“You mean destroying the Rasu?”
“No. They deserve to die. I mean using kyoseil to do it. The Rasu believe kyoseil is alive, and I got the impression Forchelle did, too. We don’t have a way to ask its permission to sacrifice tens of thousands of kilograms of it to blow up the Rasu. We’re just going to do it. Does that make us murderers, too?”
“Nika, we have no choice. This is our only plan. Besides, if it is in some way alive, it’s been dying alongside every Asterion who’s died by Rasu hands. Like you and like every soldier, it would surely be willing to sacrifice some of its own in order to stop that slaughter.” He shrugged weakly. “Right?”
“Hells if I know. But…thank you. That does make me feel better.” The delegation would be here any minute, so she forcibly shifted gears to focus on the task at hand. At least with the Taiyoks, she’d had recent personal experience to draw on in addition to the recovered memory. But none of the encrypted memories had involved the Chizeru, and she’d never met one during her time in NOIR.
Here, she had only the algorithms that told her how to be a diplomat, files holding long lists of Chizeru idiosyncrasies to keep in mind and a few journal entries she’d dug up to rely upon. “Why am I more nervous about this meeting than I was for the one with the Taiyok Elder?”
“Don’t be silly. Shoset has always loved you.”
She trailed a hand along the supple velvet of one of the drapes. “But I’ve been gone for years. I assume someone told him I was dead.”
“I told him you had to go on a long trip. Now you’re back.”
“Okay. Still, I’m worried. I don’t want to frighten him, but I have to light a fire under him, and the only way I can think of to do that is to convince him of the seriousness of the situation.”
Her hand reached the end of the drape, and Dashiel took it in his. His thumb drew soothing circles along her palm. “And you will.”
The dyne attendant signaled the imminent arrival of the Chizeru delegation, and Nika readied a welcoming demeanor—then glanced at Dashiel in confusion when she felt him stuffing something soft in her jacket pocket.
“You’ll know when you need it.” Satisfied, he straightened up beside her.
The doors opened, and a Chizeru in full formal regalia led the way inside, with two additional Chizeru following behind him. Three steps into the room, the lead Chizeru saw Nika. He gasped, rushed forward across the room and threw his arms around her legs in a tight hug while chattering away so fast she could barely understand him.
With a gentle laugh she carefully untangled him from her legs, then dropped to her knees in front of him. “I’m glad to see you as well, Shoset.”
“Gone you were, so long.” His thin, leathery lips curled inward. “Did Shoset displease you?”
“No, no, of course not. I had to go far away. I didn’t want to go, but you understand obligations to your people. This was my obligation to mine, my duty. It took me a long time to find my way back, but I made it. As soon as I got home, I hurried here to see you.”
“Good, Nika-friend. Did you bring scarves? Ridani-sir brought some, but…” he leaned in to whisper conspiratorially, tiny eyes dancing “…yours better.”
She laughed again. “I won’t tell him you said so.” She reached in her pocket and produced an intricately woven scarf of plum and gold. Wow, did she epically owe Dashiel.
Thank you. I’ll make this up to you in new and interesting ways.
Oh, I look forward to it.
She palmed the scarf and offered it to Shoset. “Here you are. A gift from my journey.”
The Chizeru shook in excitement as he wound it around his neck. “Tickles!”
“It’s a special hand-woven fabric, crafted for maximum tickling.” She placed a hand on his shoulder. “Listen, Shoset. I came here today because I wanted to see you, but also because I have to ask a very, very important favor of you and your people.”
“We like to help our Asterion friends.”
“I know you do, and we appreciate it so much. There’s a bad thing…” she pointed upward and toward the closest window “…up in space with the stars. We need to stop it from coming to our home and hurting us. From hurting Asterions, and from coming here and hurting Chizeru, too.”
“Oh, no!”
“It’s going to be okay. We have a plan to stop the bad thing from hurting anyone. But to do our plan, we need a lot of kyoseil. As in, a lot. And we need it super-fast.”
Shoset’s eyes narrowed to slits, and he studied her intently for several seconds. “If we mine hard and fast for you, how many scarves will you bring me?”
She grinned. “Enough scarves for you to carpet the planet with them. All the scarves in the entire world.”
44
* * *
KIYORA
Asterion Dominion Axis World
“Advisor Nika Kirumase to see Gemina Kail.”
The two Justice dynes standing guard outside the door to Kail’s office stared blankly at her. “ID signature, please.”
She pressed her fingertips to the pane. It still felt strange, providing her again-real name and signature to the authorities, and not a single pealing alarm or drawn weapon in response. She’d never thought of herself as hiding before as such, but she’d certainly been hiding from the authorities. Now? She was the authorities.
“Cleared to proceed.”
“Thank you—” a message arrived from Xyche, and her curiosity won out “—pardon me, I need a moment.”
Nika,
I was pleased to learn your meeting with Zhanre proceeded favorably for you. He is a fair and moral man when given sufficient reason to be. I wish you well in your endeavor, and should you fail, may you die with honor.
—Xyche’ghael
Her face screwed up. How had Xyche learned about the meeting, much less its outcome? And how did a simple Taiyok merchant eking out a dubious living on an Asterion world know the Elder?
