by Nick Webb
And she hadn’t believed it was possible to think less of him right about now, given his actions. Given his betrayal.
“What are you thinking, my child?” Celestine asked cleverly.
My child. She struggled not to roll her eyes, and didn’t answer. Instead, she stopped in front of a window looking out into the black. The captured ships of the fleet had been arranged there, so as to be visible to her—mockingly, she supposed—but she looked beyond them: dark blue Neptune, and beyond it, the stars.
The distant, beckoning stars.
He had come to greet her at her ship, a gesture of respect she had not anticipated. She had assumed that he would behave the same way Essa had: that he would force her to advance across a wide floor while he sat in a raised throne and looked down at her with a sneer.
Unexpectedly, he seemed to be trying to convince her to join his side. With kindness and good humor.
And that she had not expected at all. What did he want from her?
The rest of the fleet.
What was the best way to set him off balance?
Make him agree with her.
She had not wanted to do this—until she was here. Now, faced with the chance to persuade someone to join her side, she could not simply back away and let this fall apart. If she stayed, this might still come to a fight.
If she walked away, it certainly would. A fight she was prepared to win, of course, but a fight all the same.
Walker took a look around at the marble floors and the gold-inlaid walls as the thought took shape in her mind. “I’d like to see the lower floors of the station.”
Celestine froze for a moment, as she knew he would. This was the Funders Circle’s headquarters in the outer solar system, the place he called both paradise and prison. It was no Venus, but they had clearly spared no expense with the resources available to them this far out.
But the lower floors would be only a prison. Both he and Walker knew that. There would be the slim, underfed forms of the foundry workers who operated at the edges of the solar system, near the ends of the trade routes. There were so very few people in the exodus who had enough—and those on the lower floors were part of the majority who were barely hanging on.
Celestine wavered now, not sure what she would ask of him, not sure what suffering he would lay at her door.
“Did you grow up on one of the stations?” she asked him casually, as if she simply did not know instead of having tried desperately and failed to learn of his background.
“My parents were smugglers.” He said the words so nonchalantly that they might even be true.
“Oh?” She tried to picture it. “Did they bring you with them, or leave you on one of the outlaw stations?” Those stations were a fairly open secret, created in the same way as the first Exile Fleet base, from one of the earliest wrecks. Patched and rickety, they were carefully disguised to look as if they were unused. Often set into orbit around one of the larger asteroids. Ceres, or Vesta. She tensed when she thought about the former asteroid, destroyed by Ka’sagra’s malevolent deception.
“An outlaw station,” Celestine said quietly. “Jackpot Station. Orbiting Ceres. I was rarely with them, unless they thought there was some profit to be had in having me there.” When she frowned, he shook his head. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. There are some people who respect family more than anything, and so they played happy family to secure trades. I … didn’t really know them. They died when I was quite young.”
She was more and more sure that he was telling the truth, and it unsettled her.
“Why do you ask?” Celestine asked her. His voice was composed.
“Because I grew up on the stations,” she told him. “And it is a unique kind of hopelessness, Your Holiness.”
She was coming at him too directly, she could feel wariness radiating from him, but was there any other way? Hadn’t he always been wary? He had never wanted to trust her in her overtures during the early years when she and Essa were building the Exile Fleet from scratch.
“You think they would rather be dead than live as they are?” he asked her, just as directly. “Because you doom them with your choices. You know this, Admiral. You must change your course, or all of us will suffer.”
She knew the retort Larsen would want her to make—perhaps even that Delaney would want her to make. It was what she wanted to say: that Celestine’s own, stupid selfishness would doom as many—if not more—if he did not bend.
And she already knew that that direction would only lead to a clash that would harden his resolve instead of persuade him.
“What would you do?” she asked him honestly. There was no reproach in her tone. “How would you tell me to change my course? I am outmatched in most ways by the Telestine fleet, Your Holiness. I act because I see no other way. I see our people dying slowly in the stations and I fear that with Tel’rabim in charge, there is no time for us to marshal our forces and build another fleet. We’re building new ships at Mercury, but it requires a fifth of my fleet just to protect those shipyards. Time is not on our side.”
Celestine’s brow furrowed slightly. “You would simply exchange a slow death for a swift death, then.”
Behind him, Walker could see a group gathering. There were many whose faces she knew: the Mormon Prophet—Worthley? Worthington? Something like that. The recently-memorized names were already slipping away as she focused on Celestine. And those Mormon associates—businessmen? Apostles? There were others as well, faces that were wholly unfamiliar. They might be too low in the organization to warrant a dossier. There was a tall, slim man she recognized—Schroeder, was it? Or Dorian? She couldn’t remember which. He was smirking at her.
Celestine was aware of their presence. He looked to them, and stiffened when Walker put a hand on his arm.
“Your Holiness, I am truly asking you.” She drew his gaze back to her, however unwillingly he looked. He wanted to call them over, she knew, so they could reassure him. He did not like where this was going.
