by Claudia Gray
“I’m setting up regenerative equipment in the Apollo Acestor lab.” He pats her shoulder as the two of them begin walking up the gangway into the ship. “It’s not like we have tons to work with in here, but I think we can at least keep your condition from getting any worse for a while. That buys us some time to figure out what’s really going on.”
They step into the ship, which feels cramped and dark inside. As Noemi’s eyes adjust, she realizes the tiny bay is already almost filled by her freshly repaired starfighter. Two legs stick out from under it, surrounded by tools.
“No offense,” Virginia says, her voice slightly muffled, “but your planet is kind of boring. Gorgeous! But boring. You think I’m going to stay anyplace that doesn’t stock the latest Han Zhi holos? Not likely. So I’m grabbing the first ride off this rock.”
Noemi has to swallow hard before she can answer. “It’s dangerous for you to leave Genesis. On Cray you could be arrested—”
“We’re not headed to Cray.” Virginia skims out from beneath the corsair, lying on her back. The slim hoverboard beneath her causes enough static for a few strands of her hair to float around. “Wait. Are we headed to Cray? Because if so, tell me now. I like to avoid active arrest warrants.”
“You know we’re not headed to Cray,” Noemi says.
“Yeah, I know.” Virginia’s wide grin changes to a scowl. “You’re not going to get mushy about this, are you? Because this isn’t one hundred percent selfless. Genesis really isn’t the best place for me. I might not know where that best place is, exactly, but it’s going to involve way more tech. So I’m only being, like, eighty-nine percent selfless. You should still be in awe of my saintly nature, but—”
Noemi drops to her knees and hugs Virginia. She has to be careful with the hug—it’s difficult for her to judge her strength—but she does her best.
Virginia murmurs, “I tried to save two of my friends and failed. I’m not going to fail anyone else.”
“You’ve never failed me.” Noemi’s throat is tight. “You never would.”
“All right, all right,” Virginia says gruffly as she pushes Noemi back. “But I’ve hit my mush limit for the day.”
A knock on the entry ramp makes them all look around to see someone walking on board. “Captain Baz?” Noemi asks in wonder. “What are you doing here? Just—saying good-bye?” She always liked the captain, but she’d never imagined Baz took such a personal interest in her.
“Actually, I was hoping to have a word with you.” Baz’s dark eyes flicker over to Ephraim, then to Virginia. To her, they’re offworlders—not people she’s ready to trust.
“Uh, sure. Come with me.” Noemi leads Baz into the Apollo Acestor, which lets her take her own look around. There’s not much besides a basic bridge/engine room combo, a tiny mess hall, and crew quarters so tiny they make military bunks look luxurious. The mess seems as good a place as any for a conference.
As they sit at the one table, Baz says intently, “Word has it you’re one of the people who helped obtain the engine for—for Bellum Sanctum.”
“Yep, that’s me,” Noemi says. “Obtainer of the engine for the plan that’s supposed to end the Liberty War for good. And still, the Council’s throwing me off my own planet.”
But Yasmeen Baz doesn’t look like she’s here to share her anger at the injustice. Her expression is unfamiliar, because Noemi’s never seen it on her captain’s face before. It’s fear.
Quietly Noemi says, “Darius Akide attacked Abel because he wanted to use him to close the Gate. I’ve been thinking about it, and if Akide realized Bellum Sanctum was a possibility after the Battle of Genesis, he was still willing to commit murder and close the Gate forever. That suggests Akide didn’t want to use the Bellum Sanctum strategy. So that makes me believe that the strategy is something besides a communications scramble.” She pauses, then adds the fear she’s hardly even dared think inside her own head, much less speak aloud. “That it’s something terrible.”
“You’ve always been sharp, Vidal—I mean, Noemi.” By now Baz’s voice is hardly more than a whisper. “Are you familiar with core disruptor technology?”
Noemi blinks. “I think so. But that’s not weaponry, is it? It’s a machine that digs deeply into a space object and then explodes it completely. That’s how miners blow up larger asteroids, to get at the ores inside.”
