It wasn’t a question, and neither Cuc nor The Cinnabar Mansions bothered to answer. “They’re defence drones patrolling the perimeter. We’ll walk you through,” Cuc said. “Give me just a few moments to link up with Great-great-aunt’s systems…”
Lan Nhen could imagine her cousin, lying half-prone on her bed in the lower decks of The Cinnabar Mansions, her face furrowed in that half-puzzled, half-focused expression that was typical of her thought processes–she’d remain that way for entire minutes, or as long as it took to find a solution. On her windshield, the squad of drones was spreading–coming straight at her from all directions, a dazzling ballet of movement meant to overwhelm her. And they would, if she didn’t move fast enough.
Her fingers hovered over the pod’s controls, before she made her decision and launched into a barrel manoeuvre away from the nearest incoming cluster. “Cousin, how about hurrying up?”
There was no answer from Cuc. Demons take her, this wasn’t the moment to overthink the problem! Lan Nhen banked, sharply, narrowly avoiding a squad of drones, who bypassed her–and then turned around, much quicker than she’d anticipated. Ancestors, they moved fast, much too fast for ion-thrust motors. Cuc was going to have to rethink her trajectory. “Cousin, did you see this?”
“I saw.” Cuc’s voice was distant. “Already taken into account. Given the size of the craft, it was likely they were going to use helicoidal thrusters on those.”
“This is all fascinating–” Lan Nhen wove her way through two more waves of drones, cursing wildly as shots made the pod rock around her–as long as her speed held, she’d be fine… She’d be fine…. “–but you’ll have noticed I don’t really much care about technology, especially not now!”
A thin thread of red appeared on her screen–a trajectory that wove and banked like a frightened fish’s trail–all the way to The Turtle’s Citadel and its clusters of pod-cradles. It looked as though it was headed straight into the heart of the cloud of drones, though that wasn’t the most worrying aspect of it. “Cousin,” Lan Nhen said. “I can’t possibly do this–” The margin of error was null–if she slipped in one of the curves, she’d never regain the kinematics necessary to take the next.
“Only way.” Cuc’s voice was emotionless. “I’ll update as we go, if Great-great-aunt sees an opening. But for the moment…”
Lan Nhen closed her eyes, for a brief moment–turned them towards Heaven, though Heaven was all around her–and whispered a prayer to her ancestors, begging them to watch over her. Then she turned her gaze to the screen, and launched into flight–her hands flying and shifting over the controls, automatically adjusting the pod’s path–dancing into the heart of the drones’ swarm–into them, away from them, weaving an erratic path across the section of space that separated her from The Turtle’s Citadel. Her eyes, all the while, remained on the overlay–her fingers speeding across the controls, matching the slightest deviation of her course to the set trajectory–inflecting curves a fraction of a second before the error on her course became perceptible.
“Almost there,” Cuc said–with a hint of encouragement in her voice. “Come on, cousin, you can do it–”
Ahead of her, a few measures away, was The Turtle’s Citadel: its pod cradles had shrivelled from long atrophy, but the hangar for docking the external shuttles and pods remained, its entrance a thin line of grey across the metallic surface of the ship’s lower half.
“It’s closed,” Lan Nhen said, breathing hard–she was coming fast, much too fast, scattering drones out of her way like scared mice, and if the hangar wasn’t opened… “Cousin!”
Cuc’s voice seemed to come from very far away; distant and muted somehow on the comms system. “We’ve discussed this. Normally, the ship went into emergency standby when it was hit, and it should open–”
“But what if it doesn’t?” Lan Nhen asked–the ship was looming over her, spreading to cover her entire windshield, close enough so she could count the pod cradles, could see their pockmarked surfaces–could imagine how much of a messy impact she’d make, if her own pod crashed on an unyielding surface.
