by Robert Reed
Orleans was steering one of those phantoms.
An EM pulse had pushed its AI pilot into insanity, leaving him no choice. The same pulse had killed its main reactor, leaving them depending on an auxiliary that whispered to the driver. “I am sick. I need maintenance. Do not depend on me.”
The Remora ignored the complaints. Instead, he looked back at the passengers, a whisper-signal carrying his minimal question:
“How soon?”
“Ninety-two,” said a white-as-milk face.
Minutes, she meant. Ninety-two minutes, according to the latest projection. Which was too long, and what could be taking so much time…?
But he didn’t ask the question.
Instead, he spotted a Wayward dragonfly lifting up off the horizon behind them, trying to catch them. Too late, he whispered, “Target.” Two baby men in the back of his skimmer had seen the enemy, and they were aiming at the fly’s weakest centimeter. But their ad hoc laser needed too much time to charge up, and a burst of focused light swept away holoprojection—a column of purple-white light dancing along the hull with an eerie grace, searching for something to incinerate.
Too late, the boys cried out, “Charged. Fire—!”
But Orleans had jerked the wheel, spoiling their aim, and where they would have been was blistered with the raw energies, a trailing EM scream stunning everything electronic within a full kilometer. Every lifesuit seized up for a horrible instant. The skimmer’s controls obeyed imagined orders, ignoring real ones. With his private voice, Orleans cursed, and he regained control after everyone’s living juices had been jerked savagely by the gees, and he cursed again, sharing his feelings with the others.
Again, a voice said, “Fire.”
Their weapon was tiny compared to the Wayward’s, but it had sighting elements ripped out of one of the ship’s main lasers—elements meant to find and strike dust motes at a fantastic range—and the soft narrow bolt reached up into the bright lavender sky, then reached inside the armored target, bringing it plunging down to the hull, where it belonged.
There was a little cheer.
Pure reflex.
A dozen new phantoms appeared beside them, but none looked convincing. Orleans saw that immediately, and he realized that their projectors were mangled now, failing fast, and he erased the phantoms before the Waywards noticed.
Better to depend on your own camouflage now. And if he could, catch up with the rest of the fleet, then get lost among their countless phantoms and deceits.
That seemed possible, for a little while.
The woman behind him, eavesdropping on a secure channel, leaned forward and shoved him on a shoulder, his suit’s false neurons too fried to feel more than a slight pressure. But he appreciated the pressure, the touch. Orleans leaned back into it, and again, he asked, “How soon?”
“Forty,” she replied.
The sabotage teams were back on schedule. And in twenty-two minutes, they would be inside the bunker.
The woman almost spoke again, but her voice was interrupted by the complaining voice of the skimmer’s reactor. “I am failing utterly,” it declared. Then with a prickly pride, it told Orleans, “I will last another eleven minutes. I promise.”
He said, “Fuck,” to himself.
Then with a whisper, he told the others, “Sorry. No roof for us.” Then he asked, “Any ideas? Anyone?”
There was no sense of surprise. What Orleans saw in the faces and could practically taste in the ether was nothing but a weary disappointment that evaporated in another moment. Two weeks of war had done it. Emotions were as flattened and slick as new hyperfiber. Then because it was expected, the gunnery boys said, “We should turn around. Turn and charge the fuckers, and kill a few of them.”
They wouldn’t kill anyone, except themselves.
Orleans turned in his seat, showing them his face. Hard radiations had blistered his flesh, leaving mutations and weird cancers that appeared as lumps and black blisters. Amber eyes dangled, and his tusks were misaligned. But his defiant mouth announced, “That’s not a choice.”
Dozens of faces closed a wide, splendid assortment of eyes—a sign of the purest Remoran respect.
“I know a place,” he confessed. “Not a bunker by design. But it’s got a roof.” Then he turned forward, muttering, “At least I hope it does,” as he wrestled the skimmer into a new course.
