by Nick Webb
“For?” He frowned.
“For getting our ships back.” She gave a little smile. “Can’t forget that, can we? So I think it’s time we—”
The door behind them burst open. Walker was in front of him in a moment, her sidearm drawn, her short frame tense.
The ensign very nearly shit himself. His face was grey-green, and he had his hands up in a moment. “M-message from the bridge?”
Walker let out a slow breath. She holstered the weapon, and Pike saw her struggling not to snap at him. “Yes?” she managed, fairly pleasantly.
“There’s a … um.” He seemed to have forgotten the message entirely.
A tic started in Walker’s cheek.
“Our sensors picked up a detachment of the Telestine fleet,” he managed. “The readings are all messed up, they must have some scrambling—something, we don’t know—but we caught their heading. Saturn. Enceladus. The colony of Al-Mansur is there. They mine—”
“Ice,” Walker finished for him. “Our water. He’s going for our water.”
She was gone the next moment, making for the bridge at an all-out sprint.
CHAPTER FOUR
Triton, Geosynchronous Orbit
New Vatican Station
Assembly Room
Nhean pushed his way through the door and nodded to the group assembled.
“I came as quickly as I could,” he said, by way of explanation. He looked around himself at their faces. “Where was it this time?”
James Dorian, a new, rising power in the Funders Circle, looked up grimly. He’d just arrived from Venus. “Ganymede.”
Nhean only nodded. He had known this before he asked. Information flowing through New Vatican Station was tightly monitored, however, and the people in this room liked to think that they were always the first to know things. As their ally, and one who’d had his estates on Venus seized by the UN in their investigation of his role in the Vesta disaster, Nhean was expected to rely on them for information.
But he had never been the sort of person to rely on others.
He nodded to those around the table as he sat. Not all looked up. On one side of the room, Pope Celestine was reading a dossier. He looked up briefly to meet Nhean’s eyes, but only briefly. He was still strong and unbowed, and relatively young for his office. The top tier of the priesthood had been almost entirely wiped out in the exodus. The first pope to be elected in the exile, Pope Clement XV, had died of illness only a few months later, and the Holy See had been in similar turmoil ever since, until Celestine was elected at the tender age of thirty. He’d made a name for himself in his youth as a missionary on Ganymede, and was the youngest man appointed cardinal in hundreds of years. He was hardly past fifty now, and would likely be the longest-serving pope ever.
Assuming Ka’sagra didn’t kill everyone in the solar system first.
Nearby, Parley Worthlin, the Mormon prophet, was in a close conference with an older woman, Vice President Mora of the Cargo Guild, who was pointing out a series of things on printed photos. It seemed they had finally moved past their vast difference in temperament. Neither of them looked up, nor did any of the aides clustered around them.
A few of the other principles of the Funders Circle were here already as well, and Nhean knew even more would assemble shortly. This sort of meeting was becoming a distressingly regular occurrence. The aides had not even bothered to move the chairs back after the last one. They remained in little clumps, one for each of the major players now on the station.
The amount of wealth here was truly staggering, and though Nhean shared the same level of wealth as most of them—and had been a part of the Funders Circle for years—he had rarely felt more out of place.
He was used to being in his own estates. He preferred the company of….
Parees.
Dorian interrupted his thoughts by pushing a briefing across the table to him. “They took out the aid station, Bogotá Station, orbiting Ganymede … and left.” His jaw was tight. “The Exile Fleet seems to think they held them off. Idiots.”
There were a few knowing looks.
“What do you think?” Celestine asked Nhean.
Nhean held his tongue for a moment, eyes flicking over the printouts. Bogotá Station had, as it happened, been a nexus for much of the Funders Circle’s charity work among the Jovian moons.
But it had also been largely administered by the Daughters of Ascension, and try as he might, Nhean could not seem to convince the others that the Telestine group, and its enigmatic founder, were the true targets of Tel’rabim’s anger.
“You know what I think,” he said finally. He kept his voice restrained. “It’s the same thing I thought last time. Ka’sagra was Tel’rabim’s chief political rival, and he’s hunting her down.”
“She must have died on Vesta,” Celestine said smoothly. “He won’t be searching for her anymore. If that truly was his goal, then he’s already achieved it.” He looked to Dorian.
“There has been no mention of her, no sighting, and no statement since the tragedy,” Dorian confirmed. “As Tel’rabim’s supposed rival, it would be important for Ka’sagra’s followers to know if she was still alive.” He lifted a shoulder. “In any case, Telestine politics do not concern us. Human politics do.”
Nhean bit back a retort. Telestine politics certainly concerned the Funders. If only they could see things a bit more clearly. Ka’sagra’s rise had been built on pretty lies: he was certain she hadn’t told most of her followers her true goals—death cults rarely do—but it nonetheless exposed serious fault lines within Telestine society.
An enemy fighting on multiple fronts was weaker on each.