Cuc didn’t answer. She didn’t need to; they both knew what would happen if that turned out to be true. Ancestors, watch over me, Lan Nhen thought, over and over, as the hangar doors rushed towards her, still closed–ancestors watch over me…
She was close enough to see the fine layers of engravings on the doors when they opened–the expanse of metal flowing away from the centre, to reveal a gaping hole just large enough to let a small craft through. Her own pod squeezed into the available space: darkness fell over her cockpit as the doors flowed shut, and the pod skidded to a halt, jerking her body like a disarticulated doll.
It was a while before she could stop shaking for long enough to unstrap herself from the pod; and to take her first, tentative steps on the ship.
The small lamp in her suit lit nothing but a vast, roiling mass of shadows: the hangar was huge enough to hold much larger ships. Thirty years ago, it had no doubt been full, but the Outsiders must have removed them all as they dragged the wreck out there.
“I’m in,” she whispered; and set out through the darkness, to find the heartroom and the Mind that was her great-aunt.
***
“I’m sorry,” Jason said to Catherine. “Your first choice of posting was declined by the Board.”
Catherine sat very straight in her chair, trying to ignore how uncomfortable she felt in her suit–it gaped too large over her chest, flared too much at her hips, and she’d had to hastily readjust the trouser-legs after she and Johanna discovered the seamstress had got the length wrong. “I see,” she said, because there was nothing else she could say, really.
Jason looked at his desk, his gaze boring into the metal as if he could summon an assignment out of nothing–she knew he meant well, that he had probably volunteered to tell her this himself, instead of leaving it for some stranger who wouldn’t care a jot for her–but in that moment, she didn’t want to be reminded that he worked for the Board for the Protection of Dai Viet Refugees; that he’d had a hand, no matter how small, in denying her wishes for the future.
At length Jason said, slowly, carefully–reciting a speech he’d no doubt given a dozen times that day, “The government puts the greatest care into choosing postings for the refugees. It was felt that that putting you onboard a space station would be–unproductive.”
Unproductive. Catherine kept smiling; kept her mask plastered on, even though it hurt to turn the corners of her mouth upwards, to crinkle her eyes as if she were pleased. “I see,” she said, again, knowing anything else was useless. “Thanks, Jason.”
Jason coloured. “I tried arguing your case, but…”
“I know,” Catherine said. He was a clerk; that was all; a young civil servant at the bottom of the Board’s hierarchy, and he couldn’t possibly get her what she wanted, even if he’d been willing to favour her. And it hadn’t been such a surprise, anyway. After Mary and Olivia and Johanna…
“Look,” Jason said. “Let’s see each other tonight, right? I’ll take you someplace you can forget all about this.”
“You know it’s not that simple,” Catherine said. As if a restaurant, or a wild waterfall ride, or whatever delight Jason had in mind could make her forget this.
“No, but I can’t do anything about the Board.” Jason’s voice was firm. “I can, however, make sure that you have a good time tonight.”
Catherine forced a smile she didn’t feel. “I’ll keep it in mind. Thanks.”
As she exited the building, passing under the wide arches, the sun sparkled on the glass windows–and for a brief moment she wasn’t herself–she was staring at starlight reflected in a glass panel, watching an older woman running hands on a wall and smiling at her with gut-wrenching sadness… She blinked, and the moment was gone; though the sense of sadness, of unease remained, as if she were missing something essential.
Johanna was waiting for her on the steps, her arms crosse
d in front of her, and a gaze that looked as though it would bore holes into the lawn.
“What did they tell you?”
Catherine shrugged, wondering how a simple gesture could cost so much. “The same they told you, I’d imagine. Unproductive.”
They’d all applied to the same postings–all asked for something related to space, whether it was one of the observatories, a space station; or, in Johanna’s case, outright asking to board a slow-ship as crew. They’d all been denied, for variations of the same reason.
“What did you get?” Johanna asked. Her own rumpled slip of paper had already been recycled at the nearest terminal; she was heading north, to Steele, where she’d join an archaeological dig.
Catherine shrugged, with a casualness she didn’t feel. They’d always felt at ease under the stars–had always yearned to take to space, felt the same craving to be closer to their home planets–to hang, weightless and without ties, in a place where they wouldn’t be weighed, wouldn’t be judged for falling short of values that ultimately didn’t belong to them. “I got newswriter.”
