The Broken Third (Digitesque Book 4)

by Guerric Haché

  Baoji switched the voice off. “Yeah, yeah.”

  Turou looked nervously out the cockpit. “Baoji, this is all normal for you, right?”

  The mirran turned around and grinned a toothy grin. “Having a magic earthling on my ship fighting off military patrols? Hell no. I smuggle shit, Turou, even people sometimes, but I usually pick my jobs carefully. Thanks to you for not warning me who I was picking up, by the way.”

  “Oh.” Turou rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, you have a plan for escaping the authorities, right?”

  “Sure. The second I met Ada I was already too close to be able to walk away from this, so it’s time for drastic measures. We’re ditching the ship.”

  Ada looked around. “It’s crap, sure, but you must have had this thing for -”

  “Forever, yes. On the bright side, I’ve been saving up for an upgrade for a few years. Transporting illegals is quite profitable and I’m quite frugal.”

  “I believe him.” Elsa pointed at Baoji. “Kitchen’s got the cheapest fucking booze you can find, and his clothes are trash. Money must be going somewhere else.”

  “You see?” Baoji gave a hissing laugh. “I like this girl.”

  “Don’t like me too much.” Elsa said. “I was SpecSec on Tlaloc.”

  “SpecSec? Hell of a career to throw away.”

  Elsa grimaced. “Career? I was about to be fired before they decided to kill her and kill me to cover it up.” She sighed. “SpecSec look out for each other more than most, but I never thought high command would just treat me like a civilian.”

  Turou glanced at her. “Imagine being a civilian.”

  Baoji didn’t dwell on that. “There’s always business in smuggling”

  “Baoji, we barely know each other, and you do not want to meet my parents.”

  Ada smiled. She understood the mood of the banter, if not the context. She looked to Turou, who just looked nervous and uneasy, probably running over the possible negative outcomes in his mind. Ada was out of place - not quite part of this world, even though she was here. Not quite aware of everything that could happen, that could go wrong.

  She tried to put on a brave face. “So how did you become friends with a smuggler, Turou?”

  Turou glanced up from his brooding. “He wasn’t always like this. He studied at the academy with me.”

  She looked at the mirran. “But, um, he’s not human. Isn’t it an academy for ancient human culture?”

  Baoji turned around and said something incomprehensible to her, a language that reminded her a little bit of what the Chengdu used to babble. Turou shook his head. “She doesn’t speak it. Baoji was adopted as a baby, by a human family from Chang’e.”

  Baoji held up something suspended around his neck, then popped it off the string and handed it to her. A small metal disk with a square hole in the centre, an engraved image of odd buildings, and unintelligible blocky script. “Humans whose ancestors came from the same place on Earth as Turou’s, and speak the same language. That’s what I grew up with. But that monastery wasn’t enough for me.” Baoji hissed his mirran laugh. “Not enough fun.”

  “By fun, he means petty crime.”

  “Oh, don’t be like that, Turou. Ada, do you have any idea how much these same people pay me to deliver priceless Old Earth artifacts for their collections?”

  Elsa shook her head. “Ada doesn’t know money.”

  “What? Well I’m never going to Earth then.”

  Ada grinned. “You wouldn’t like it anyway. Not much demand for spaceships.”

  “So how did you get one?”

  She thought back to it. “It was given to me by the gods.”

  Baoji paused. “You should know that a lot of people in the Union believe in gods. Gods that aren’t supposed to be machines.”

  “What are they, then?”

  “Well, they’re like... spirits that live everywhere at once, and influence our lives.”

  Ada nodded. “Most people think our gods are like that. I just discovered that they were machines because I tracked them down. What’s your point?”

  “The gods that people here believe in can’t really be found. They don’t exist anywhere specific; there’s no way to prove they exist. Or don’t.”

  “Wait, they don’t do anything at all? Why believe in them, then?”

  Turou nodded out into the void of space. “There’s a lot in people’s lives that they don’t understand. Gods give them meaning.”

  “I’m not sure that’s better than machine gods.” She blinked. “Hell, even if our gods are idiots. Is life really so great in the Union that people think there are gods looking out for them?”

  Elsa snorted laughter, and Baoji shrugged. “I don’t know if any of us here do, but there are people, and even we understand gods are supposed to be something higher than us. So when you talk about machine gods, well...”

  Turou sighed. “There are people who believed the Haints were sent by a god, or the universe, to punish us for our sins. They worship the Haints and pray for their return.”

  “That sounds stupid.” Ada’s face fell a little. “A vaguely familiar kind of stupid, actually.”

