The fourth time she slammed against the field, her hand yanked free.
The bands all over her body released at once. Her arm flew up, struck the cushion. The lights flickered and then went out.
The deck no longer gripped her soles. In infrared, she’d already risen a quarter meter above the heat shadow she’d left on the couch.
Osia and her cohort had gone to mess with the power systems, but she doubted they’d expected this. Something had gone wrong. Whatever was in charge of the planarship might have rerouted power to adjust.
The fields protecting Niccoluccio had dissipated, left infrared a fuzzy mess. Habidah could hardly see. Niccoluccio’s platform was a hot blur in the center of the chamber.
She half-twisted in midair, lashed her foot against the bulkhead to propel herself. Too late. Before she’d gotten a meter away, the lights restored. This time, the air surrounding Niccoluccio didn’t change in any spectrum she could perceive, but something popped and sizzled.
If Niccoluccio’s protective field had turned the crewman’s hands bright red, it would burn the flesh of Habidah’s face. Habidah drove her hands into the deck to arrest her momentum. The deck gripped her hands, slowing her.
Too late, her demiorganics trilled a warning about how her maneuver would end. Her legs flew over her. She flipped end over end. Momentum tore her hands away from the deck. She tumbled past Niccoluccio’s table, far overhead, and crashed knee first against the far bulkhead. The domed surface clung to her like the faux-gravity of the deck.
Crew reported power flickers all over the ship. Not every power conduit or generator was easily accessible, though. The planarship’s hijacker had been able to reroute most of those disabled. It had not even bothered to defend the remaining junctions, so little had it been affected so far.
Habidah was acting on dumb impulse, she knew. She couldn’t free Niccoluccio from the fields holding him. She couldn’t navigate the planarship. Even if she could, she had no way to get her shuttle out of its hangar. She had no plan, only a goal. There was no way to have planned for this.
She’d had no idea she’d possessed so strong a will to live. She’d boarded the shuttle expecting, sometime soon, to be killed. She’d imagined she would simply accept her end when it came to her. But this wasn’t how she wanted to die. Not, at least, while Niccoluccio was here as well.
She scrambled sideways, on her hands and knees, across the dome. She had nearly reached the deck when the lights failed again. The bulkhead lost its grip on her. She sailed helplessly, and crashed shoulder first into the deck.
The moment the lights returned, a figure pushed through the portal. Habidah’s crash had given her a lazy trajectory through the chamber. Her hands slipped loose of the deck. She was already out of arms’ reach of any surface. She steeled herself to confront Osia, but the person who’d stepped through was human.
Meloku.
She was still in native costume, minus the headgear. Her lips hung slack in mute horror. Her eyes darkened when she saw Habidah. She held onto the portal’s edge to push herself through, and planted her shoes on the deck.
Habidah twisted in midair. She couldn’t do anything to avoid Meloku. She started to ask, “What the fuck are–?”
Meloku braced against the deck, drew back her fist, and slammed it into the bridge of Habidah’s nose.
By the time Habidah realized what had happened, she was pinwheeling backward. The back of her tongue tasted of copper. She couldn’t breathe. Her demiorganics informed her they were blocking a tidal flood of pain signals. They struggled to regain control of her breathing.
She didn’t have the time to wait. The next time the deck spun past, she reached for it. The faux-gravity seized her palms, and brought the rest of her crashing onto her back. She swung her feet around to face Meloku. The other woman was already advancing.
Habidah’s demiorganics weren’t combat-rated, but she had a minimal self-defense program. Amid the flood of other urgent signals, she didn’t have time to listen to its suggestions. She lashed her foot ahead, aiming to catch Meloku by the ankle. Meloku sidestepped. She grabbed Habidah’s leg and slammed her elbow into it, just below the knee.
This time, her demiorganics couldn’t block the pain in time. Habidah’s world blurred black and red. Her demiorganics informed her Meloku had narrowly avoided breaking her leg. Her shin was fractured. Almost as an afterthought, they added that her nose was broken. As if the blood warming her upper lip wasn’t proof enough.
