Borderlander

by Joshua Guess

  Dex was mildly put off by the idea of traveling inside another sentient being, and saw Erin’s face wrinkle up in time with his own. “How long a trip are we talking? If it’s going to be more than a few days, we’ll have to hunt and stock up on food.”

  The answer was immediate. “From here to the nearest Planetary Alliance naval hub is a two-jump journey through the Cascade, totaling four hours of travel time. I believe they will want to temporarily quarantine you, however, and am unsure whether adequate supplies will be on hand or easily transferred to me. My concern is not for your survival, but for your comfort.”

  Erin raised an eyebrow at Dex. “Uh, last I heard, we were at war with the Children.”

  Dex nodded. “Yeah, we are. Except that one.”

  “That is correct,” Blue said, its electronic voice bemused. “I am here to help.”

  Erin smiled at the probe. “Well, that’s a hell of a thing.”

  Given what they had endured over the last few months, Dex understood how easily the others might accept an enemy suddenly turning into an ally. Stranger things had happened to them by margins almost too huge to be believed.

  “Home,” Dex said, thinking of the Seraphim. And of Iona.

  33

  It took Grant more than a little time to convince Dex to return to the ship. Oh, the kid was beyond happy to reunite with the crew. That much was obvious. But the months of hardship had changed him. Not in big, obvious ways other than his appearance. Dex wasn’t more angry or less trusting. Nothing so easy to put a finger on.

  No, when Grant spoke to him in the mammoth bay set aside for the rescued prisoners, the impression was of someone whose childhood had well and truly come to an end. It was ridiculous, of course; Grant knew perfectly well that Dex had never been that innocent or naïve. The sadness edging the younger man’s face couldn’t be ignored, nor the hard glimmer in his eyes. The kid Grant had taken onto his ship more than a year earlier was one desperate to put his past behind him, eager to shed the emotional baggage and history that weighed him down.

  This Dex seemed to have picked at least some of it back up. It was hard to blame him. Remembering old lessons was sometimes useful, even if it washed some of the joy out of your life.

  The kid protested that he didn’t want to abandon the other prisoners, and Grant stood by with amusement written on his face as Dex’s new friends shoved him toward the captain bodily. Far from jealous at Dex being the first to reunite with his family, they urged him to go. Grant thought he’d like these people if given the time to know them. Then he decided he already did. They’d helped Dex survive.

  When they arrived on the Seraphim for the meeting, Dex was introduced to the ground team. Grant saw him blink at the sight of Fen, taking in her reptilian appearance with a quick glance and finding his equilibrium again. There was a strange, almost embarrassed look on his face. Maybe a little guilty. Grant made a note to ask about that later.

  Dex and Iona sat together, hands clasped on the mess hall table. The ground team stood—there were plenty of seats, but not close enough to make conversation easier—and Grant let everyone quiet down on their own before taking control of the meeting.

  “I’m glad you and Iona got some time together before we had this sit-down,” he began. They had all missed him, and if he didn’t miss his guess, the sheen in Batta’s eyes wasn’t from exhaustion. Iona had gone to him, of course, and he didn’t begrudge the couple a few hours to get reacquainted in one of the simple cubic quarters Blue had fabricated for those who wanted some privacy. “I thought it was only right to give you some time before telling you this news.”

  Dex didn’t exactly tense; it was more accurate to say he went on point. Like a prey animal stepping out into the naked night, he seemed to instantly become more present somehow. More aware, more observant. “I’ve had a lot of bad news lately. Is it worse than being taken prisoner and having an experimental gene therapy tried out on me?”

  Grant shook his head. “Well, no. Not exactly. You already know Threnody was behind this. When we came into the system, we expected massive resistance. We didn’t get it. The last fight we were in was bad, but nothing like what we thought we’d get when we came here. There was a single Threnodian ship here, with a handful of guard vessels Blue was able to take out pretty easily. He—uh, it—disabled the ship from Threnody and took control of its systems. We know why there aren’t any other ships here. And why you were taken.”

