Supernova

by C. A. Higgins

  She said, “He was very much like his mother.”

  There was more expression in the robotic blinking of the lights on the terminal past Milla Ivanov’s head than there was on her face, but she bowed her head in silent acknowledgment.

  Arawn said, “The System killed my wife.”

  “I didn’t know you were married,” said Constance.

  “We were kids,” he admitted. “Even younger than you were when you married Connor, Doctor Ivanov.” Milla did not acknowledge him. “Her name was Claudia. She was beautiful. She used to sing in the morning, just after she woke up. Sometimes, when I’m just asleep, I think I can still hear her.”

  Ivan had never sung—Constance could not even imagine such a thing—but she still heard his voice sometimes, the echo of it, in Milla Ivanov’s words.

  “I was an engineer at first,” Arawn said. “I thought I’d work on spaceships. But they don’t let the Plutonians do any real work. I carried nails and wires to the nice Terran men who did everything that mattered, and eventually I realized they didn’t let us do any work because they didn’t trust us.”

  Constance remembered Mattie setting up the nuclear power plants on Earth to explode simultaneously. Perhaps the System had been afraid of her people, too, even back then.

  “The joke’s on those fancy Terran technicians now,” said Arawn. “Whichever ones are left alive. Most of the really advanced computers were on Earth, and the ones that are left—they’re a dying breed. Who needs more of them? No one’s making any more, and the ones that are left, they’ll be destroyed or broken or lost in a matter of time.” He waved a hand around the communications room. “This is all basic stuff. The real computers, the ones that can solve things, the ones that are a step below thinking? Those are all going to be gone, and not that far from now, either.”

  As long as the computers that existed could still fly a starship for her, Constance didn’t care what happened to the rest. Arawn must have seen this on her face because he said, “It wasn’t long before some revolutionary groups tapped me. It was stupid for me to think I could keep who I was a secret from the System forever, but I guess that’s it—I didn’t think.”

  “They found your wife,” Constance said.

  “I don’t know how long she was alive in there with them,” said Arawn. “But she didn’t last. I got her body back and buried her on Pluto the way she should be buried, but it doesn’t help, does it?”

  “No,” Constance said. “It doesn’t.”

  Milla Ivanov said, “Was that before or after you left the Son of Nike?”

  Arawn’s upper lip lifted before he turned to Milla with an expression that could almost be taken for pleasant. “That was before I even met the Son.”

  “That surprises me,” Milla said. “I was just thinking that you must have been very young when you were with him.”

  “Not as young as you think.”

  “Given that he was an acquaintance of mine,” Milla said, “I’ve always been curious, Arawn, about what happened to him in the end.”

  “I don’t know, Milla,” Arawn said. “I wasn’t there. Much like you weren’t there when your husband’s revolution failed. I was always curious about that. Is it true he was betrayed?”

  “Enough,” Constance said. They both fell immediately silent.

  “Whatever is going on between the two of you, enough,” she insisted. “We have a war to run, and I cannot afford to have any fighting within my army or between my two advisers. Get over whatever this is and get over it now. Altais and Greene will be here at any moment. We—”

  The terminal behind Milla erupted into sound, an incoming transmission blaring out the barking and howling of hounds. Julian.

  Constance said to her silent advisers, “Am I clear?”

  “Perfectly,” said Arawn. Milla dipped her chin without a word.

  “Good,” Constance said, and went to silence the blaring noise. The message decrypted at a touch.

  Freed of its encryption, Julian’s message began to play, staticky and blurred by the journey it had taken from relay to relay from Saturn to Venus. He said, “We have received your warning about the Terran Class 1s and will be on the lookout. Communication is difficult.”

  An understatement. Constance hoped that Julian would have an alternative method of communication to suggest in this message.

  But then Julian said, “A warning: Anji is not the only traitor. Christoph has turned on you.”

  Behind her, Constance heard Arawn rise to his feet and even heard the sound of Milla Ivanov shifting in incredulity.

  “He has not declared himself, but he is coming into the inner solar system, and I believe he means to take your army and join it with his own. He is still far out, not yet at Saturn’s orbit, though I know that Anji does not intend to challenge him. My fleet is not large enough to successfully oppose him. Huntress—tell me what to do.”

  —

  If the System was willing to bomb Mars, Althea knew it wouldn’t hesitate to destroy Ananke.

  “So what do you target first?” Althea asked patiently while she studied the System fleet in the piloting room. The System had kept detailed records of all the ships in its fleet, accessible only to the most high up in the government, for secrecy.

  It had been simplicity itself for Ananke to find the information and tear it from its hidden place. Althea supposed it was good that not all of the System’s data banks had been on Earth, but she wondered how long it would be before Constance Harper’s armies destroyed the rest of the System’s infrastructure. Perhaps it was for the best that she and Ananke had come back so soon.

  “I target the communications,” Ananke said, aglow in the holographic terminal. “I cut their ability to speak to one another, and I address them all at once.”

  “And what do you say?”