Again, the woman touched him on the deadened shoulder.
Was she going to tell him the time?
But no, she only wanted to feel him. And as he massaged the last drops of energy out of the skimmer’s dying reactor, and himself. Orleans concentrated on the dim touch of her hand, treating himself to a fantasy older than their species.
* * *
REMORAS EXISTED BECAUSE the hull needed constant repair.
What they did, they did very well. But not perfectly. Speed was critical when a deep blast crater needed to be filled. Hyperfiber, particularly the better grades, was sensitive to a multitude of variables. And on occasion, mistakes were made. One layer went bad before it could cure, and already one or more new layers were on top, soft as flesh and as pliable. Freed volatiles made bubbles. Bubbles weakened the patch. But to tear out the newest work and repair the damage meant time lost, and worse, it gave the universe an opportunity to strike the comet’s grave with a second, perhaps larger comet.
“Better to let the flaw remain,” Wune had said, speaking about hulls and about other matters, too. “Build around it, and preserve it. Remember: one day’s flaw will be another day’s treasure.”
A spacious flaw lay far out on the ship’s leading face. Hidden tunnels led into a chamber large enough to hide every surviving Remora, and stockpiles of machinery and shop-made weapons had been delivered secretly over the last ten days, making a last-stand fortress out of someone’s long-ago fuck-up.
Except Orleans would never reach it. His skimmer was barely able to fight its way within four kilometers of a smaller, less secure bubble. He had found it while visiting one of the tall bone-white memorials to read the names of dead friends—centuries ago, on some look-around tour. Beside the memorial was a frozen gas vent leading into the hull, into a cramped, lightless, and not particularly deep bubble.
When the skimmer died, he shouted the obvious advice:
“Run!”
Lifesuits had strength, not speed. A dreamlike slowness and a dream’s sense of utter helplessness held sway, each man and woman pounding along a smooth and gray and essentially featureless plain. If not for the memorial, they would feel lost. The white spire beckoned from the first clumsy stride, and every eye that looked up could measure their progress, the minds behind the eyes thinking, “Closer.” The mouths saying, “Not far.” Everyone lying with a desperate earnestness, whispering to each other, “Just a few more seconds. Steps. Centimeters.”
The sky was purposely ignored.
The lavender fire of the shields was brightening, capturing greater and greater amounts of gas and nanoscopic dusts. The giant lasers continued pummeling hazards big as fists and men and palaces. And blotting out the usual stars was a single swollen red giant sun, ancient and dying, its mass already touching the ship, starting to pull at its trajectory.
A brighter flash of light came from behind, startling everyone.
The boys said, “Skimmer,” and nothing more.
Orleans let himself slow, looking backward long enough to see darting shapes and more bursts of light. Lasers, and in the distance, the soundless delicious flash as nuclear mines detonated themselves.
Then he was running again, falling behind everyone and thinking, “We have time,” when he knew full well they didn’t. An army of Wayward monsters were charging, and if the last timetable was right, they had barely three minutes left before …
Before.
Then he stopped his thinking and looked up, and again, quietly and confidently, he told himself, “Just a few more steps.”
The memorial was too tall and close to absor
b with a look, but it was still too far away to feel imposing. Orleans looked down again. He forced the servos in his legs to drain themselves fully with each stride, and he used his own muscles to lengthen the strides, and because it made him feel better, he cursed with each ragged wet breath.
The milk-faced woman said, “Hurry.”
He looked up again, realizing that he was falling farther behind.
She said, “Faster,” and glanced back at him, one long bright arm waving clumsily.
Orleans’s suit was in desperate trouble. He knew it before its own machinery confessed to any weakness, war and bad luck having eroded the servos in both legs, both failing within three strides of each other.
“Piss away,” he cursed.
His muscles lifted his legs and dropped them again.
