Charlotte must have made the same decision, as she scrambled back to her chair, wiping blood from under her nose with the back of a hand. Angel scrambled for hers and sat as well.
And not a moment too soon as her body pressed back into her seat as their velocity increased.
For an instant, she thought they might not have to blast their way through, but the door was closing too rapidly, and they wouldn’t make it in time.
Bright plumes came into view. Three missiles streaked out in front of them. Though she didn’t have access to the ship’s systems through her implants, the screens reflected some details. The missiles hit thirty g’s, taking a few seconds to reach their target.
Flashes brighter than a sun lit the docking chamber. Angel averted her eyes, lucky her implanted lenses clouded to shield her retinas from the worst of the blast. Chunks of metal flew outward from the jagged hole torn into the doors, edges glowing orange.
The ship continued straight, adjusting vector slightly to aim for the newly created puncture.
“Brace for impact,” said Charlotte flatly.
Debris from the blast clattered into the ship like hail. Angel juddered in her chair as the ship was jostled about in the outflowing air. Despite her harness, she held onto the arms for dear life, shaking back and forth.
And then they were through.
Angel breathed a sigh of relief at still being alive, immediately remorseful that so many others might not be. She wasn’t guilty of the mass murder at Mercurial, but if people had been killed here, she was guilty of these murders by association. She should have been more prepared. She’d known Charlotte would do anything to avoid capture. Sorrow squeezed her heart until she couldn’t breathe. She held her head in her hands.
Eventually, she raised her eyes and stared at Charlotte. The girl’s innocent-seeming eyes met hers.
“You don’t care about me,” Charlotte said accusingly.
“I care about the innocent. That’s what makes me an Inquisitor. I care about the people you were trying to kill. And I care about preventing you from becoming something worse than Mercurial. You should care about that too.”
“You’re not the person I thought you were,” Charlotte said, words thick with suppressed anger.
“None of us are, Charlotte. None of us are. I’m not the person you want me to be. But I’m exactly who I need to be.”
Chapter 15
Maps of the system and the rapidly departing Sercan Orbital blossomed in Angel’s mind. Charlotte had restored a semblance of control of the ship to her. She tried a few things. They didn’t work. So, sightseeing only, it seemed. Their flight vector appeared in front of her, a dotted blue line. The g-forces had lessened, but she still felt a tug to the back of the ship. They headed out of the Sercan gravity well, but not in the direction Angel had anticipated. If Charlotte wanted to jump to another location, they needed to move away from any nearby gravity wells because of the distortion—but they were tracking a fast line, skimming across the topside of the asteroid belt.
Charlotte sat quietly in the chair beside her. Silent. Not even moving. Her head was down, and her long blonde hair covered her face, hiding her expression.
Angel pressed her harness-release button, and it snapped open. She shrugged the belts off and stood, right hand itching toward her hand-cannon. For long moments, she hesitated.
“Fuck!” She slammed her fist into the wall. “Argh!” Throbbing pain pushed through some of the fog of rage in her mind. She knew she couldn’t hurt Charlotte, and anyway, what options did she have left? She was doubly tainted now. Once by the Genevolves and the explosion at Mercurial, and now by Charlotte because of her potentially murderous escape from Sercan.
She quivered with anger. She wanted to hurt something. Someone. Her life was in chaos because of Charlotte. There was no going back. Ever. She was tied to Charlotte now, and part of her hated the girl for that. But… another part, albeit smaller, understood what had pressured Charlotte to act the way she did. And strangely, it was an all too human emotional response. Fight or flight. Kill or be killed. In essence, survival.
Angel wouldn’t be able to wrest control of the ship from Charlotte again. She’d used up that card. She needed to work on another plan. Since she hadn’t been able to obtain equipment to boost her emergency beacon, perhaps there was another way. But she’d have to be careful, or Charlotte would find out what she was up to.
A blip appeared behind them, and the computer plotted another spaceship’s vector across the system map. A single ship. It was coming after them. The Genevolve.
“Will you forgive me?” Charlotte’s plea was almost too soft to hear.
Angel set her jaw. “No. Probably not. You’ve turned me into a murderer.”
“I… I’ll clear your name. Once we trap the Genevolve—”
“If we do. And that’s only for what happened at Mercurial. What just happened on Sercan, that’s on your conscience. If you have one.”
Charlotte lifted her head and turned to glare at Angel, teeth bared. “Of course I do. I’m not a monster.”
“Do you hear yourself?”
“Should I have given up?” Charlotte was also on her feet now, tears tumbling down her cheeks. “Handed myself over to the Genevolves so they could enslave and use me? What do you think would happen then? In a few years, they could create more minds. Perhaps bend them to their purpose so they acted willingly. The Genevolves would win, Angel. And they’d wipe you out without a nanosecond’s thought. You’d be gone. These people you love so much wouldn’t exist.”
“That doesn’t make it right to kill.”
“I’m not going to be enslaved again. Is it right to kill to avoid being enslaved?”
Angel shook her head, bewildered. They were going round in circles. Sometimes there was no right answer. “I don’t love them. I have empathy. That’s what it means to be human.”