“Most of the time, yes.” Baz fiddles with the loose edge of her headscarf, betraying her nervousness. “Once, however, Earth tried to use a core disruptor as a weapon. Despite heavy resistance from our troops, they were able to place an unprecedentedly large disruptor deep within a cave on our moon Bodhi. The goal was to destroy it.”
“Wait. Earth was going to blow up a moon?” The repercussions are as obvious as they are horrifying. “How much of that debris would’ve rained down on us from outer space? People would’ve been killed! The climate would’ve been—”
“Substantially altered for a generation or two,” Baz says, nodding. “Which Earth preferred to avoid—they’ve always wanted to start moving people onto Genesis immediately. But this was their last-ditch weapon. If they’d used it, the population on Genesis would have been reduced to a fraction of its former self, unable to fight back. Our environment would’ve healed within fifty to seventy-five years—in time for Earth’s population to finally claim it as their own. When the tide of battle turned, and we were able to push Earth mostly out of our system—that’s when they tried to use the core disruptor.”
After Earth’s use of biological warfare, Noemi had thought nothing that world could do would ever again shock her with its evil. She was wrong. “But Earth’s plan failed. The core disruptor didn’t destroy Bodhi.”
“No,” Baz says. “A Genesis team was able to deactivate it in time. The disruptor remained deep within the cave on Bodhi, still intact. It only lacked power. This engine, the one brought to us from the Kismet system—it’s more than strong enough to power the disruptor again.”
No. It can’t be. Noemi rises to her feet and backs away from Baz, as though the distance would somehow get her farther away from this terrible truth. “You mean—” Her mouth is dry, and she has to swallow before she can finish speaking. “Genesis intends to use the core disruptor against Earth’s moon?” But that’s one of the largest moons in any solar system—it plays a huge role in Earth’s weather—its destruction would be even more terrible for Earth than Bodhi’s would’ve been for Genesis—
“They don’t plan to use it against Earth’s moon,” Baz says. “The Bellum Sanctum strategy would use the disruptor against Earth itself.”
The leadership of Genesis means to destroy Earth.
Noemi slumps against the wall. Tears well in Baz’s eyes. This is a horror too great for any words. It is a sin beyond redemption—Second Catholic catechism would say such a thing is impossible, but Noemi now believes that part of the catechism is wrong. No god in any theology would forgive this depth of evil.
And I gave them the engine to do it, she thinks, sickened to the point of dizziness. Abel and I risked our lives for this. For the murder of billions of people. For the destruction of everything beautiful that humanity has ever built. For the extinction of every animal and plant that’s managed to hold on through their environments’ devastation. For the greatest crime human beings have ever known.
No wonder Darius Akide was willing to commit murder to stop this from happening. He was exchanging two lives—Abel’s and mine—for the lives of billions.
Finally, Noemi manages to say, “As much as Earth is hated, I can’t believe anyone would agree to go through with this.”
“No, you’re right. That’s why the plan is top secret. My squadron’s been chosen to escort the core disruptor into the Earth system and aim it at the ocean floor; that’s the only reason I know.” Baz turns her teary eyes toward the ceiling. “We were congratulated for earning this ‘incredible honor.’ I could protest—pull us off the assignment—but then, if there’s any chance of st
opping this thing, I want to be there. I want to play a role.”
“We can stop it?” Noemi gasps as she seizes on this brief hope.
“I don’t know,” Baz admits. “There are other escort squadrons, too. But if anyone else can create a diversion—or find allies for us—”
“I’ll do it,” Noemi promises, without hesitation. She has no idea how to do this. She’s not even sure she’ll be alive in another few days, if this mech virus or whatever it is keeps wreaking havoc with her innards. But she’ll fight for this to her last breath. “When do they plan to bring the core disruptor to the Earth system?”
“They’re still installing the new engine, which buys us time—but the current timeline suggests we’ll go through the Genesis Gate with it in eight days.” Baz shakes her head in dismay. “Did you ever think we’d be defending Earth against Genesis?”
