Larkos smiled broadly at first, and then narrowed his eyes. “I thought you were bringing one person.”
Charlie shrugged. “Everyone needs to leave.”
Silence hung between them all for the space of three human breaths. The scent of fear rose, sweat and adrenaline.
“They’re Next,” the woman screamed. “Damn you!”
Larkos leaned back, pulled his hand back, and stepped forward, throwing a hard punch at Charlie.
Charlie took the fist on his jaw, flinching away, avoiding half the energy.
He recovered fast, leaned down, stepped toward Larkos.
Larkos landed another punch, then tried for one to the gut.
Charlie lifted an arm just so, twisted, blocked.
Jason took a step toward the fight, but Chrystal put her hand on his arm. “We can’t.”
The look on Jason’s face told her he knew that and hated it. He snarled.
Charlie stepped in and kicked Larkos below the knee, forcing a step back.
Larkos grabbed Charlie’s foot. Charlie jerked away before Larkos established a grip.
“Stop!” Nona screeched, her voice louder than she’d ever heard it.
They did, freezing. Neither man looked away from the other.
“It’s OK,” Charlie blurted through clenched teeth. “They’re friends. They were you. High Sweet Home.”
Yi in Chrystal’s head, They’re too scared for logic.
Larkos’s reply was another attempt at a punch in the face, which Charlie stepped into and past. Both anger and fear gave the big man’s eyes a hot and dangerous look. He was taller and broader than Charlie, but breathing harder.
She took a step back. Assessed. She allowed more smell, and scented fear from every human, the sickly sweet tang of sweat infused with adrenaline. Oil and grease in the air, and the acrid and slight edge of welding torches used recently.
She heard the rasp of the fighter’s boots on the metal floor as the men circled, a little distance between them.
Neither committed. They just danced, Larkos bigger than Charlie but Charlie faster, both of them breathing hard.
Peripheral movement caught Chrystal’s attention. Yi, from behind her, darting so fast she could barely see him. He slammed into the ponytailed woman.
A stunner flew across the floor, bouncing and banging, then skittering in a circle.
Yi held the woman, who struggled in his arms.
Larkos turned and stepped toward the gun.
Chrystal launched herself after it, easily beating Larkos. “We’re not hurting you,” she hissed.
Jason pulled Nona back.
The woman in Yi’s arms yelled as if her worst fear had caught her by the hair.
“Stop!” Nona yelled again.
This time everyone did for just a moment. Then Larkos reached toward the woman. “Don’t hurt her.”
Yi let go and stepped back, his hands up.
The woman kicked, her foot hitting his stomach.
Yi didn’t react at all, simply stood, as if he were a wall or a stone.
Chrystal clutched the gun to her chest, making sure it was pointed at no one. She had no real training with weapons, and it felt like a bad thing. She wanted to be rid of it, but no one else was going to get it from her.
Larkos yanked the woman after him and the two of them ran off, their footsteps echoing in the huge chamber.
Nona’s voice shook as she asked, “Will they be back? Will they come back after us?”
Charlie held his hand out for the weapon, palm up. Chrystal gave it to him, relieved.
Charlie held the weapon up to the light. “I don’t think they’ll come back.”
“Who were they?” Nona asked.
“Workers.” Charlie examined the weapon, pushed a few buttons, and slid it into his pocket. “Probably the people who repaired all of these ships.”
Jason asked, “What are they doing?”
“They’re fleeing. We were going to go with them. More will be leaving. A timed exodus, so the Next will have many targets if they decide to shoot.”
“They’re that desperate?” Nona asked.
Charlie didn’t answer. His gaze swept the ships.
Yi said, “I know which ones we can take.”
“How?”
“Your repair system knows. I read it.”
Charlie’s eyes widened. “Can you tell which ones other people want?”
“That’s harder.” Yi said. “We may have to steal a ship.”
From the look on her face, Nona understood the implications. “We’ll be thieves and liars in people’s minds.”
“And the press,” Charlie added.
Yi continued. “I can ask the Next if they have a ship. The Bleeding Edge is big enough to have ship’s bays in her. But we would be safer in a human ship.”
“We need something I can fly,” Nona said.
Eight people spilled in through the closest lock and headed for the nearest available ship. They looked curiously at the small group but didn’t acknowledge them.
“Well,” Charlie said, waving a hand toward the ship. “We aren’t stealing that one. We have access to a lifeboat-style ship. I got the permission codes from Gunnar. He says he’ll pick us up.”
Nona grabbed Charlie’s arm. “I don’t trust him. The Next—when I went to get Chrystal the Next said that Gunnar arranged for them to come here to meet me. But he and Satyana told us to lay low and not draw any attention. Remember? We need to get away from Gunnar as much as we need to get away from the Next.”
There was no surprise in Charlie’s eyes.
Jhailing Jim had suggested that she teach Gunnar to fear the Next. But Gunnar was already working with them?
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHARLIE
Blood pounded through Charlie’s jaw. It ached. One wrist had been hurt in the fight and wouldn’t quite turn right. Every choice about how to get off the station felt like a trap. He’d never been sure Larkos was a friend; he was an enemy now. Gunnar, behind everything. Gunnar, who destroyed planets. Gunnar, who had set Nona up. There had to be another way.
