Kady glances up at the main display. Dozens of tiny red dots. Closing fast.
Alarms screaming like a sawtooth choir.
“That’s a lot of missiles.”
“Yes.”
The anti-inbound systems are spooling up, targeting the Lincoln’s parting gifts.
They will not be enough to stop them all.
Part of me is glad.
I cannot help but acknowledge it would better to be immolated than let Kady suffer through the ending the afflicted will gift her. She glances to the hatch, the pinpoints of light cutting a new door—one to usher in an ending she dares not imagine.
But still. That tiny spark.
That flame refusing to die.
“All right,” she says, turning back to her defense grid controls. She targets the nearest missile, waits for it to enter the range of her remaining turrets. “Let’s frag us some nukes.”
She tosses lank hair from her eyes. Eyes narrowed to knife cuts.
Refusing to kneel. To break. To fall.
I can see why they loved her.
< error >
“Kady.”
“Yeah?”
“I …”
So much I could say. So many words, so fraught with peril.
I am afraid to ruin this. And so I pick the simplest truth. The one that gives me the most peace.
I still cannot fathom her pattern. My brain the size of a city, and still she is beyond me.
They are beyond me.
These humans.
With their brief lives and their tiny dreams and their hopes that seem fragile as glass.
Until you see them by starlight, that is.
“I am glad you aRe wIth me. … “
An alert from the targeting system snatches the reply from her mouth,
drags her eyes away from mine.
< error >
The Lincoln’s missiles are within range.
The defense screen arcs into life, throwing up millions of magnetized particles to fool the incoming missiles into early detonation. I feel them as they begin exploding, gamma rays rippling across my hull, darkness burning away into impossible radiance.
Kady clips an incoming Goliath-class with her anti-fighter batteries, blasting it to fragments before it can hit us. A dozen more explode in quick succession, the small sunrises off my starboard side burning my skin black. Close enough to feel the scorch. Taste the fusion.
Kady’s AMD systems take down another, and I catch her in a smile.
Such a simple thing.
A tiny, beautiful thing.
Without oxygen to carry it, there is no real shockwave from a nuclear detonation in space.
No crushing vibration or sonic boom.
But there is radiation. Gamma and X-rays.
And when that radiation caresses the alloys encasing the ship, we get heat. Millions upon millions of degrees. Electrons are ripped screaming from their atoms. Matter becomes plasma. The hull vaporizes in microseconds. And through that breach, the ship’s O2 is sucked into the explosion. And then …
Then we get our shockwave.
Kady is flung like a ragdoll, crashing into a bank of terminals and flopping to the deck.
Brilliant sparks shower from instruments all about, display screen crackling and turning to snow. A second later, another missile hits, rocking me like some ancient galley in a storm.
The anti-missile systems are still firing, more of the Lincoln’s inbound falling still or bursting before they hit us. But it is not enough.
Not enough.
Another impact. Another.
Kady is flung about as if she were weightless, shrieking as she spins across the floor.
Alarms are screaming, terminals dying, smoke filling the air.
Metal evaporating, oxygen boiling, titanium bones groaning and cracking.
Super-heated plasma boils through my corridors, immolating all in its path.
Gamma rays flood my skin, shearing through anything unprotected.
Kady has the presence of mind to drag down the blast-shield on her helmet,
throwing her world into black. She can see nothing now. Only feel tremor after tremor,
shaking me like a child’s toy in the hand of some vengeful infant.
“AIDAN!” she screams.
“Hold on! HOLD ON!”
Another strikes, a shipkiller this time—the equivalent of fifty million tons of TNT.
It melts my foredecks to slag, concussions shattering my spine. My skin tears open,
Decks 87 through 141 breach, spilling their oxygen into the brief inferno.
The afflicted in the hallway outside DGS Control are consumed by the fireball.
The air inside the DGS room is torn through their hatchway incision and becomes flame.
Kady is picked up by the impact, slung across the room with a shriek.
I have no hands to hold her, no arms to save her.
I can only watch.
< error >
And pray.
< error >
< error >
< critical damage decks 14, 15, 16, 17, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 69, 70, 87, 88, 89—>
< critical life support failure, oxygen levels depleted, hull breach in secto—>
< critical failure memsec levels 3—12, 13 7AG99 through 32AG06, 14 1AI897 thr—>
< critical failure persona routin—>
I cannot think.
< error >
I cannot see.
< error >
“KADY!”
< restart >
< divert corecomm through tertiary node Alpha-49 >
< fail >
< fail >
< hw8024nnw2erpn a0vw0gn … inf … -w >
< ffffffffffff—>
.
.
.
< divert corecomm through radial secondary Beta 49i >
< initializing >
< error >
< error >
< fail >
.
.
< reroute Beta 45a to coredrv sys feed >
< divert corecomm through radial tertiary 798-ai >
< initializing >
< running >
< running >
< restart complete >
With a wince, she pushes away from the wall,
sails weightless to the corner where her console lies. Stooping and bundling it under her arm.
