
Ada sighed. “It’s… not worth it. I should focus on directly targeting direct threats. It’s more efficient that way.”
The breeze over the open water smelled like salt and seaweed, and it was cold. Ada turned around,
and found Zhilik there to nuzzle her head with his snout, an unusual gesture of affection the outers mostly reserved for their children, as far as she could tell. Still, she accepted it. She closed her eyes and breathed, then walked back into the Chengdu as the others exchanged seemingly satisfied glances.
S he had to have accomplished something. Something that would help these people, this strange collection of hated ghosts and alien diaspora trapped together in one small city. She coaxed the ship back down into the murky depths of the sea and turned it around, heading for the city. With any luck, she hadn’t hurt anybody.
Isavel would understand.
Chapter 4
It wasn’t difficult to find the outers’ city, even nestled amidst the stony ruins of a whole city as it was. The gate was a massive bluish sheen of hard light that crackled with electric power, a difficult thing to overlook even at a casual glance.
Isavel reminded the coders to stay out of sight with the hauler, and made for the gate. Hail followed her, of course, and for that she was grateful. Even though Hail seemed to silently disagree on how much Isavel should cleave to the words the gods had uttered so many weeks ago, she had stayed by Isavel’s side, listening for weeks as Isavel slowly turned away from what had once seemed a clear divine mandate. And she had not been fazed. Isavel trusted her.
She stood in front of the gate and felt the gifts whirl inside her, breathing out and letting the dragon and warrior grow together into a brilliant pair of jagged white wings that spread out behind her back. The shapes on the city walls - some human, some not - stared down at her, and even at this distance her hunter’s eyes saw recognition and understanding in the human faces.
The others, these outers, she couldn’t fathom. Their stared back at her with glassy eyes settled in coarse fur of various colours, faces peeking out from gaps in the cloth swaddled around their bodies. After a moment, she realized they looked cold.
A human shape shouted down at her. “What do you want, White Witch?”
White Witch. They were ghosts, of course - few humans would voluntarily come live in such an inhuman place. She felt Hail tense up next to her, but reached out a hand to stay any shots as she shouted back up the wall. “I’m here to talk to Ada Liu. There’s a war coming for you, and I want to help stop it.”
The ghost turned to one of the outers nearby, and they conferred quietly for a time before the human rushed down the wall and disappeared down the other side. The outer looked back down at her, pulled back its hood, and spoke in a voice that did not betray age or gender in any way Isavel understood. “We are trusting you by allowing you into our city. We mean no harm to anyone. Know in your heart that if you hurt us, you will have betrayed our goodwill, and allowed a malice to take root in your self.”
She pressed her lips together and nodded. Oddly affected words, delivered in an accent alien to her ears, but she recognized the sentiment behind them. She was not here to hurt anyone. On the contrary, she wanted the madness to stop. If it stopped - if people laid down their arms, and peace returned to the region - she could be free to do set her own course.
First and foremost, figure out why she had been thrust into this impossible life, and once she had those answers, decide what she wanted to do with it.
It took an inordinate amount of time for the gate to open, but when it did it was with a sudden snap, the hard blue light cracking and vanishing into thin air. On the other side, standing in the middle of a clean and mostly empty street, Ada was waiting for her.
The sight of her gave Isavel’s heart a jolt. She hadn’t expected her to be here so fast, so without warning. She wasn’t entirely ready. Hail leaned in and whispered.
“I will watch her, Herald. If she tries to -”
She shook her head. “Hail, don’t worry. Leave her to me.”
“As far as anyone knows, she’s a madwoman.”
“I know more.” She squeezed Hail’s shoulder. “Watch from a distance, sure, but leave the conversation to us.”
Hail kept her lips sealed, and nodded even as she cast more suspicion at Ada. Isavel took a deep breath. Time to make a second impression.
She crossed the gate towards Ada, eyeing her up, trying to gauge how she was feeling. Ada’s jet black hair cascaded down onto her shoulders, almost disappearing in the black of the strange suit she was wearing. Her eyes, usually sharp with cunning, were wide and surprised, and there was a touch of pink underlying the pale golden tones of her face. Isavel stopped just within arm’s reach of her, and the proximity seemed to snap Ada out of her stupor.
“Isavel - uh - hi.” She blinked rapidly and shook her head, as though trying to clear it. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I know.” Isavel smiled and extended her hand towards Ada, and for a moment the coder seemed confused. Was she doing something wrong? Then Ada clasped her forearm, and smiled back. Isavel breathed a sigh of relief. “I was hoping we could talk.”
Ada’s eyes flicked to something behind her. “Is this… about the bridge?”
