by Claudia Gray
Abel sleeps, too. At first she’s surprised—Abel doesn’t need sleep the same way humans do—but then she does the math. He hasn’t had other crew members to help run the ship in days or weeks, and he spent even more time working in the lab to bring her back to life. He’s had to be on constant lookout for attack by Earth ships or Gillian Shearer’s mechs. He was captured and treated like an experiment in a lab, very nearly getting killed in the process.
Even mechs get tired sometimes, Noemi figures. Maybe that’s another reason I’m not bouncing back yet.
It would’ve been better if they could’ve slept in the same room—maybe even the same bed. Noemi isn’t completely sure if she’s ready to take the huge leap forward of sharing a bed, given what might happen between them. She only knows it would be good to see him. Better to touch him.
As she’s lying under the covers, awake but only barely aware of it, the comms chime with an incoming live transmission. Noemi sits upright and jabs at the nearest panel with her finger. “Patch me through,” she says to the computer.
Abel’s voice through the speaker answers her, “I awakened just in time to hear the chime and have already patched the message through, though not yet begun conversation—”
She manages not to groan in frustration. “Will you just patch us both through?”
Another chime, and then a deep, unfamiliar voice says, “Krall Consortium vessel Maputo to the free ship Persephone. Do you read us?”
“We read you,” Noemi says. Maybe she should let Abel handle this, as the captain, but she was in charge of the negotiations with the Consortium. “Have you been looking for us? If so, why?”
“All Consortium vessels have been on the lookout for you since shortly after the Battle of Genesis,” replies the Maputo. “The alliance between our Consortium and Genesis holds. Your assistance is required for the next and final stage of the Liberty War.”
Hope blossoms in Noemi’s heart. Abel told her once that she had her own version of Directive One: her powerful instinct to protect her homeworld. She hadn’t known she’d ever be able to help Genesis again.
“You have our attention, Maputo,” says Abel. “Please elaborate.”
“The information is coded in-person only,” says the deep voice. Vagabonds distrust digital communications, which can so easily be altered; the most important conversations only take place when both parties are face-to-face. “Can you rendezvous with the Katara on Stronghold?”
Noemi raises her eyebrows, and suspects Abel’s just as surprised as she is. The Katara is the flagship of the Krall Consortium, the personal vessel of Dagmar Krall herself.
“We can,” Noemi says. “When?”
“Twenty-one hours from now,” says the Maputo. “Do not land on Stronghold without first confirming the rendezvous with the Katara in orbit. The situation on the planet is volatile.”
“Understood,” Abel says. “Is there any other critical information?”
“Negative. Maputo out.”
A crackle of static indicates the comm channel to the Maputo has been closed, but the connection between Noemi and Abel is still live. She says, “Do you trust them?”
“On the balance, yes. They’ve taken a side in the Liberty War; their concerns are Genesis’s concerns, for now, and vice versa. The Vagabonds have no reason to turn against Genesis, and every reason to remain allied against Earth.”
“Agreed,” Noemi says. “Just the same, I’m keeping my eye on them.”
“Very wise.”
Everything goes well during their voyage to Stronghold—until they’re both on the bridge, ready to settle the Persephone into orbit. That’s when a red warning light begins to flash on its console. From her position at ops, Noemi brings up the data and frowns. “We’ve got issues with the mag engines.”
Almost instantly, Abel’s at her side, studying the same data. “I’ve put them into overload too often,” he says. “I always allowed for several hours or days of rest before those uses, but still—too many overloads is too much wear.”
“Can we fix this?” Noemi doesn’t want to have to find a new ship. That would be complicated and dangerous, and besides, Persephone is almost like home.
“Yes, it’s fixable,” he says. “However, we’ll need to obtain the necessary parts.”
Sensors indicate that the Katara hasn’t reached Stronghold yet. “I guess we won’t be able to borrow them from the Consortium,” Noemi says.
“Not unless we wait, and I would prefer to begin repairs sooner rather than later.”
“Then ‘sooner’ means we’ve got to land on the planet.”
