“What the hell -”
“Magic, okay, it’s magic, I can’t explain it, just fly faster!” Ada gritted her teeth. “How far away are we from this ship?”
“We’ll be out of the city in a few minutes if nobody shoots us down. After that, who knows? Half an hour before we intercept.”
“Half an hour?”
“ Don’t you complain to me. Magic us faster if you really -”
Ada slowed time down, reached out behind the skimmer with code, and slammed force sigils onto the back, pushing the skimmer faster and faster. The vehicle started shuddering, the cockpit rattling around and vibrating underneath them.
Elsa’s eyes widened. “Holy fuck this is way too fast -”
Ada braced herself against the front of the cockpit. “Don’t you complain to me! Elsa, who the hell shot me?”
“All I know is they screamed about supersoldiers .” Something flicked by outside, brushing against the side of the vehicle. “Like I said, terrorists. ”
“What are those?”
“People who destroy or kill to make a political point .”
She nearly hit the glass window in frustration, then considered it might be pathetically brittle. “Politics! Fucking colonial bullshit. Why me?”
Elsa’s grip on the controls tightened. “I don’t know, some people aren’t nice, Ada please just let me fly this thing.”
She gritted her teeth but kept quiet. She had survived. She was… not unstoppable, truthfully; an explosion or a more complicated wound would have been the end of it. She was lucky, in a sense. But she was also so much more than that. Than them. She watched her fingers flex, one by one, and smiled.
The skimmer zipped out of the forest of towers soon enough, the world below suddenly very different. Concrete and glass and metal cut away to rolling plains of bluish greens pocked with turquoise lakes and pale grey rocks and patchy snow-dusted forests. The rear-view camera wasn’t showing pursuit, at least not at the moment. Ada thought she could breath a sigh of relief, and the pain in her chest was finally starting to dull. She was hungry, though. Whatever those nanites did in her blood, it had cost her.
Elsa shook her head. “Okay, you magicked us too fast for the skimmer’s controls to handle properly. I’m not going to ask how. Let’s just - we’re running, right? To Chang’e?”
Ada ran her fingers through her hair. “Elsa, if you think you’d be safer without me -”
Elsa glared briefly and savagely. “Ada, I told you we were in this together and I meant it. Besides, if somebody isn’t there to help you figure this shit out I think you’re going to kill a lot more people than you need to. I’d rather that not happen.”
Ada smiled. “So righteous.”
“You’re a wrecking ball and I - holy crap, is that - shit, that’s the Cirrus.”
Elsa was pointing up at the sky, and for a second Ada couldn’t tell what she was talking about. Then she saw it, sharper white against soft white clouds, slowly descending down towards the rugged plains below. “That’s the ship?”
“It’s going fast. Looks like this friend kicked it the second we got off the call with Turou. And since you magicked our ride, I think we just broke the math on this exam question.”
She frowned. “What? Are we landing?”
The soldier started flicking switches. “Well they are, so so are we. We’ll work things out, but we have to be fast. If the skimmer’s insurance company hasn’t tracked us yet the satellites definitely have. The only secret we have is this other pilot’s name.” She shook her head, and muttered half to herself. “Ship better have some serious mods.”
Elsa gently brought the skimmer down to the soil - well, tried. The force sigil on the back was clearly throwing her off, and the skimmer’s ability to maneuver was already poor. The approach flubbed, the skimmer’s nose ground into the dirt, but they were unhurt. After they heaved the doors open Ada jumped out onto Freyja proper, touching the planet itself for the first time.
The soil was spongy and prickled with hardy plants, snow cowered in shaded crevices and ditches, and a cold wind whipped over the plains towards the impossibly towering spires of the capital city. Dense bushes clung to the planet between sheets of moss, and small, fuzzy creatures unlike anything on Earth squirmed away, hurrying into the greenery.
Then a masculine, mirran voice cut across the cold. “Jalack’s? Fresh is best, but I won’t say no!”
