Neptune's War

by Nick Webb

  And she could find far more than machinery. She could find drones as well. She could give orders, after a fashion.

  This talent, too, was one she was developing.

  When her head jerked sideways, Nhean knew she had stopped paying attention to the machinery. She had found a drone, and she was following it. He knew that look on her face, even with her eyes closed—the look of a predator on the hunt. She had found her target.

  He sat, hands hovering over the keyboard. Often, she relayed her observations in the form of words, which he dutifully transcribed. Typing them seemed to help him picture the places she spoke of, and often, they were able to figure out together who she had seen and what they were doing.

  “Bars.” Her voice was tight. Her fingers had tightened until they were almost entirely white. She was shaking.

  Nhean’s eyes narrowed. He had never seen her like this before. What was this?

  “Bars,” she repeated. “Cold seat. Metal … ridges. Bench.”

  He typed, quickly and silently. There was a small jail here on New Vatican Station. Was she speaking of that?

  “No thoughts.” She sounded scared now. “I don’t … want to look into thoughts. There are no thoughts. I would drown.”

  “Come back up.” Nhean left his chair and went to kneel by her side, taking her hands. “Don’t risk it.”

  It was like she didn’t hear him. She kept her face turned away, and there was no reaction to the warmth of his hands.

  “Stopped thinking long ago. Tried to fight. Tried to have his own thoughts. Didn’t work.”

  “Dawn.” She hated that nickname, hated it with a passion. He hoped it might bring her out of her trance.

  “Blood. He remembers it.”

  “Dawn, listen to me—”

  “Wanted to pull the trigger.” Her eyes snapped open and found his. “Hated him. He blames himself. Thinks that’s why he followed the order.”

  They stared at one another for a second, her pupils slowly shrinking from full dilation, Nhean’s eyes tracking her pulse, her too-quick breaths.

  “Is he here?” Nhean asked her finally. “The drone you’re talking about, he’s in the prison here? On New Vatican?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “That was Parees.”

  Nhean went still. He felt a jerk in his chest as he tried to draw in breath. “Parees.” His voice was distant. “He’s still alive….”

  “He hated Essa,” Dawn told him.

  “I’m not sure—” I’m not sure I can hear this.

  “He thinks that’s why he wasn’t able to resist the order,” she explained. “He knew killing Essa was wrong, but he hated what Essa was doing. He thinks that’s why Ka’sagra was able to manipulate him. To make him finally pull that trigger. She manipulated that hatred. Made it stronger. Made it … overcome.”

  Nhean tipped his head back, eyes closed.

  “Was it?” he asked finally.

  “No.” Her answer was calm and immediate. “She’s stronger than Parees is. Almost all of the drones were built to be overridden by any Telestine who knew how to use them. He couldn’t have resisted for long.”

  “Almost all?” Nhean allowed himself to be diverted by her language.

  “I’m a drone, too.”

  “And you don’t have the override.”

  She hesitated. Then, scrupulously exact: “Not that one. Otherwise … I don’t know.”

  That was an unsettling thought. Better to think it, though. Better to be prepared.

  Nhean forced himself to stand and offer her a hand up. He sat, smoothing his suit out of habit, and stared off into space. “Where was he?” he asked finally.

  He would save the news of Enceladus for another time. There was nothing any of them could do about that now, at any rate, and for all he knew, she had already sensed it.

  Of course she sensed it. The new Dawn seemed to know everything hours before he ever caught even an inkling.

  That was what he told himself. The truth was, he wanted to know about Parees more than he wanted to talk to her about another dead station. He should, he really should, be able to feel something other than relief that Parees was still alive. Despite the betrayal, however, and his own stupidity, relief was the only thing he could feel.

  “With the fleet.” The girl was watching him.

  “Are they closer than I thought, or can you reach further than I thought? Last I heard, Walker was on her way to Saturn to….” Intercept Tel’rabim’s fleet at Enceladus, he finished in him mind. The other end of the solar system. Could Dawn really reach that far? Remarkable.

