by mikel evins
“That’s not good,” said Jaemon. His voice was strange, too. Everything around me sounded both flat and hollow. It was hard to think. The thoughts wouldn’t come.
A second later our car shuddered in a wave of pressure and we heard a loud boom and a rushing.
“That’s really not good,” said Jaemon. “Kestrel?”
There was no answer. Silence loomed inside my mind. Thoughts and memories were missing. I felt a strange floating detachment, as if I were in a dream. The world seemed unreal.
True to its word, our car limped its way to Kestrel’s berth and slid to a stop next to the dock. A cargo car sat at the dock in front of us, empty, its bay standing open. A large, featureless rectangular box sat skewed on the platform.
“That’ll be the EMP,” said Jaemon, “Or I’m a Titan.”
“Look at what they did to my docks!” Erdos said.
Besides the EMP device they had set off something explosive. Parts of the dock were scorched and bent. Wisps of smoke drifted. There was a star-shaped blackened area on the outside surface of Kestrel’s gangway hatch. Bodies in red and blue and gold were lying on the deck. Humanoid figures swathed in black crouched inside the outer hatch, peering out at us, aiming.
“Careful now,” said Zang, leaning forward and drawing her sidearm. “They’re watching us.”
Erdos pulled out her own weapon. Jaemon and I followed suit.
“Any suggestions?” Erdos said.
“We could dive boldly out through the car door and roll for cover,” said Jaemon. “Maybe their shots will miss.”
Zang and Erdos stared at him.
“He’s kidding,” I said.
“It could happen,” said Jaemon defensively.
“Yeah,” said Zang, “If they turn off their brains.”
“The Fabric’s down,” I said. “How well can they shoot without autocorrect?”
Jaemon inched toward the door of the car. There was a bright flash in Kestrel’s darkened gangway and a slug spanged off the outside of the car.
“Ow!” said the car. “That smarts!”
“Looks like they can shoot pretty well,” said Zang.
“I figured,” Jaemon said. “I can shoot pretty well without autocorrect.”
“Any serious suggestions?” Erdos said.
“I could go out and jet away from the hatch,” I said.
“What the hell for?” Zang said. She stared at me.
“To draw their fire. If I get far enough offline, they’ll have to expose themselves to shoot me. You’ll have clean shots at them.”
“But they’ll shoot you,” said Erdos.
“I have a metalloceramic exoderm,” I said.
“Which their guns punched through like tissue paper before,” said Jaemon. “And you’re in your spare body. We don’t have another one for you yet.”
“All right,” said Zang, “It’s a decent idea. But not Lev. He’s our doc. He doesn’t have a backup body. Get ready. I’ll count down before I go.”
“No, wait,” said Erdos.
Jaemon grabbed Zang’s arm.
“Wait a second,” he said. “What about nobody in their right mind would get themselves killed on purpose?”
Zang shrugged.
“Like Lev said before, it’s worth it. Besides, You’ve got another one.”
She nodded at Erdos.
Jaemon shook his head.
“Let’s think about this,” he said.
Zang looked at his hand on her arm until he let go.
“What’s to think about?” she said. “Isaac’s in there hunting Harken. We need her safe. We have to get past these guys. Somebody’s got to take the fall, and we have two of me.”
She and Erdos exchanged another look.
“You’re gonna be pissed when you wake up,” Jaemon said.
“Explain it to me,” Zang said with a grim smile. “Tell me I was a goddamn hero.”
38.
Zang hit her jets and accelerated, arcing out of the transit car over the platform and off to the side. A hail of shots burst from Kestrel’s gangway in bright flashes. Most missed her but two of them tore into her torso and one punched through her leg. We heard her grunt on our Fabric channel and saw her loop crazily in the air.
“Two of them,” said Erdos.
Jaemon fired twice at the gangway.
“Got one,” he said.
Erdos and I fired several times. I saw one of her shots take a figure in black in the upper torso, jerking it backward.
“They’re both down,” Jaemon said.