They share looks of dismay. Whether or not they trust Dagmar Krall, they’d rather wait for her. Breaking the rules of this rendezvous might be enough to scare off the Katara, and ruin any chance Noemi has of helping Genesis again.
But they have no choice. It’s run the risk of being stranded in deep space—or head to Stronghold.
12
THE PERSEPHONE HAS ONLY LANDED ON STRONGHOLD once before. At the time, Noemi had been delirious, suffering in the high fever of the Cobweb virus. Abel, overcome with fear for her, had paid relatively little attention to their surroundings. But one of the advantages of a cybernetic brain is the ability to recall even those things that went unnoticed before. He calls up the memories, scans the images and sounds, and compares them to what they see now.
Noemi’s recall cannot be as detailed. Not only did she have only fallible human memory at the time, but she spent most of their time on the planet too sick to be coherent. Yet he must be underestimating human memory, because she recognizes this as the spaceport they landed at before, and sees all the ways in which it has changed. The contrasts are even sharper to her than they are to him.
“Look at this,” she whispers as they walk through the crowded port. (Her steps are still too slow, slightly halting, as though she’d sprained an ankle recently—an ordinary occurrence, not one anyone will remark on.) The spaceport resembles most architecture on Stronghold: thick, made of stone, Brutalist in its starkness. However, she’s pointing out the graffiti painted and scratched on every pillar, every floor: Our Worlds Belong to Us. Haven for All Humanity. “It’s finally happening! They’re all rising up against Earth.”
“Not all. Your visual sensors should be more acute—can you make that out?” Abel gestures to a distant arch that leads to the outside. The words scrawled there say Genesis Lies.
She brushes one hand over her nearly bare scalp, an uncertain gesture, but she doesn’t flinch. “Sure, not everyone believes in us. But there must be some threat of an uprising. That scene near the Haven Gate? That doesn’t suggest a galaxy at peace.”
He nods, conceding the point. “Several Damocles ships were patrolling a large area of the Kismet system when I came through, and a few scouts were monitoring the area near the minefield. It’s already clear from the Damocles we’ve seen that Earth has greater military reserves than was ever publicly reported. If they haven’t already run into substantive resistance, they expect to, and soon.”
Encouraged, Noemi begins to smile. “There must be graffiti like this on all the colony worlds. The planets are figuring out that they could stand up to Earth together in a way they never could alone. As far as I’m concerned, that’s good news.”
“There’s an ancient Russian proverb,” Abel says. “It goes, ‘Never celebrate the death of the czar.’”
Noemi frowns. “You mean—don’t get excited about one power falling before you know what might replace it.”
“Exactly. No one should take heart when war begins.”
Her grin fades as she takes this in, and for a moment he wishes he hadn’t said it. Maybe he should’ve let her take her happiness where she could. Yet that would be patronizing her—treating her as less than the intelligent, courageous person he knows her to be. As she grapples with this transition, he must not take it easy on her; she’d hate that, and tune him out immediately. He must trust in her as he always has.
> Noemi shrugs, and her voice is hard as she replies, “Maybe the rest of the galaxy can be scared about ‘the start of the war.’ My war began before I was born. I’ve never known anything else.”
“I stand corrected,” Abel says, and leaves it at that.
Stronghold is not a beautiful world. Someday, if terraforming efforts fully take root, it might become warm, green, and welcoming. At present, it is nothing but a flat gray sky stretched over endless black sand. The broad banners that fly from most arches and buildings provide only flickers of color in the vast, stony monotony. Its horizon is dotted with mines, smelting factories, and the like. The industrial smoke this planet produces is deliberately sent into the atmosphere to warm the climate; its sluggish gray swirls drift slowly toward the clouds. Stronghold is Earth’s quarry, its mother lode of every vital metal and mineral. It is the colony world Earth can least afford to lose.
Genesis and Stronghold would make uneasy allies, he thinks. Terraforming through pollutants, deep-earth mining—these are the practices Genesis has forbidden. After Earth’s defeat, wouldn’t they inevitably turn on each other?
The galaxy may find out.