  “It is.” Elsa ground her teeth, letting her arms fall to her sides. The ship didn’t seem to need her anymore. “I raided a cult of them once; they were trying to build AI in a walled-off basement. Them and the robots almost killed us when we busted them.”

  “So you can see why machine gods make us uneasy.”

  Ada frowned. The Haint trauma was from so long ago - but hadn’t she reacted the same way when she first realized the ghosts were returning? That had turned out a lot better than she had expected, but there had been no way for her to know that. Perhaps the fear wasn’t completely misplaced.

  She smiled. “I pulled a gun on my gods once, you know. Pointed it straight at them. I think they were scared.”

  The other three glanced at her in silence as she grinned. After a moment, Elsa sighed. “Hell, I’m not even surprised.”

  As the ship slowly turned in space, accelerating away from the jumpgate, a large white orb loomed into view. Ada pointed at it. “Is that Chang’e?”

  Turou nodded, smiling a little as he saw the distant world. “That’s the planet, yes. The main moon people live on is a lot smaller. I can’t quite see it from this angle.”

  “I’ll stay here and keep an eye on things.” Elsa glanced at Baoji. “But I’m getting really hungry. Baoji, mind whipping up some pizza and bringing me a slice?”

  The mirran smuggler stood up and grinned. “Yes dear.”

  Ada’s mouth started watering. “Oh gods, yes please.”

  “Come on, I’ll show you how some of the stasis box works.” Baoji blinked. “Which is ridiculous, given how you’re some kind of star goddess.”

  Elsa shook her head. “Space witch. That’s what I’m calling her.”

  “Seriously though, I’m not.” Although… Ada realised there was an opportunity here, for all that the colonials didn’t seem interested in titles. “Well, actually, if you want to call me Star Goddess -”

  “I’ll pass.”

  She pouted as Baoji climbed down past her. “Damn it.”

  She clambered down the ladder towards the kitchen, and Turou followed her. “Can we put on the news? I want to see what they’re saying about… this.”

  Baoji nodded, flicking a switch to turn on a screen. “Eating stasis pizza and watching the news with two ladies we barely know hanging out in the apartment. Turou, friend, this is just like old times.”

  Ada was impatiently standing behind Baoji as he made for the food, but she managed a grin. “Is that the kind of life you used to live, before the… what was it called?”

  Turou nodded, smiling fondly. “APHEC - but this specific campus is called Guwenhua. And yes, neither of us could cook while we were roommates, so we ate a lot of… this.”

  “I thought you disapproved.” Ada found herself unable to imagine disapproving.

  “Just
the kind that gets made in a factory and held in stasis for days. When I learned to make it myself I couldn’t go back.”

  “He’s such a stuck-up, now.” Baoji tapped the side of the stasis box. “Ada, come here. See this number? That’s the battery. It’s not perfect stasis, but the box slows molecular motion without freezing. When the battery runs out - soon - or you open the box, everything returns to its normal speed, hot like when it was made a day or two ago. Hopefully.”

  He popped open a small clasp, and a tiny screen on the box went dark. The box opened, the smells suddenly filled her nose and mouth, and she inhaled deeply. “I was worried it would be complicated.”

  Baoji’s ears flicked. “Well sorry, I thought you grew up charring dead animals over a fire.”

  “Hey.” Turou gestured for them to come over. “We’re all over the feeds.”

  They turned around to the screen Turou was looking at. Ada tilted her head. “What are people saying?”

  “Baoji, you haven’t upgraded the software on this thing in years. How do I -?”

  The mirran walked over and hit the screen in a few places. “There.”

  “Right.” Turou touched a small square filled with text, and a mechanical voice started droning out into the kitchen.

  “Yesterday’s dramatic events in Starcast’s Daneer studios have rocked the Union. Earthling Ada Liu remains unaccounted for, but Union intelligence is working to identify the terrorists who shot several civilians and servicemembers in the Starcast showroom. Daneer’s military governor released a statement this morning outlining the department’s initial findings.”

  The screen Turou was holding showed a picture of a beat-up-looking man that Ada vaguely recognized.

  “Contrary to the earthling’s baseless accusations, our surviving suspect openly admits to being a member of Humon. They claim to have received the same audio recording that was later broadcast by an unidentified ship around Freya, which Union intelligence has repeatedly debunked as a fabrication. It’s unclear whether Humon believes Ada Liu will somehow provoke the military into breeding a race of supersoldiers, or whether they believe the Earth mission was a hoax and that she already is a genetically modified supersoldier, but -”

  “Who are these Humon people?” Ada’s memories started racing. “Do they have anything to do with the Starshadow? With Shade?”