She composed a quick reply and sent it off.
Xyche,
On a first-name basis with the Elder, are you? Is there something you’d like to tell me?
—Nika
Then she nodded to the guards, squared her shoulders and stepped forward as the door opened. Jetting around the galaxy begging favors from friends and adversaries alike had drained her, but she needed to push ahead for a little longer. No time for a vacation or, with four days left until the Rasu deadline, so much as a nap.
Gemina sat at her desk with three rows of active panes surrounding her. She glared at Nika through the shimmering figures they displayed. “Oh, lovely. Did you finally find five minutes in your busy schedule to drop by and exact vengeance on me?”
Nika leaned against the wall and crossed her ankles and arms. “For what, precisely? It’s a long list of grievances.”
“It is.” Gemina frowned, then banished the panes and considered Nika anew. “I believed in them, you know. For a while. I believed in the Guides and the plan they were following. Part of me still believes the choice they made was the only choice they could have made. We are not strong enough to defeat the Rasu. Whatever insane scheme you’re working up, it won’t be enough.” She paused, and her gaze fell to her lap. “But I am sorry you got hurt in the process. I’m sorry for the role I played in hurting you.”
Nika blinked, stunned. This was not how she’d expected this conversation to go. “I have no idea how to respond to an apology. Are you going to try to tell me that you and I were friends? Before the psyche-wipe?”
“Oh, gods, no. We…it would be inaccurate to say we hated one another, because we didn’t. But friends? Never. In good years we tolerated one another, and in bad ones we…didn’t.”
Whew. For a minute there, she’d worried she’d somehow stumbled into a twisted, funhouse version of reality. “Now this I can believe.”
Gemina straightened up and tried to look bored. “Why are you here? I’m being a good girl. I’m doing my job, not sending any unauthorized messages, not trying
to break the Guides out of prison, and returning to my cell every night like I’m supposed to.”
“I know. Justice had to clear you for why I’m here, and they agree that you are being a…good girl. No, I’m here about that insane scheme I’m working up. I need your assistance to pull it off.”
“Didn’t I just say you’re not going to be able to pull it off?”
“Yeah, but I figured it was merely you being your usual bitchy self.”
Gemina regarded her strangely. “Huh. What’s my assistance entail?”
“A very simple task. I need you to pilot the Tabiji to the Rasu stronghold one final time.”
“But we’re not sending them any more Asterions in stasis chambers, are we? I heard you made a grand speech about how that was never, ever, ever going to happen.”
“I did, and it was in fact quite grand. But actually, we are. We’re sending them me.”
“I realize you think highly of yourself, but trust me, the Rasu will not view you as equivalent to eight thousand bodies.”
“You’re probably right, which is why we’re sending them eight thousand copies of me.”
Gemina’s jaw dropped. She stood and walked around the side of the desk toward Nika. “Eight thousand copies of you? What nightmare have I fallen victim to?”
Nika rolled her eyes. “Oh, drop it, Kail. Will you do it?”
“Why me?”
“Because the Rasu are expecting you. In eight years, you’re the only walking, talking Asterion they’ve had direct contact with that they haven’t killed. If we were to change up the routine now, they might get suspicious, and the last thing we need is for them to get suspicious. All you need to do is the exact same thing you’ve done on every trip up until now. Fly the Tabiji there, deliver the stasis chambers, turn around and leave. That’s all.”
“What are eight thousand of you going to do once you get on board one of their platforms?”
“It’s not your concern.”
“Still don’t trust me?”
Nika snorted. “Can you blame me?”
“No, I guess not.” Gemina’s lips puckered, as if she’d just eaten a rotten egg. “Can I wrangle a cell upgrade out of it? One with a reasonably soft bed? I mean, I’ll only get to enjoy it for a couple of days before the Rasu show up and obliterate the planet, but this way they’ll be comfortable days.”
“You do this for us, and I’ll get you upgraded to house arrest.”
“Really? All right. I literally have absolutely nothing to lose. It’s a deal.”
“Thank you.” Nika turned toward the door to leave, then looked back over her shoulder at Gemina. “Also, if you betray us when you reach the stronghold and alert the Rasu that something is amiss, I will feed you to them myself.”
45
* * *
MIRAI ONE PAVILION
They sat around a large, rectangular table in Conference Room 2-D, mostly because it was one of the few larger rooms that hadn’t suffered any damage in Satair’s attack.
This wasn’t the last opportunity they’d have to update the plan or make crucial decisions, but it was damn close.
Nika leaned back in her chair and fisted her hands beneath her chin. Gods, she was tired. Everyone was tired, and it showed in a hundred ways, from the proliferation of fine lines around people’s eyes and mouths to the sloppy postures of those at the table to the wrinkles in clothes that had been worn for too many hours or days.
“Lance?”
The military officer was the only one here who refused to let his posture slack; his spine remained straight and his head held high, though rumor was he’d slept less than ten hours in the previous week.
“My people will be working all night to finish the stealth module retrofits on our ships and assembling the last of the KA Bombs, as the final shipment of kyoseil from Chosek won’t arrive until later tonight. One way or another, we’ll be ready by the departure time.”