The suit was fantastically heavy, but their goal was finally close. Honestly, teasingly near. Orleans grunted and took another few steps, then had no choice but to stop and stand motionless, his deep perfect lungs sucking in free oxygen wrenched from his own perfect sweet piss and blood, feeding the black blood that needed a few moments to purge the muscles of toxins, bringing them back into something resembling fitness.
His people were at the spire’s base, disappearing one after another into a tiny, still invisible hole.
Again, quietly, the woman told him, “Hurry,” and turned and waved with both arms, her face just visible, something about its whiteness afraid.
Orleans staggered, stopped. And as he gasped again, he turned his head and looked back over the ground that he had covered. Armored vehicles were skittering and skidding across the grayish plain. Following some Wayward logic, each was shaped like a bug, useless wings folded back and jointed legs holding weapons, one laser firing, a blistering light sweeping over him and slashing into the memorial, then continuing on into infinity … the white spire melting near its base, tilting with a silent majesty, then collapsing without so much as denting the hull.
A second blast melted the memorial’s raw base.
Where was the woman, and the others?
Orleans couldn’t see them, or anything but a sudden pool of melted hyperfiber. Maybe they were underground, and safe. He kept telling himself it was possible, even likely … and after a little while he realized that he was running again, legs trying to carry him away from a swift, relentless army.
He couldn’t look more pitiful.
He reached the edge of the molten goo, and because there was nothing else to do, he turned again and stared at his pursuers. They were almost on him. In the end, seeing that he was alone and defenseless, they were taking their time. Maybe he would make a valuable prisoner, the monsters were telling each other. Maybe the top monster Herself would reward them for capturing a tremendous criminal like Orleans.
He took a long exhausted step backward.
The hyperfiber was fantastically hot, and deep, and filled with bubbles of freed gases. But without an influx of energy, it was curing again. It would be sloppy, a very weak grade, and someday someone would have to wrench it off the hull and replace everything. Then build an even larger memorial, of course. But Orleans’s suit was hyperfiber, too. An excellent grade, if somewhat battered. It could withstand the heat. His flesh would blister and boil, yes. But if he could keep his diamond faceplate from bursting, then maybe … maybe …
He stepped back once more.
And stumbled.
The weight of his reactors and recyke systems helped drive him partway under the surface, and the pain was vast and relentless, then in another moment, there was no pain. Orleans’s helmet and head were the only parts of him in view, and his face survived long enough to let his eyes stare up at that big glorious red sun, shrouded in the shields and the constant bursts of laser light … and then he was wondering if it was time, and maybe he should try to dive deeper …
Suddenly, without the smallest warning, the shields evaporated, and every one of the giant lasers quit firing at the coming hazards.
And one breath later, a sudden and fierce rain began to fall …
Forty-seven
BECAUSE THEY SAW a Wayward car—a little machine patterned after a copperwing—Washen and the others climbed up into the epiphyte forest, into a camouflaged blind, watching from above as the car set down on the graveled shoreline. Because he could have been anyone, they kept hiding when a man with Pamir’s face and build jumped out, big boots kicking the gravel and a hard, tired voice calling, “Washen,” over the constant rush of the river. Because he was Pamir, and tired, he said to the forest, “I guess you thought again and changed your mind.” He shook his head, saying, “Good. I can’t blame you. I never liked this leg of our plan.” Then he lifted his gaze, somehow knowing exactly where to stare.
Washen stood, shouldering her laser as she asked, “Could you see me?”
“Long ago,” he replied with a crisp sense of mystery. Then he motioned at the car, telling her, “It’s stolen. Scrubbed and reregistered, if we did everything right.”
Quee Lee and Perri stood. Then finally, Locke.
A sudden dull shiver passed through the canyon. One of her newly implanted nexuses told Washen what she’d already guessed: a comet had impacted on the hull, instantly obliterating a thousand cubic kilometers of armor.
“If you’re going,” said Pamir, “you’ve got to go now. Everything’s late as it is.”