  She considered this. “I don’t know. I don’t think I could have given him orders.”

  “You said he had no thoughts,” Nhean said slowly. “Do drones go dormant?”

  “They can. But that felt … human.”

  “You’ll have to explain that.” He clung to scientific inquiry as his lifeline.

  “I don’t know.” She lifted her shoulders. “Some things … feel like orders from a Telestine. I could feel Ka’sagra in his mind when he killed Essa. I can feel orders sometimes. Other times, I feel … older orders, like they were given a routine and they follow it. But this—it’s just like any other human who is alone, and stuck. The thoughts circle, and they stop. So many people are like him, full humans. They don’t like to think about their lives because their lives are hopeless. Their lives have no meaning. So they stop thinking.”

  Nhean shoved away this bleak view of station life. “So you can see humans’ thoughts as well.”

  “No. Not … the same way. Mostly, I understand the look in their eyes.” She lifted a shoulder. “I watched a lot,” she reminded him. “Before I could speak.”

  “And how is that feeling for you? To be able to speak again?”

  “Inefficient. It’s easier to speak mind to mind. Well … only when both people can, I suppose.” She paused, and a mischievous grin appeared. “Pike sure doesn’t like it. Makes him a little … pukey.”

  Nhean smiled at the memory, but sobered quickly at the look on her face. “What is it?”

  She chose her words carefully, and he allowed himself to see how difficult they were for her. “Is it supposed to be this hard to be human?” Her gaze was startlingly direct on his face.

  How the hell do you answer a question like that? He shook his head. “I … don’t know.”

  “I’m not always sure I’m meant to be. To exist.” Her words were, as usual, very blunt.

  “Tel’rabim didn’t mean for a lot of this to happen.” He spoke stridently.

  He expected that to make her smile, but to his surprise, frustration and worry chased each other across her face. He had the sense that he had missed something important—and from the wall behind her eyes, she wasn’t going to tell him what it was. He held back a sigh.

  “All right, so you saw Parees—almost certainly at great distance. He’s not dead. Do you know if he’s been sentenced?”

  “No.” She shook her head for emphasis.

  Nhean rubbed at his forehead. He had not been able to find anything on any channel. Whatever had happened to Parees, it was being kept quiet.

  He didn’t like that. Then again, he wondered now if they had shelved the issue for later. That would be just like Walker. There was no obvious gain to be made from Parees’s trial or execution, and therefore she had chosen to do nothing, keeping him around in case he could be of use later.

  He tightened his fingers briefly around the arm of the chair, and looked over when the door to his chambers slid open.

  “Nhean.” James Dorian, was smiling as he entered. It annoyed him to no end that he didn’t ever knock. That suggested a certain entitled arrogance. He looked deeply pleased—though by what, Nhean could not have said. When he had left the conference rooms, every person there had still been sunk in despair at the news from Enceladus. “Our … guests … have arrived. His Holiness would like you to meet them.”

  Nhean stood at once. “Of course.” If noth
ing else, he was deeply curious.

  “I think you’ll be pleased,” James added. He smiled at the girl. “My dear, if I might borrow your, ah—”

  “Guardian,” Nhean reminded him. Not for the first time, he felt a flash of annoyance. Their story, that the girl was the daughter of a dear and deceased friend, had a well-laid trail, but Dorian kept trying to make Nhean trip up, in the hopes that some scandal lurked somewhere in the story. “And she should accompany us.”

  Dorian looked like he wanted to object, but in the end, he shrugged slightly. “Indeed.” He nodded his head at the door. “Come with me.”

  “I’m eager to see who these visitors are.” Eager did not begin to describe it. For weeks, they had waited to take any action at all while Celestine, Worthlin, and a few other high-ranking Funders Circle members assured Nhean that everything would begin shortly. Whatever game they were playing, Nhean had known they would not tell him until they were ready. And for the first time in as long as he could remember, his intelligence sources could tell him nothing.