  The mess hall went silent but for the low, constant hum of the ship’s systems. After months planetside, Grant knew the prisoners would still be adjusting to the change. Their senses and minds were conditioned to respond to the random noises of a living world. They expected it, at least on a subconscious level. He had been there himself and knew how hard it could be to adapt to the rigid normality of an artificial environment.

  It was one of a dozen reasons for why it took so long for Dex to respond. The abrupt change in circumstance after struggling for so long was enough to hinder anyone’s ability to process new—and potentially unpleasant—information.

  “I was taken at random,” Dex said, almost pleadingly. As if asking Grant to make it true.

  “You weren’t, son,” Batta said, surprising Grant. The engineer shot a glance at his captain, whose subdued expression said, sure, go for it.

  Batta leaned forward and placed his elbows on the table. His relaxed posture, possibly the result of a few celebratory drinks, vanished. “They targeted you. According to the reports on the captured ship, they wanted to test this...weapon or whatever it is on someone who already had the Blessings. Guess they didn’t want to sacrifice any of their own people if they could avoid it.”

  Dex snorted. “First fucking time for everything, apparently. They sure didn’t seem to care about that when I lived there.”

  Grant smiled, expecting Crash to chime in with a joke. Then he looked around quickly and remembered she was still unconscious and being tended to by the medical systems.

  Batta nodded. “They’re trying to keep as many resources close to home as possible. Building them up. You know why, don’t you?”

  Dex nodded. “They’re ready to attack. Idiots.”

  Grant barely raised his hand from the table in Batta’s general direction, but it was enough. The older man deferred to Grant with a nod. “They’ve got access to Children technology,” Grant said with a calm he didn’t quite feel. “Nanotech that will allow the mutagen they used on you and your friends to propagate much faster than they could manage on their own. Not weeks or months. Days. From what we’ve been able to find, the process itself will cause huge disruption anywhere it’s used even before the final product causes the infected to lose control and riot.”

  Dex frowned. “Why—oh. Their minds won’t have time to adapt, and their bodies will be starved for calories. Gods. They’ll go insane with hunger as their bodies demand food for a change that rapid. The other prisoners were only able to cope with the mental aspects because it took so long for the change to happen.”

  “We’re still not completely sure of everything,” Grant said, “but essentially, yes. The notes and data suggest that while anyone still alive at the end will still be more aggressive and prone to violence, Threnody wants to use the mutation itself as the weapon. We think that was always the plan.”

  Dex nodded along glumly. “If they’re marshaling their forces in the home system, they’re ready to attack or close to it. Which is suicidal. They have to know the Alliance is going to come down on them like a building falling on a bug. If nothing else, the PA will order kinetic strikes on the planet itself. They can’t possibly expect this to work.”

  From the back of the room, a gentle artificial voice spoke up, emanating from a small drone hovering unobtrusively. “My people thought enough of biological weapons to use them as a strategy. When I gave yours the intelligence needed to blunt that prong of our—their—attack, it seems they went looking for an alternative. Threnody had been planning this for months, possi
bly years, but with the assistance of my people, they were able to move their timetable forward significantly.”

  Grant clenched his teeth briefly, experiencing a momentary flash of rage at the idea that for every plan they cut off from usefulness, the Children seemed to sprout two more. “Not just the nanotech, either. Threnody seems to have teamed up with mercenary bands. A lot of them. And some of them have those fancy new engines. A Ghost Fleet stealth recon mission to the edge of Threnodian space shows no less than fifty vessels in station keeping near the system Gate. Another hundred in orbit around Threnody itself. If they wanted to hit a single colony, they could do it with ten, fifteen ships.”

  Dex closed his eyes and tilted his head up, as it beseeching an unseen god. When he opened them again, he looked as tired as Grant had ever seen him. “The original plan was for a fairly small number of us to infiltrate and disrupt. But the Children have that taken care of. If they concentrate on nearby systems, they can expand their reach. Citizens will do most of the work for them.”

