Scardown

by Elizabeth Bear

  “Is she armed?”

  “Not for ship-to-ship combat, ma'am.” Gabe stares at me. I see him from the corner of my eye. “Richard says she's carrying a ten-hundred-ton nickel-iron asteroid.”

  “Oh,” she says, and sags against the bulkhead, holding herself up with one flat palm. Richard won't need to explain what it means. I won't, anyway. He's already filling my head with velocities and trajectories and a phrase that clogs my mind until I cannot breathe, cannot think.

  Impact event.

  “What are our options, Master Warrant?” The polished flicker of her eyes tells me the woman's gone and the officer has returned, but the lines beside her nose and mouth are strained. “Where will they attack?”

  Richard, crisp and brittle, traces of Alan creeping into his voice. “The logical choice is the capital, Jenny.”

  “Toronto,” I translate. And close my eyes. Elspeth. Genie. Over my shoulder, Patty moans low in her throat. “We could try to catch the rock with the Montreal, ma'am. But she's not very maneuverable sublight. She's a sailboat.”

  “I know. What else?”

  “A shuttle,” Patty says.

  Leah. She's on the Leonard Cohen. Unless it's reached the Calgary already. Could it have? I don't know. Gabe's looking at me, lips tight. Tasting bile, I close my eyes. “A shuttle might work.”

  Richard.

  “I already told her, Jen.”

  Thank you. I couldn't have given the order. Could I? Merci à Dieu. I will never have to know. “Leah and Trevor are going after the Huang Di,” I tell Wainwright. “They'll try to intercept the rock.”

  I'm not quite fast enough to stop Gabe going to his knees.

  The captain grabs his other shoulder and yanks him up while I'm still torn between comfort and On your feet. “Come on, soldier,” she orders. “You need to fix my starship, Castaign. And we need to get a message to Riel. Casey.”

  “Yes.”

  “With me.”

  We run. I unholster my sidearm with its ship-safe plastic bullets and clutch it in my meat hand; Wainwright glances at it but doesn't comment. Even light body armor will make a joke of those rounds, but she's wearing one, too. I age ten years in the seven minutes it takes us to reach the bridge. “How many people on this bucket can we trust?”

  She shakes her head and palms a hatchway lock that wasn't there before. I notice its freshly soldered shine. Gabe and I exchange a hard, covert look; I wince at the way his face pinches around the eyes.

  “Four,” she says.

  “Five, Jenny.”

  I nod to the voice in my head. “Richard's in.” Wainwright skates a cold glance across me. I tilt my head, a nod to the alpha set of her shoulders, and step through quickly when she undogs the hatch and pushes it wide.

  “I've had the crew confined to quarters for three days, Casey,” Wainwright says. “Except security and a few I more or less trust.”

  I raise my hand to shield my eyes. The fluorescents are up to full, and the whole room shimmers in their strobing. Ow. Richard.

  “Sorry. Tell Wainwright that Riel has the evacuation under way.”

  Genie? Elspeth? Razorface, Indigo, Melissa, the VR tech, the cute boy at the front desk of the Marriott, Boris the fucking cat.

  “We're doing everything we can,” he answers. Five words, I know from very personal experience, that you never want to hear a doctor or a paramedic say.

  Without being told, Gabe and Patty fan out across the bridge, heading for panels, bringing locked-down systems on-line. The lights dim abruptly as Richard takes pity on me, and Wainwright shoots me a look. “The AI was supposed to be firewalled out of the ship's systems.”

  “He was. He's learned things.” Richard— “Captain.” My outside voice. Can you access the drive? How locked down is the crew? I have some wild idea we can beat Leah to the Rock, which just grew a capital letter in my head. “The Chinese just jumped in-system. Can we get Charlie Forster working on hacking their nanotech back? Considering all the fun they've had with ours?”

  “He already is,” she says. “He's on Clarke. Master Warrant, I can't ask you to try to fly this ship when I don't know what's lurking in her brain.”

  “I'm still working on the drive,” Richard interjects. “There are physical interlocks I am going to have to bridge. Our little friends are building them now.”

  I shake my head. “I'll take her.” I can't in good conscience put the Montreal and her three hundred crew in between the Hammer of God and my family on the ground. Not when Leah can get there first. But I've got some strangeness in me that says go.

