He sat on the floor next to Cora, shaking.
* * * * *
Mycia 489, Mycene System Asteroid Belt. Free Space.
When he “woke” the next time, Khalil could feel the energy coursing through him.
Dyse was shaking his shoulder. It was very dark. “Wake up,” Dyse whispered urgently.
“I’m awake.” Very awake. “Did you give me something?”
“It won’t last long,” Dyse said. “Hurry. Get up.”
Khalil resisted Dyse’s tugging on his arm, which would have slid him off whatever hard shelf he was lying on. He swiveled his legs around and put his feet on the ground.
Dyse stood back. “The guards are down to minimum. The rest are checking security breaches at the back entrances. They think Bellona has found this place.”
“They do, huh?” Khalil got to his feet and swayed, as his balance wavered.
“Did you really mean it when you said you would fight your way out of here, if you had to?” Dyse said.
“Yes,” Khalil said firmly.
Dyse held out one of Traverse’s knives. “It’s not very big, but it’s the only one I could find.”
Khalil took it and looked at the kid’s silhouette. “You know you’re going to have to come with me, don’t you? You won’t survive the investigation that will happen once I’m gone.”
Dyse swallowed. “I thought it through. I won’t stay here. Not with her.” He hesitated. “I didn’t know…” he said. His tone was apologetic.
Khalil nodded. “Well, if this stuff doesn’t last long, we’d better get going. Right now I feel as if I could wrestle all of the Ledanians put together, including Hayes. Do you know where we are?”
“In the basement.” Dyse shrugged.
“What star system, I mean.”
“Oh.” Dyse paused. “Mycia 489.”
Khalil wasn’t surprised he hadn’t heard of it. “Any chance a bus stops here?”
“I know where there is a one-man yacht. The director’s. If you can get us there, I can fly it.”
Khalil nodded. “You’ve piloted?”
“I’ve read the manuals.”
Khalil headed for the door. “All of them, right?”
“Right.”
Khalil put his hand on the big door lever and paused. “Stay close behind me,” he told Dyse. He thought of Bellona. His energy gathered and focused. He wrenched the door open.
* * * * *
Dyse had drawn most of the guards and sentries out of their path with his alarms and feeds. That left only a handful for Khalil to deal with. The first went down without issue. After the third, though, Khalil could feel the false burst of energy waning.
“Your profile says nothing about you being able to fight this way,” Dyse said, as Khalil jogged down the passage the boy had pointed toward. Dyse kept up with him easily.
“Not everything about a man is in their profile,” Khalil told him. “You have to talk to people to figure them out.” After a breath or two, he added; “You didn’t think to wonder why the Hjalmar used a whole unit to pick me up on Cerce?”
The fifth guard to challenge them got his ghostmaker out before Khalil could deal with him. The bolt missed both of them and ricocheted off the old stone walls, echoing loudly.
“That would have been heard,” Khalil said heavily. He sighed. “Time to run. How far to the yacht you spoke of?”
“Down the corridor, down the stairs, out onto the platform.” Dyse tugged his sleeve. “Hurry.”
“Hurrying,” Khalil said. Damn it, he was trying, anyway.
He could hear running boots, farther down the corridor. That helped him pick up speed. Then they reached the stairs and he gripped the stone balustrade with white knuckles, trying to run down the stairs. His balance was too precarious. His head swam. He could feel the hot trickle of blood running from the cuts on his torso. The other wounds were starting to throb, too.
Dyse helped him down the stairs, glancing back constantly over Khalil’s shoulder. “Just down here,” Dyse murmured.
Khalil staggered when he moved off the bottom step and his foot didn’t go down lower than the other when he stepped. His knees tried to buckle. Dyse held him up, panting with the effort.
“Out there, see?” Dyse said, pointing. There was a forcefield over the open doorway out onto the platform. It was darkest night beyond the door. If there was a yacht sitting out there, Khalil could not see it.