Habidah was almost glad the pain had gotten through. It jogged her focus.
Meloku shoved Habidah’s injured leg aside and stepped closer to get a better shot at her face. Habidah jabbed both feet against Meloku’s ankles. Meloku stumbled free from the deck plating, flailed through the air.
With demiorganics like hers, she shouldn’t have fumbled like that. Habidah wasted no time thinking about it. As Meloku passed overhead, Habidah drove the heel of her palm into Meloku’s stomach. Meloku whoofed.
Habidah stayed planted on the deck plating, sucking air through her teeth. Her demiorganics fought for her attention with increasingly shrill warnings. Her vision tinged red and black.
Meloku wheeled across the chamber. As soon as her feet made contact with the far bulkhead, the lights went out again. Again, the chamber vanished in an infrared fog of dissipating fields.
When it returned, Meloku had launched back, already halfway across the chamber, her face contorted with rage. In a flash of panic, Habidah spotted an ivory-handled knife in her hand. If she’d meant to hurt before, now she aimed to kill.
Habidah had just enough time to roll to her side before Meloku’s boot slammed into the deck where Habidah’s stomach had been. Habidah couldn’t roll fast enough. The deck plating grabbed at her, slowed her.
Meloku stepped closer and landed her boot in Habidah’s ribs. Meloku’s next kick found Habidah’s stomach, and then her chin. Her vision blurred dark again. She raised her arm as a shield. For whatever reason, though, Meloku hesitated to use the knife. Her next kick glanced off Habidah’s elbow.
Habidah seized Meloku’s leg while it was still in the air, and wrenched Meloku off the deck. The half-second that followed gave Habidah a chance to finally listen to her demiorganics’ self-defense programs. They had her yank Meloku forward, lock her knees with a raised leg, and then try to slam her head into the deck.
Meloku’s combat programs should have had plenty of time to react. Habidah was shocked when she completed her maneuver uninterrupted. Meloku reached to slow herself, but with merely human reaction speed. Habidah brought her crashing headfirst into the deck. She yelped and bounced away, pinwheeling into the air.
Habidah rolled onto her stomach to try to right herself, and the lights vanished again. Her head spun with her new sense of weight. The deck bashed into her chest and held her there tightly. Somewhere in the infrared haze, Meloku crashed to the deck. The knife clattered far away.
Ways and Means was moving again, faster and more violently. This was no thruster burst. The main engines were firing, sustaining a half-g of acceleration.
Ways and Means was breaking out of orbit before opening its gateway. Momentum held constant between planes. Habidah’s mind raced. Assuming it was transporting to a solar system like this one, it wanted to emerge at a high velocity. Used as a kinetic impactor, a ship this size could smash a world apart.
The lights returned. On the other side of the chamber, Meloku had fallen to her knees. She stood on shaky legs. Blood welled from torn skin over her left eyebrow. She was just as bruised as Habidah felt. She demanded, “Where are you taking us?”
Maybe that was why she’d held off from using the knife. Couldn’t ask a dead woman questions. “Do I look like I know what’s happening here?”
Meloku half-staggered across the chamber, toward Habidah. Habidah’s ribs flared in agony as she stood. She rested her weight on her good leg. Against an opponent with superior demiorganics, she was in no shape to win. But something was
very obviously wrong with Meloku. She wobbled in the half-gravity.
Habidah slipped into a parrying stance, alert for any sign Meloku was faking her distress. Meloku feinted a blow to Habidah’s left, and then jabbed a fist toward her stomach. Habidah blocked it, and countered with a hard punch to Meloku’s chin.
Meloku stumbled back, visibly stunned. Habidah could hardly believe it. She took several steps back while Meloku recovered.
Meloku’s face screwed up with pain. She glanced sideways, to Niccoluccio. Habidah realized too late that Meloku was now closer to Niccoluccio than her.
Meloku stepped toward Niccoluccio. Habidah blurted, “Stop!”
Meloku looked to her.
Habidah nodded to the table. “There’s a protective field. It’ll burn your skin off.”
Meloku hesitated. Habidah said, “Test it if you don’t believe me.”