And he did not believe that Ka’sagra had been killed on Vesta. Not for a moment. Why Celestine would so blithely believe it was beyond him. Certainly, the man was concerned with the recent loss of multiple trade routes, but that was no excuse for sloppy thinking.
“The more important issue,” Celestine stressed, “is what happens when he finds us.”
Nhean managed a tight smile. “So far, the admiral has managed to avert disaster at each target.”
“Io.” Celestine’s voice was sharp. “Vesta. Ganymede was not without casualties, and he got what he wanted. I tell you, he’s coming after us! He knows that we’re the ones with the most, ahem, means. That fact can’t be lost on him. Before long, he’ll make his move on us.” He leaned across the table. “We need a strategy for defense.”
“We don’t have a fleet,” Nhean said. He felt his tone growing dangerous. “And he has not yet come even close.”
“He will.” Worthlin spoke up now. “Eventually, he will. Just because he hasn’t yet, doesn’t mean he won’t. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t.”
The Dalai Lama, Oliver Pemba, finally spoke. “And, my friends, there is still no word from Schroeder. No one has seen him for days. Is Tel’rabim employing kidnappers now? Or assassins?”
Nhean shut his mouth with a snap. He couldn’t afford to speak in anger. And he certainly shouldn’t air his concern about Schroeder. It simply wasn’t like him to disappear, and he wasn’t high enough on Tel’rabim’s radar to care about. There was foul play involved, he was sure of it. Possibly by someone there in the room with them.
He said nothing, because he also had a very good idea of why Tel’rabim hadn’t found a reason to attack New Vatican Station yet. He had an idea regarding how Tel’rabim’s systems worked. The alien prided himself on logic, on the strength of his information network. He would be running the numbers to see where he should hit next.
The problem with using computers for that, instead of one’s own mind, was that computers could be hacked.
And the one person who could hack Tel’rabim’s was sitting in Nhean’s chambers right now, growing ever more proficient with her abilities. She’d asked him to complete her. To finish the job Tel’rabim had started when he began altering her. At one point, she’d told him, she was dead. And then implanted with Telestine technology
. And revived. But Tel’rabim hadn’t completed her. Now, using the specs she brought back from Earth, Nhean was.
He’d implanted a few more chips they’d found the specs for. He’d injected her with various basic elements that would provide the building blocks for … something—he couldn’t even say what.
And it was mildly terrifying, seeing her grow in her—he wanted to say powers, but that would suggest she was some kind of otherworldly mutant superhero.
Was she?
He rubbed at his forehead, trying to think of something, anything, to say. Mercifully, he was saved by a ding on someone’s comm unit.
Dorian pressed a button at his wrist. “What is it?”
They watched as his face went grey. As if conscious of their eyes on him, he visibly tried to pull himself together.
“That’s impossible,” he said shortly. “The full Telestine fleet was at Ganymede two days ago, how can—”
He broke off and put the comm unit down on the table softly.
There was only one question. “Where?” Nhean asked.
Dorian looked over at him. “The other side of the solar system. Saturn. Enceladus.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Triton, Geosynchronous Orbit
Koh Rong
Telemetry Lab
She felt them.
A ship slid easily through the almost-nothing of space, without wind or sea to buffet it, but the ships themselves crackled with signals.
Inputs and outputs.
Ones and zeros.
Feelings and impulse. Will and instincts.
She felt the tiny figures of Telestines and human drones moving within them, adjusting targeting computers and loading missiles. She felt the singular mind, constructed through the actions of many. They weren’t a true singular consciousness, like those that emerged in the old science fiction stories, but they held a common mind, like a running conversation among them, mind to mind, essence to essence.
She had felt them for weeks. They flickered into her consciousness without warning as her senses expanded. Sometimes, she caught thoughts, fragments of patterns, and she modified them and sent them back carefully. Just a tweak here. A twist there. Small, minuscule changes.
Tel’rabim must never sense her.
He wasn’t there with the fleet approaching Enceladus, that much she knew. But they weren’t guided by his top commanders. This fleet was under his direct, remote control.
She knew, for some reason, that he trusted almost no one when it came to understanding how he chose his targets, and why. Decisions were made in an blink, the result of calculations instead of judgment calls. He was looking for something, and he wouldn’t tell even his commanders what it was.
He was looking for Ka’sagra. And her secret iridium isotope bombs.
That gave her an opening. Calculations could be intercepted. No one on the ships knew what they were supposed to be targeting, after all. When they were close enough, when she was able to find her way through the unfamiliar systems—she had been made to take down the Telestine defense network, not Tel’rabim’s, after all—she placed small changes into the data:
This target isn’t worth it. A small tweak, just a number or two changed. A percent, no more.
There’s nothing here. She could shield comm buoys. Sometimes, she could shield stations.
There’s another, more urgent place to look. She could nudge the program to start running again, disregarding its most recent calculations.
On the stations, human lives continued on in a strange monotony. They did not see the Telestine fleet flicker into view and disappear again almost as quickly. In battles, they did not realize that the number of targets hit should have been larger.
Only she knew, and she did all she could.