Nona turned to the disheveled-looking skinny robot that had probably just saved his life. “Yi? Can we buy a ship?”
“I’ll check.”
Charlie backed the group against a wall where they wouldn’t be easily seen.
The immediate problem was getting off the Satwa. The station was a sacrifice as far as he could tell, something the Glittering could afford to lose. He glanced at Yi, who was talking quietly to Jason. No way to tell if Yi was going to be any help.
Charlie called the number Amia had given him.
She answered.
“What do you know about the inventory of ships?” he asked her. “Is there one that we can take reasonably? Something up for sale, or that’s Gunnar’s, or . . . or anything?”
She laughed softly. “It’s a repair bay. Half of the leftover ships are red carded. You won’t be able to get them out.”
“But the other half?”
“I’m checking.”
Gunnar had told him to trust Amia, so he didn’t. Not now. Nevertheless, he didn’t want to leave anybody behind who wanted to leave. “Do you want to stay?”
“No. No, I don’t. I’m checking to see if I can get into the inventory.”
Charlie glanced at Yi. The robot stood stock-still and appeared to be looking at nothing. No help there yet.
Nona and Chrystal conferred in low tones.
A warning bell went off.
“What does that mean?” Charlie asked.
Loudspeakers told him. “Hull doors opening in twenty minutes.”
He looked around for a suit locker.
Amia said, “I see a ship that’s registered to Gunnar. It’s big and slow.”
“Is it empty? Is it ready? Does it have fuel?”
“All yes.”
“Supplies.”
A short hesitation. “Plenty.”
Yi looked up. “T
here’s a faster, smaller ship nearby. The Star Ghost. It’s for sale. Four hundred thousand credits. It has everything. There are two other parties looking at the record right now. If we want to offer we should hurry.”
That would fund a year’s worth of the entire ranger program on Lym. Charlie was ready to choose the slower ship and steal from Gunnar when Nona said, “No time like the present to test my credit. I’ll try to buy it. Give me a minute.”
“Amia? You can come with us if you want.”
“The sale will need approval. I can expedite it.”
“Are you coming with us?”
“No. I’ll take the number seventy-five ship you were talking about. And one of the soulbots.”
Nona’s eyes widened. The family looked at each other, stepped closer together.
“Why?” Charlie asked.
“Gunnar will pick me up. He’ll reward that much ingenuity.”
Charlie looked at the three, who stared back at him. Yi’s face had gone rigid. Jason and Chrystal looked shocked.
Three things flashed through Charlie’s mind. First, the robots were fast and could probably kill him quickly. He’d seen the way Yi moved when the woman pointed the gun at him. Second, Gunnar deserved nothing. Third, the terror on their faces could be made-up. But so could everything about them. If it wasn’t made-up, it mattered. They looked like a human family in that moment, under that threat.
“Approve the sale and I’ll give you the codes for the number seventy-five ship. You get a free ride for doing your job. No robots.”
“You don’t need three.”
She didn’t understand. Maybe he didn’t either, but his opinion of them had changed already. “They’re a family. They were a family before, and they still are. They travel together. Gunnar will see them on the Deep.”
Silence.
Yi mouthed, “Thank you.” Nona looked approving.
The alarms went off again. He gestured the conversation to mute so he would hear Amia’s response but she wouldn’t hear them or the alarms.
“Will we all fit in the number seventy-five ship?” Nona asked. “Five of us? Isn’t it basically a lifeboat?”
“I’ve never seen it. Probably. The question is how much we’d have to sacrifice to get by on readymade food and recycled air.”
“We don’t breathe,” Yi reminded him.
“Oh.” He had forgotten. “We’d be fine, I think.” Decisions were happening too fast. He had to be sure they didn’t make a mistake out of stress. “Where are the ships?”
Yi started walking. “Follow me. I found a suit locker.”
In five minutes, both humans were suited. The robots didn’t bother.
Charlie tried to think. The little boat would be picked up by Gunnar. Almost certainly. “Maybe we should stay here,” Charlie said. He hated the idea, but running off into space with the wrong vehicle was more dangerous.
Amia’s voice came on. “I approved the transfer.”
“Thank you,” Nona said.
Charlie added, “I’ll send you the codes as soon as we’re aboard the Ghost.”
Once more they all followed Yi. The Ghost turned out to be half the size of the Savior, and it looked fast and well maintained. For once, he was grateful that Nona was rich.
The Ghost had been decorated in faded plush, the way some people’s old boats were at home. It had probably once been a fancyman’s travel ship, with a reasonable cargo deck that would have allowed a significant side business in trade goods. The command center was full of worn red leather chairs and bright blue carpet. No taste.
Nona slid into the captain’s chair with no problem, and made sure that all of the doors were dogged shut and turned on the front view screens. Boot messages flashed slow enough that he was able to see them, but then a vivid image of the inside of the bay showed up.
“I’ll check supplies and fuel,” Charlie offered.
“That’s done,” Yi said. “Fuel tanks are full. We have raw materials for food and a working garden. No perishables.”