  Be near.

  Hold her hand when she dies.

  Leah's about the same age my little sister was when my older sister killed her. Je vous salue, Marie, pleine de grâce. I was in Montreal. Nell gave me that eagle feather when I graduated basic training. Jenny, you're a warrior now.

  Le Seigneur est avec vous. I came home for the funeral. Earth rained on the brushed-copper coffin like the beating of my heart in my ears. Vous êtes bénie entre toutes les femmes et Jésus le fruit de vos entrailles est béni.

  Are you going to stop me, Richard?

  Leah's not my daughter.

  She's my whole goddamned world.

  The Montreal's main drive is violently attracted to mass. The Chinese have somehow found a way to jump short of a gravity well. They can stop. Sainte Marie, mère de Dieu—

  I cross the bridge to my chair. Richard doesn't whisper anymore; he can't spare the time. His voice rings over the loudspeakers as Wainwright dogs the hatchway, palm seals the lock, and wedges it tight. It's us on the bridge, us four and two security guards in full riot gear. “The Huang Di has released its missile, Captain. Leah and Lieutenant Koske are in time. They will intercept.” —priez pour nous pauvres pécheurs, maintenent et à l'heure de notre mort.

  “No.” Soft leather cups my thighs. I try to reach back and pull the collar forward, but the arrangement defeats me.

  “Gabe. I have a plan.”

  He looks up from a terminal. “Jenny, what are you doing?” Wainwright looks up, too, and Patty. I gesture them back, and there's no time to argue. They have their jobs. Leah has hers.

  I have mine.

  “Something really stupid, and I need your help. Can you pull that collar forward? And this serpentine, here?” I undo my belt and unbutton the top button on my pants, hurried enough that the steel hand tears cloth, sliding the waistband down enough to expose the bulge of my lower processor.

  “Casey,” Wainwright warns. “The system's not clean.”

  “I'll manage.” You do. What you must. Amen.

  Gabe abandons his terminal, Patty moving in to cover him, her eyes wild behind the dark spill of her hair over her shoulder. Leah's her best friend. Patty's got family on the ground. Gabe, frowning dubiously. “Jen . . .”

  “Don't argue. There isn't time. See that cable? Press the end of it against my back. Right here.”

  He does, and I try not to jump as the probes slide in and find their resting place. Valens is a hell of a lot more gentle. “Now the collar.” It comes out through gritted teeth.

  Gabe hesitates, one hand on the nape of my neck. I'm numb from the waist down, my legs deader than tingling. I can't feel the ship yet. Dick, can you make this work for me? “Jen, this is a lousy idea.” The collar hangs in his other hand, connecting cables dangling.

  “What are you doing?” Richard, concerned. He projects trajectories into my inner sight, as I know he must be doing for Leah. Red line for the asteroid, orange for the Huang Di ascending now on a curve. Green line for the Leonard Cohen. Fat blue stationary dot is the Montreal. “The Chinese pilots are wired faster than you are, Jen.”

  “I know,” I answer them both, and turn my attention to Gabriel. “Once that's on, I think I'm going to lose consciousness. Catch me. Watch me. All right?”

  He shakes his head. I see Wainwright following our conversation from the edge of her eye. “I'm losing two daughters today. And a damn good
friend.”

  “You're losing nothing if I can help it, mon coeur.” He meets my eyes. I look down first, studying my knees. Awkwardly, I reach out and lift first the left and then the right leg onto the couch. It's like handling a still-warm corpse. Heh. Done that, too. Somewhere far away, I can feel other things—a pulsation like an ache in my belly, a rumble like the trembling in your calf muscles from hiking uphill.

  Gabe takes a breath, and I speak first.

  “Gabriel.” The tone in my voice stops him short. “Wire me into this fucking machine right now.”

  I feel more than see him nod as cold metal brushes the back of my neck. A lancing moment of pain, a wrenching disconnect . . .

  . . . and I am swimming among the stars.

  Richard.

  “Right here, Jenny.” He opens up to me: space, the stars, the weight of the world and the arcing curve of the Huang Di, the asteroid, the soap-bubble of a shuttle that Leah presses to its maximum—or, more likely, Koske does, while my goddaughter runs navigation. Je vous salue, Marie, pleine de grâce.