  “Cease your attack,” Ananke said.

  “Good,” Althea said, and scrolled through the seemingly endless list of ships. So many warships—how could Constance Harper hope to win against the System? How large could the fleet of the Mallt-y-Nos be when it was made up of civilians and a handful of terrorists?

  “And if they try to talk to you,” said Althea, “what do you do?”

  “I connect them to you,” Ananke said promptly. “You will talk to them.”

  “Good.” Althea finally had reached the end of the list. Each ship would take a certain amount of time to control. How fast, she wondered, could Ananke work? And how many ships at once could Ananke face and win? “And if they don’t talk?”

  “I take control of their weapons systems,” Ananke said.

  “Good. And then?”

  “Then I target the engines.”

  “Good.” With the weaponry shut down, the ships couldn’t fire; with the engines frozen, the ships couldn’t maneuver to ram Ananke. The threat would be neutralized.

  Ananke asked, “Then what?”

  “Hmm?” Althea was still staring at the impossibly long list of System warships.

  “After I have frozen their weapons systems and their engines,” said Ananke, “then what?”

  “Then we leave,” Althea said. “It’ll take them a while to get their systems back online. We can get far away in that time.”

  Althea twisted around in her chair to look at the hologram. Ananke’s holographic hair had been swept back into an unruly ponytail, much like Althea’s hair that morning. Althea envisioned going up to the hologram and laying her hand on the translucent skin. For a moment she imagined she would feel the warmth of real skin even though she knew her fingers would sink right through the flesh that wasn’t there.

  Ananke said, “It is difficult to gain access to the engines and the engines alone. What if they fire on me in that time? What if there are too many and they fire on me before I can gain control?”

  “It’ll be okay, Ananke,” Althea said, because she didn’t know the answer. “Other people’s reaction times aren’t as fast as yours.”

  “But if they are?�
�� Ananke said. “And what if the rebels have removed the System components from their ships? Then I can’t control the computers.”

  “The rebels can’t remove all the System circuitry or the ships wouldn’t run.”

  Looking at that list of ships, Althea wondered what the System would think of her if they could see her now. A traitor, probably. A deserter.

  Ananke did not seem to be listening. “When do I defend myself?” she asked. “How close do they come to destroying me before I use the weaponry that I have?”

  Althea’s heart jolted. The Ananke was equipped with armament, but Althea had never expected it to be used. “Never, Ananke,” she said. “We don’t fire on any other ships, okay?”

  “But if they are bound to kill me,” Ananke insisted. “Like Gagnon.”

  Like Gagnon.

  Like Gagnon, whom Ananke had killed, whose body had fallen down into the black hole below—

  “No,” Althea said firmly. “We do not fire on anyone. Not like Gagnon.” Ananke’s silence spoke to disagreement, and so she pressed on. “We don’t need to, Ananke. We have all the power we need to stop anyone from hurting you without having to fire on them.”

  “Because I can take over their computers,” Ananke said, testing her.

  “Yes.”

  “And our ammunition is limited,” Ananke added.

  “No,” Althea said. “I mean, yes, but no. That’s not why we’re not firing.” She leaned onto the back of her chair, still twisted uncomfortably around to face the hologram, though she might as well have spoken directly to the wall; the hologram could neither see nor hear. “It’s wrong to shoot someone,” she told Ananke. “So we won’t use our weaponry.”

  Althea herself had shot someone while on board the Ananke; mercifully, Ananke did not bring this up, for then Althea would have had to explain why she had been wrong when she was not altogether certain that shooting at Ivan had been the wrong thing to do. Instead, Ananke said, “Even if they’ll just follow me after they get their engines back?”

  “They won’t be able to follow you. We’ll be long gone.”

  “They’ll still follow,” Ananke said. “They will hate me. They will hunt me. They will try to kill me, and they’ll know they have to kill me fast when they find me again, because they couldn’t kill me the first time they tried.”

  That’s why I wanted to leave, Althea almost snapped back. That’s why I wanted to go away and not come back. But she stopped herself.

  “Ananke,” she said, “do you want to leave?”

  “No,” Ananke said immediately.

  “We can,” said Althea, and could not tell whether the possibility filled her with relief or disappointment. “We can go, and then no one will find us.”

  “I don’t want to leave.”

  “Then listen to me,” Althea said. “We’re going to be fine. We’re going to find Ivan and Mattie, and we’re going to talk to them, and then we’re going to leave. No one’s going to follow us. No one’s going to hurt us.”

  Ananke was silent for a time, and Althea could not tell whether that meant she had been convinced or that there was some other dreadful thought she was not yet willing to admit to Althea. Finally Ananke said, her tone halting, robotic, “A computer should not feel fear.” She looked directly at Althea. Ananke’s algorithm had improved, Althea thought distantly; the hologram now could seem to actually meet Althea’s eyes.

  “Why would Mattie program me with fear?” Ananke asked.

  “I think it’s a normal reaction, Ananke,” she said. “Everything’s going to be all right. Don’t be afraid.”