Sometimes it wasn’t enough, and people died.
After all, how many times could she pull off these tricks before Tel’rabim started wondering? On that point, she had no data at all.
And she could not always manage it.
She felt them now, felt the ships pick their targets. She searched desperately through the inputs being loaded, through the mainframe of the chief carrier. It was broadcasting a target and she had to pinpoint it in the code, figure out what it was, find a way to nudge the ships into looking somewhere else, somewhere new.
Then they were gone. Where? How? Dear, dear Tel’rabim, what have you done?
And then, minutes later, they suddenly reappeared.
Oh God.
She shouted. “No!”
She was still desperately trying to modify signals and inputs when the first missile hit, and by then, it was far, far too late.
CHAPTER SIX
Saturn, Enceladus, High Orbit
EFS Intrepid
Bridge
By the time they decelerated, they were ready.
Walker had put them on a strict rotation. Everyone had to sleep. Everyone had to eat. The first set of missiles were loaded, the fighters were prepped, the bridge crews were changed out thirty minutes before they reached their target.
You know the drills, she told them. You know your training. Get your rest, he’s trying to exhaust us.
They were ready.
Delaney straightened his jacket and crossed his arms as he waited for the battle readout to begin populating.
They should have known Tel’rabim would hit Enceladus. In retrospect, it was all too obvious. Every station and ship had state of the art water filtration systems, but state of the art was, unfortunately, still not all that good. There were always losses—leaks, mold, contamination. Someone always needed water.
Starving a human to death took weeks. Cut off their water, though, and you could take a human down in three days flat.
Of course Tel’rabim was going for the water. He had his own. He had everything on Earth.
His fingers clenched around his arms. He had supposed, when he was twelve years old and running for the ships, herded like cattle, that the calm face grown-ups put on was true. Even when his grandmother had died on Carina Station, her hand slipping from his face, he had thought she looked beyond the living world to a future he could not see. She was young once, and lived a carefree life in a place called Los Angeles before he was born. She’d wanted to be an actress. Maybe she saw that dream as she died.
Now that he’d reached her age, he had found the way to keep his face calm and his voice authoritative. He had learned to speak the truths younger people did not speak aloud.
But inside him, there was no calm. There was only rage and loss, and the overwhelming need to kill every single one of the aliens that had taken their future from them.
This battle was that chance. As was every battle for Delaney.
He dropped his hands to the desk and flattened his palms on the cool glass. The battle readout was flickering.
It came up, and he tilted his head. Drummed his fingers. Nothing was populating yet.
Nothing.
Nothing.
The computer system must still be on the fritz. Ever since those damned mutineers….
“Bring up the blasted view screens.” His voice was gruff. “We can shoot by sight if the computers won’t lock on.”
It took him too long to realize what he was seeing. Enceladus hung, white-blue and perfect, in the background. Untouched. Beautiful. Intact.
His first thought was that they had beaten the Telestine fleet. He even smiled. After all these years, they were owed a win or two.
His second thought was that they hadn’t calculated correctly, that the Telestine fleet was going for a different target and they were running behind again.
And then he realized why Al-Mansur Station wasn’t showing on the battle readout.
“Good God,” he breathed.
The Telestine fleet had already come, destroyed its target … and already left.
And they were nowhere in sight.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Triton, Geosynchronous Orbit
Koh Rong
/> Telemetry Lab
The girl sat in the center of the floor, clutching a large piece of Telestine machinery. In the years since humans had begun recovering Telestine electronics, whole ships’ worth had been thrown away, deemed worthless after the anti-gravity and propulsion hardware had been stripped. Everything else they found was featureless, something halfway between a metal and a plastic. No buttons, and no circuits. They thought they’d been finding the wrong parts. Bad luck.
It turned out they’d had Telestine computers all along—but what made them tick was entirely invisible to every human except a drone. Try as Nhean might, he still could not figure out if what she had was a whole computer, or part of one, or if different shards of machinery were even different from one another.
He sank his chin onto one fist and watched her for a moment. Her eyes were closed—focused, Nhean knew, very far away. Sometimes, her fingers moved. If there was any connection between what she was doing and her motions, he could not be sure.
The truth was, neither of them had any idea about how the mechanics of what she did actually worked. And that unnerved the hell out of him.
Nhean directed his gaze back to the monitors. Comm buoys tracked tiny fragments of other Telestine electronics at varying distances from the station in high orbit around Triton, dropped there surreptitiously on Nhean’s instructions some weeks ago. For weeks, the girl had been training to manipulate them.
One monitor blinked green, then another, and another. She had managed to find the comm buoy 25,000 kilometers out from the ship’s orbit.
Nhean nodded silently. He was pleased, but he did not want to disturb her. Whether he understood the mechanics or not, he knew one thing about talents: they grew and strengthened with practice. Whatever Tel’rabim had done to the girl, whatever genetic material he had woven into her blood, it was clear that her skill with machinery was something that could improve and increase. After only these few weeks, her reach was farther and her grip was surer.