“Zang’s still alive,” I said. She was twitching in the air, sailing toward the wall of the transit tube.
“Go get her,” Jaemon said. “We’ll secure the hatch.”
“Wait,” said Erdos.
We looked at her. She held up a hand, staring hard at the gangway.
“Okay,” she said. “Go ahead.”
Zang hit the wall of the transit tube and slid along it, jets still firing, leaving a red smear. I jetted after her as hard as I could.
“Zang,” I said to her. “Cut your jets.”
She didn’t hear me. The Fabric was down. Her jets pressed her against the tube to bounce and slide. We were almost half a kilometer down the tube by the time I caught her and got her jets to shut off.
I turned her over in the air and held her. She looked bad. Her eyes were fluttering, almost closed. She coughed and blood welled from her mouth. I tried to scan her and realized, again, that we had no Fabric. I bridged our somatic networks through my hands to get a reading. It looked bad.
“Zang,” I said, softly. My voice was muted.
“Lev,” she whispered. Blood bubbled on her lips. I turned up my audio gain. I could barely hear her.
“I’m here,” I said.
“We get them?” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “Erdos and Jaemon are securing the hatch.”
“Don’t revive me,” she said.
“You’re not serious,” I said.
“I am,” she said. “Don’t need two of me. Erdos is enough.”
“Not for us,” I said. “We don’t need Erdos. We need Erszbet Zang. What will I tell Jaemon and the Captain? What will I tell Mai?”
She didn’t respond. I checked her vitals. She wasn’t quite gone.
“Okay,” she said after a moment. She attempted a smile. “Talked me into it.”
Then she was gone.
I towed her body back to the platform and pressed it down gently until the surface took hold of it. Jaemon and Erdos, tucked into Kestrel’s gangway, watched me closely, sidearms elevated.
I lingered, looking down at my dead friend. In half a day Erszbet Zang would be back. The new Zang would be almost the same. She would have almost the same personality and almost the same memories. She would be my friend. Right now, though, she was dead. Gebre Isaac’s men had killed her. The Erszbet Zang on the deck before me was gone. Whatever the future had held for her was lost.
I left her lying in her blood and jetted toward the hatch.
“Is she—?” Jaemon said as I jetted toward him. I shook my head.
Erdos crouched in silence, staring across the dock at a body that might have been hers. I looked down at her feet. Two bodies there were the black-clad invaders that we had shot. Two more weren’t.
Jaemon saw my look.
“Angier and Yarrow,” he said. “They were on the hatch. The bomb got them.”
He was as grim as I’d ever seen him.
“You feel funny?” Erdos said. She shook her head jerkily. Her gaze lingered on Zang’s crumpled body.
“Feel like my head’s wrapped in something,” Jaemon said. “Things don’t sound right.”
“It’s not the sound,” Erdos said. “Not exactly. It’s like everything is...I don’t know. Flat?”
“It’s the Fabric,” I said. “I noticed it too. We’re disconnected.”
“Yeah,” said Erdos. “Cut off.”
Jaemon nodded.
“It’ll come back when it comes back,” he said.
“Soon,” I said. “I feel a little current moving.”
“Isaac will lose all his advantages when Kestrel comes back,” Jaemon said. “She’ll see him and all his men. She’ll be able to guide us and work against him. He’ll have to try to shoot his way out before then. Harken will be safe.”
“Or he could just head for Harken and forget about escaping,” Erdos said.
“How’s that?” Jaemon said.
“Once she’s dead he’s got what he came for.”
“Yeah, but how does he get out? We’ll have him surrounded.”
Erdos shrugged.
“Why bother?” she said. “All he has to do is get himself shot. Or do it himself, for that matter. If he’s really a covert operative he must have a safety archive somewhere. Hell, he probably has a way to switch between different ones.”
Jaemon winced.
“Yeah,” he said. “There’s that.”
“How does he find Harken, though?” I said. “He’ll have to get awfully lucky. He’s got twelve decks to search and nobody telling him where to look. And he doesn’t have much time.”
