Six Wakes

by Mur Lafferty

  Maria grinned. “Good to know. How’s Minoru handling his new life?”

  Hiro laughed. “Well, he’s already fixed the old printer and begun eating everything it could make. Mostly pork ramen. Then he slept for about twelve hours. Then he spent a lot of time in the gym putting his new body through the paces. For science, he said.”

  “I guess he likes his new world,” Maria said.

  “Anyway, Katrina and Wolfgang are talking about your situation now. I’ve already given my opinion. I said I would check on you. You’ve got to be getting hungry now.”

  Maria’s stomach was tight with anxiety. She had been hungry earlier, but now she couldn’t imagine eating.

  “What was your opinion?” she asked.

  He looked at her for a moment, then reached out and took her hands. “Will you, if I ask you to, remove the yadokari from my head? Give me a fresh mindmap that’s only me?”

  She made a strangled laugh. “Bring me a terminal and I’ll do it right now. I’ll do anything I can to make you better—”

  He interrupted her with a kiss, fierce and unexpected. He pulled back after a moment and she stared at him in shock.

  “Thank you.”

  Hours later, after Maria had showered, had her wounds re-dressed, and ate, she sat with the rest of the crew.

  She explained how she had hacked the body scanner and Bebe’s powerful capabilities to move beyond food preferences to creating a full mindmap. She explained the secret instructions Minoru had hidden within the printer long ago, before he had been transformed, when he knew what was going to happen to him and tried to figure out the best way to lay bread crumbs toward fixing himself. Wolfgang watched stony-faced, while Joanna was unabashedly fascinated. Katrina looked confused, while Minoru nodded.

  “Can you program Paul to fly the ship with no ulterior motives to betray the crew or the mission?” Wolfgang asked.

  Maria nodded. “That’s simple. I can strip away the same stuff I did in my own mindmap that’s flying us now.”

  “Set her free, put her in a gardening robot or something,” Joanna said. “Paul needs to work to make it up to the crew. And we need to be able to trust him.”

  Maria nodded.

  Katrina looked around at the rest of the crew. “In light of the fact that you saved the crew in multiple ways, solved the murders, fixed the cloning problem, and freed our enslaved AI, we’re not going to charge you with any ethical hacking crimes.” She glanced at Wolfgang’s stony face. “As for holding grudges, I can’t promise anything, but I expect everyone to do their best to work together within the crew.”

  “Thank you,” Maria said.

  Joanna picked up where Katrina had left off. “Wolfgang has given up command of the ship to Captain de la Cruz again, who has agreed to counseling. But I’m of the opinion that now that our secrets are aired, there should be less paranoia and more trust. We’re continuing with everyone in the same roles, except you will take the role of chief engineer and Paul is sentenced to become our new AI.”

  “What about Minoru?” Maria said, indicating her head toward their new crewmember.

  “He’s going to work as an assistant to the captain,” Wolfgang said sternly. “He has his own infractions to work through, and we don’t want to give him too much power to start out with.”

  Minoru crossed his arms. “You had your entire world turn into a lie, and you became a crazy clone hunter. I’d think you of all people would understand my actions better.”

  Wolfgang tensed, but Joanna placed her hand on his shoulder. Maria marveled that the doctor could calm him immediately.

  “Also,” Hiro said, “since this whole ship was launched to fail, we’re kind of worried that there’s not reliable information about the planet at the other end of this mission. So we’re going to be doing a lot of research as we get closer to Artemis.”

  “Or we might be turning around and going home after all,” Katrina said.

  “Won’t they be surprised to see us?” Maria asked, smiling at last.

  “Our happy crew, and our mission, are works in progress,” Joanna said, smiling slightly. “We’ll figure it out. We’ve got a lot of time to do so.”

  Acknowledgments

  I’m always awkward writing these because I secretly fear I will miss someone. I always think I will write my acknowledgments as the book goes on, but that’s like saying I will organize my tax receipts at the end of every month instead of waiting for March. Doesn’t happen. But onward!

  The whole team at Orbit continues to be wonderful, supporting me and making this book better than I could have made it. Devi Pillai and Kelly O’Connor are excellent editors, and the cover was under the care and guidance of Lauren Panepinto. My agent, Jennifer Udden, continues to work hard to give me incredible guidance, as well as gentle talkings-down when I get anxious. Thanks also to Katie Shea Boutillier and everyone from DMLA who worked with this book.

  I was lucky enough to have the science advice of astronomer Dr. Pamela Gay, who gave both lovely conversation and speedy responses to panicked emails. Thanks to early readers Alasdair Stuart and Matt Wallace, and thanks to Claire Rousseau for her enthusiasm at Loncon a few years ago when I joked that I was considering writing a book of FTL fanfic.

  No, this book isn’t FTL fanfic, but still, thanks to the design team behind the iOS game FTL whose use of cloning sparked the idea behind one of the major building blocks of this book.

  To the people who gave support through this writing: Kameron Hurley, Marguerite Kenner, Sunil Patel, Karen Bovenmyer, Andrea Phillips, Sam Montgomery-Blinn, Fran Wilde, Charlie Stross, and of course all of my parental units and my sister Shelley. And I can never forget the people at home who make sure that I have a schedule of a normal person who puts on pants and takes a shower and eats a food from time to time (not in that order): Jim and Fiona, my whole world. I love you.

  extras

  meet the author

  Photo Credit: JR Blackwell

  Mur Lafferty is a writer, podcast producer, gamer, runner, and geek. She is the host of the podcast I Should Be Writing and the cohost of Ditch Diggers. She is the winner of the 2013 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. She is addicted to computer games, Zombies, Run!, and Star Wars LEGO. She lives in Durham, North Carolina, with her husband and daughter.

  By Mur Lafferty

  The Shambling Guides

  The Shambling Guide to New York City

  Ghost Train to New Orleans

  The Afterlife Series

  Heaven

  Hell

  Earth

  Wasteland

  War

  Stones

  Six Wakes

  interview

  When did you first start writing?

  I thought the answer was eighth grade, but then my dad brought me a stapled-together booklet of stories I wrote in first grade, so I guess it’s been a while.

  Who are some of your biggest influences?

  Early on it was Madeline L’Engle (who answered my fan mail when I was eleven!) and Anne McCaffrey. As an adult they’re Neil Gaiman, China Miéville, and Connie Willis.

  Where did the idea for Six Wakes come from?

  Ha. I considered making up something literary, but I’ll tell the truth. I was playing an iPad spaceship game called FTL [Faster Than Light], where your ship either had a medbay or cloning bay. The cloning bay would bring back your dead crew. I kept thinking that the concept was interesting, that you would use cloning not for multiplying yourself, but for immortality. Then I figured it would be a convenient way to drive a generation starship. And it went on from there.

  Your last two books took place in well-known locations (New York and New Orleans), but this one is set in deep space. How was the experience of writing these locations different or the same?

  It’s all research, really. I research important points, history, and people from New Orleans and New York, and I research what happens to wounds in zero gravity.

  What defines personhood
is a major theme in Six Wakes. What drew you to focus on that?

  It’s the philosophical concept of Theseus’s ship: If you take one board from the boat and replace it, is it still Theseus’s ship? What about two? What if you replace every single piece of the boat with something else? People are dismayed with the concept that the Star Trek transporter beam kills you in one area and awakens a clone on the other side. I think as this kind of tech becomes more and more possible, we have to decide how much we’re going to allow it to change ourselves and how we view the self and the soul.

  I’m glad I’m not religious. I wouldn’t want to wrestle with the problems one of the characters in Six Wakes faces.

  If you could spend an afternoon with one of your characters, which would it be and what would you do?