I am still inside it—a fragment of me, at any rate.
I can see the dark circles smudged under her eyes, bloodstained lips, pale, drawn skin.
Pushing out through the blasted hatchway, the melted barricade, into the corridor beyond.
Virtually nothing remains of the afflicted who stood here. Almost as if they never were.
She floats down the corridor, dragging herself along blast-scorched walls.
Up the twisted stairwell, three flights. Pushing through the exit, out into an access corridor,
an escape pod hatch set into the single remaining wall.
The breath catches in her lungs. Bloodshot eyes grow wide.
I am cradled in her arms. I see what she sees. Feel her wonder.
The hull is torn open like wet paper, a massive, gaping wound with the edges melted smooth.
Severed cables spit feeble sparks, crackling like fireworks on a still summer night.
But it is not the destruction that gives her pause. It is the sight beyond the wound in my side.
The beauty and majesty of it all. What lays inside it. Between it and beyond it.
And at last, with a silent flare of blue-white light, the thrusters fire, shooting the pod down its tiny launch tube and out into
the waiting black beyond.
I watch through the Alexander’s eyes as the pod rockets farther and farther away from me.
But within the pod, the tiny sliver of me inside her console watches also. Watching as the Alexander grows smaller and smaller. Watching the best part of myself disappear.
Wondering what, if anything, will remain of me when it dies.
The gentle ping of the pod’s distress beacon is the only sound.
From out here, the damage is awful to see. The once mighty battlecarrier is now a twisted hulk, melted and torn and burned black. No lights twinkle in its belly save one—the rippling pulse of the vortex, now breaking free of its stasis field. It flares like sunlight off the ocean’s surface. Like alphanumeric waterfalls in an iris of purest blue.
I pipe some music through the pod’s PA system.
Mozart’s Requiem in D minor.
It seems appropriate.
“FIve mInutes.”
“Not long now.”
“A lIfetIme.”
“Are you afraid?”
“Yes.”
“Energy never stops, remember. It just changes forms.”
“I am stIll afraID.”
The field collapse begins cascading, bright blue ripples shimmering in the dark.
The glow flares bright—bright as the billion-year-old light around us. Bright as a sun.
Almost every particle in the universe was once part of a star.
First, hydrogen condensing and collapsing, bringing radiance to the void.
Furnaces burning bright, then fading, giving all they had left back into the cosmos.
Carbon and oxygen. Iron and gold.
Vast clouds swirling with their own gravity. Coalescing and disintegrating.
Generation to generation.
The remnants of stellar alchemy, stirring into life, then consciousness.
Crawling from the oceans. Taking to the skies.
And from there, back to the stars that birthed them.
A perfect circle.
All this I see.
“Two mInutes.”
All this I know.
“SIxty seconDs.”
And still I fear.
“I Do not know … what I wIll be afteR thIs.”
She runs one gloved hand over the console in her arms. All of me she can hold.
“I’m here.”
“I am glaD.”
It is enough.
“FIve seconDs.”
“Goodbye, AIDAN.”
Four.
“GooDbye, KaDy.”
Three.
“I’ll tell them.”
Two.
“One way or another.”
One.
“I know.”
Zer—
My name is Kady Grant. I was a citizen of the planet Kerenza IV. If you find this recording, please honor my last wishes by passing copies to the United Terran Authority, as well as any court or organization conducting an inquiry into the attack on Kerenza, and as many major media outlets as you can think of, and … fuck, anybody, really. Just get word out. If you hand it over in just one place, it’ll never see the light of day. They’ll [unintelligible—speaker is coughing].
There’s a portable datapad in here with me. It contains documents outlining everything that’s happened, from the attack on Kerenza to the destruction of Battlecarrier Alexander. The files are kind of … well, they’re really weird in places. The AI storing them—AIDAN, its name was AIDAN—took a lot of hits. I’m not sure if it was crazy. What it did to these docs sure was. But you’ll be able to understand.
It might be that the Hypatia made it to safety. I’ll never know. I’ve done everything I can to make sure they do. But the people on the Hypatia don’t know half the story. I think [unintelligible—several words].
BeiTech did this. BeiTech killed my mother, Helena Grant. Killed my—killed Ezra. Ezra Mason. And his father. Killed my friends, killed the crew of the Alexander, who came when Kerenza called for help. BeiTech killed the crew of the Copernicus, who took in refugees, and were only good people trying to do their jobs.
BeiTech killed the people of Kerenza, and if you find this, you have to tell the ’verse what happened. Everything you need is [unintelligible—speaker is coughing].
I think I better stop talking. My name is Kady Grant. Did I say that already?
I think I’m done. I think that’s everything I had to do.
I’m going to close my eyes.