Erdos’ eyes narrowed.
“What?” Jaemon said. “I know that look. You thought of something bad, didn’t you?”
She sighed.
“If I was Isaac, I’d try to talk to Harken. I’d convince her that I was here to rescue her. She’d tell me where to go.”
“He can’t talk to her,” Jaemon said. “The Fabric’s down.”
“Lev just said he can feel it coming back up.”
“Not coming back up,” I said. “Not yet.”
“But soon,” she said. “Besides, he could have talked to her before he took down the Fabric.”
Jaemon grimaced.
“She won’t believe him, will she?”
Erdos said, “I think Harken believes what she wants to believe. If you were being held in connection with a larceny and a bunch of murders, what would you want to believe?”
Jaemon thought it over.
“Okay,” he said. “We need to find Isaac.”
39.
I gently touched the fallen bodies of Angier and Yarrow, and of the two invaders that Jaemon and Erdos shot, to make sure the deck had a grip on them. I didn’t want them drifting away. Greasy black smoke was drifting off the invaders.
We jetted through the gangway to Kestrel’s inner hatch. It was sealed. We pressed ourselves to the bulkheads on either side. Jaemon nodded at me and I reached out a hand and laid my fingertips against the hatch.
“He can hear through his fingers,” Jaemon said to Erdos. He used a private channel.
“I thought the Fabric was down,” said Erdos.
“It is,” I said.
“So how come he can open a channel?” she said.
“Local channel,” I said. “Direct between bodies. Just uses our local partitions. It only works on line-of-sight, and when we’re pretty close to each other.”
She frowned and nodded.
“How close?” she said.
“A few meters,” I said. “I don’t hear anybody, in there. Just thermal noises and a few human sounds here and there.”
“What kind of human sounds?” said Erdos.
“Taps and scrapes. Indistinct vocal noises.”
“Vocal noises?”
“Nothing intelligible. I’m hearing them through bulkheads.”
She grunted.
“Pop it open,” Jaemon said. “Carefully.”
I opened the maintenance access and released the latch, then slid back the hatch slowly.
“Dark in there,” Erdos said.
“Yeah, we won’t be able to see much,” said Jaemon.
“I think I can help,” I said. “Give me your hand.”
Jaemon reached out and I took his wrist.
“Hey,” he said after a few seconds. “I can see. Sort of.”
“What did you do?” said Erdos.
“I configured his personal partition to route sound and thermal data to his visual cortex. Give me your hand.”
She frowned, but she reached out to me.
“Hunh,” she said after a few seconds. “Dim and grainy, but it works.”
“Better than nothing,” said Jaemon. “Why is it flickering?”
“Sound,” I said. “Part of what you’re seeing is from reflected sound. When there’s more noise you can see a little better. I fixed it to route microwaves from your transponders, too. They can’t resolve fine details, but it helps with big shapes, and I have an emitter.”
“It’ll do,” he said. “Let’s get a move on.”
“Isaac and his crew probably have real augments,” said Erdos.
“I’m sure they do,” said Jaemon.
“So?” said Erdos.
“So we’ll have to shoot a lot better than they do,” said Jaemon.
Erdos winced.
“Great,” she said.
“Wait,” said Jaemon. “Lev, can you check the lift?”
It was just visible, a quarter of the way around the companionway.
“I can shine a light or a microwave spot on it,” I said.
“Do it.”
I did.
“I don’t see anyone in the cage,” I said.
“Okay, let’s get over there,” said Jaemon.
We popped our jets and floated around the companionway to the lift. We caught ourselves on the cage. Erdos pulled the gate back.
“Careful,” said Jaemon. He pointed up and then down with one finger.
“Yep,” said Erdos. She cautiously peered upward and downward, trying to see into the lift shaft without exposing herself.
“Let Lev do it,” Jaemon said. “He can see better.”
Erdos nodded.
I repeated Erdos’ examination, shining microwaves up and down the shaft.