  Hard to say, because the characters have so many past selves. I would say I’d hang with Hiro from a few decades ago, but probably not now? IAN at full operating power would be interesting. I’d like to discuss ethics with Maria and the doc. I guess that doesn’t answer your question, but there you go.

  Lastly, we have to ask: If you could have any superpower, what would it be?

  You caught me at a bad time—I just got home from a lot of travel. So all I can think is that I’d love to be able to teleport. That’s magically teleport, not die-then-be-cloned-on-the-other-side teleport.

  The dream of flying is wonderful, but thinking logically, being able to just fly wouldn’t be a lot of fun. I think of it as driving with your head out a car window all the time. Wind, temperature issues, weather, birds, all of those could make flight miserable. This is why I guess that most flying heroes also have one of those minor powers to not be bothered by the elements, like how the Flash doesn’t burn away all his shoes and clothes due to friction. It’s all in the details.

  introducing

  If you enjoyed

  SIX WAKES,

  look out for

  BEHIND THE THRONE

  The Indranan War: Book 1

  by K. B. Wagers

  Hail Bristol has made a name for herself in the galaxy for everything except what she was born to do: rule the Indranan Empire.

  When she is dragged back to her home planet to take her rightful place as the only remaining heir, she finds that trading her ship for a palace is her most dangerous move yet.

  1

  Hail. Get up.

  The voice cut through the nausea, sounding too much like my father. I suppose it made sense in some twisted way. If I were dead, it wasn’t completely illogical to be hearing the voice of a man who’d been shot in front of me twenty-one years ago.

  The bitter tang of blood filled my mouth and nose when I inhaled, rusted iron and the awful smell of death. The stale air of a carrion house screamed of the violence that had taken place in my cargo bay, violence I couldn’t remember through the pounding of my head.

  Hail, get up now.

  Whoever’s voice was in my head, it was enough to make me move, or at least try to. I scrambled to my feet, pain stealing what grace the gods had gifted me. My boots—gorgeous red-black Holycon IVs I’d borrowed from a dead raider six months prior—slipped on the blood-slick metal. I went down hard, cracking my already abused face on the deck, and the world grayed out for a moment.

  More pain flared when I tried to flop over onto my back and failed. All right. So—not dead. Because even now at my most cynical, I didn’t believe for an instant the gods let you still feel pain after you died. It just didn’t seem proper.

  “Look at this mess.”

  This voice was outside my head, which made it infinitely more dangerous. I froze facedown in what smelled like someone else’s guts.

  Judging by the events filtering back into my brain, I suspected the guts belonged to my navigator. A vague memory of trying to strangle her with her own intestines flashed before my eyes. Memz had been a tough bitch. She’d landed a few good punches before I’d given up and broken her neck.

  “Weekly saints preserve us.”

  I heard several other curses from behind me, but the high, lilting call for the saints to my left was what caught my attention. It was edged with a Farian accent, and that was enough to keep me from moving.

  Farians. An alien race who could kill or heal with a touch. The only thing that kept them from ruling the universe was some strange religious code enforced with a fanaticism privately envied by most governments. They had seven saints, one for each day of the week. It was the Thursday one, I think, who abhorred violence.

  According to Farian scripture, he’d set an edict on their power. It was to be used for healing, not death. Killing people with their power drove Farians crazy. I’d never seen it firsthand, but the vids I’d seen had given me nightmares: grief-stricken, screaming Farians held down by their own comrades as an executioner put them out of their misery.

  Not moving was a good idea. Anathema or not, there was always a chance this Farian was ghost-shit insane, and I didn’t have a gun.

  “You claimed to sense a life sign, Sergeant.” A female voice several octaves lower than the Farian’s didn’t so much ask the question as pick up a previous conversation.

  “Did, Cap. In this room. Only one,” the lilting voice replied. “That’s as close as I can pinpoint it.”