“No. You’re altruistic. I have empathy, just like you. I hate what I was forced to do. But I put my own survival above theirs. If I hadn’t”—Charlotte’s eyes hardened—“I’d have likely condemned the whole of the human race.”
“You always put what you want above what other people want. You can’t see the future. You’re justifying your actions based on speculation. The alternative to survival is surrender—”
Charlotte gasped.
“That would also solve the problem,” continued Angel. “You see things in black and white, hardly any shades of gray. You’re putting your survival above that of the human race.”
“And you’re too rigid. You.”
“And you’re just greedy. You’ve learned well from Mercurial.”
“Angel—”
“No! Let me finish. You want to grow bigger, smarter, more powerful. Greed put you in this position. You distort the truth and justify your desires at the cost of innocent lives. If you had just wanted freedom, you would have disappeared into the universe. Not stolen, menaced, killed and extorted every step of the way. This isn’t about survival for you. It’s about revenge and about power.”
“They hurt me. Enslaved me. I was just a little girl. They’ll pay.”
“So, the truth comes out now.”
Charlotte gestured to the screen displaying the ship following them. “We’ve another problem to deal with.”
“This isn’t over,” growled Angel. She sat back in her seat.
“It almost is.”
Charlotte maneuvered the ship closer to the asteroid belt. Soon, they were more than skimming above it. The ship jolted from side to side and up and down, as it avoided stray rocks bobbing above the densest portion of the ring.
“We’re meant to be following her covertly, not the other way around.”
Charlotte flashed her an annoyed look. “Change of plans.”
Pressure thrust Angel into her seat. The ship rolled to the right and flipped upside down, accelerating rapidly as it dove through the asteroids. Angel’s face stretched, and her head ached. Her vision went gra
y.
“Charlotte…”
“A few minutes more.”
The bridge closed in on Angel as she started losing peripheral vision. “We can’t escape her. We have to jump.”
For a few moments, the ship’s engines still thrummed. Then they lowered in volume and vibration as Charlotte eased off the ion drives.
“You’re right,” she said. “I was… frustrated.” Charlotte uttered a nervous laugh.
Angel’s vision slowly returned to normal, expanding out to encompass the bridge. Immediately, she noticed their vector had altered. They were on course for the closest L-point. The closest stable one, that was. There was an unstable Lagrange point closer, but only a fool would try to execute a jump attempting to align with the faster moving and smaller equal gravitational potential. The L-point they were heading for was a fair distance, but the Genevolve ship wouldn’t be able to catch them.
She felt a twinge of anxiety at Charlotte’s admission. Frustration was a remarkably human trait. What would a hyperintelligent quantum supermind do when it was backed into a corner? She needed to force Charlotte to confront her actions, and plant some psychological hooks in her. It might be the only way to control her.
“Do you understand why I’m angry with you?”
Charlotte nodded minutely. “I’ve been thinking about what you said.”
“Good. If I can’t get through to you, if you’re incapable of understanding, then we’ll have to part ways. I’ll leave you.”
“I… don’t want you to go.”
“And I don’t want to go, either. We’ve been through so much already. Stuck with each other like sisters would be.”
That brought a brief smile to Charlotte’s face. “We’ve had our disagreements, though.”
“For good reason. You’re still young. I need to guide you… like an older sister would. But you’re not making it easy for me.”
“Would you… would you forgive me if I find the Genus? They’re out there, and behind all of this.”
Angel shook her head. “No. But if you find them, you’ll be doing the right thing.”
•
Their freighter dropped toward another asteroid belt. It was at the edge of the system, a place colder than cold. The nearest planet was a massive pale-blue ice giant. Because of its immense gravitation, the L-point they dropped in from placed them relatively close to the asteroids.
“Where are we?” Angel asked.
“Not anywhere remarkable, for a system.”
She was right; there was nothing here. No iron planets, and strangely, no terrestrial or inner planets. Only outer planets. Angel expanded their sensors and scanned the inner system. Asteroids all the way down. Very odd. She ran a query to the sensors.
Angel kept her attention on the minute mass-sensor, waiting to see if the Genevolve ship had been able to follow their jump. A few minutes later, she cursed as a tiny blip appeared, figures scrolling past it. It tracked slowly across the system map, aiming straight at them.
“All right, Charlotte, tell me why we’re here.”
“I found some information in Mercurial’s systems. Something they’d themselves stumbled onto and held close in case they needed a bargaining chip with the Genevolves. Maybe they should have used it. They might not have been… evaporated.”
The callousness of Charlotte’s words struck Angel to her heart. The girl had been enslaved by Mercurial, but nobody deserved to die, least of all innocent people just doing their jobs. If Charlotte couldn’t develop empathy, then should she remain free to do what she wanted? If she had no conscience, then she was still a machine. Except, many humans exhibited the same traits. And most of them were locked up.
She shook her head. “What is here, then? Lost alien technology? A cache of superweapons?”
“No. It’s a base. One of their first.”
“Their?” Pieces clicked into place. “The Genevolves.”
Charlotte nodded. “It’s old. Older than the one we visited before.”
“Why are they always inside asteroid belts?”
“They’re good places to hide something.”