Meloku kept a careful eye on Habidah. Habidah stayed still. Meloku reached under her sleeve and tore off a sweaty, soiled piece of the lacy fabric underneath. She balled it up and tossed it toward Niccoluccio.
A flash of light wrapped around Niccoluccio’s table. Afterward, there was nothing left but a mushroom of rapidly dissipating smoke.
Meloku looked to Habidah. “Why would you tell me?”
Habidah said, “I don’t want to hurt anyone I don’t have to.” Just an excuse, a post-hoc rationalization. The truth was she’d blurted the warning without thinking.
Meloku wiped her lips. The back of her hand came back bloody. “I’d kill you if I could.”
“There’d be no point. I can’t control anything anymore.”
Osia and one of her companions stepped through the portal. There was no sign of the third. Osia halted. With a face like hers, it was impossible to read any measure of surprise. “I figured you’d get free when the power failed,” she said, nodding to Habidah, “but you I didn’t expect.”
“I came to try to stop this,” Meloku said.
Osia said, “You’re with her. You arrived together somehow.”
Meloku waved her hand at Habidah’s bloodied nose. “Do we look like we’re working together?”
Habidah barked a laugh. Of all the absurdities of the past few days, the one that stung the most was the fact that everyone still assumed she had some measure of control. Maybe she’d had some when she’d brought Niccoluccio here. But if Ways and Means hadn’t fallen to the virus in Niccoluccio’s mind, it would have been conquered in some other way.
She spun, and held out her arms. “It’s true. We worked together. We planned everything for years. Why don’t you just memory-root us and find out?”
Osia’s expression didn’t – couldn’t – change, but that didn’t keep her eyes from boring into Habidah.
Meloku told Osia, “You need to interrogate and neutralize her right now. She’s responsible for this, and she’ll do worse if she has any chance.”
Habidah waved offhandedly, like she might brush away a mosquito. “It’s hard to imagine this getting much worse from your perspective.”
Meloku told Osia, “My demiorganics have been knocked out for days. I had to open an emergency gateway to come here. Any signals you’ve received from me recently have been frauds.”
Osia kept that impenetrable gaze on Habidah. “This has all been orchestrated.”
The deck shifted. Habidah grabbed one of the seats to keep her balance. Pain shot through her ribs. A wave of panicked calls blotted out her demiorganics’ ability to receive them. This didn’t feel like an ordinary engine burst. Something had shaken the hull.
Meloku looked straight at Habidah. Demiorganics or not, Meloku had recognized that jolt. “We just jumped planes.”
Niccoluccio said, “To Providence Core.”
Habidah spun. Niccoluccio’s eyes were open, staring into the bulkheads.
Some frightened crewwoman was transmitting her view of the outside universe. She and several others had been on the outer hull before the attack. She had recorded an image of the instant the planarship had emerged: a flat black expanse, devoid of stars. Niccoluccio was right, at least in that they’d gone to a Core World. All of the Core Worlds were in vast interstellar dust clouds, hiding the light from other stars.
A swirled blue-white disk fell behind Ways and Means. The continents were in different configurations from how they were on Niccoluccio’s Earth. Ahead, a cloud of lights shone in far orbit – farther than the moon’s orbit, half a million kilometers away. Not stars, but stations, planarships.
But that instant’s view had been the only one. Everything had disappeared half a heartbeat after Ways and Means had arrived. The Earth distorted, curved, and appeared a hundred times on the other side of the sky. It was as if it had been reflected by a field of convex mirrors. Ways and Means’ defensive fields had sprung into place, twisting and distorting all the light reaching it.
There was no sign of the band of atmosphere that had once encircled the planarship. Not even a wisp of gas. Ways and Means’ menagerie must not have survived the acceleration or the jump.
For a moment, Habidah feared the planarship was aimed toward Providence Core, that it meant to crack that world open. But its engines faced away. It was headed directly toward the thickest portion of the artificial starry nebula. The weight pressing Habidah against the deck grew steadily stronger.