Chapter 8
Ada rounded on the person who spoke, a tall and muscular-looking mirran with charcoal grey fur that paled to a bone colour around his throat and presumably under his brown leather jacket. A technological headpiece blinked blue next to his eye, and he held himself a bit oddly, for a mirran.
Then his eyes met Ada’s, his ears flatted, and his muzzle twitched out impeccable human pronunciation. “Oh shit.”
Ada cocked her head. “Turou’s friend?”
The mirran was already taking a few steps back, his hands flicking across his devices. “That’s under revision. Turou? Hey.” His accent was curt and rounder than the humans’ seemed to be. “Remember when I asked who you wanted me to pick up, and you said you couldn’t tell me, and I said that was fine? This is not fine.”
Ada shot a glance at Elsa, who was reaching for something at her side. They both watched the mirran carefully; what was he going to do?
In the end, after apparently listening to Turou say something on the other end, he started sighing and shaking his head. “Okay, okay. No, I understand. But I did not owe you this much . We’ll talk.” He gave them a look of sudden attentiveness again, and pressed his palms together, bowing at the shoulder in a gesture so abortive it must be mockery. “Well, ladies, it seems I’m stuck with you.”
Ada blinked. “Um. What?”
He stepped closer to them, shaking his head in an unusually human way and staring at the roughed-up skimmer. “Turou didn’t tell me who I was picking up, but now that I’m here I can’t disassociate myself. The best I can do is try to hide you.” His ears flicked. “Except you’re Ada Liu, eldritch alien horror. Half the Union saw you on stream less than an hour ago and the rest will see the recordings soon. No way under all the heavens can I hide you .” He turned to Elsa. “You, maybe.”
Elsa eyed him suspiciously. “We didn’t hijack a pizza delivery skimmer for a maybe .”
He huffed, ears twitching, and extended a hand towards Ada. “Name’s Chuan Baoji.”
She stared at his dark furry hand and grabbed it awkwardly. “Ada Liu. This is Elsa.”
“Elsa Ines Carrera, since we’re doing the whole thing.”
Baoji seemed to wait for a second, then grinned in the toothy mirran way. “Ada, even though I saw you do things that would make my worst nightmares squeal, I think I like you already.”
She inadvertently cracked a grin. “Uh, thanks?”
“First person I’ve met in a few months who hasn’t asked rude questions about my name.”
She frowned. “What’s the matter, do people give you trouble for it?”
“Hah! Do they ever.”
She raised an eyebrow at Elsa, hoping for some clarification, but Elsa rolled her eyes and threw up her hands. “Look, Baoji, if you’ve got a plan now’s the time to share. Plans are in short fucking supply today.”
He crossed his arms in front of his brown leather jacket. “I fly a 3325 Cirrus. A white one!”
Ada frowned - had he misheard the question? “I don’t think -”
Elsa shook her head. “They’re cheap, so they’re everywhere. Baoji, you think you can just zip out of here right now and nobody will check your ship? You landed right next to the skimmer we stole. The satellites will see it, the insurance trackers in both ships will report -”
“Which is why I’m stuck without a choice. But I haven’t shown all my cards yet.” He glanced at Ada again, standing barely a hair shorter than him. “Heavens, she really does make you all look small.”
Ada gestured at his ship. “So are we going, or
just enjoying the breeze?”
Elsa crossed her arms at Baoji. “Turou needs to be picked up. He has no choice either - it won’t take long for them to dig through our comms. Even if he didn’t have anything to do with this, he’d end up in jail for months of questioning just for talking to you.”
Ada blinked. “Wait, who? The military?”
“Everything on every network is recorded.” Elsa gestured around the air. “They usually don’t look at it right away, but they can go back and listen to anything you say through any device.”
Baoji nodded at the city. “They’re probably mining the data already.”
Ada’s eyes widened. Was he suggesting they return to the city? “How long will that take?”
“I don’t know.” He tapped his headpiece. “Turou? How long will you be?”
Turou’s voice crackled out of the device this time, taking Ada by surprise. “Uh, well, I’m biking out of the city.”
Baoji froze for an instant before laughing. “Biking? You stupid idiot.”
“Look, traffic is a nightmare at this hour and I don’t want transit surveillance seeing me!”
