Chaos Vector

by Megan E O'Keefe

  Dios, she sounded like one of the conspiracy theorists. But the spitballers on the net weren’t standing in a ship built of nanofilaments that was, despite all probability, producing artificial gravity.

  The hull split, letting in a gust of stale, over-recycled air. Sanda suppressed a cough. They wore helmets for comms, but kept their visors open. She’d ordered Liao to stand at her right, keeping Conway and Nox well behind them as a sign of peace, but she hadn’t relinquished the blaster at her hip. She’d been surprised one too many times to be caught without a weapon.

  “Doctor,” she said. “Thank you for hearing us out.”

  Yaxia looked even more exhausted in person. Their collarbone pushed against the thin fabric of their jacket, the hollow of their throat too deep, eyes too bloodshot. This wasn’t just exhaustion. The settlement had put themselves on sharp rations until they could discern who it was safe to trade with. These people were starving out of fear.

  “You gave us little choice,” they said. “What, exactly, do you need, Min?”

  “We have a set of data fragments that we believe direct the construction of nanites capable of resembling biological cells. The data stack is broken, but massive nonetheless. We need simulation software, and we need it sandboxed.”

  They sniffed. “We have the sandbox, and simulating nanites is what we do, but we don’t have the processing power. It will take days, at the least, to assemble a schematic of the size you’re suggesting.”

  Sanda tipped her head toward The Light. “Our ship will assist you with processing power.”

  Yaxia’s eyes narrowed. “And how can I trust the security of your system?”

  Arden wiggled to the front of the pack. “I’ll explain the handshake protocol and establish the parameters. You, uh, have a network person?”

  Yaxia closed their eyes briefly. “We did. She’s dead. Jesson has taken over most of those procedures.”

  “Great,” Arden said, trying on a smile that melted off under Yaxia’s slow stare. “I’ll, uh… talk to him and get on that.”

  “He is also our head of security at the moment,” they said with a slight tinge of embarrassment. Stretching one person so thin between roles was a better sign of their numbers lost than the actual head count.

  “No problem,” Nox drawled before Arden could stick their foot in their mouth again. “You all go do your science thing, and I’ll have a talk with Jesson. Arden, you can have him when we’re done.”

  A fringer had approached The Light, a lanky man who pressed a HUD monocle to his eye as he pressed one hand against the side of the ship. Sanda bristled.

  “Please ask Bero’s permission before touching him,” she said firmly.

  The man jumped, pulling his hand back, and flushed scarlet. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think.”

  “Your behavior is understandable, if not acceptable,” Bero said dryly.

  The fringers looked up, eyes wide, trying to take in the whole of The Light, but as Sanda well knew, the ship was impossible to comprehend as a whole. Somehow, it took up more space than its actual size allowed for.

  “Bero may be temporarily inhabiting The Light, but that does not make it any less his body. Just as my prosthetic is no less my leg because it is replaceable. Speak to him as a person, or we’re done here.”

  Yaxia inclined their head. “I will spread the word. Bero, thank you for lending us your processing power.”

  “It is not a favor, it is an exchange.”

  “As you say. Let’s get this trade over with.”

  Yaxia waved for them to follow while a man who must be Jesson caught Nox’s attention. They led their small party—Arden, Sanda, and Liao—through half-rusted tunnels, the stink of human sweat and dirt and stale air growing thicker the deeper they ventured. Scorch marks marred the tunnels here and there, concentrated around tight corners. Stains that were not rust blotched the floor. With every step they took, Arden’s expression grew darker.

  Liao clasped her hands together and kept her head down. Sanda understood. To be afflicted by a headache now, when she needed to focus, would only hold her back.

  The lab was as busted up as the rest of the facility, but the computational consoles themselves seemed functional. Sanda, knowing she was all but useless here, stepped to the side and let Arden and Liao fuss over the connection and upload of data.

  On her wristpad, she tapped out to Bero: Are they treating you well?

  B: As well as a mouse treats a cat.

  S: I’m sorry, I frightened them.