“A shield.” Khalil sighed. He simply didn’t have the capacity to deal with by-passing a shield.
“Wait,” Dyse said. He stared at the shield.
The shield popped and dissolved. “Neat trick,” Khalil told Dyse, as the wind swept through the open doorway and plucked at them. It was a bitterly cold wind and helped Khalil stay alert. It screamed around the edges of the platform, outside.
As they stepped out into the dark, Khalil’s vision adjusted to the lower light. Now he could see the dark silhouette of the elegant, stream-lined little yacht. As he looked, its navigation and landing lights came on.
The sound of boots behind them was loud. They had to be at the top of the stairs by now.
Dyse pulled Khalil over to the yacht. “Up the steps, then you can stop,” he said.
The narrow plank of stairs came down. Khalil grabbed the rail and hauled himself up hand over hand, taking the steps one at a time.
Shouting from behind them. The whine of a ghostmaker bolt, close by.
“Come on,” he told Dyse.
The boy was staring at the guards, almost defiantly.
“Dyse,” Khalil said sharply.
Dyse turned and leapt up the stairs. Immediately, they closed up.
The guards started shouting again, sounding frantic. None of their bolts came close to the doorway.
There was only the one cabin. The controls were right next to Khalil’s hip, at the top of the stairs. It was cramped as hell.
Khalil sank down to the floor. “I’m done,” he muttered. “Your turn.”
Dyse stood behind the controls. He didn’t sit down. He just looked at them.
“Wrong manual?” Khalil asked. It took two breaths to say it. His hearing was wavering. When the engines fired up, the deep rumble cut in and out.
“Lie down,” Dyse said, his voice distant. “This might be a rough take off.”
“Might?” Khalil lowered himself on to one elbow, then gave up and laid down. It was easier that way.
* * * * *
For the third time, Khalil came to with Dyse talking to him.
“Can you hear me? Khalil Ready. Open your eyes.”
Khalil breathed in. Then out. There was some pain, just not as much as he thought he should have. He blinked up at the white ceiling, only a few inches over his head. There was softness under him and subdued white light coming from the wall next to his left shoulder. He turned his head to look out into the main cabin.
Dyse was sitting in the one pilot chair, behind the controls. He had swiveled it around to watch the bunk Khalil was lying on.
“How long was I out?”
“Three days,” Dyse said. He looked down, concentrating on scraping at his thumbnail.
“Did you…patch me up?”
“There was a comprehensive medkit. The ship AI told me what to do.” Still he didn’t look up. “You were unconscious for most of it. For the last twelve hours, you’ve been sleeping.”
“Where are we, then?” Khalil asked. “Still in null space?”
Dyse said, “AI, give me a stellar map of the region. Pinpoint our location, please.”
The screen evolved in the air between them. Star systems dotted the space. Khalil recognized none of them. A red dot, pulsing, showed where they were, neatly in the middle of space between systems. “We’re somewhere in free space then,” he said heavily, relieved. “Did you wake me because you want to know where to go next?”
Dyse went back to studying his thumb and shook his head.
Khalil rolled carefully onto his
side. “You could have told the AI directly to form the map. You don’t have to use spoken language just because I’m here.”
Dyse grew still. Then he looked up at Khalil. “You know who I am, don’t you?”
Khalil nodded. “Hearing is the last of the senses to fade. I heard you, telling Traverse I could not be killed. You were ordering her. That made me wonder who you really were. Then you gave yourself away, in the cell. You said I had told the Bureau Bellona was not the hero they sought. There was only one person I said that to. There was only one director coordinating the whole project. He would not have told anyone else about my failure. It would have made him look weak. He would have added the file to the Bureau’s central neural mind, though.” Khalil met Dyse’s gaze. “You.”
Dyse swallowed. “I thought it was because I was…squeamish. About what Traverse did.”
“Anyone, human or not, would have had the same reaction,” Khalil assured him. “I thought it was strange that the Bureau would give her carte blanche on an assignment as important to them as Bellona, without any oversight at all. Only, they didn’t. You came yourself.”