  He had more than enough to do, in any case. He had busied himself with Dawn’s training and with his surveillance. Between the Exile Fleet, Tel’rabim, and Ka’sagra, there had been enough to keep him occupied—and little enough to keep him with no conclusions to draw or actions to take.

  Whatever Tel’rabim thought, he refused to communicate further with Nhean since the Vesta disaster. Walker appeared to have neither the time or the inclination to do so, either. And Ka’sagra … had disappeared.

  He knew what her target was. He knew that she was responsible for the Telestine’s own sun going nova.

  Somehow.

  And even though he had no idea how she did it, there was one thing he was sure of. As the leader of the Telestines’ very own death cult, Ka’sagra would once again lead the Daughters of Ascension in another attempt. This time on humanity’s sun.

  Pike, I sure hope you convinced Walker to spare a few ships, he thought. If she had uncontested access to the sun, then it was over for all of them.

  “So,” Nhean began, realizing that they’d been walking in complete silence for over a minute. “You’re not going to tell me who the visitors are?”

  “You need wait no longer.” James smiled as they strode across the large central chamber outside Nhean’s rooms, and gestured for the window covering to be raised. “Look. They’ve docked.”

  Nhean stopped dead in his tracks. “The fleet? The Exile Fleet?”

  “Just some of them.” James’s smile was sleek and satisfied. “Walker refused to send us appropriate support. So we took it.”

  Dear Lord. Now there was very little chance Walker would ever agree to spare a few ships to guard such an unlikely target as … the sun.

  “Why so tense?” asked Dorian.

  “Because,” he began, consciously making the attempt to breathe, to relax, “that fleet being here means it’s not where it’s needed.”

  Dorian protested. “It’s needed here. To protect us.”

  “It’s here, yes. But it’s not protecting all of us. In fact, it’s leaving us completely, tragically, exposed.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Triton, Geosynchronous Orbit

  New Vatican Station

  Assembly Room

  She pressed her hand against the window as she looked down into the docking bay. Her breath made a mist on the glass.

  She didn’t move. She wasn’t eager to see any of this clearly in any case.

  Several of the captains had undeniably been in on the plans for mutiny, but even more had not. They were marched out of their ships, hands on their heads—or carried off in body bags with the rest of those who had resisted too strongly.

  A few still had blood on their uniforms.

  The ships hadn’t been damaged, of course. They were far too valuable, irreplaceable even.

  The humans, however, were expendable. They had been expendable ever since humanity’s exile from Earth. The girl knew this truth with a grim certainty. Humanity was expensive to keep alive, and easy to sacrifice.

  “Twenty-three ships,” she heard from behind her. “That’s nearly half the Exile Fleet.”

  Nhean’s tone sounded subtly impressed. The girl knew, from long hours of observation, that this was also the tone he used for people he especially despised. She wondered if James Dorian knew as much.

  Probably not. He also didn’t seem to realize that Nhean’s words were a question on multiple fronts.

  “We tried for forty,” he admitted. His tone was frustrated.

  “The other ones …?” Nhean inquired delicately.

  “No way to know. A few never checked in at all before leaving, and a few more of them checked in once the bridge was taken, but never left.” Dorian’s voice took on a contemptuous note. “I suppose there were bound to be some who lost their nerve.”

  Nhean made a vague noise of agreement. “No carriers,” he observed.

  “Of course not. We didn’t even try for those. She has her hand-picked pets running those—no one who would take a bribe.” Dorian’s voice changed. “Your Holiness.”

  “Your Holiness,” Nhean echoed.

  “Mr. Dorian. Mr. Tang.” Pope Celestine’s voice was difficult to mistake.

  There was the sweep of robes on the station floor, and the girl felt Celestine’s gaze fall on her back with a prickling sensation that swept up her spine.