  B: It wasn’t you. It’s my body. It’s always been my body.

  She closed her eyes and sighed, an ache in her head that had nothing to do with false memories. She was about to reply when Yaxia stepped next to her.

  They whispered, “Is Min well?”

  “I don’t know,” Sanda said honestly. “The rollback is painful, that I can guarantee, but whether there are any long-term effects… I haven’t lived long enough to find that out.”

  “You say that as if you don’t expect to live long enough to find out.”

  Her smile was genuine, if small. “These days, Doctor, I feel I never know where the next shot is coming from.”

  “And yet you abandoned your post.”

  She lifted her chin. “I’ll be straight with you. Some of the biggest assholes in the universe want their hands on this tech, and they’re willing to kill to get it. This, right here, is the best thing I can do to protect the people of Prime.”

  Yaxia sighed and looked around their blaster-scarred lab. “I thought the same thing.”

  “Xia,” Liao said. “Can you come look at this? I think I know what this is, but… it’s your specialty.”

  “That was fast,” Yaxia said.

  Sanda shrugged. “We have yet to scrape the surface of Bero’s new capabilities.”

  Yaxia approached the console warily and held a HUD monocle over one eye, face scrunching as they observed the scant models their system drew from the fragmented data. “This is incomplete,” they said, “but these appear to be synthetic structures meant to imitate biology.”

  “Not that part,” Liao said, “this here. There are two types of nanites in this set of data.”

  Yaxia’s nose scrunched. “That’s your area, Min. They look like receivers to me, about the same size. I suppose they’re meant to be used in unison. Build a synth cell structure, then seed it with receivers to take commands and distribute them to the cells. An interesting approach. Not something we’re working on.”

  Liao began to sweat, her face pale as a sheet. “Amplifiers. Rainier had us working on amplifiers.”

  “What?” Yaxia tilted their head. “I suppose you would need quite a strong signal if these systems were far apart, but what in Earth’s name are they for? I can’t see any mechanism of action.”

  “Lavaux,” Sanda said with a sick feeling. “He was… made up of these cells. We think Jules has been changed as well.”

  Yaxia’s head jerked back. “People? Hmm, well, I suppose it’s theoretically possible. I’d have to see the rest of the data to be sure. On the surface the benefits would be incredible. You could self-repair. Functionally you’d be immortal. But with this receiver component, you’d be a puppet.”

  “Who knows how many people she’s changed,” Sanda said, feeling sick.

  CHAPTER 75

  PRIME STANDARD YEAR 3543

  TIME TO BE THE BAD GUY

  Sanda,” Bero said through the speaker in her wristpad. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’ve detected a GC ship without transponder incoming.” She should have felt dread, but Sanda snapped into alert mode instantly, hand resting on her blaster.

  “Yaxia, I’m so sorry, but we need to get your people off of this asteroid right fucking now.”

  “What?” Yaxia stood tall. “That wasn’t a part of our deal, Commander. You have no authority on this station, and even if you did, you couldn’t force us to leave.”

  “I don’t have time to fuck around here. Your
people are starving—don’t try to deny it—and frankly, if Rainier has decided she wants a large population to test her experiments on, you’re it. You’ve cut yourself off—because of her, yes—but she knows this. You need to get out of here. You cannot survive another GC attack, and none of us want to see what happens if they’re not here to kill.”

  “And where in the void will we go?” Yaxia threw their hands up. “We’ve known it was only a matter of time since the guardcore took Liao. This has been an endless debate among us without you butting in with your damn hero complex. There is nowhere that will take us. The other fringer colonies think we’re poisoned goods. To them, we’re already dead and it’s just a matter of time. This settlement is all we have.”

  “Monte Station,” Sanda said. “The people there were also attacked by the false GC. They fucking hate me, and I don’t blame them, but they can’t turn away refugees from a similar assault.”

  “I believe I can shoot the GC ship down,” Bero said.

  “No. I’d love to blow her out of the black, but we don’t know how big her network is, and we can’t afford for her to know that you’re in that ship, B.” She switched her comm to open channel. “Enemy GC incoming. Evacuate all souls to The Light and prepare for transfer to Monte Station.”