“We’re not defending Earth. We’re defending Genesis,” Noemi insists. Her Directive One remains intact; at this moment, it feels stronger than ever. “Not Earth. If we won the Liberty War like this—Genesis wouldn’t just be destroying Earth. We’d be destroying ourselves. Our culture, everything we hold sacred… after Bellum Sanctum, all of that would only be empty words.”
“You’re right,” Baz says. Then she repeats it, as if to convince herself, “You’re absolutely right.”
It’s unbelievable, but true. Noemi murmurs, “The only way we can save our way of life… is to save Earth.”
26
ABEL COULD TEAR THROUGH ANY PHYSICAL RESTRAINT, but the small energy bands on the biobed gurney hold him firmly in place. So he can only lie still and stare up at the ceiling as he’s hauled back into Gillian Shearer’s laboratory.
Gillian sits at the far edge of the lab at her desk. It remains as brightly, fiercely white as he remembered: ceiling, walls, floor, even the desk. The harsh light from overhead reveals how thin her red hair is and makes her look haggard. Then again, Abel muses, anyone who’d endured what she had in the past year would look haggard: She’d left her home planet for good, crashed on a completely different planet, and is now trying to hold on to absolute power from a cramped laboratory, despite dwindling support. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people are landing on this planet, and it won’t be long before they notice how many vital resources the Winter Castle is trying to hoard.
Most important of all, she lost her father. She lost her son. Grief doesn’t excuse her behavior, in Abel’s opinion, but perhaps it helps explain it.
Gillian holds out her hand, and the Tare accompanying Abel’s mobile biobed puts a dataread into it. The Tare is operating smoothly and effectively, with no signs of the malfunctions he’s seen galaxy-wide.
Scientists say the last human sense to fade upon death is hearing. For mechs, it must be curiosity. Despite the fact that he’ll never be able to use this information, Abel has to ask. “Are you aware that mechs throughout the galaxy are breaking down, while yours remain in normal working order?”
To his surprise, Gillian chuckles. She sounds eerily like her father. “Just like Dad, not to release the update before we left. Of course, he’d hoped he’d be able to deploy it himself. Now he’ll have the chance.”
“Update? Mechs are breaking down because they lack—an update?” Abel focuses all his concentration on this new information, rather than on what’s happening to him. The word reckons back to an earlier stage of technology, centuries before, in its lawless days—“This is planned obsolescence. You’ve begun designing mechs intended to break down within a certain amount of time.”
“An archaic concept, I know,” Gillian says, tapping on her screen. “But it’s one my father and I thought it wise to revive, before the journey of the Osiris. Our community on Haven would need a way to make profit. Mansfield Cybernetics had to remain the sole source of the mechs the galaxy relies on. What better way than by making sure they’d need to come to us to keep the mechs they already have?”
The concept is both ingenious and diabolical; Abel has no trouble believing Burton Mansfield would come up with it. “I appear to be immune.”
“You’re unique, Abel. You’ve always had a singular destiny. What point would there be in my father designing his own future body to break down?” Gillian’s smile has taken on the glassy, impersonal quality he’s learned to fear. It’s the expression of a worshipper, not a daughter. “But the planned obsolescence looks even further into the future. When we’ve created our Inheritors—when we alone have created and perfected the next generation of mechs—we can phase out the old ones. We’ll be able to provide the galaxy with something so much better.”
More mechs with souls, still bound in servitude to humanity. Abel has always been afraid for the Inheritors and the bleak future they might face, but he’s suddenly seized by an even greater horror, one that even eclipses his own fate.
Noemi.
She’s part mech now. Some of the software runs on the implant within her brain. Will she break down, too? She hadn’t when she left the Persephone, but that could be due to no more than later installation of—
Gillian breaks his train of thought by adding, “My father will be able to release the updates himself, soon—assuming you’re back in working order.”