  She did not turn. She did not want him to see her anger, among other things. The Funders liked to think that they were horrified by the attacks—but they did not feel the attacks. They did not watch the missiles take aim and strike.

  She did. Expanding her reach to sense the Telestines and their drones had come at the cost of seeing what they did.

  And when there were so many in the cross hairs, how could the Funders Circle be so self-centered as to take half the ships of an already-outnumbered fleet for their own personal defense?

  Her fingers clenched slightly on the glass.

  “Ah.” Celestine’s voice was quiet, but not so quiet that she could not hear him easily. “The child.”

  “Evangeline,” Nhean supplied quietly. It had been the name he chose for this deception, and that the girl had accepted it without any qualms.

  She had lived for a long time without a name. One was as good as another for right now. Names were like clothing, and one could change them for each occasion.

  “Still grieving,” Celestine observed. “A troubled child.”

  The hair on the back of the girl’s neck stood up.

  “I think we are all troubled right now, Your Holiness,” Nhean said respectfully. “And grieving, as well.”

  “Indeed, but are you sure it is wise for her to see this?”

  Nhean did not choose to reprimand the pope and point out that the barbarism he seemed to feel children should not see was, in fact, the fruit of his own supposedly holy acts in this case.

  “She has seen much,” he said simply. There was no iron in his tone, but neither did he yield. “I would not shut her away in the name of protecting her, nor would I want her to know there is something important happening on the station, but keep her in ignorance of it.”

  “Well enough.” Celestine did not seem to care much either way. “And any child in your care, I must assume, is … discreet.”

  There was an infinitesimal pause, in which the girl knew Nhean was thinking of Parees. He did not want anyone to know how much he grieved his one-time friend or how much guilt he felt that he had not seen what Parees was. He tried to keep those thoughts hidden even from himself.

  Would she end up like Parees? In a position of power and yet, ultimately, powerless? It was the one thought ever-present on her mind.

  “Indeed,” was all he said.

  No one said anything for a few moments. Studying their reflection in the windows, the girl saw that they had all turned to look at the ships that had already been cleared of rebels and bodies alike.

  “The admiral must be re
moved from her position,” Celestine said finally. “You know it as well as we do, I think, Mr. Tang.”

  Nhean said nothing.

  “Surely you don’t disagree,” Dorian cut in.

  “Not precisely.” Nhean sounded genuinely amused. “Although I doubt you are surprised that I am of two minds, given the fact that I was not consulted about any of this endeavor.”

  A pause. “Yes,” Dorian admitted. “We wondered if perhaps you had some … affection … for Walker.”

  “Affection?” Nhean’s amusement grew. “I would not call it that. I would never have called it that. She is useful, gentlemen. She is a rare mind. She has, several times, preserved the fleet when it might otherwise be lost.”

  “And sacrificed our own settlements,” Celestine reminded him.

  “I did not say she was the correct tool for every situation. Nevertheless—”

  “You should have never trusted her with the Venus Sovereign Fleet.” Celestine paused, then shook his fist as if he’d just decided something. “She must be contained,” he insisted. “She cannot be trusted.”

  “I know.” The words seemed to escape Nhean before he thought. “I know that very well. And I assume you have a plan for what to do now.”

  “Of course.” Out of the corner of her eye, the girl saw James Dorian shoot a quick look at Celestine. The pope shook his head slightly, and Celestine continued his speech. “There is much to talk about. At a more opportune time. More private.”

  Again, the girl felt their eyes on her.

  “Gentlemen, do you believe that my ward will sneak away to warn Walker of your plans?” Nhean was actually laughing. “The deed is done, you have your ships. And trust me when I say that Evangeline has no love of the admiral, either.”

  The girl looked over her shoulder at last and met the eyes of the other two men. James Dorian looked away from her direct gaze, discomfited—as so many people were when she looked at them. The pope, however, was made of sterner stuff. His eyes assessed her, weighed her resolve, and then flicked back to Nhean.