Despite the Taiyoks declaring that they intended to send more than enough ships on the mission to deliver all the bombs, Lance insisted on sending five hundred Asterion ships as well, including the Dauntless. This was an Asterion mission, and they would see it done.
“What about the Taiyoks?”
“They say they’ll be ready, but I have no visibility into their preparations. We have no choice but to trust them.”
Xyche had replied to her message a few minutes earlier with a single sentence: Perhaps one day. His species—and him personally—remained a confounding, fundamentally alien mystery in so many ways, but she could confidently assert a few things about them. “We can. If they say they’ll be ready, they’ll be ready. Parc?”
Parc had thrown a foot up on the table and kicked his chair so far back he’d fall over if a fly landed on him. It was an act, a projection of deliberate bravado to hide how uncomfortable he felt sitting at the table with a bunch of Advisors. Maybe. Or, he could simply not give a shit.
He set the feet of the chair down long enough to retrieve a data weave from his pocket and slide it across the table to her, then returned to his display of balancing prowess. “Here’s your key to slice into Rasu systems and diverge what you need to. Courtesy of three separate ceraffin working for twenty straight hours—under my sage supervision, of course.”
“Of course.” She spun the weave between her fingers thoughtfully. “I bet I’ll know the answer once I load the program, but will any of my existing routines make the slicing and diverging go faster, or are they going to be useless?”
“No, and yes. Auxiliary process routines are included on the weave, and I’d suggest using them over anything you’ve got.”
“That reminds me.” Dashiel picked up a container he’d stashed beside his chair and opened it. He lifted out a compact blade unlike any she’d ever seen before. The metal was barely a millimeter thick, and when viewed side-on it nearly disappeared. The material almost seemed to subtly glow from within, a shimmer perpetually slipping away out of the corner of her eye.
He offered it to her. “This should cut through any Rasu material, if only briefly.”
She set the weave aside and took the blade from him, running her fingertip lightly along the metal. Blood welled up in a thin line in the blade’s wake. Damn, it was sharp. “What’s it made of?”
“We don’t have a name for the material yet. We succeed in our mission, and we’ll hold a naming contest.” He tried to make his smile light, but he didn’t fool her.
She turned the blade over several times, watching as it caught and split the ambient light in the room. “Archine?”
Lance made a face, and she shrugged. “I’m just saying.”
Dashiel eyed them curiously. “Works for me. Archine it is.”
She set the blade down on the table. “Remarkable work. As much as I’d be thrilled to test it out on some Rasu, however, I’m not technically going to the stronghold myself. You’ve crafted eight thousand of them?”
He nodded. “They’re being added to the stasis chambers this evening. In a left-side slot halfway down the interior of the chambers, so you…your copies will know where to retrieve them.”
“Thank you. Katherine?”
The Administration Advisor didn’t even bother to look perturbed or annoyed. Simply tired. “Said eight thousand bodies are all constructed and have been released by the twelve different clinics it took to prepare them all. They’re just waiting to be loaded with your imprint. Whenever you’re ready.”
Nika cleared her throat, as she seemed to have developed a sudden lump in it. “In the morning. I want to wait until the last possible moment, so they’re loaded with the most complete information available to us.”
She let her gaze pass across everyone at the table. “Thank you all. It doesn’t do justice to the work you’ve put in to say that you’ve gone above and beyond. None of us have had much choice in the matter, because we’re fighting for our survival, and not ours alone—our entire species and the allies we’ve made. But what the Guides tho
ught was impossible, beyond our capabilities? We’ve gotten it done. We’ve proved them wrong, and we’ll prove them wrong again in the next two days. Asterions can do anything we set our minds to. Anything. And right now, we’ve set our minds to surviving.”
“So, survive we will.” Dashiel grasped her hand under the table and squeezed it tight. “From this point forward, everyone splash all updates to the @OpFlare nex hub so no time or meaning gets lost along the way.”
Nika projected the most confident mien she could manage. “If there’s nothing else, I’ll see most of you in the morning at the spaceport.”
46
* * *
NIKA’S FLAT
Dashiel heard the shower shut off as he finished pouring two glasses of wine. He’d stopped on the way here and picked up the bottle, a cabernet vintage from a small winery in the mountains outside Kiyora Three. Her favorite, though she didn’t remember it.
He took a minute to set himself straight. Tonight, he wasn’t going to whine about how much he disliked her decision to send herself alone into the torture facility of the Rasu. She couldn’t change her course now even if he did somehow convince her to—which he didn’t intend to try to do, because as much as his heart recoiled at the thought, she was the best person to do it. Perhaps the only person who could do it.
Tonight, he wasn’t going to fret over the impossible nature of their mission or all the thousand minutiae that were certain to go wrong with the plan. He wasn’t going to dread the imminent possibility that their civilization might soon come to an end.
Tonight, he was going to celebrate. Celebrate her life and the wonders she’d performed. Celebrate their second life together. In the finest Asterion tradition, celebrate the here and the now, one touch at a time.
He picked up the glasses and went to join her in the bedroom suite.
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