“You know what we would do,” he told her. “We would protect every human settlement.”
Especially the richest ones, she wanted to retort.
“And I would do the same in a heartbeat.” She decided to use another tactic. Play up the vulnerable, weepy woman. Disarm them into underestimating her. She made her voice was thick—just enough to hint at emotion, but not enough to make it seem like she was acting, like she was playing them.
She hated the emotion in her voice. It seemed like weakness. For her, such emotion was always a symbol of giving into the despair inflicted on them by the Telestines.
But she clearly hadn’t persuaded them with logic.
“Your Holiness, I do this to save us—just as you do. That was why you took the fleet, wasn’t it? You wanted to save humanity, you had a plan for how to do so.” She refused to let him look away. “If nothing else, we share that. Can we not start this negotiation from there? Tell me your plans. Many heads are better than one.”
He stared at her mutely, and she had the sense that she truly had set him off-balance. He had not expected her to meet him on any point.
“I know you were not trained as a tactician.” She gave him the out in the moment before he broke. If he broke now, he would not agree with her. “I know that. None of us were. We didn’t have the chance to be. And I know someone who wanted to be the pope hardly wanted to run a military campaign.”
Unwillingly, he laughed.
“But haven’t you ever wondered,” Walker asked him quietly, “why you are pope? I wonder, myself—about who might be a fleet admiral on Earth. We are here, you and I, but on Earth, if the Telestines had never come, we might well be nothing.”
He frowned at her.
“At another time, someone else would have risen through the ranks,” Walker told him. “Any number of chances would lead it to be so.”
“There is no chance,” he said. He sounded lost. “There is only God’s will.”
“Then why did
God choose you?” she asked him. “You must have the capability for this. And I am asking your help, Your Holiness. You—and all of your circle. I have not found a way that I can match Tel’rabim on every field he would pick, but if you can, if any of you can….”
He stared at her for a long moment, and she felt him waver.
And then he smiled, as slippery a smile as she had ever seen, and she felt any kinship between them vanish in a moment.
He was not going to listen to her. He was never going to listen to her.
“Come,” he suggested. “We should talk more. Come to my receiving room.”
She struggled to keep her face straight as she walked at his side. The others followed at a distance behind. President Worthlin’s face looked … off. He conferred in a low voice with one of his apostles as they followed slowly behind them. He kept furtively glancing at her, with pained eyes, as if he regretted calling her here. As if he knew the conversation with her would be futile and a waste of time.
And he was probably right. She had to find another way, and she could think of no other way. What could she say to convince him, what could she ever come up with if this had not worked?
Celestine swept ahead of her to open the door to his receiving room, and she followed, numb, hands clasped behind her back. She was so absorbed in her own thoughts that she hardly heard the pounding footsteps, but she heard the sudden yells. Celestine’s head whipped around and he shouted, ushering her through.
A moment later, Nhean slammed into her back as shots rang out overhead before striking into the marble floor, sending chips of stone flying.
Nhean hauled her up by one hand and somehow managed to elbow Celestine in the solar plexus in the same movement. Intentional or not, it had an efficiency she liked.
But there was no time for that. His eyes met hers, desperate. “Run,” he told her, and he shoved her further into Celestine’s receiving room. “Preferably, faster than a sniper takes aim.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Triton, Geosynchronous Orbit
EFS Intrepid
Bridge
Delaney leaned in close to the tactical screen, resting a hand on the shoulder of the officer. It was show time. The truth was, impending battles always brought on a sense of dread for him. Nervousness and fear that he usually bottled up and forced down into the pit of his stomach to deal with later, either with alcohol or a punching bag or a good, soothing engine schematic.
But this felt different. They were on the verge of attacking their own kind. They should be attacking Telestines. Instead, they had to waste time liberating their own ships.
“Last shuttle’s launched,” said the tactical officer.
“Good. Any indication the mutineer fleet knows what’s up?”
A shake of the head. “No,” said the officer. “Their ships are holding steady in orbit.”
Peach-gray Triton brooded below them, a dead wasteland marked only by humanity’s only settlement on the moon, the sprawling New Beslan City. Near them loomed New Vatican Station.
New. New. New. Everything old was new again. Including human-on-human violence. Anything to squeak ahead, notch out a slight advantage over your neighbor, get the slightly better tool, deadlier weapon, more fertile farmland. And if you had to kill, so be it. Violence was humanity’s birthright, it seemed, the one constant throughout a bloody history.
“What’s that one doing?” Delaney pointed out towards one of the shuttles approaching the stolen Venetian frigate VSF Harare.
“Uh….” The officer tapped a few buttons. “It’s changing course. No idea, sir.”
“Then find out.”
The little assault shuttle, with a full compliment of ten marines and a tech, was now veering straight for New Vatican Station, instead of towards its target, the Harare. A second shuttle near it lurched a few times, and then similarly changed course.