“You realize I’m going to have to pick you up on the run. What did you tell your academic buddies?”
“That I was going for a bike ride.”
Baoji was shaking his head. “ If you don’t get executed, you’re getting fired. ”
“Look I - almost hit something furry. Just track me?”
Something flashed on a tiny glass screen in front of Baoji’s face. “On my way.” The mirran turned to them and pointed to the ship, its boxy white body flanked on either side by stubby-looking wings. “Lovely ladies, may I offer you a ride?”
Elsa bared her teeth. “Cut the smarm.”
He flicked an ear. “Ride or die.”
Ada patted Elsa’s shoulder and stepped forward. “Cut the smarm. I’ll use that one.”
Elsa followed towards the ship, but Baoji left them, running towards their skimmer. Ada turned to watch. “Hey, where’s he -”
“He’ll be back. It’s his ship, after all.” Elsa jerked her thumb at the Cirrus and pulled Ada inside. “Come on, let’s hit the cockpit.”
Ada followed Elsa into the ship, and something was… wrong about it. The hallway they stepped into was narrow and flat, with ladder-like handrails along both sides, but some of the rooms they passed were built sideways, the apparent floor oriented towards the back of the ship. It was an awkward hybrid, she realized, between the tower-like design of the ship she had arrived on and a more terrestrial layout, like what she knew from the Chengdu .
At the end of the hall they reached the cockpit, and Elsa immediately sat down in one of the seats. As her hands and eyes ran over the instruments, Ada sat down in the other and stared. What the hell were they looking at? The inside of the cockpit was an avalanche of buttons, knobs, levers, and screens displaying all kinds of information. She poked something, but Elsa smacked her hand away. “Don’t, unless you want us all to die in a fireball.”
“What is all this garbage?”
Elsa scoffed. “ Actual garbage, even to me. This model is at least twenty years old.”
“No, I mean this isn’t how ships on Earth work. We don’t have all these… buttons.”
“What do they do, read your mind?”
Ada thought back to Cherry, to that effortless melding of mind and being. “Yeah, basically.”
Elsa groaned as she flicked a few switches. “I get it, you’re a fairy princess from a magical fairy kingdom. Look, nobody wants you flying this thing, so stop complaining and let me -”
“Pizza!”
They jumped, and Ada turned to see Baoji carrying a towering set of thin metallic boxes. “What the hell are those?”
He set them down in a storage contained behind the pilot seats, and snapped it shut. “What are these? Heavens, she really is an alien.”
Elsa shook her head. “You’re telling me. Ada, let him sit.”
She jumped up, hitting her head on the glass around the cockpit. “Ow! Fuck! Why are you people all so tiny?”
“Happens to me too.” Baoji chuckled as he sat down. “It’s all the humans scurrying around, they’re practically mice. I grabbed everything that wasn’t nailed down in that skimmer, praise be Jalack’s. Let’s go.”
Elsa pointed at the patchwork dashboard. “A lot going on here.” Elsa sounded cautious. “Is that an EMP trigger?”
Baoji’s toothy white grin split out from his charcoal face. “A what? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Elsa pursed her lips. “Exactly how much of this rustbucket is illegal? And how the hell did Turou ever meet you? If anybody from SysSec so much as glances -”
Ada tapped her foot. “Are we leaving today?”
The ship started to whirr and hum, the startled purring of an engine somewhere deeper in the ship. Baoji waved at her. “Yes, crazy space lady. I’ll need you two down by the door to nab him.”
“No, Ada can manage alone.” Elsa shook her head. “Trust me. How do you think we got our hands on that skimmer?”
Baoji stared at her, having obviously not wondered about that yet. “I shudder to think.”
“Shudder away.”
The ship rattled, and Ada was suddenly thrown up against the bulkhead by the acceleration. The cold steppes of Freyja below dropped away as the ship pushed up into the sky. Panicked by the rattling, she gripped one of the handrails in the hall. “What happened? Are we going to explode?”
“Don’t mind her.” Elsa shouted to be heard over the roar of the ship’s machines. “She comes from a mythical place where everything just works.”