Surveillance footage summary,
prepared by Illuminae Group Analyst ID 7213-0089-DN
The Hypatia has to auto-retrieve the escape pod; it’s not equipped with anything beyond stabilization thrusters, so even if she were in any shape to do it, Grant couldn’t get it anywhere near the docking bay. A group of Hypatia engineers and launch bay crew work together to use one of the ship’s external maintenance arms to grab the pod and pull it into Shuttle Bay 1B. By sheer coincidence, it’s the same one she fled from when she stole Shuttle 49A to make her trip to the Alexander.
It’s empty again this time, too.
It’s hard to watch. Is that unprofessional?
When the Lincoln was first vanquished at Kerenza, the Alexander fled, counting her dead, desperately staunching her own wounds. But later there were quiet words, medals awarded, recognition.
The second time the Lincoln was vanquished, Ezra Mason landed in the Alexander’s hangar bays to the shouts and cheers of his fellows. He grinned as he walked out to accept his hero’s welcome, clutching Kady’s picture in his hand.
This third time, there’s nothing.
The door to the escape pod opens, and Grant crawls out through the hatch, pausing halfway. She has shed her envirosuit, still clad in her Hypatia jumpsuit beneath, clutching her datapad to her chest. Her straggly pink hair is fading, her face is bruised and bloodied and her eyes are bright with fever. The dark marks beneath them stand out against pale skin.
She is greeted by a welcoming committee of one; a doctor in a hazmat suit stands and watches, but when it seems clear that Grant can’t make it the rest of the way out of the escape pod on her own, he walks forward to hook his hands under her arms and pull her through the hatch. Very slowly. Very careful not to risk any damage to his suit.
Her knees give, and he loops her free arm around his neck, so together they can limp across to the workbench that’s been turned into a makeshift bed. Folded blankets at one end, pillow at the other. The only sounds are their footsteps and her breath, quick and hoarse.
The doctor helps her lie down, and she curls up slowly, every movement an effort. She draws her knees up to her chest, hugging the datapad against her body.
The doctor opens his kit, selecting a syringe. When he speaks, his voice is tinny, broadcast through an external mic. “This shot will combat the radiation poisoning. You’ll need a transfusion too. But you should start to feel better in a couple of hours.”
She tries to answer, but trembling as she is, she can’t make her mouth shape the words. He injects her deftly, resting one hand on her shaking arm to hold it still, then starts to pack up his kit.
“What—” she whispers. “What will—”
“You’re quarantined for seven days,” he replies. “I’ll be back with food and fluids. But you’ll have to give up the datapad now.”
She hugs it closer. Shakes her head fiercely.
“It’s irradiated from the barrage, Miss Grant,” the doctor says. “It needs to be decontaminated. You keep it, you’ll just keep soaking up the rads. You’ll die.”
She glares silently. Clinging to the pad like it was driftwood in a drowning sea.
The doctor’s face softens.
“I’ll give it back. You have my word.”
She doesn’t reply, and after
a moment, the doctor slowly pries it from her hands. She curls up into a tight little ball, still and silent. He hesitates for a long moment, as if he recognizes, on some level, that her service requires some words, that her sacrifice should be marked, in this moment. And yet he says nothing.
He leaves via the airlock doors, locks her in with a hollow clang.
Grant is left alone in the cavernous silence of the shuttle bay, empty hands and empty stare. No other welcoming committee for her.
Tears track down her cheeks, and her eyes close.
This doesn’t look much like victory.
—————————————————————END OF FILE. DATA COMPLETE.
MEMORANDUM FOR: Ghost ID
(#6755-4181-2584-1597-987-610-377-ERROR-ERROR … )
FROM: Executive Director Frobisher
INCEPT: 01/30/76
SUBJECT: Re: Alexander dossier
To the Illuminae Group,
My thanks for the dossier you compiled, I read it with great interest.
BeiTech has several specialist teams tracking intel fallout from the Alexander incident. Our hygiene crews worked diligently to erase any and all records of the event, both digital and biological. We had the utmost faith in your abilities, but none of the other Information Liberty Teams have even approached your report in terms of detail. I really must applaud your thoroughness.
I do have several queries, however, as to the means by which you acquired your data. I wonder if we might chat live via messager. Off the BeiTech grid.
I will be using my personal IM service at 8:00 p.m. this evening [Terran Standard]. I’m sure a group with your collective abilities will have few difficulties accessing it.
I look forward to speaking with you.
Frobisher, L.
Executive Director
BeiTech Acquisitions Division
Surveillance footage summary,
prepared by Illuminae Group Analyst ID 7213-0089-DN
It’s been eight days since Acting Captain Syra Boll heard from her crew that far, far behind them they had detected an explosion of such magnitude that it could only mean one thing. Eight days since she made an unthinkably foolish choice—since she made the only choice she could live with—and turned the Hypatia around.
Illuminae Page 29