“At least you’re not moving very far, ” Johanna said, a tad resentfully.
“No.” The offices of the network company were a mere two streets away from the Institution.
“I bet Jason had a hand in your posting,” Johanna said.
“He didn’t say anything about that–”
“Of course he wouldn’t.” Johanna snorted, gently. She didn’t much care for Jason; but she knew how much his company meant to Catherine–how much more it would come to mean, if the weight of an entire continent separated Catherine and her. “Jason broadcasts his failures because they bother him; you’ll hardly ever hear him talk of his successes. He’d feel too much like boasting.” Her face changed, softened. “He cares for you, you know–truly. You have the best luck in the world.”
“I know,” Catherine said–thinking of the touch of his lips on hers; of his arms, holding her close until she felt whole, fulfilled. “I know.”
The best luck in the world–she and Jason and her new flat, and her old haunts, not far away from the Institution– though she wasn’t sure, really, if that last was a blessing–if she wanted to remember the years Matron had spent hammering proper behaviour into them: the deprivations whenever they spoke anything less than perfect Galactic, the hours spent cleaning the dormitory’s toilets for expressing mild revulsion at the food; or the night they’d spent shut outside, naked, in the growing cold, because they couldn’t remember which Galactic president had colonised Longevity Station–how Matron had found them all huddled against each other, in an effort to keep warm and awake, and had sent them to Discipline for a further five hours, scolding them for behaving like wild animals.
Catherine dug her nails into the palms of her hands–letting the pain anchor her back to the present; to where she sat on the steps of the Board’s central offices, away from the Institution and all it meant to them.
“We’re free,” she said, at last. “That’s all that matters.”
“We’ll never be free.” Johanna’s tone was dark, intense. “Your records have a mark that says ‘Institution’. And even if it didn’t–do you honestly believe we would blend right in?”
There was no one quite like them on Prime, where Dai Viet were unwelcome; not with those eyes, not with that skin colour–not with that demeanour, which even years of Institution hadn’t been enough to erase.
“Do you ever wonder…” Johanna’s voice trailed off into silence, as if she were contemplating something too large to put into words.
“Wonder what?” Catherine asked.
Johanna bit her lip. “Do you ever wonder what it would have been like, with our parents? Our real parents.”
The parents they couldn’t remember. They’d done the maths, too–no children at the Institution could remember anything before coming there. Matron had said it was because they were really young when they were taken away–that it had been for the best. Johanna, of course, had blamed something more sinister, some fix-up done by the Institution to its wards to keep them docile.
Catherine thought, for a moment, of a life among the Dai Viet–an idyllic image of a harmonious family like in the holo-movies–a mirage that dashed itself to pieces against the inescapable reality of the birth vid. “They’d have used us like brood mares,” Catherine said. “You saw–”
“I know what I saw,” Johanna snapped. “But maybe…” Her face was pale. “Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad, in return for the rest.”
For being loved; for being made worthy; for fitting in, being able to stare at the stars without wondering which was their home–without dreaming of when they might go back to their families.
Catherine rubbed her belly, thinking of the vid–and the thing crawling out of the woman’s belly, all metal edges and shining crystal, coated in the blood of its mother–and, for a moment she felt as though she were the woman–floating above her body, detached from her cloak of flesh, watching herself give birth in pain. And then the sensation ended, but she was still feeling spread out, larger than she ought to have been–looking at herself from a distance and watching her own life pass her by, petty and meaningless, and utterly bounded from end to end.
Maybe Johanna was right. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad, after all.
***
The ship was smaller than Lan Nhen had expected–she’d been going by her experience with The Cinnabar Mansions, which was an older generation, but The Turtle’s Citadel was much smaller for the same functionalities.