“Looks clear,” I said.
“What do you think they’re doing?” said Jaemon.
“Where’s their rear guard?” said Erdos.
“I guess the two on the gangway were it,” Jaemon said.
“Pretty thin,” Erdos said.
“Thick enough for Zang,” Jaemon said.
Erdos winced.
“Yeah,” she said. “Sorry.”
“Wonder how many they have?” Jaemon said.
We heard a shout from somewhere far above us, echoing eerily down the lift shaft. It was followed by a rapid series of shots and a high-pitched shriek that wavered and moved, then suddenly stopped.
“Makers, what are they doing?” said Erdos.
Jaemon shook his head.
“That sounded like somebody running into Yaug in the dark,” said Jaemon.
“Your science guy?” said Erdos. “What makes you say that?”
“The scream,” said Jaemon. He grinned.
Erdos frowned at him.
“I’ve met Yaug,” said Erdos. “I didn’t scream.”
“You met him in the light,” said Jaemon. “With his clothes on.”
Erdos held the frown. After a moment she started to speak.
“What—?”
There was another shriek and another burst of shots.
“Let’s move,” said Jaemon, grabbing each of us by a shoulder and popping his jets. He shoved us into the lift shaft and jetted upward.
“Make for Deck Five,” he said. “Captain’s Mess.”
We flew up the shaft. The screaming and shooting continued intermittently far above us. At Deck Five we caught hold of the maintenance ladders and stopped our flight at the closed lift gate.
“Lev?” Jaemon said.
I nodded. I slid back the lift gate and slowly eased my head through, microwave emitter turned up full. The barrel of a gun appeared in front of me, pointed right between my cameras.
“Got you,” said a familiar voice.
40.
“Burrell,” said Jaemon. “That’s Lev. It’s us.”
“Jaemon?” said C
hief Engineer Burrell. “Lev?”
She hesitated, then lowered the pistol she had pointed at my head. She was classically Jovian: very tall, very slim, with ivory skin and black hair and eyes. Her eyes were almond-shaped and her ears and nose were long and pointed.
“Is that Zang?” said the Captain from behind her.
“Erdos,” said Erdos. “Sorry. Zang didn’t make it.”
“Didn’t make it?” said the Captain.
“She got us in,” said Jaemon. “But she died doing it. Angier and Yarrow are down, too.”
Everyone was silent. Oleh Itzel and Angela Cygni were with them, both armed with handguns. The Lambertans floated in the companionway. They had swivel guns mounted on the sides of their shells.
“Well, let’s take care of Isaac and make sure we get them back up again,” said the Captain.
“Where are the others?” I said.
“Py and Mai are with the Harkens in my mess,” said the Captain.
“Yaug?” said Jaemon.
The Captain lifted his gaze to the ceiling. We heard a few more whoops and a couple of shots.
“That’s what I figured,” said Jaemon. “How’s he doing?”
“Two down,” he said. “Three to go, including Isaac.”
“Where are they?”
“Maintenance. They’re trying to hold a position near the feeds panel. Yaug’s picking them off.”
“Excuse me,” said Erdos, “But how the hell do you know all this? The Fabric’s still down isn’t it?”
The Captain and Jaemon exchanged looks.
“Yaug has, ah, drones,” said the Captain.
“That’s right,” said Jaemon. “Drones. Really small ones.”
“He’s been sending them back every minute or two to report.”
“May I access those reports?” I said.
“Sure, Lev,” said the Captain. “Why?”
“I’d like to see if there’s data about his vitals.”
“Good point,” said Jaemon. “It’d be good to know what kind of shape he’s in.”
The Captain nodded. He passed me a glyph. Without the support of the Fabric it was small and dim. It unfolded into a set of memory records.
“He’s injured,” I said. “Not mortally, if he sees treatment soon.”
“How soon?” said the Captain.
“Perhaps an hour,” I said. “Perhaps two. I’m not expert yet in his anatomy.”