Osia stepped closer to Niccoluccio’s table, and stopped seemingly half a hair’s breadth from the protective field. She asked, “Are you speaking for the virus that’s hijacked our planarship?”
“It’s not a virus,” Niccoluccio said, still staring. He hadn’t blinked since he’d opened his eyes. “It’s a mind.”
“Answer my question.”
After a pause, Niccoluccio said, “I can speak to it. Not for it.”
Osia’s companion blurted, “Is Ways and Means safe? What did you do with its mind?”
“Ways and Means is dormant.”
Habidah’s knees buckled as the planarship’s engines increased thrust. It went from half gravity, to full gravity, and half that again. She kept her weight on her good leg, and still her demiorganics had to numb the pain.
The crewwoman outside continued to transmit. Flashes of light sparkled among the defensive fields. Providence Core’s defenses had not taken kindly to a planarship arriving without notification. Pulsed lasers struck Ways and Means, but dissipated harmlessly amongst the angled defensive fields. From the crewwoman’s perspective, the sky scintillated kaleidoscopic colors as the laser light bounced from field to field, scattering and dissipating.
Providence Core would have launched missiles and combat drones as well, but too late. Ways and Means had emerged at too high a velocity for them to catch up. Not before it reached its target.
The crew was puzzling out what that target was. The last any of them had heard, three amalgamates were visiting Providence Core: Foreign Operations, Risk Management, and Trade and Finance. They were somewhere ahead in the seashell-spiraled nebula of lights.
Osia said, “Let me speak to Ways and Means.”
Niccoluccio said, “It’s not in a state to talk directly.”
The other crewman said, “You mean it’s dead.”
“Dismembered.”
Osia’s fingers curled into a fist, but it was either a pointless gesture or a purely emotional reaction. It was the first time Habidah could remember any of the crew showing either.
Habidah said, “Niccoluccio, I don’t know how much you can remember, or use your judgment, but this is Habidah. Tell me what you’re seeing.”
“I don’t see. I’m a part of it. It’s using me. My capacity to process information. I’m a part of its network now, one synapse in a brain. It’s protecting me because of that, but it could do without me.” Niccoluccio’s vocabulary had changed since he’d returned from the gateway, but he hadn’t sounded like this before. His affect was that of a dead man, but she could still taste the sorrow in his voice: “I had no idea I would lose so much.”
Ha
bidah swallowed past the heat in her throat. She asked, “Do you know everything it knows?”
His eyes were red for lack of blinking. “Most things.”
The deck rumbled as the engines accelerated harder. Habidah felt twice as heavy as usual. A drop of blood fell from her nose, struck the deck with a heavy splash. Her vision fringed red as more pain made it through her nerve blocks. Every part of her hurt. Her demiorganics tightened her blood vessels to keep her from fainting. She hobbled to one of the acceleration couches, holding its side.
Outside, the defensive fields pulsed iridescent, but dimmer and dimmer as the planarship put more distance between it and the planetary defenses. Habidah inhaled deeply. Providence Core was well defended, but the amalgamates ahead were far more so. It was hard to imagine Ways and Means besting three planarships.
But the virus’s plans wouldn’t necessarily include surviving.
Several crewmembers were trying to sabotage the planarship’s weapons. The voice of Osia’s missing companion was the nearest link in the relay reporting on their efforts. They were jamming drone bay doors shut, disabling missile engines. More crawled inside the hull plating to destroy field emitters and dismantle combat drones in their nests.
“Niccoluccio,” Habidah asked, fearing the answer, “how much of you is still you?”
Niccoluccio’s mouth opened and closed, but he didn’t respond.
Habidah heard an echo of her own voice. Osia was broadcasting this conversation. More and more crewmembers were listening.
Osia asked, “Is the same creature that sent you controlling our ship?”
For a moment, Habidah didn’t understand why Osia had asked. But Osia was astute. Niccoluccio surprised Habidah when he said, “No. It planted a seed in my memories. When you interrogated me, that seed spread its roots through your planarship. It’s like a branch of a plant that broke off and was replanted. The mind that’s in control of your ship is its own being.”
Quietus Page 41