A quick scan at a public kiosk reveals the location of the closest repair depot, which requires only a short trip via public tram. The depot is located at the edge of a mine, which must be why it’s surrounded by and filled with gray-plated Smashers. This is the work their enormous, powerful bodies were built to do. The hulking, humanoid shapes of them form an eerie maze leading to the heart of the depot.
To Abel’s mild surprise, the head of repairs is human: squat and pale-skinned, with a thick shock of gray hair and a name tag that reads HELGA. She appears to supervise a number of Item models, all of whom are tinkering with various machines. She sucks on a mint stick as she scans the dataread they brought, with its diagrams of the Persephone’s damage. “Not pretty,” Helga says. “Why were you two running around like flighted mammals out of the depths of purgatory and burning out your engines like that?”
He tries to think of a valid excuse, but as usual, Noemi is quicker with this sort of thing. “Don’t know if you noticed, but there’s a war brewing. We get away from trouble as fast as we can, and these days? There’s trouble everywhere.”
Helga nods. “Fair enough. Well, we’ve got the parts and can send ’em over to fix you up in a jiffy. Just as soon as you transfer the credits—” She lifts up her own dataread, which displays a figure Abel finds staggering.
“That’s more than four times the usual price,” he says. If Helga thinks he’s too naïve to understand when he’s being swindled, she’ll soon know better.
But her grin is knowing. “Like the lady said—don’t know if you noticed, but there’s a war on. Plus every Vagabond and his great-aunt Mildred is headed to Haven, so they’re all fixing up their ships for the big voyage. Supply shortages plus shipping delays mean higher prices.” Helga sighs heavily. “Listen, kids, I’m making less profit on this work than I did before. Hardly any, to tell you the truth. But we’ve got to stay in business, and I can’t stay in business if nobody can afford repairs, so here I am practically working for free.”
No doubt Helga is exaggerating—but Abel suspects she isn’t exaggerating much. The problems she describes are logical; he ought to have projected this possibility from the start. Worrying about Noemi has left him very little mental energy to consider anything else.
Noemi leans closer to him and murmurs, “Can you pay for this?”
He’s put aside almost all his profits from Vagabonding; with no taste for luxury, he’s kept his money available for emergencies. Yet some emergencies go beyond planning. “Almost, but not quite.”
“So what are we supposed to do?” She puts one hand to her shorn temple.
A loud metallic clatter startles them both. Abel looks over to see that an Item has dropped one of its tools onto the concrete floor. Such a slip is rare for the dexterous Item models. Not unheard of, by any means—but Abel notes it.
“Not again. These damned things have been giving me trouble all week,” Helga mutters.
As the head of repairs bustles over to investigate her malfunctioning mech, Noemi resumes speaking. “The last time we had to earn money was back in the Kismet system, and I doubt Stronghold has a tourism industry to support.”
“The obvious option is of course—”
“Not prostitution,” she insists. Humor glints in her dark eyes. No doubt she remembers Abel’s offer to take up the “oldest profession” in order to earn funds on their very first journey. “Stop kidding around.”
Abel wasn’t joking, but there seems no point to admitting it now. “Our choices are therefore limited. Perhaps we should ask Helga—”
“Vidal of Genesis.”
Startled, Abel turns toward the voice whispering at his shoulder; Noemi moves even faster—equally startling—and seizes the cloaked speaker’s arm. “Who’s looking for her?” she demands.
The tall man in the green cloak pulls back his hood, revealing East Asian heritage and a metallic scrollwork tattoo along one side of his face. “Call me Yeoh.”
“What is your business, Yeoh?” Abel remains careful not to admit that Noemi is “Vidal of Genesis.”
Yeoh says, “You were instructed to wait for a rendezvous with the Katara.”
Noemi visibly relaxes at the mention of Dagmar Krall’s flagship. Abel remains wary, but contact with the Consortium is more likely to help them than hurt them. “Our ship is having engine trouble,” he says. “We’d hoped to obtain repair parts and return to deep space, but we are, as the saying goes, ‘flat broke.’”