Quee Lee touched Washen on the arm, and with a motherly concern, she said, “Maybe he’s right. You shouldn’t do this.”
They were filing down onto the gravel bar. To her son, Washen said, “Make sure you’re happy with things. Quickly.”
Locke nodded grimly, leaping into the hovering car.
She reminded everyone, including herself, “We need bait, and we need it convincing. Delicious and substantial. What else can we offer but me?”
No one spoke.
“What about Miocene?” she asked.
“She got your invitation twenty-three minutes ago,” Pamir reported. “We still haven’t seen any traffic that might be her. But it’s a long trip, and unplanned, and since she’s got to suspect an ambush. I don’t expect her to come too fast or follow the easy routes.”
A massive shudder numbled through the ship’s body.
“The biggest yet,” was Perri’s assessment.
The shields had been down for five minutes. “What’s the official explanation?” Washen asked.
“Remoras are bastards,” said Pamir. “Officially, they’re proving themselves to be enemies of the ship, and in another ten or twenty or fifty minutes, repairs will be made, the shields will be restored, and within the day, every last bastard will be dead.”
Boom, and then a sudden second boom.
From inside the car, Locke shouted, “Everything’s ready.”
Washen jumped inside, paused and took a ragged breath. She was anxious, and it took a moment for her to realize why. No, not because she was the bait. Her thundering heart had nothing to do with any danger. In a perfect peace, she would feel the same way. She was returning to Marrow after more than a century’s absence. She was returning home, and that was enormous in its own right.
Washen waved to Quee Lee and her husband.
Then the steel door was yanking itself shut, and with a hurried, inadequate voice, she called to Pamir, “Thanks for these days.”
* * *
WAYWARD SECURITY WAS thorough.
Was seamless.
And it was totally unprepared for an invasion of exactly two people: a famous dead captain and her even more famous son.
“You’ve been missing,” a uniformed man declared, staring at Locke with a mixture of awe and confusion. “We’ve been looking for your body, sir. We thought you were killed that first day.”
“People make mistakes,” was Locke’s advice.
The security man nodded, then stumbled over the first obvious question.
Locke answered it before it was asked. “I was on a mission. At the insistence of Till himself.
” He spoke with authority, and impatience. He sounded as if nothing could be more true. “I was supposed to recover my mother. By any means, at any cost.”
The man looked small inside his dark uniform. Glancing at their prisoner, he said, “I should beg for instructions—”
“Beg to Till,” was Locke’s sound advice.
“Now,” the man sputtered.
“I’ll wait inside my car,” promised one of the greatest, most honored Waywards. “If that’s all right with you.”
He had no choice but to say, “Yes, sir.”
The waystation was perched on the throat of the access tunnel. Traffic flowed rapidly up and down. Washen saw giant steel vehicles patterned after the familiar hammerwings. The empty ones dove into the kilometer-wide maw, while others appeared beneath them, rushing fresh units into the gaps in the Wayward lines.
The war’s carnage was relentless. And perhaps worse for the ship was the swelling, unstable panic among passengers and crew.
Washen closed her eyes, letting her nexuses sip updates. Coded squirts. Images from security eyes and ears. Avenues and public plazas were filled with terrified, furious passengers. Angry voices blamed the new Master, and the old Master, too. Plus Waywards. Remoras. And that largest, most terrifying foe: simple stupidity. Then she watched dust and pebbles falling at one-third lightspeed, smashing Wayward vehicles as their terrific momentum was transformed into a brilliant light and withering heat. An army had charged into the Remora’s desperate trap, and it would be dead in another few moments. But a new army was coming to replace what was lost. Washen opened her eyes and watched the steel hammerwings rising up to the fight. And in that mayhem of coded messages and orders and desperate pleas, one small question was misplaced. Then a fictional but utterly believable answer was delivered, wrapped snug inside bogus encryption seals.
The waystation’s AI examined the seals, and because of a subtle and recent failure in its cognitive skills, it proclaimed:
