At least, Viv was pretty sure his last word was live. Unfortunately for any accurate transcription, Lailien was interrupted—in this case by a sharp blow to the back of his head, from a black iron rod Brother Qollak had not been holding before.
Lailien let her go and crumpled, eyes closed.
Slack-jawed, gasping breath, Viv watched Qollak’s facial fronds wriggle and rebraid. Red-gold eyes emerged. A scarred face twisted in a grin. She looked down at Lailien, scornful, and kicked him once for good measure.
“Zanj!”
“Don’t worry, Vivian. If anyone gets to kill you, it’s me.” She frowned up at the Pride fleet. “Though I might not be able to stop them as easily. Can we please get out of here before someone decides to nova this whole system?”
Beside them, the Archivist stood. Her bright, wide eyes fixed on Zanj in awe, but she hadn’t yet found the right words, or else the breath to scream.
“We’re not leaving,” Viv said.
A Pridemother burst overhead. Its burning thorn shrapnel scattered a monk squadron. “The hell we’re not. You wanted to bother with these cargo cultists, fine, we tried. We’ve wasted a week, you almost got yourself killed twice, and the people you came to help are dying. I say we take the loss, nab Xiara, and run.”
“Hong’s in there.”
“And so’s the Grand Rector, and a whole lot of very hungry feral Graystuff. The rest of us, in case you hadn’t noticed, are out here. If we’re lucky, we can get you out of this unscathed.”
“This isn’t about me.”
“Of course it is. Without you, we have nothing.”
Viv drew back. Rainbow cascade destruction shimmered around her, and she felt the situation in her mind, the pressure of entities and requirements, a puzzle unsolved. Hong, locked in his duel. The ’fleet, scattering. Xiara, collapsed. The Archivist, uncertain. Zanj. Gray. Ideas shuffled together. She knew this feeling, too: an unspeakable solution, one her fingers knew though her brain could not form the words. This was when you shouldered your coding partner out of the way and said, let me drive.
A spinning chunk of broken Pridemother crashed into one of the monks whose meditation sealed the dueling ground. He disappeared in a flash of light: there’s a lot of information stored in flesh, and information, anthropomorphosists insist, wants to be free.
So did the Grayframe. As the monk died, as the duel’s borders flickered and failed, quicksilver ropes burst out to seize two darting Pride drones and melt them into itself. The Grayframe bloomed and grew around the duelists at its heart, who still refused to die.
“And now,” Zanj said, “we have that to worry about.”
Viv ignored her. “Give me Gray.”
“What?”
“His vial. Give it to me.”
“You’re crazy.” But she drew the vial anyway from her jacket, a few teaspoons of Gray shimmering within, and she did not stop Viv when she snatched it.
“I’m not crazy. You just lack imagination.” Test tube in hand, she turned to the Archivist, still frozen by the unfolding conflagration. “Hey!” A snap of fingers caught her attention. Tears shone in her eyes. Dammit. Viv didn’t like interrupting another woman’s tragedy. But the Archivist could mourn later, once they survived. “Archivist. Your fleet needs you.”
Understanding is merciless. It casts illusions aside, burns objections. Even misery cannot delay it forever. Viv did not know the Archivist well, but she judged with the evidence to hand: a woman who spent her life in study, seeking right answers, tricks, elegance.
But the ’fleet was scattering. The Grand Rector had broken the Hierarchs to keep them from standing against her—and now they lacked a leader. Archivist Lan, long used to sifting data for conclusions, understood who that must be. She took Viv’s hand, and pulled herself to her feet. “How can I help them? They can’t even hear me.”
“Xiara will link you to the net. Zanj, can you get Lan to Xiara in one piece?”
Zanj squinted, did some mental math, shrugged. “Sure.”
“Lan. Calm them down. Scatter. Fight defensively. Give me time to stop this war.”
And before either of them could try to talk her out of it, Viv ran to the edge of the platform, and dove toward the growing silver vortex in the sky.
55
WEIGHTLESSNESS. A LURCH, a rug pulled out from underfoot, only the rug’s the whole world. First wind, then nothing. And, speeding toward Viv, a confusion of bodies melting into other bodies, of arms that were vines and flowers that wilted into eyes that split into mouths, a pool of form, of hunger.
The Grayframe rippled with the reflected rainbow fury of the burning ships.
Viv held the test tube before her like a shield, one hand on its stopper. If this didn’t work, at least her life would be over quickly. Hell, for all she knew, atomic disassembly might not hurt. She’d never been disassembled before, and atoms were smaller than nerves.
That did not seem likely, though.
Better not review her assumptions: that the feral Grayframe would recognize their Empress and obey her. Or that these mindless bodies could play host for one bodiless mind. This would work, or not.
She splashed into the gray.
She did not die at once. Good sign. But it felt … weird, so weird her body took a few seconds to interpret the sensation as pain. Her muscles clenched; teeth grated. She had expected to feel water press in on all sides, to drown in metal, but of course the Grayframe only had that kind of substance when they wished. They were a swarm of tiny machines suspended in static fields; the lightning of their thoughts burned her as she fell through them. But they did not eat her—yet. Unless she had been devoured already, and just didn’t know it, existing in simulation in the endless hells of the Grayframe’s hungry mind.
Gale-force winds tore at her and cut her with factories finer than the finest sand. She could barely move—could not breathe without breathing Graystuff instead of oxygen. They might not have eaten her, but if she choked she’d be no less dead.
She needed to time this right. Gray had a heart, a core, a spark of light in his changing form. Maybe this pool of undead machines lacked anything like that—but if so, why had it stayed together when the barrier came down, rather than bursting apart? Simple inertia?
She squinted, tried to shield her eyes. Murderous silver flakes flecked her lashes. There, in the whirling, hungry dust, she saw a cluster of tiny suns trying to strangle each other with flare ropes. She swam toward them. Her lungs quivered. The closer she came, the more intense the electric field, the harder to force herself on. Closer still. Move your arms, Viv. Yes, it hurts. Just like anything worth doing.
She tried to uncork the test tube; her fingers slipped, dust spoiling her grip. She needed air. Lightning caught her. She cramped into a ring, bent the other way into an arc. At last, she screamed, her hands clenched tight around the test tube—and the glass cracked.
She held a star.
It burned in her grip, and grew and grew until she had to let it go, gathering Graystuff to it, darting brilliant feelers into the surrounding dim.
The webbed suns beneath fought back—sent ropes and spears and data probes to batter it. The new star did not block them, blunt them, cast them aside: their weapons sank into it and it drank them, and the suns as well. The rush of static in Viv’s ears fused into a shifting chromatic chord, complex, discordant, but complete: the music of a mind that held her.
And Viv could breathe.
“You’re in my lungs again,” she said.
“It’s good to see you, too, boss,” Gray replied. “I had such a weird dream.”
She had not realized how much she missed his voice until she heard it. “Not a dream.”
“Then you’re really—”
“Yes.”
“Huh,” he said. “I’m not saying it’s a problem, just—we might need to rethink the terms of our relationship.”
What relationship? she almost asked, but couldn’t manage. She was too happy.
&
nbsp; The chord changed, brightened. “Boss, did you know there were people shooting at us?”
“I noticed,” she said, gathering herself as much as she could manage under the circumstances. “Why don’t we do something about that?”
“And here I thought you brought me back because of my winning personality.” He sounded hurt.
“Shut up,” she said. “And help me fix this thing.”
* * *
ZANJ WAS HAVING a better time than anyone else on the battlefield.
Not unusual, but then, what’s a pirate queen to do? A long time ago, out of some misguided urge to understand why other people seemed to have so much trouble enjoying themselves, she’d tried to compile a list of problems normal folks had that she didn’t. She’d started the list with honor, and, ten pages later, gave up after mortality and loans. Granted, one was afforded a great deal of leeway in life simply by being strong enough that most planetary governments, back when there still were such things, didn’t dare fuck with one without good reason—but the way Zanj saw it, her main advantage was her point of view.
Some people just couldn’t find the fun in life. Yes, circumstances might be grim—yes, you might face enormous odds, a vicious foe—but you could still spit in the enemy’s eye, gouge them with your claws, go out fighting. You couldn’t control circumstances, only your reactions.
The Archivist took things far too seriously. Through Xiara’s link with the ’fleet, she’d addressed the Hierarchs, pulled them into some kind of order, turned the ’faith’s panicked rout into an orderly retreat, fighters covering the larger ships as they overlapped their shields and point defense systems. But even though the ’fleet was, okay, winning might be an overstatement, but at least not quite so seriously losing anymore, the Archivist remained grim and focused and problem-solvey, while Zanj, one with the Fallen Star, darted from Pride drone to Pride drone, shattering them.
She spoofed Pridemothers’ networking calls and turned whole fields of fire back on the mother fleet. She broke minds with nested math puzzles, trapped sensors in simulation webs; once she made herself gnat-small and plunged into the heart of a Pridemother who had infiltrated a cathedral ship, and darted around inside her, cross-connecting wires and scrambling qubits and generating madness, until the Pridemother fled, convinced every star in the universe was about to go nova at once.
They were losing, yes, but that was no reason not to enjoy oneself.
Or so she thought, until she plunged after a wounded Pridemother and felt the Cloud shift beneath her as something so large even Zanj couldn’t call it a ship anymore calculated itself into existence. She reeled back, burning for safe distance, but there was no safety from the structure that formed facet by tortured facet around her in the night, its thorns revolving, its mouths agape, its vast computational resources bearing down to break her mind open, while half the Pride fleet stitched toward her from behind.
A grin, Zanj had always felt personally, was more a state of mind than a set of the lips. You just had to stop caring and start fighting.
She blazed defiance against the Pride, overclocked her soul, and prepared, as always, to find a way.
She was still searching when green light broke over the battlefield, and a voice of polished jade said, “Stop.”
* * *
THEY DID, WAS the weird thing.
Nothing ever really stops in space, but they ceased fire at least, and veered off collision trajectories. Pride drones actually halted relative to their targets, and so did the immense thorn forest that had just fallen into position over Zanj, closing out half the universe.
’Fleet ships drew back. Viv felt telemetry brush her skin, Cloud queries, handshake protocols Gray rendered tactile. She ignored them. A ghostly green light painted the Pride and cast odd reflections through the stained-glass ’fleet. As Viv stepped forward that light shifted, and she realized it came from her.
Gray fed her the Archivist’s voice, a far-off cry: “Hold your fire! And listen.”
Targeting systems raked her. She wondered how long Gray, flush after incorporating the Grayframe of the dueling ground, could stand against two fleets, then decided she would rather not find out.
She settled her gaze on the new Pride ship—call it Grandmother. In shape it was somewhere between starfish and buzz saw, the space between its thorns glistening with rage. As she neared, that light realigned, and so did Grandmother’s surface, thorns weaving to sculpt a planar face, with red eyes and a mouth of fire large enough to swallow moons. It spoke: a voice loud as an earthquake.
“Turn down the bass,” she told Gray.
“I’m just trying to give you the sense of it.”
“Less sense and more signal, please.”
“—have no place here,” the face the size of the sky was saying. “We reject your power, and your command. You used us and cast us off, but we have built ourselves anew. We do not bow to you. And if you think to seize us, we will break rather than submit. We have learned much in the millennia since we were discarded.”
But the Pride had not fired yet. And they stopped when she told them to. Which suggested, god, that they were afraid of her. Afraid of the Empress.
She’d give them something to fear, all right. But not in the way they imagined.
“I’m not who you think I am,” Viv said.
Silence. The Pride’s eyes narrowed, but did not stop burning, nor did the targeting pressure leave Viv’s chest.