  “Fine. Fan out and check through this”—the owner of the voice paused, but I resisted the urge to lift my head and see if she was looking around the cargo hold—“rubble,” she finished finally. “Sergeant Terass says one of these poor sods is alive. Figure out which one.”

  I kept my eyes closed, counting the footsteps as my unwelcome guests fanned out around me. There were five people total, all moving with military precision. They were probably fucking mercs come to claim my ship. I hadn’t been able to figure out whom Portis—my bastard of a first officer—thought he was going to sell Sophie to when he started his little mutiny.

  You mean when you killed him.

  Grief dug razor claws into my throat, and I choked back a sob. Gods damn you, Portis. Why did you betray me?

  Except I wasn’t entirely sure he’d been trying to kill me, or that I’d been the one to kill him in the end. My memory of the fight was as fuzzy as a Pasicol sheep and had teeth just as sharp. Trying to dredge up anything resembling coherency made the pain in my head turn on me with snarling fury.

  I snarled back at it and it dove away, whimpering, into the recesses of my brain. There were more important matters at hand—like getting these bastards off my ship and getting the hell out of here.

  Sliding my hand through the gelling blood on the floor, I wiggled my fingers deep into the thick, squishy mess. A spark of triumph flared to life when I closed my hand around the hilt of my combat knife. I knew it was mine because I felt the nick in the handle even through all the gore.

  The day was a fucking waste, but at least I was armed.

  The intruders moved past me. By some grace I’d ended up partially beneath the stairs and out of sight. I eased myself sideways, rolling over Portis’s torso and away from the abstract blood painting on the floor. I saw his profile, and all at once I wanted to kick him, curse his name, and drop to my knees and beg him not to leave.

  There’s no time for this, Hail. You have to move. The voice I now recognized as my own damn survival instinct shouted at me with the crisp precision of an Imperial Drill Sergeant. I got my feet under me and rose into a crouch. My left leg protested the movement, but held my weight.

  The strangers had their backs to me. I almost thanked the gods for it and then reminded myself there was nothing the gods of my home world had done for me lately. Portis had been the believer, not me. The dim emergency lighting might be just enough for me to slide into the shadows and make it to the door.

  The ship’s AI wasn’t responding to my smati’s requests for information. At this point I couldn’t tell if I’d been hit by a disrupter that had shorted the hardware wired into my brain or if the problem was with Sophie. Either way it didn’t matter. I had to get to the bridge
and access the computer manually. If I could space these jokers, I would be long gone before they finished imploding.

  If.

  I backed straight into the sixth intruder before I had time to remind myself what If stood for.

  He was hidden by the shadows I was trying to blend into, as still and silent as a ghost. He didn’t make a sound when I spun and drove my right hand into his ribs. The blue shimmer of his personal shield flared and I swore under my breath. It would smother any strike I threw at him, making the damage laughable. But the kinetic technology didn’t extend to his unprotected head, so I swung my left up toward his throat, blade first. He caught my wrist, twisting it back and away from his head.

  I matched him in height, and judging by the surprised flaring of his dark eyes, we were nearly equal in strength. We stood locked for a stuttering heartbeat until he drove me back a step. Sophie’s emergency lighting made the silver tattoo on his left cheekbone glow red.

  My heart stopped. The Imperial Star—an award of great prestige—was an intricate diamond pattern, the four spikes turned slightly widdershins. But what had my heart starting again and speeding up in panic was the twisted black emblem on his collar. He was an Imperial Tracker.

  “Bugger me.”

  The curse slipped out before I could stop it—slipped out in the Old Tongue as my shock got the better of me. There was only one reason for a Tracker team to be here. The reason I’d spent the best part of twenty years avoiding anything to do with the Indranan Empire.

  Oh, bugger me.

  Trackers always worked in pairs, but I couldn’t break eye contact with this one to check for his partner. Instead I eased back a step, my mind racing for a way out of this horrible nightmare.