  “Worse than that,” Blue said through the drone. “I believe my people will attack in time with yours. A coordinated strike will draw off enough resources to minimize the response for any attack by Threnody.”

  “Not my people,” Dex said flatly. “Not by choice.”

  Grant put a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Stop, kid. Don’t do that to yourself. This isn’t on you.”

  Dex’s eyes blazed. “I know that. Why do you think I left?”

  “Because you didn’t want any part of it, and because you felt guilty about what they were going to do,” Batta said. “My family has its share of thieves and crooks, but that doesn’t mean I’m guilty too.”

  “What I don’t understand,” said Fen, speaking for the first time, “is why the Threnodians trust the Children. They might be able to exterminate a few colonies and take them over, but the Children will come for them eventually.”

  All eyes turned toward the drone. It bobbed in acknowledgment. “Subjugation was always the end goal. My people wanted to hem you in, depopulate you, and control the remainder. Humans are capable of work that would normally require an AI, and my people are reluctant to grant sentience to lesser machines than ourselves.”

  Grant saw Iona bristle at this, but she remained quietly focused on the drone.

  “So they’ve probably struck a deal,” Batta said. “Threnody gets to show the Alliance how they’re still the tough little Borderlanders who can step in and take what they want, and in return the Children get an ally to split the Navy’s attention. Threnody’s mutagen works as a replacement for all the bioweapons we destroyed, and all the bad guys are fucking happy.”

  Dex raised an eyebrow at Grant. “So, what? Orbital strikes, then? Threnody gets the same treatment as Jefferson?”

  “Not a scorched earth strike like that, no,” Grant said with a shake of his head. “Targeted bombardment would be ideal, but they’ve got so damn many ships and those new engines will let them easily catch up with any spikes or rocks we try to throw.”

  “Then it’ll be a direct assault,” Iona said. “Can the Alliance spare the firepower it will take to stop them at home?”

  Grant smiled. “The Alliance? No. They’re going to be prepping for the Children. Threnody is one of the most protected planets in existence. Their defenses are intense even without a bunch of fleets in orbit. Fortunately, we have an idea. But it’s going to be tricky. Iona actually inspired it in our last fight.”

  Dex looked confused by this, but of course he wasn’t there to understand the reference. He didn’t ask a question, however. Grant noted that he didn’t ask the single question that should have been the first thing out of his mouth upon discovering he’d been targeted for the experiment. Namely: how had the hired thugs managed to track him or even know who Dex was? As far as Grant or any of them knew, the only people in the Alliance who knew Dex was from Threnody was the NIA. The kid was still out of sorts, not thinking in his usual patterns. Probably he’d wake up in the middle of the night when it hit him. He’d probably call Batta, but he’d have no answers either. It was a mystery everyone on the crew was keen to solve, but one that could wait.

  Grant tried to look confident—but not cocky, never cocky—when he addressed the group as a whole. “We pull this off, we’re going to destroy Threnody’s ability to make war for a generation, maybe longer.”

  “If we fail,” Iona said, her voice tight with rage, “then at least we go down swinging.”

  Grant took it as a good omen that not a single person in the room showed even a hint of disagreement.

  34

  From Threnody—from anywhere inside the heliosphere—the probe was invisible. The volume of a sphere increases geometrically as its radius increases, and at ten light hours distant, the volume was enormous. The probe was less than a mote even at three meters long and a meter thick.

  The flickering light of a Cascade point closed as the metallic rod entered real space. Because the probe itself occupied all but a tenth of one percent of the opening into the Cascade, the distortions and energy readings that might be detectable by any ships passing near or long-ranger sensor technology gifted by the Children were below readable levels. Nothing more than an electromagnetic and gravitational blip, there and gone between eye blinks and so faint the signals attenuated to nothing within a kilometer.

  Housed within the probe’s stealth casing was a member of the Ghost Fleet. His name was Yasin, and this was not his idea of a good time.