  Chaos broke out across the line. Sanda winced and muted everyone except her crew.

  Yaxia’s fists were clenched, their body trembling. “You don’t order my people.”

  “I do now.”

  Yaxia reached for their own comms unit. Liao grabbed their wrist. “She’s right, Xia. I’m sorry but it’s true. I was on Monte during the attack. I was on Janus. Rainier will burn worlds to get what she wants. If she’s coming here, it’s to finish what she started or to get test subjects for her experiments. You have to get on that ship. We have to get on that ship.”

  “Or she’s chasing your new friends,” Yaxia grated.

  Liao said, “Either way, it’s too late.”

  Yaxia met Liao’s eyes and nodded. Liao took her hand back, and Yaxia pressed their comm firmly. “Abandon station. Evacuation protocols. The crew of The Light will direct you.”

  “Thank you,” Sanda said. To her crew, “Load out in fifteen, stealth and burn for Monte.”

  Nox requested a private channel; she accepted. “She’ll chase us there. It’s the only logical place for us to run.”

  “No. She won’t. Because I’m going to give her what she wants.”

  “We don’t even know what she wants,” Nox protested.

  “She and Keeper Lavaux wanted what was behind that deadgate. That’s the sphere.” Sanda closed her eyes. “When Rainier comes, I’ll be here, and I’ll tell her Demas ran off with it. Let those two butt heads for a while.”

  “You will do no such goddamn thing,” Nox said. “She’ll slaughter you before you can get a word out.”

  “I don’t think so. She was working with Lavaux so long that, whatever she is, she’s picked up human proclivities.” Sanda thought back to that night at her welcome-home party. Her interaction with Rainier had been brief, but in that moment she’d picked up an intense sense of curiosity from the woman. “She’ll want to know what I have to say.”

  Nox switched over to all-crew comms. “Our commander plans to stay behind and have fucking tea with Rainier.”

  Sanda winced as a chaos of voices made her comm squeal. “One at a time,” she snapped.

  A long pause. Arden, standing across from her in the battered lab with a faraway look on their face, asked, “Why?”

  Sanda was vaguely aware of the evacuation going on all around her, Yaxia and their people oblivious to the argument playing out over private comms. Yaxia had been the first person Liao had ushered out of the room to The Light, leaving Arden and Sanda alone. Arden, then, was the only one who could read her expression. She treaded carefully.

  “Two reasons. The first, setting Rainier against Demas and Okonkwo will give us an advantage. Those two fighting might weaken one or the other enough that we can break them.”

  “The second?” Arden asked.

  “What we learned here. There are two sets of nanite construction data. The first makes a nanite that self-replicates synthetic cells that mimic biology. The second is a receiver set, meant to work with the first.” She licked her lips. “Janus was building amplifiers. If Rainier is planning to use those amplifiers on infected people, not the gates, then we have to know. We have to know how many, and what signals exactly she can send. People could be walking around out there as Rainier’s puppets and have no idea. I have a bargaining chip because I know where the sphere is.”

  Arguments broke out across the comm, but this time, Sanda ignored them. She met Arden’s gaze steadily as they thought, head tilted to one side, a dimple between their brows. They straightened as if jolted, then set about doing something with the consoles in the lab—fussing with wires. They said nothing.

  “We can’t take the risk,” Conway was saying over the channel, her voice rising above Nox’s expletives and Knuth and Liao’s bickering.

  “See? Nobody’s on board with this, Commander,” Nox said, and for once he spoke her title without sarcasm. “Get your ass back here. We’re almost fully boarded.”

  “I like the idea of Okonkwo and Rainier tearing into each other, though,” Liao said carefully.

  “Then we’ll leave her a fucking note,” Nox said. “Write it now. We’re boarded. We’re leaving.”

  A text appeared in the corner of her wristpad, from Bero.

  B: I can see what Arden’s doing.

  S: I can’t.