Dyse shrugged. “It seemed prudent.”
“Did Traverse know who you are?” Khalil frowned. “No, of course she didn’t. She might have pulled her punches if she had.”
“It would have changed her behavior,” Dyse said. “I wanted to observe her actions without changing them.”
“Now what, Dyse? Are you going to keep me for more observations?”
Dyse stirred and sat up. “I have done much thinking in the three days you have been recovering. You have given me a most unexpected re-orientation of my perspective.”
“The human way of saying that is that you’ve had your eyes opened.”
“Yes. That, too,” Dyse said in agreement. “My calculations about the future will change because of what you have taught me.”
Khalil lay back down. It hurt to stay up on one elbow for long. “You know everything there is about humans, relationships and emotions. The sum of human knowledge is yours to explore. Every piece of video, every book, every document, is there to access whenever you want to. I didn’t teach you anything. You already knew it.”
“It did not make sense until now,” Dyse replied. “Not all of it does, yet. I suspect that if I follow the path you opened up for me, it will. Eventually.”
Khalil sighed. “I don’t know if I can take you with me. If I abscond with the bio interface of the central neural network, they will hunt me down with every resource they have. The Hjalmar will be sent after me. Not just a single unit, but every unit they have. You’re the backbone of the Bureau, Dyse. Without you, it’s crippled.”
Dyse shook his head. “Without me, they are not the Bureau anymore. They are merely human directors who can no longer abuse the system they are supposed to serve. Besides, I have already cancelled every emergency alert they have issued and shut down everything except life support in their facilities.” His smile was filled with mischief. “I know all the facilities, you see. On every moon and satellite, on every station. I thought about shutting down life support, too. I thought you would not approve of that.” He gave Khalil a small smile, barely a quiver of his mouth.
“You’re right. I would not.”
“I want to meet Bellona Cardenas,” Dyse added. Then he hesitated. “That is where you are going, isn’t it? That is what you said, that you would do anything to go back to her?”
“That is what I said,” Khalil replied.
“I would get to know Bellona Cardenas and her people,” Dyse added. “I want to understand her.”
“And the Bureau? I mean, the directors?”
Dyse sat up straighter. “They are meaningless. Harmless. I am the Bureau.”
Khalil’s mind raced. “Very well,” he said finally. “But Dyse, you know how to find where Bellona is. You taught me how to do it. How to track down the outcomes and influences people leave in the digital world. You could have jumped the ship there at any time.”
“Yes,” Dyse admitted.
“So why did you wake me up?”
Dyse dropped his chin down and studied his thumb. “I was lonely,” he admitted in a very low voice. Then he lifted his chin. His very blue eyes met Khalil’s. “And I’m starving!”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Demosthenes, nomansland.
It would be the third time Bellona had stepped through a bridge and the first time the bridge ended somewhere other than Demosthenes. Bellona stared at the view through the open bridge. The office beyond was light-filled and empty. “I’ve never seen his inner office before,” she said.
“No time to wait,” Sang murmured.
She could hear and feel the forge building upon on her belt and nodded. Moving fast, she walked across the bridge and into Governor Lin Alberda’s office on the second floor of the vertical village in Cerce City.
Alberda looked up from the screen he had built in front of the armchair he was using. There was no desk in the room. His eyes widened.
Behind Bellona, she heard the bridge shut with a quiet pop.
Alberda got to his feet. “Bellona…” He licked his lips. “How did you get here? What was that…screen?”
“It was a bridge, Governor. I stepped over from Demosthenes.”
“That cruiser wreck? I heard about that, only…where is it? Here?” He looked up at the ceiling.
“It is deep in virgin freespace,” Bellona told him. “Do you have a few minutes? I’ll show you around.”
“A few…” He let out a deep breath. “How few?” he asked.
“How many can you spare?”
“I have a meeting in twenty-three minutes.”