  You know, Marie is my middle name. How do the Chinese pilots do it, Dick?

  “Plan in advance.”

  Set the jump in advance?

  “Line of sight. Do you trust me that much?”

  I trust you that much. You know what I want to do?

  “Leah says to back off and let her handle it.”

  Seal the airtight bulkhead doors. Evacuate everybody from the aft sections of the Montreal. Tell Leah to tell Trevor to pull the fuck up and let me handle this.

  “There's nobody back there but a maintenance crew. Reactor is too hot; we've evacuated until we can take on coolant water.”

  Sometimes synchronicity works.

  You know where we're going, Dick?

  “That's a ninety-meter rock, which—considering the atmosphere—will hit at something like fourteen kilometers per second. If we miss, it's not just Toronto. Cleveland. Buffalo. Most of Ontario and a chunk of the Midwest. Atmospheric blowout, it's called. Widespread fires.”

  If we miss, Leah and Trevor get their chance to die like heroes. What are our friendly Chinese neighbors thinking? That's a hell of a way to deal with the competition, Richard.

  “What do they care? They're leaving anyway.”

  I didn't know a computer could sound bitter. If I were Trevor, I would match velocity with the Rock and push it aside. If I had time.

  Which Trevor doesn't.

  With my eyes blank, with my body numb and distant, with a mind full of the cold spinning depths of space, I focus all my attention, reach out an arm that's no more than a vision, and point. Richard.

  Can you tell me when to stop us there?

  “Can Gordon Lightfoot sing shipwreck songs?”

  Who the hell is Gordon Lightfoot? Somebody with a shuttlecraft named after him, whoever he is—

  “Never mind.”

  —priez pour nous pauvres pécheurs, maintenent et à l'heure de notre mort.

  Amen.

  Amen.

  Richard.

  Go.

  Amen.

  2250 Hours

  Thursday 21 December, 2062

  HMCSS Leonard Cohen

  Under way

  The silence made it stranger.

  Leah heard Koske's breathing, the dull thud of his heartbeat, the tick of the Leonard Cohen's hide shedding heat into the vast chill of space. She heard Richard's voice in her head and the myriad tiny intimate sounds of two human bodies moving in protective gear, amplified by a confined space. But that was all.

  The Montreal hung motionless behind them, visible in rear camera displays and as a shimmering dot kilometers off the Leonard Cohen's stern. Leah had acquired visual contact with the asteroid, a slender bright crescent skittering across the motionless background of the stars, the flare of the Huang Di's chemical engines painting its topside red as the asteroid dropped from the starship like an egg from a dragon's belly, unholy in its silence.

  She swore and fed course corrections to Koske, matching her best guess at the thing's velocity and its inexorable path to the stately blue globe below. “How long?”

  “Leah,” Richard said in her head, and gave her better data. “From a friend on the Huang Di.”

  We have friends on the Huang Di?

  “Seven minutes to contact,” Koske answered, then glanced down as her new data lit up his screen. “No, seven and a half. Get your hat on, kid. It's too close for a nudge to do it. This could get rough.”

  Leah was already suited, but the shuttle was under sustained burn and the acceleration made her clumsy. She clapped the helmet on and was pleased that her hands didn't fumble a catch. Adrenaline hissed through her veins and the world outside her body slowed about 40 percent. She had her hands on the controls in ninety seconds. Richard fed her more math. This won't work. There's no way this can work. Even if we intercept the rock, we haven't got the thrust at this distance to knock it off course. Even if we go into it at full velocity. It's just not enough ship and too much rock. “Lieutenant. Suit.”

  “Can you fly this?” He looked at her for the first time, surprised.

  “I just have to keep it pointed. Three minutes, go.”

  Koske slapped the release on his helmet restraint and yanked it off the hook while Leah let her hands sit steady on the controls, tears burning the corners of her eyes. Fifty seconds. Genie's down there. Bryan. Ellie. God.

  “I have it. Sorry about this, kid.”

  “My name's Leah,” she said, and let the thrust pin her hands to the arms of her chair.

  “Leah,” he answered, muffled through speakers as the globe of his helmet tilted to observe the instruments. She bit her lip as the silence resumed.