  Yasin volunteered for the mission because, among Ghost Fleet sims, he was uniquely talented in two areas. He was an experienced pilot, nearly obsessive in his interest, and his artificial brain was mostly constructed of cells bearing the newest and most advanced architecture. The upgrade was one Yasin volunteered for, a risky proposition for any sim.

  The first allowed him to pilot the probe with more skill than any human could have. The second gave him the ability to process information and perform calculations at a speed more than an order of magnitude beyond his fellow sims.

  Combined, they made Yasin the only choice for the mission. He was the nucleus for what came next. He was the only chance for success.

  *

  Crash sat in the med chamber, which could not be properly called a medical bay given its small size and lack of an actual doctor. She’d be talking to the captain about that in the near future. At the very least they needed a medic in the crew.

  The auto doc kept bitching at her to stop what she was doing, but Crash ignored it. The stuff Batta brought her smelled like cleaning solution and kicked like a team of mules, but it was nice. A few sips were enough to start relaxing her in ways the medicines pumped into her veins couldn’t quite manage.

  When the door opened, she expected Grant. He had been by several times since she woke. Worried about her, she knew, even if he wouldn’t say it.

  Instead, Iona walked in. “Commander. How are you doing?”

  The woman was stiff, and if Crash didn’t know better...angry? Maybe afraid. Sometimes holding back either could look the same. “Oh, you know. Won’t be winning any marathons. Other than that, I’m good. Alive is better than the other options. How about you? Do we need to budget for a new bed? I bet you and Dex broke at least one getting reacquainted.” She winked and took another sip from the cup in front of her.

  Iona was built to simulate all human reactions on the same fundamental, biological level as anyone who was born instead of built. Her blush wasn’t a surprise, but it did give Crash a little thrill of victory knowing she’d pried a reaction out of Iona. “Uh, no. That’s not why I came here. I wanted to apologize. For your leg.”

  Crash looked down at the stump. Her left leg ended halfway down one slim thigh, capped with a weird medical device the auto doc assured her would speed healing and prevent infection. The slight suction took a while to get used to. “You didn’t do this to me. Way I hear it, I owe you one for helping Batta get me free of that damn ship.”

 
“I was in command—”

  Crash waved a hand. “You were in command of Seraphim, not my Ravager. That was all me. And I did a damn fine job out there. The fact that I came back at all proves that. You got nothing to feel guilty about.”

  Iona grimaced as if this was the last thing she wanted to hear, but Crash didn’t let her get a word in edgewise. Why should she? It would only be more self-recrimination, more guilt about something way outside her power to prevent or fix. “Look, you know as well as I do that Grant came down here to prepare me for this talk. You know how close we are, and we’re captain and first officer besides. This is the kinda shit we have to talk about. I’ve been in a lot of scrapes, Iona. Way back when you were a tiny AI who thought she was human, I was flying ships and doing stupidly dangerous shit for a living. Wanted to since I was five. You didn’t make that call for me.”

  Crash took another, deeper swig of Batta’s home brew. “I can’t make you not feel guilty about it, but I can give you orders. You wanna feel bad, go ahead. Can’t stop you. But after this conversation is over I never want to hear another word about it. I’m not mad at you for losing my leg, mostly because it’s not your fault. Even the irrational part of me that might be mad at you for no good reason has had time to gain some perspective.”

  Iona blinked at the verbal onslaught. “How can you be taking this so well? I can’t imagine losing part of myself that way.”

  “Sure you can,” Crash said, raising her glass in a less than steady hand. “You lost Dex for months. And yeah, on one level it’s hard to cope with. I mean, that’s my leg. Had it my whole life. Gone now, never coming back. It’s a psychological thing. But practically speaking, whatever I replace it with will probably be better than what god gave me and once I break it in I doubt I’ll even be able to tell the difference. So that helps. Not looking forward to the wait to make that happen, I’ll be honest.”