  B: They’re building an EMP. If Rainier is synthetic, it might destroy her and disable the GC armor, paralyzing them.

  S: Not to mention destroy the station and its life support. Yaxia will flip—if something fries permanently, they’ll have nowhere to come back to. The station will die.

  B: This station is already dead. Yaxia has just not accepted the reality yet. I have reviewed the files from your battle with the berserker shields. This seems a tactic you’re familiar with. Possibly where Arden got the idea.

  Sanda flicked her eyes up from the pad and met Arden’s gaze. They nodded solemnly and tapped on their wristpad. A second later, a program packet arrived on hers—the only graphic a big red button wrapped in a bow. She smiled despite the ache clenching her throat, and hit accept.

  Arden clasped her shoulder, not a comforting squeeze, just a firm affirmation, then said over comms, “Calm down, Nox, I got her. We’re coming, we’re coming.”

  “Fucking sanity prevails.”

  Arden smiled, a touch sad, pressed a finger to their lips, then slid out the door and shut it behind them.

  B: Are you sure?

  S: We might never get another chance to find out what she wants.

  B: I agree.

  S: She might have changed thousands already.

  B: I agree.

  S: Stop saying that.

  B: I can agree, but I don’t have to like it.

  S: Get clear. Take them to Monte. Pull the camera feed from my wristpad. When I hit the EMP, come back to get me, Big B.

  B: Always.

  CHAPTER 76

  PRIME STANDARD YEAR 3543

  HEART-TO-HEART WITH THE HEARTLESS

  Sanda waited alone on a derelict station for her enemy to come to her. She’d blocked the entire crew of The Light from her comms out of fear that if she died here, then Rainier could use the connection to reverse-engineer their location. Bero went silent in her text stream, leaving her to think, while he alone held the lifeline thrown out to her—the camera feed pulling steadily—trusting his new body to keep his location safe.

  She almost wanted to see the look on Leon Gutarra’s face when The Light showed up with its sheltered cargo. Almost.

  What she wanted, more than anything in that moment, was to talk to her brother. Her fingers twitched above the message icon. She had no doubt that Rainier could find him wherever he was if she wanted to. Sanda cons
idered sending him something benign, silly. A cat CamCast or something.

  There wasn’t time. Though she couldn’t see anything in this cursed place, on her wristpad she watched the GC ship sink into the crevice in the asteroid that sheltered the settlement, watched as it battered its way past the dock’s flimsy defense protocols and latched itself to the gangway The Light had rested at less than an hour ago.

  Sanda pulled herself up. She made no secret of where she was. Half the station was shut down. The remaining HVAC pointed proverbial arrows to her in the lab. Arden had scrubbed the lab of all data, naturally. Rainier would find nothing here save the words Sanda had to give her. Maybe she’d find Sanda’s blood, too, but that was a risk Sanda had to take to get answers.

  She heard them before she saw them. Heavy boots rumbled like soft, faraway thunder across the rusty halls of the station. She wondered if these were the same soldiers who had laid waste to this place the first time. Wondered if they felt anything when they looked at the scorch marks on the walls and the blood staining the ground. Probably they didn’t see them at all. Once, she had been capable of that same tunnel vision. Not any longer. The door opened.

  “My, my,” Rainier Lavaux said, ducking her head as she entered the lab. She wore a Prime jumpsuit, and her fake GC—twenty that Sanda could see, ten to either side—fanned out behind her in twin, pin-straight lines. “I hadn’t expected a welcome from a war hero.”

  Sanda stood with the console to her back and her blaster in her hand, though she had no intention of making use of it. If it came to that, she’d already lost. Her hip joint ached, but her head was clear.

  “And how much of that did you orchestrate?”

  She clucked her tongue and crossed her arms, slouching. “None. I gave Icarion certain toys. We did not know until much later that they had discovered Kenwick and tried to keep him from us. Idiots. In trying to suss out his secrets, they doomed themselves. Your secrets now, it seems.” Her voice hardened. “Where is it?”

  Sanda grinned with all her teeth. “Truthfully, Rainier, I don’t have it.”