Although Yeoh doesn’t reply, the explanation seems to satisfy him. “Lucky for you, the commodore has her own reasons for being planetside. Follow me.”
Noemi smiles brilliantly at Abel as she falls into step behind Yeoh, who’s heading into the bustling crowd near the repair station. He remains at her elbow, ready for any sort of ambush.
Expecting betrayal where there is no motive for betrayal could be considered paranoia, Abel tells himself. Perhaps he’s becoming neurotic. What might Burton Mansfield have made of that?
The cheapest form of insulation on Stronghold must be the soil of the planet itself. That’s Abel’s best theory for why all the planet’s entertainment venues are located underground. Not deep within subterranean caverns, like the entire civilization on Cray—but half-buried, with only long, narrow windows near the ceilings to let in the weak sunlight. The café Yeoh leads them into uses actual wax candles for additional illumination; they burn within lanterns hanging from the ceiling beams or tiny votives atop each table.
At a table in the far corner sits Dagmar Krall. Abel automatically runs a physiognomy scan that confirms it’s really her, but even a human would already know. Krall’s appearance is striking: blond hair that hangs freely, and large, unusually wide-set eyes. Her clothing is more subdued than that of the average colorful Vagabond’s, perhaps as a nod to her authority over the largest private fleet in the galaxy—or to dispel the many rumors that she’s less of a businesswoman, more of a pirate queen.
They last saw Dagmar Krall in the Battle of Genesis, leading the Katara and her entire Consortium against Earth’s fleet. She seems to have moved from defending Genesis to helping that planet take the offensive.
Noemi and Abel take the chairs opposite Krall. Yeoh remains standing two meters away, tacitly guarding them from detection.
Or, Abel thinks, guarding Krall from us. The faint distrust he feels is no doubt mutual.
“A lot of people are wondering where you guys are,” says Krall, by way of hello.
Noemi’s expression darkens. “The Genesis authorities? Are they looking for Abel?”
Krall raises an eyebrow. “Should they be?”
Abel judges it most prudent not to answer this.
But Dagmar Krall doesn’t seem to expect an answer. She continues, “You left some Vagabond crew back on Genesis wondering where their captain went.”
“We had an emergency,” Abel says, leaving it at that. “Besides, I believed Harriet Dixon and Zayan Thakur intended to settle on Genesis permanently.”
“Doesn’t mean they don’t wonder where you are.” Krall’s eyes study Noemi intently. “Nice haircut.”
“Oh. Um, thanks.” Noemi ducks her head. She’s in no hurry to explain what she’s become, at least not to Dagmar Krall, which Abel considers wise. “But we didn’t come here to discuss hairstyles. The message from the Maputo talked about helping Genesis.”
Krall leans forward, lowering her voice. “I assume you both know what I mean by Bellum Sanctum?”
“Of course.” Abel is programmed with a full knowledge of Latin, as well as thirty-one other languages, both living and dead. “The phrase translates as ‘holy war.’”
“It’s more than that,” Noemi interjects. Her excitement is palpable.
“What do you mean?” he asks her.
Eagerly she explains, “We learned about this in tactics training. Genesis always had a kind of masterstroke weapon—one they’d kept in reserve in the early days of the war. But they waited too long to use it. It was an offensive weapon, not defensive. We couldn’t use it until Genesis was in a position of strength, which it hasn’t been for thirty years.”
“What precisely does it do?”
“I never had that kind of security clearance,” Noemi says. “They weren’t giving us details. If we’d known what it was, we might have hesitated in battle. They taught us not to hesitate in war. Hesitation ruins everything.”
“Not everything,” Krall says. “In this case, the Battle of Genesis means your homeworld is back in a position of strength. Some Consortium ships and others from the Vagabond fleet are now acting as Genesis’s operatives in the greater galaxy. And right now, we’re working to get everything ready for Bellum Sanctum to be used at last.”
It strikes Abel that Krall is talking around the particulars of the Bellum Sanctum plan. Possibly this is only discretion in a public location. But he notes this for future consideration.