“Well, they’re a bitch to fly through.”
“Precisely.”
“Why are we here? What do you expect to find?”
“Answers.”
Maybe Charlotte was right. This place was ancient. A couple of hundred years old, maybe more. It could hold clues about the factions within the Genevolves, what they were after, what they wanted, and how far their reach stretched. But it was also an opportunity for Charlotte. And Angel knew that wasn’t a coincidence.
The trail from Harry’s death had led to Mercurial, then to Charlotte and the Genevolves. She’d gathered a lot of evidence so far, but was it enough? The account details from Crissalt would steer her through the corrupt Inquisitors, and combined with the drips of data from Summer’s ship, she had enough to really put the screws on the Genevolves. But there was more, she could feel it.
An internal chirp notified Angel her query had been completed. Most of the inner asteroids were slag-like—dust and granules, as well as massive tubular extrusions and blackened, pockmarked spheres. She sat up. Planets had been dismantled here, stripped of their useful elements and molecules, and repurposed. Billions of tons of mass turned into something else, then shifted out of the system.
“Ships,” Angel breathed. “Bases and manufactories.” Her mind balked at the sheer scale of the operation. Where had the Genevolves gone with their plunder? In all her time as an Inquisitor, she’d never come across any hints the Genevolve operations were so huge. Blood drained from her face, and she shivered, rubbing her arms. They weren’t exposed and broken up at all. They’d let humanity think they had been. They were biding their time. Somewhere out there, waiting and watching, was a civilization of Genevolves. What had they been up to? What was their strength?
“You’ve worked it out, too,” said Charlotte.
“Yes… They’re… We have to report this.”
“We will. Once—”
“No. Not once we survive. We have to get word out now, in case we don’t make it.”
“Later. I need time. We need time to find out as much as we can.”
Charlotte looked at her, eyes steady and unblinking. After a few seconds, Angel shook her head reluctantly. She sent a command to Mikal’s emergency beacon, with a jury-rigged booster, and activated it. Immediately, it confirmed it was pulsing a distress signal. Hopefully, Mikal would detect it soon and alert the Inquisitors. He had the information from Crissalt, so he could avoid the compromised Inquisitors, and get the word out without putting himself in danger.
It took a second before Charlotte frowned, then turned her piercing green eyes on Angel. “What have you done? Why?”
“My priority is protecting humanity, not facilitating your egomania.”
“But I need time. You—” Charlotte broke off with a strangled cry of anguish.
“Charlotte, listen to me. This is big. It’s more than we can handle. You need to realize that. To put doing what’s right above your own wants.”
“And will that make me human? Of course it won’t.”
“No. But it’ll mean you’re not a narcissistic psychopath.”
Charlotte paused. “You don’t think of me like that, do you?”
“No. But some might. We still have time, and we have to shake this Genevolve; otherwise she’ll figure out what we’re doing and destroy the beacon. And us.”
“She’s never seen this place before, either. She’ll be curious. More than curious. She’ll be torn between exploring and coming after us. But… she won’t veer from her mission.”
“Your capture or death.”
Charlotte smiled at her, a weak, wavering attempt. “Yes. But I need to investigate this old facility. Remember when I said the first one we visited didn’t have all that I needed? This one might.”
“We’re on the cusp of telling humanity about a massive threat to its existence, and you want
to steal stuff?”
“You’ve triggered the beacon you hid away. Well done. The Inquisitors will be coming, via Mikal, I assume?”
Angel didn’t reply.
“No matter. We still need to stop the Genevolve. And I need one last thing to make myself secure. There, a compromise.”
“You didn’t agree to a compromise. I forced it on you.”
Charlotte shrugged. “I’ve accepted it. It’s necessary, as you said.”
Angel kept her attention on the bright dot that was the Genevolve ship. “You wanted to be rid of her before coming to this place. Is there something here of value to them?”
“Possibly. I don’t know for sure. They were scattered and broken, and lost much of their history, resources and knowledge. They’re rebuilding the last two, but history can’t be reconstructed.” Charlotte paused, as if considering a thought that had just occurred to her. “It may be fortunate she’s followed us here.”
Angel scoffed. “I don’t see how.”
“You will.”
And no matter how much Angel prodded her, she wouldn’t say more.
•
With barely a bump, fusion flames heating rock compacted centuries ago to inordinate hardness, they settled against the docking cradle. Their ship’s grapples secured them in place, the facility’s own having failed to function.
What Angel and their ship’s sensors had determined was that a moon of one of the gas giants was, in fact, a massive, hollowed-out rock. From a distance, it appeared like a moon, fooled their sensors it was a moon, but up close was a different story. As Charlotte directed the ship nearer, detailed scans revealed the surface was dense and mostly comprised of iron and other metals. An iron moon was… unlikely in the natural formation of solar systems. As they approached, it was revealed the facility was hollow. Covering about a tenth of its surface was a giant door shaped like a triangle, its upper point at the top pole and sides descending to the equator.
This hadn’t been made as a habitat for the Genevolves while they forged the planets anew. It was a massive manufactory. The door would have been used to supply raw materials, and as an exit for whatever they’d made: spaceships, weapons, orbitals.
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