She taps in some command at her console. The slight tingles in Abel’s head, as well as the faint silvery whispers at the very edges of his hearing, inform him of what she’ll learn from the scan that’s being run: His Tether is now fully functional.
“Good.” Gillian sits upright, and the spark returns to her intensely blue eyes. “We can finally begin.” She gets to her feet and repeats, in a reverent whisper, “Finally.”
From the white pod of her desk, she draws two containers. One is a dodecahedron, faintly glowing. Abel recognizes this as the special data solid developed to hold the entirety of a human consciousness. The other is a humbler wooden box, one old enough to show some signs of wear, which must contain another data solid.
The first holds the mind of Gillian’s father and Abel’s creator, Burton Mansfield. The second holds her mother—at least, in theory. Mansfield’s tech wasn’t nearly as good at the time of Robin Mansfield’s death as it is now. She died more than thirty years ago. Whatever’s kept in there might not bear much resemblance to the living woman before. The few words it was able to conjure on a Ouija board appear to have proved that much.
But Gillian isn’t thinking about that right now. She’s focused purely on making Abel fulfill the purpose he was made for: housing Mansfield’s soul, at the cost of his own.
“Time to finish hooking you up.” Gillian holds up another chilly cluster of diodes. “Just a few more applied to your skin, and we’ll have full coverage.”
Abel has been stripped to his underwear, which he finds somewhat undignified—not that it matters much at this point. He doesn’t feel fear as much as he feels… defeated.
“It’s curious,” Abel says as the diodes are applied to his legs, “how enthusiastic you and your father are about immortality.”
Gillian doesn’t even look up at him. She’s too busy with Mansfield’s data solid. “My father removed your fear of mortality via your programming. It’s highly unnatural, not to fear death. You can’t imagine how humans feel.”
“I don’t have to imagine. Mansfield programmed me with data about the human psyche in all its forms.” Real-life interpretation has sometimes proved trickier than the textbook examples in his head—but Abel understands the basics. “However, immortality has its own drawbacks, which you don’t seem to have considered. For instance, what if you’re marooned in a spaceship? Unable to escape, unable even to deactivate yourself. I made it through thirty years of that, but it was difficult. And my consciousness is wholly artificial. A more human mind… I think someone could very easily go insane.”
Gillian still doesn’t look up. “Getting marooned like that seems unlikely.”
“Once I would’ve thought so, too.” Abel glances at Gillian, whose head is bent over her wo
rk. While he isn’t afraid, he finds that he would like someone to look him in the eye. To see him, during these last moments of his existence. She never glances away from the diodes.
“If that’s the scariest possibility you can come up with—well, I think that conversation’s over, don’t you?” Her tone could now be described as “smug,” which Abel considers extremely rude.
He replies, “That’s not the scariest possibility. The scariest possibility is outliving anyone who may care about you. Everyone, perhaps. Without love, I think immortality could only be very bitter.”
She blinks, apparently still surprised that Abel might talk about emotions. “My father will have love. He’ll have me.”
Abel says the hardest truth he knows: “Your father hasn’t loved anyone but himself for a long time.”
Gillian finally looks at him then. The porcelain mask of indifference is broken; her hand trembles, but she keeps her firm grip on the data solid. “You don’t understand,” she says.
But he does. Abel realizes that Gillian believes this act will at long last win her father’s love. There was a time he wanted that love, too. He couldn’t help but want it. On some level he still does, even though he’s learned Burton Mansfield’s love is a prize not worth having. That’s the nature of children, when it comes to their fathers.
His father never did love him. Now Abel’s existence will end, for the pleasure of an egomaniac who felt entitled to more than one life.
What was the point of gaining consciousness, living independently, striking out on his own if it only led to this?
Then Abel thinks of Noemi. She was the point. She still is.
She was worth it.
Gillian places the data solid in a reader, which begins to glow. Abel feels a faint tingle along the diodes. This is it.
What should his last words be?
“I was lucky,” he says, surprising himself. Yet instantly he knows those were the right words. He’s been so lucky just to exist. Just to have experienced the universe.