“ Just works? You mean breaks the second you try something the engineer didn’t think of?”
Ada ground her teeth, tapping the bulkhead. “Let me know when you want me to get outside and push!” Had a thousand years really not allowed for any more improvement? How could Cherry be so much more advanced than anything the Union was able to cook up? Technology on Earth really did just work, so why did the idea seem so laughable to them?
Damn it, she wanted her ship back. Everything would have been so much easier if Cherry hadn’t suddenly gone radio silent after reaching the ring.
The Cirrus rushed above the pocked wilds of the planet towards Daneer, ringing around the city and coming in slow. Baoji pointed down. “Okay, Ada? Get down to the door you came in from. Turou’s riding out along one of the country trails. You see him, grab him. Forget the bike.”
“What’s a bike?”
“You’ll figure it out. Go!”
She turned and swaggered back through the shaking ship, trying not to fall or hit her head. There was a display next to the door, and after a second of fumbling she managed to get it to show an image of the world outside. The city wasn’t far, but there were dirt trails leading out from the streets, and a small figure was moving along one of them.
Baoji’s voice crackled through a speaker next to her. “Ada? I’m going to fly down alongside him as slow as I can go. I see CitySec but they’re keeping their distance, you must have spooked them. Hold on tight. Ready?”
She gripped the handrail tightly with one hand, and raised her other hand towards the door. Moving things was simple enough. “Ready.”
The door slid open, squeaking a bit as it did, and suddenly wind whipped her black hair into a frenzy as it howled past the door. She leaned forward, peering just a few metres below them, and saw a shape there. Turou was on… some strange metal contraption with two wheels. It was perhaps the stupidest-looking machine she had ever seen.
She struck out with code, grabbing him in slow-time and then hauling him up to the ship in real-time with carefully-coordinated levitation sigils, taking special care not to drop him or slam him into the side of the ship. It was always a risk. He flailed and screamed as the black torrent swirled around him, but before long she yanked him inside. He flew in a bit too hard and landed in her arms, staggering her backwards into the ship.
Frozen in a moment of panic, she kicked the wall. “Baoji! Close the door!”
The door slammed shut. Then the ship tilted upwards, and Ada barely managed to grab the handrail before gravity yanked her towards the back of the ship. Turou fell into the hall, yelping in pain before grabbing onto the nearest of the handrails, which had now more effectively become ladders. Suddenly he cried out and fell another metre to the back of the hall, now the floor, and flattened against it.
Ada reached down to grab his hand, but gravity seemed to grow stronger and stronger, and the force on her arm was starting to hurt. If she let go, though, she would be pulled downwards a few metres by a force of gravity at least twice as strong as what she was comfortable with, straight onto a frail colonial human. She could kill him with that kind of fall.
She slowed time and reached out to claw a levitation sigil onto the bulkhead around him; it was awkward deforming the sigil like that, but she managed to make it work. Gravity shifted again, and she felt a sudden relaxation of the force pulling her to the back of the ship. Turou was taken aback and reached around himself, and Ada scrambled down the ladder to the floor, where the levitation sigil had weakened but not entirely eliminated the force pushing them downward.
Thick, hard metal boxes with little blinking lights and displays started falling on top of them.
“Baoji!” Ada yelled up the ship, fending the boxes away from her face. “What the hell are we doing?”
Turou looked at one of the boxes. “Really? Of all the pizza companies -”
Ada slowed time and snapped a seeing eye of code up into the cockpit, watching the screen counterpart flicker before her eyes. The vastness of space stretched out directly in front of them, Freyja’s chilly cloak of atmosphere receding along the sides. Gods, they were already on their way.
She let the code dissipate and turned to yell at Turou over the rattle of the ship. “We’re leaving the planet!”
Turou looked like he was in pain, and his hair looked like it would flattened unflatteringly if it were any longer. “I can tell!”
Elsa shouted back at them. “Hold on tight, we’re being hailed by system security! Stay quiet!”
The Broken Third (Digitesque Book 4) Page 13