Isavel felt the tension in Ada’s arm at the words, and a little bit of panic ran down her spine. She didn’t want to start on the wrong foot. “No, this is about your terrible dancing feet. You’re a menace. I’m here to give you lessons.”
Ada blinked at her for a second before her face lit up with laughter, though she pulled her hand away from Isavel’s arm at the same time, instead bringing it to the back of her neck. “That’s not fair! I never got to practice, okay?”
“I figured that out in Hive.” She smiled, but the staring eyes of everyone around them were starting to raise her hackles. “Ada, can we talk somewhere… not in front of dozens of people?”
“Oh, right, of course.” She spun around, once in both directions, as though looking for some kind of quick solution. “Um, there’s a greenhouse. It’s quiet. Come on, I’ll show you.”
Isavel shot a quick glance at Hail, who seemed to have relaxed a bit. Good. She didn’t want to have to defuse any other tensions while she was here. She caught up with Ada, who turned to her with a pained look on her face.
“Isavel, I’m sorry about the whole mountain thing. Where we got into that fight. I didn’t want to hurt you.”
Isavel shook her head. “You were right, you know. The ghost’s walker showed me Elysium, afterwards. I… should have listened to you.”
Ada looked back in front of herself. “Oh. I heard you killed him.”
She tensed up a bit. “Yes. He actually asked me to, but I don’t expect you to believe that.”
“No, I do.” Ada was shaking her head. “You know, since the end of that war, every week a couple of ghosts kill themselves. Feel like they’re done, I guess; or they’re sick of hiding.”
“All the better.”
Hail’s voice made Isavel jump, and Ada seemed startled as well, stopping still. She hadn’t realized Hail was following them so closely. Anger flashed across her face, but then she exercised visible restraint, glancing back at Isavel before addressing the hunter. “I don’t think we’ve met.”
Hail crossed her arms. “No.”
Ada seemed to sway a little on her feet, glancing between Isavel and Hail. “Well, I’m Ada. You know that already, but -”
“Ada, this is Hail. She’s my companion.”
Hail stood a little taller than Ada and had a more warlike build, so the unease etched across Ada’s face made sense. Still, the coder took a deep breath and nodded. “Well, good to meet you. I’m not going to hurt Isavel, I promise. I’d just like to talk to her alone.”
Hail glanced over, and Isavel nodded to her. She appreciated the protective instinct, but it was misplaced here. She didn’t think Ada was dangerous - even if what the other coders said was true. Hail stepped back, and Ada led them to a large building with mostly transparent walls, bursting with greenery inside.
Isavel noticed a few other people had been following them at a distance, and Ada stepped over to them to speak for a moment. Two of them were humans, presumably ghost
s, and one of them was a white-furred outer. Their body language spoke of familiarity; Isavel wondered just what kind of kinship Ada saw with these outcasts that she didn’t see with her fellow humans.
Ada came back, and glanced at Hail again. “You can wait outside with my friends. None of them are gifted, so don’t worry about them trying to kill you or anything.”
The bluntness of the statement didn’t seem to reassure Hail, but she nodded and stepped away, and as she gained some distance Isavel heard Ada breath an audible sigh of relief. Isavel grinned. “She’s a bit intense, isn’t she?”
Ada’s eyes widened. “Yeah. How did you get a… companion like that?”
“We met in Hive. It’s a long story, but basically she let me borrow her clothes.”
Ada seemed to blank for a moment before chuckling, though she quickly turned away and opened the door. “Oh, got it. I remember Hive.”
“So do I.” Isavel only realized after she had said them that the words were ill-timed, considering she had just been talking about it. “I mean - I remember meeting you there. I assume you were there to break into the Mayor’s home.”
They stepped into the greenhouse, and Isavel was suddenly overpowered by the feeling of moist, warm air, and the smell of greenery and soil. It was a beautiful and comforting smell, like a promise to her body that she was going to feel better, and she breathed it in deeply as Ada shut the door behind them. “Yeah, that was me. I killed the guy, too. I remember you saying he was a pain in your ass.”
“That’s definitely one way to put it. His son is a lot nicer.” She watched Ada, and tried to see her as a cold-hearted killer, but it was a difficult thought to reconcile with the nervous woman standing in front of her. “Let’s sit down somewhere.”
“Sure.” Ada again turned around as though she were unfamiliar with the place, even though she clearly was. “Um, over there, by the tomatoes.”
Tomatoes! The word sparked hunger in Isavel’s mouth; she hadn’t had tomatoes in a few weeks, but her mother had always tried to cook with them if they could find any. “Are they ripe?”
Second Contact Page 4