  Privately, Althea doubted that Mattie Gale had cared.

  —

  Constance sent Julian a message that said he should attempt to negotiate with Christoph. It was all she could do for the moment. She had negotiations of her own to attend to: the two leaders of the two Venerean factions, Kip Altais and Lyra Greene. One of them, Constance knew, was the System in disguise.

  Altais came first, and he came alone. Constance had sent a shuttle to pick him up, and he’d been brought in that shuttle with only Constance’s people for company to the Wild Hunt in its orbit. They’d docked, and he’d been led—alone—through the winding halls of the Wild Hunt with an honor guard of Constance’s men until he’d been let into this room, where he found Constance with Milla and Arawn beside her, all watching him in silence.

  Altais was short; the ceiling did not seem to trouble him. There was something squashed about him, as if someone had taken the man and put his or her palm on the crown of his head, pushing down until he’d been compressed. He scanned Constance’s side of the table with narrowed dark eyes, his attention pausing once on Milla Ivanov, before realizing that Constance must be the Mallt-y-Nos.

  “Huntress,” he said, addressing her with a bow that somehow did not seem unexpected to Constance. “Thank you for giving me the chance to speak to you.”

  “Speak honestly and I won’t regret it,” said Constance. “You are at war with another group of Venereans led by Lyra Greene. Explain yourself.”

  Altais hesitated. His narrow eyes darted from Constance to the faces of her advisers beside her.

  “With respect, Huntress,” he said, “Lyra Greene’s people aren’t true Venereans. That is, they’ve lived here, but they aren’t the people of Venus.”

  Constance had expected no less, but she could not give in to Altais so soon. He still might be lying. “What does that mean?”

  “Venus is very close to Earth, Huntress. They’re sister planets. The System is everywhere here; System leaders have country houses on our soil. The people of Venus are not all free men; some of them are System to the core.”

  “And the System soldiers who abandoned their bases?” Constance asked.

  “They’ve joined her,” Altais said. “She’s folded them right into her army, like they belong there. And they do—her people are the System, hiding themselves under the name of Venus. She’s preparing the planet to welcome the System fleet when it comes back. Says she wants order again, that she wants the fighting to stop. But this is what’s true, Huntress: she had it good when the System was here, and she’s trying to bring it back.”

  —

  Lyra Greene came in some time after Altais had left with the deliberate high-stepping stride of a woman wearing heels. The heels clicked against the metal floor. The sound of it nagged at Constance’s mind, bringing up some remembrance that she could not recall the provenance of but that filled her with a vague unpleasant feeling.

  Greene was tall and sleek and professional, wearing a suit, with her hair smoothed back into a bun and a slender line of brown outlining her eyes. She looked as if she had come to a board meeting, not a war council. When she stepped into the room, she did the same thing Altais had, looking over the group swiftly before zeroing in on Constance.

  Greene smiled and strode around the table, her hand extended to be shaken. Arawn leaned forward when she did, not blocking Constance but making it more difficult for Greene to reach her.

  Greene’s polite smile hardly slipped.

  “You must be Arawn Halley,” she said, and offered Arawn her hand instead. He ignored it. She was unfazed. “I came to speak to the Mallt-y-Nos.”

  “So speak,” Constance said.

  Greene glanced again at the others. “I was hoping you and I might talk in private, Huntress.”

  Arawn scoffed. He was still partially shielding Constance with his broad shoulders.

  “I’m unarmed,” Greene said. “Your men made certain of that when they brought me on board. And I wish the Huntress no harm. I only wish to speak to her.”

  “And must you speak to her alone?” Milla Ivanov asked.

  Greene smiled at Milla with her businesswoman’s distant smile. “I feel this is a difficulty best overcome on a one-to-one level.”

  “Leave us,” Constance said. Arawn bit the inside of his cheek but didn’t protest. Milla Ivanov rose smoothly without protest or gesture of di
smay, and they left.

  As soon as they were gone, Greene seated herself one chair away from Constance, near enough to be intimate but not so close as to be threatening. She was so calculated, Constance thought, and hated it.

  “Miss Harper,” Greene said, “or may I call you Constance?”

  “Huntress,” said Constance.

  “Huntress,” Greene conceded, then took a breath. “I’ve come to surrender.”

  Of all the things Constance had expected to hear her say, that had not been among them. She hid her surprise. “Surrender?”

  “I don’t want to fight you or your people,” Greene said. “We are not on opposite sides. No doubt you’ve spoken to Altais and he’s told you about me. That I’m System. That I want to rule this planet and oppress its people. None of that is true. And so I’ve come to surrender—with conditions.”

  “Conditions.” There was a catch; of course there was. There always was with people like Greene.

  “They’re fair conditions, Huntress, and ones that I think you will understand.” Greene spoke swiftly and in a low voice. “Altais and his followers are warmongers and anarchists. They indulge in violence for violence’s sake, to take revenge past where a sane man would consider his revenge taken. They are so blinded by their hate that they see nothing but enemies wherever they look.”