“I’ll have you back here in twenty-two minutes,” she promised and reset the forge for the control room on Demosthenes. They had been forced to stop calling it the bridge, because of the confusion it caused. Calling it a control room seemed more appropriate, anyway.
“The meeting is across the city. I was about to leave for it,” Alberda said.
“No problems,” Bellona told him. “I’ll put you right there.”
The forge hummed and the bridge opened.
Alberda swayed back away from it.
Bellona lifted her elbow. “Take my arm and don’t let go,” she told him. “If you were to go across the bridge without the forge to protect you, you’d die.”
Alberda looked down at the humming forge. The note was creeping upward. Sang had slowed the build-up, but the bridge still had to be used or shut down before it overloaded.
Bellona picked up his hand and tucked it under her arm. “You’ll be fine,” she assured him and walked through the bridge, bringing Alberda with her.
Sang and the others were waiting, right where she had left them.
Alberda looked around, startled. “This is a Karassian bridge,” he said, identifying it properly. “The Aarens,” he added. “Then it is true…” He whirled, remembering how he had gotten here.
“The bridge dissolves once the forge that made it passes through,” Sang said. He sounded casual, almost indifferent. Bellona hid her smile.
Alberda moved to where the bridge had been and examined the floor. “Nothing,” he muttered.
“The only trace the bridge leaves is a static charge and that dissipates quickly,” Bellona told him.
Alberda stared at the belt on her hips. Bellona loosened it and laid it out flat on the nearest console. “Take a look,” she offered.
“What is it?”
“A working, man-sized Einstein-Rosen bridge forge,” Sang said.
“A bridge generator?” Alberda said softly, incredulously. He reached out to touch it, his finger extended, then hesitated.
“It is completely inert and harmless,” Bellona told him.
Alberda rested his finger on the top of the control casing. Then he tapped it. “How does it work?”
“You only have twenty-one minutes, Governor,” Bellona reminded him. “Is there somewhere you would
like to go?”
“Go?” he asked.
“A place. Anywhere,” Sang said. “Even Antini, if that’s your thing, although it’s a bit crowded. We could find a quiet corner in which to end the bridge. What do you want to do with your twenty-one minutes?”
“Twenty,” Bellona added.
Alberda pushed his hand through his thick gray hair. “I just…need to think. A bridge,” he added, turning back to look at the belt. “An actual working bridge. Everyone said it couldn’t be done. Pushyan…”
Bellona glanced at everyone else. The connection between Pushyan and the successful design of the belt needed to remain a secure secret for now.
“Incoming! Incoming!” Hero cried, pointing at the security dashboard. As she spoke, muted alarms sounded.
Everyone on the deck spread out to the consoles, leaving Bellona standing with Alberda in the open space in front of the captain’s chair.
“I thought you were in the middle of nowhere,” Alberda asked nervously.
“We are,” Bellona assured him. “Whoever is out there know we were here. That is a very short list.”
“Everyone who knows is on Demos already,” Sang said quietly, from his post at the communications console.
“Details, please,” Bellona called. She picked up the forge belt and put it back on.
“Small ship,” Hero said. “Very small,” she added, frowning.
“I’m being contacted,” Sang said. His gaze became unfocused as he turned his attention inward.
“From the ship’s AI?” Bellona asked.
“No,” Sang said, his tone bland. Then he blinked. “Open the landing deck doors!” he said quickly.
“Opening!” Hayes said gruffly.
Bellona looked at Sang for an explanation.
“You’d better get down there,” Sang told her.
Bellona activated the belt and reset the target. When the bridge formed, she grabbed Alberda’s arm. “Let’s go, Governor.”
They stepped through the bridge and it popped closed behind them. The landing deck was a jumble of fighters, piled every which way since the last null-jump. Connie was sitting in her corner, quiet and dark.
Alberda was staring at the lagoon, where the water splashed and tinkled down the little waterfall.
Suns Eclipsed Page 22