  And gasped.

  The golden-gray sunlit dot of the Montreal suddenly seemed to elongate, to blur, to vastly stretch. Her outline, gaudy with running lights, appeared in the shuttle's forward dorsal windows, cosmic and immense and silent. Her solar sails spread wide, gossamer gold-electroplated mesh on unfurled vanes that downflected like bowering wings, the embrace of a terrible gray dove, kilometers long.

  “Above” the Leonard Cohen.

  Between the Leonard Cohen and the falling stone.

  “Shit,” Koske hissed as the Montreal slowly, majestically unfurled her gracious wings, seconds taut as hours. “Richard, tell Casey there's too many people on that ship to risk her. Tell her to stop grandstanding and get the fuck out of my way!”

  “Lieutenant,” Richard said, so both of them could hear him, “we have—a plan. Hold on.”

  “The Leonard Cohen will have contact with the asteroid in . . . Ten,” Koske said, his voice becoming soft, mechanical. He twisted the Leonard Cohen into position, flipped up the plastic cover on the thruster controls and let his thumb hover over the switch. “Nine, eight, seven—”

  “Richard—!”

  “—six—”

  “I said,” the AI answered calmly, “—hold on.”

  “Five. Four. Three—” Koske hit the thrusters, and four gravities smacked Leah in the chest like a swung baseball bat.

  The world tore in half.

  Leah chopped her teeth down on a scream and locked both elbows against the console, fighting the massive hand that slammed her back in her seat. The crescent-lit potato shape loomed behind the Montreal's gossamer solar sail, then punched through it like a bullet through a window screen. The Leonard Cohen leapt forward—intersect trajectory—and suddenly, brutally, before the asteroid was quite clear of the starship, the space around the Montreal rippled—and slipped—and stretched. In perfect serenity, all of it, and the ultimate ghastly hush of space.

  Leah never would have even seen it if she hadn't been through the augmentation. Aunt Jenny must have kicked in the stardrive the instant the asteroid touched the Montreal's vanes.

  Space tore around the wounded ship and the rock tore, too. The Montreal vanished, a blur, a smear of light across the sky, and a sound that scoured Leah's throat leaked bet
ween her teeth and tainted the air in her helmet.

  Richard's voice in her ear and Koske's. “Did we get it?”

  Leah leaned forward. Strained her eyes. And saw a curved splinter of reflected sunlight tumble past the Leonard Cohen's starboard stabilizer, close enough to reach out her hand and touch. Koske slewed the shuttle after it, but it was too late, already too late, and she knew it when she saw the mass of the asteroid start to burn.

  “Half,” she whispered, as Koske raised both gloved hands in the air and slammed them down on the Leonard Cohen's console, killing the thrust. “Richard, you got half.”

  10:15 PM

  Thursday 21 December, 2062

  Wellesley Street East

  Toronto, Ontario

  It was dark, and the bed was shaking. Genie mumbled and pulled her covers up, but bruising hands grabbed her and strong arms picked her up as the room light flared. “What else, Dr. Dunsany?”

  Genie opened her eyes and then shut them tight again. A big man held her close to his chest. “Ellie!”

  And then Ellie was beside her, warm hand on her arm, tucking trailing blankets around her. “Genie. We have to leave now. Right now.”

  Genie's eyes flew open. “For good?”

  Ellie nodded, holding the door open for the soldier—Genie saw now that it was a soldier, and pressed herself against his uniform. “Probably. We're going to see Leah and your papa. And Jenny.”

  Genie squirmed suddenly, slithered out of the startled soldier's grasp, the loose weave of her blue cotton blanket burning her skin. “Boris,” she shouted, and squirted out of the bedroom.

  “Genie— Shit. Come on. She—”

  Boris was curled on Ellie's bookcase, next to the stereo speaker. Genie grabbed him and dragged him against her chest. Startled claws bit into her nightgown, but he didn't scratch. Genie put her back against the books and clutched the orange tomcat tight. Real old-fashioned books that smelled of paper and leather and glue. “Boris comes,” she said, and saw Ellie make a lightning calculation and then scoop her up, cat and all.

  “All right,” she said, hefting Genie on her hip even though Genie's head rose higher than Ellie's did. “Come on. We have to run to the roof.”