“Show me.” He wanted to check Yi’s work.
While he went over supplies and verified Yi’s assessment, Nona played with the controls and managed to get a conversation started with the ship’s nav AI. Charlie quickly decided that Yi knew more about starships than he did.
Three minutes later, the big doors of the bay started to open in front of them, a slitted view of stars growing larger.
A ship shaped like a small egg flew through the doors.
“Amia?” he mused.
“No,” Chrystal said. “That’s number thirty-four. She’ll be in seventy-five. But it will be like that.”
The Ghost was a far better choice.
Nona scrolled through commands on an air screen in front of her.
Yi stood right behind her, peering over her shoulder. From time to time one of them whispered to the other.
Charlie hadn’t expected so much capability from the newly minted robots, or that he would trust them so fast. Or at all.
A larger ship flew out, bigger than the little escape pod or the Ghost.
The engine check screens showed up on the side wall. Charlie sat still and watched them pass every test. No problems.
“Seat yourselves,” Nona said, her voice high and a little over-imperious but confident. She sounded more like a captain than she had on the Savior.
Yi watched them, and made sure that Nona was belted correctly before he sat down in the co-pilot’s seat. He was so sure of himself Charlie got the distinct impression he was being polite and letting Nona have the big chair. Maybe they had a second pilot if they needed one.
“Ready?” Nona asked.
“Ready,” they all responded.
“No last-minute desires to change your minds?”
“No,” he said.
And then they moved, smooth and silky and faster than he expected. Soon enough Charlie couldn’t see any part of the station or the Bleeding Edge, only stars and the lights of other fleeing ships.
PART FIVE
ESCAPE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHRYSTAL
Chrystal curled across a chair in the command room, with Yi and Jason close by. They talked in low tones while watching over the various inputs from the ship. A curious and slightly unsettling sense of freedom had been growing on her. There was no Jhailing Jim in her head. She could think whatever she wanted to think, and not worry that some far-more-capable being would take offense at her thoughts or feel a need to come and lecture her. She felt like she was twenty years old all over again.
This was their second night away from the Satwa. The first day had been filled with learning the new ship, with short conversations between sleep shifts for the humans, who had clearly been exhausted. Today, there had been long talks about options and plans, and hours spent with all five of them in the greenhouse going over systems and checking young plants and adjusting the automated system’s plans to fit the grows to two people.
Chrystal liked being here, happily sleepless, surrounded by Jason and Yi. Her new eyes were sharp enough to read even the smallest green and orange letters in the dark, and it felt oddly appropriate to be a machine protected by the machinery of the control room, which they watched over as well. All of the interconnected machines created a bigger machine that was currently flying between two space stations, which were essentially collections of machines anyway.
The little robot that had come with them moved, startling her. She had forgotten that it was working out a kink in Jason’s right knee, some bit of automata that had lost track of the signals from their brains. Sometimes I wonder what it must be like to be in a different body, to be even less human.
Yi answered her. We will discover it. I asked Jhailing once, and he said that it might take years, but that we can become as versatile as Jhailing. That our minds—our selves—are adapted to having four limbs that work the way human bodies do, or almost. He also said that the best way to prepare ourselves for more freedom is
to practice, to push our bodies, to learn to do more than we once could.
Like teaching our subconscious? Chrystal mused.
Jason grunted at something the robot did. Too bad they left us pain.
No. It’s a survival mechanism. We can die, after all.
Yi, being a minder. He’d always looked out for their safety. Katherine had been the freest, the most abandoned, the poet and the singer and the massage artist and the one who kept the plants alive. Chrystal kept the thought private; it would trigger pain in Jason. You can turn physical pain down, Chrystal suggested, and showed him how.
He looked relieved. Funny how they hadn’t each learned the same things.
The robot finished with Jason and moved back. “Are you ready?” Yi asked.
“Yes.”
This time, Chrystal watched as Jason and Yi practiced braiding. They hadn’t tried merging all three together yet. If they made a mistake, there was no one more experienced here to help.
Yi and Jason grimaced together, and then laughed, and then relaxed into a look that held no emotion at all. She knew it for a lie; the deepest part of braiding was all under the surface of the body, so deep that they didn’t feel the external parts of themselves. For her, it was the most emotional part of their new lives, the most curious and exhilarating and slightly scary time.
Glancing at the hallway camera, she noticed a light flick on outside of Nona’s room. She came out, fully dressed, and started toward command. She stopped outside of Charlie’s door, hesitating. She looked pensive, draped in longing. Nona had always been a loner. Seeing her uncertain and in love felt sweet.
Chrystal vowed to spend time with Nona that afternoon, quiet time just chatting like they used to. It was difficult to focus on conversation that moved as slowly as a human mind, but it was a skill Chrystal needed to keep. This alone was almost surely the reason the Next had chosen to use fresh soulbots as part of their ambassadorial force.
She hummed loudly, warning Yi and Jason.
Yi and Jason ascended, faces going from slack to wonder.
Lights snapped on and it was time for coffee and loud conversation, and time to feel as much like her old self as possible.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
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