A shouted voice from the comms center. “Sir! We’re picking up a strange broadcasted signal! It’s coming from the station!”
“What the hell is it?”
Precious seconds dripped by, and he watched as two more shuttles veered off course and made for the station. Foreboding dread washed over him. “Well?”
The comms officer hesitated. “I … I don’t know. But … the only thing that I can compare it to is from when we engaged the Telestine fleet over Mercury. Only that time, the signal came from us.”
Delaney staggered backward and found the captain’s chair. “Dear God.” He collapsed into it.
The tactical officer glanced back at him, fear creeping over his face. “Sir?”
“The Seed. Nhean gave it to them, the bastard.”
“The Seed?”
“The virus we used to take over Tel’rabim’s fleet back at Mercury. Now they’re using it against us.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Triton, Geosynchronous Orbit
New Vatican Station
Main Concourse
“Come on!” Nhean heard his voice break as he and Walker pounded across the floor of the receiving room. Shots scattered overhead: the wild, too slow rounds of the pistols and the heavier thunk of the sniper’s rounds. They were never very close, but each one filled him with dread.
“What’s going on?” The girl’s voice, coming from his earpiece receiver.
“No time—get me a path from the back of Celestine’s receiving room to Walker’s shuttle, and keep everyone out of that bay!”
“I’m on it.”
“And get down there, too. Bring that piece of machinery you’ve been working on.”
“What?”
“No time!”
“Who is that?” Even running for her life and grey with fear, Walker managed to sound like she was commanding the bridge of a ship.
“Shut up and run, please.” He didn’t have the energy for a spat with her on top of everything. His sweaty fingers slipped as he fumbled with the comm unit button. “And lock doors behind us!”
He heard the mechanical hum and whine of the girl’s handiwork, or at least he thought he did. He could, far more certainly, hear the sound of footsteps and yells behind them. The guards, trying to hit Walker, had inadvertently laid down cover fire for the two of them.
That advantage wouldn’t last much longer.
“What the hell is going on?” Walker demanded breathlessly as they tumbled down a side corridor.
“To your left,” the girl said, in his ear.
“This way.” He grabbed a handful of sleeve and yanked Walker after him. He heard her hiss as she turned an ankle and stumbled, but she didn’t stop running. “And I have no idea, I was sure I was too late. They cut me out of it, I made them promise they wouldn’t hurt you.” He shook his head.
Stupid, stupid….
“That was where I went wrong,” he grunted, pounding down the hallway. “They knew I wouldn’t help get you here unless they promised, so they said the words. Never tell someone what you really want—it undercuts your bargaining position.” But why was he explaining this to her, of all people?
“Why the hell would you want me alive?”
“Speed up, and get through that door straight ahead, they’re trying to close it.”
“Faster!” He pushed himself to sprint and swore to every god he could remember that he would stay in better shape if he got out of this alive.
Walker, for her part, put on a burst of speed and managed to drag him under the fire door as it started to close. She yanked him up before releasing his hand, dropping it like she didn’t much want to touch him.
That was fair.
“Where to?” She turned wildly, looking all around.
“Next right.”
“Next right,” he repeated. “How close are we?”
“I don’t know—” Walker began.
“Not you.”
“Close,” the girl said. “Keep running. There’s only one more turn before you get there.”
“And you’re on your way?” He jerked his head at Walker a
nd they started out again, first at a trot, and then at a weary jog that wasn’t quite as fast as it should be.
“In the bay already.” If she wondered why, she didn’t say it.
That was good, he didn’t want to explain it. She wasn’t going to like it. Hell, even he didn’t like it. Walker was going to be over the moon, though.
She surprised him by keeping her silence for a few corridors, before saying contemplatively, “There wasn’t any signal when we went in the door. The sniper was supposed to shoot as soon as they saw me. So why bother to talk to me first?”
Nhean took a moment to find the breath to speak. “They were seeing if you’d be trouble first.”
She flashed him a surprisingly ready grin. “They really should have expected me to, shouldn’t they? It’s baffling that they expected anything else.”
Despite himself, he laughed.
She sobered quickly. “I felt like I had almost persuaded Celestine to work with me.”
He really should remember how dangerous she was. He thought of her as brittle, too head-on, too set in her ways to be dangerous in a political sense—and then she went and did something like this.
“How the hell did you think you were going to manage that?” He was genuinely curious. “Next right, by the way, down the stairs.”
She replied conversationally, as if she weren’t running away from an attempted assassination: “I told him I wanted to protect every settlement as much as he does.”
“But he doesn’t want to.” Nhean felt a surge of irritation. “He only wants to protect himself.”
“Mostly,” she agreed. “Yes, those fuckers want to protect their own first, starting with the ones with the deepest pockets. But what am I supposed to work with, appealing to that? He was a young priest once. I figured maybe there had been something more to him, at the start.”