Lan Nhen went up from the hangar to the living quarters, her equipment slung over her shoulders. She’d expected a sophisticated defence system like the drones, but there was nothing. Just the familiar slimy feeling of a quickened ship on the walls, a sign that the Mind that it hosted was still alive–albeit barely. The walls were bare, instead of the elaborate decoration Lan Nhen was used to from The Cinnabar Mansions–no scrolling calligraphy, no flowing paintings of starscapes or flowers; no ambient sound of zither or anything to enliven the silence.
She didn’t have much time to waste–Cuc had said they had two hours between the moment the perimeter defences kicked in, and the moment more hefty safeguards were manually activated–but she couldn’t help herself: she looked into one of the living quarters. It was empty as well, its walls scored with gunfire. The only colour in the room was a few splatters of dried blood on a chair, a reminder of the tragedy of the ship’s fall–the execution of its occupants, the dragging of its wreck to the derelict ward–dried blood, and a single holo of a woman on a table, a beloved mother or grandmother: a bare, abandoned picture with no offerings or incense, all that remained from a wrecked ancestral altar. Lan Nhen spat on the ground, to ward off evil ghosts, and went back to the corridors.
She truly felt as though she were within a mausoleum–like that one time her elder sister had dared her and Cuc to spend the night within the family’s ancestral shrine, and they’d barely slept–not because of monsters or anything, but because of the vast silence that permeated the whole place amidst the smell of incense and funeral offerings, reminding them that they, too, were mortal.
That Minds, too, could die–that rescues were useless–no, she couldn’t afford to think like that. She had Cuc with her, and together they would…
She hadn’t heard Cuc for a while.
She stopped, when she realised–that it wasn’t only the silence on the ship, but also the deathly quiet of her own comms system. Since–since she’d entered The Turtle’s Citadel–that was the last time she’d heard her cousin, calmly pointing out about emergency standby and hangar doors and how everything was going to work out, in the end…
She checked her comms. There appeared to be nothing wrong; but whichever frequency she selected, she could hear nothing but static. At last, she managed to find one slot that seemed less crowded than others. “Cousin? Can you hear me?”
Noise on the line. “Very–badly.” Cuc’s voice was barely
recognisable. “There–is–something–interference–”
“I know,” Lan Nhen said. “Every channel is filled with noise.”
Cuc didn’t answer for a while; and when she did, her voice seemed to have become more distant–a problem had her interest again. “Not–noise. They’re broadcasting–data. Need–to…” And then the comms cut. Lan Nhen tried all frequencies, trying to find one that would be less noisy; but there was nothing. She bit down a curse–she had no doubt Cuc would find a way around whatever blockage the Outsiders had put on the ship, but this was downright bizarre. Why broadcast data? Cutting down the comms of prospective attackers somehow didn’t seem significant enough–at least not compared to defence drones or similar mechanisms.
She walked through the corridors, following the spiral path to the heartroom–nothing but the static in her ears, a throbbing song that erased every coherent thought from her mind–at least it was better than the silence, than that feeling of moving underwater in an abandoned city–that feeling that she was too late, that her great-aunt was already dead and past recovery, that all she could do here was kill her once and for all, end her misery…
She thought, incongruously, of a vid she’d seen, which showed her great-grandmother ensconced in the heartroom–in the first few years of The Turtle’s Citadel‘s life, those crucial moments of childhood when the ship’s mother remained onboard to guide the Mind to adulthood. Great-grandmother was telling stories to the ship–and The Turtle’s Citadel was struggling to mimic the spoken words in scrolling texts on her walls, laughing delightedly whenever she succeeded–all sweet and young, unaware of what her existence would come to, in the end.
Unlike the rest of the ship, the heartroom was crowded–packed with Outsider equipment that crawled over the Mind’s resting place in the centre, covering her from end to end until Lan Nhen could barely see the glint of metal underneath. She gave the entire contraption a wide berth–the spikes and protrusions from the original ship poked at odd angles, glistening with a dark liquid she couldn’t quite identify–and the Outsider equipment piled atop the Mind, a mass of cables and unfamiliar machines, looked as though it was going to take a while to sort out.
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