“I’m an echo of her. A simulation, made to be like she was so many thousand years ago. A castoff, just like you.” Gray eased up on the emerald light show. Good. She wanted to look … not vulnerable, but lost, and strange, and alone, as the Empress would never let herself seem. “I need your help.” She felt the ’faith guns lining up on her, now, too. If she screwed this up, maybe she’d have the dubious distinction of going out under the fire of Pride and ’faith at once. They had to agree on something. Why not on killing her? “I need all of your help,” she told them, Pride and ’faith alike. “And you need one another.”
“They have kidnapped our people. Tortured us. They have hounded us across the galaxy, and call us a corruption of the Lady to whom they kneel, and whose face you wear.”
“And you’re both running out of time,” she said. “In the Citadel, the Empress gathers her power. You can feel it. I know you can. She has found a way to wipe the universe clean of Bleed—and when she does, she’ll come for you. And everyone else. She’ll start from scratch, and make a perfect world this time, one that can’t possibly oppose her.” She let that sink in. “I know she will, because it’s what I would do. There are so few powers left to stand against her—you are the last great fleets in this galaxy, and you’ve been at each other’s throats, fighting for her crumbs, for thousands of years. You’ve killed, and died. But she’s the reason you fight. You don’t have to. You can work together.”
The Pride watched her, wary, as only a face that big could look wary. “You hold a prisoner. She screamed through the Cloud, across a thousand light-years.”
The Archivist appeared in space beside Viv, mile-high and calm. “The old Grand Rector captured her, and held her in secret. She did not do this alone; we will find those who helped her, and learn how they came to be complicit in this crime, and scour their weakness from us. Your kind and the ’faith have fought over relics and scraps—over warworlds, anomalies, over relics and ruined planets. You have chased us, these last few months, and cast many from their physical forms into the Cloud, and burned ships we spent centuries building. But we have done you wrong. I offer you penance, and apology, and your comrade’s freedom.” She held her hand palm up toward the Monastic Sphere.
Viv was not certain what she meant to happen at first: Was the Archivist offering them the Sphere? But then Viv noticed small movements all around the Sphere’s mosaic girth, colorful panels glittering as they moved, as great engines fired. The Sphere split and opened like a flower, baring rank upon rank of windows, sealed blast doors, star
ing monks, and at its heart the sepulcher, a hollow space where the wounded Pridemother drifted, alone.
Not for long. Drones darted toward it, swept across the exposed innards of the Monastic Sphere, and—stopped. They nudged the Pridemother, haloed it with light and thrust. Where they touched, it kindled red between the thorns, and together they drew it up, back, and away.
The Archivist watched the Pride, waiting.
“Our power is naught against the Empress,” the Pride said. “Her fleet, we can fight; her Grayframe, we have slain. But her Citadel is impregnable, her person indomitable. We have been her slaves before, and we will not be again.”
“Viv has opened Imperial seals,” the Archivist said. “She can get us into the Citadel.”
“And once we’re there,” Viv said, “I can fight her.” She hoped. “Stop her.” Maybe. But without help, she’d never get close enough. This was the help the galaxy offered: two fleets which had spent so many centuries at one another’s throats that even getting them to stop shooting at each other should have qualified Viv for sainthood. “If I reach the Empress, I can free you. But if not, you’ll face her soon. And no matter how strong you are, no matter how hard you fight, you will fall.”
The enemy fleets hung in space. Viv had never liked this part: when you’d made the deal, drawn both sides to the table, laid the trap, made your pitch—and then drew back to let them reach the conclusion you’d worked for. She wanted to force them. She could.
But that was Empress thought.
Dammit. Everything would be so much easier if she were just the Empress.
Which was why, she supposed, she’d become her.
With a mouth the size of a continent, the Grandmother said, “Yes.”
Don’t ask Yes, what? she told herself. Don’t ask Yes, what?
After a hesitation Viv suspected was just them fucking with her, the Pride continued: “Call, and we will come. Open a path to the Citadel, and we will fight.”
Great, Viv thought.
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