  Turou shushed her, though. “- the attack has hopefully lain the most conspiratorial theories to rest. We now have clear footage of this earthling engaging in what witness could only describe as magic. This being is a clear threat to the safety of Union citizens -”

  Ada sighed. “Turn it off.”

  She looked at Baoji and Turou. Perhaps this news was lying, of course - but if it was telling the truth, Ada’s accusations about Earth invasion plans might fall flat, if anybody even cared to wonder about them. These Humon people seemed like the obvious target - would anyone care what Senjat had planned for her?

  Ada remembered Sanako had said it wasn’t the military. She had known something was up, something to do with a former friend or lover. Maybe Ada should have listened. Watched out for her.

  Had Sanako been hurt afterwards? She had almost completely forgotten. She shook her head, trying to figure the best way forward. “Who are Humon?”

  Turou fidgeted again, but Baoji spoke plainly. “Human Movement to Nature. A human purity movement. They want to turn back into monkeys living in trees, and get away from mirrans if they can.”

  At this, Turou seemed to tense. “Let’s not pretend there aren’t mirrans who feel the same way, Baoji.”

  “And to them I’m either a species traitor or an abuse victim.” Baoji shook his head. “Ada’s just in a bit more complicated of a situation.”

  Human purity. The only sense she could make of that was the one, brief moment she had feared she might be infected by the technophage, but even then, that wasn’t about purity so much as keeping her sanity. And too much of Venshi’s old ideas about how humans were supposed to live echoed in that idea. The Union might not have solutions, but at least it still held the poison that killed Earth alive and available for study.

  The thought made her skin crawl. Especially where it was black with code. Living things weren’t pure - forests and cities, bodies and minds, everything was mixed and ever-changing. Only snow and deserts were pure - wastelands. Her face contorted into a scowl, and she leaned back, suddenly less interested in the pizza Baoji was rather violently cutting apart.

  She had to hope Sanako handled herself. She had to hope the military wouldn’t turn on one of their own for helping her - though they had already planned to do the same to Elsa. Ada looked to the screen again. “Anything about us? Are they tracking us, maybe?”

  Turou flicked through the screens again. “Just some basics, like how they suspect the EMP blast over Freyja was related to your disappearance. Nothing concrete, nothing about Chang’e. The details won’t be in the news until it’s too late; the regime will make sure of that.”

  Baoji started taking posters down from the walls as the pizza sat uneaten on the table, folding them up and packing them away. She remembered what he had said - time to ditch the ship.

  She finally turned her attention to the food, wondering if he would regret it. Losing his ship. It would only make sense.

  Chapter 10

  The ship moved as fast as it was able; Ada had offered to speed it up, but Baoji thought that would compromise the ship’s ability to navigate correctly, so she had to endure the colonial pace. The planet proper was a fixture of the journey, ribboned with coldly majestic pale greys and beiges, but when the moon finally came into view it was something else entirely. Chang’e was vibrant, woven of a rainbow of greens and veiled with a thick, cloudy blue haze. It looked, as best she could guess, almost as big as Earth.

  She glanced at Baoji and Turou. “This is home, then?”

  Baoji nodded. “A bit smaller than the other worlds, so it’ll feel lighter than Freyja. One of the things I like about it - that and the sparse SysSec patrols, most of the time anyway.”

  Ada wished most of the time included the now . “I bet the whole planet is just waiting for us this time. What’s the plan?”

  “They’ve probably already seen us.” Elsa pointed to the moon. “We’re in space. You can’t really hide in space without completely turning off your systems, especially not when people are looking for you.”

  She blinked, leaning forward and looking out the cockpit, resisting the urge to brag about Cherry once more. “So, again - plan?”

  Baoji grumbled. “Fly really fast towards a region of the moon that doesn’t have a security response team ready to pounce, ditch the ship in the forest, move on foot. It’s a hell of a lot harder to track four people in a forest than it is to track a ship in space.”

  Ada really couldn’t help herself. “ My ship could turn invisible.”

  Baoji grinned as he flicked through a series of charts. “Yeah, keep talking like that.”

  Elsa pointed at another screen, and Ada leaned over to see a map of Chang’e laid out before her. “Where are we landing?”

  “I’m trying to get us to a sleeping timezone in the moon’s shadow.” Baoji tapped something on the screen, and the map was suddenly half-covered in a darkened filter. “Landing at night won’t help much, but better to land somewhere without as many people up to see the entry trail.”

  “Wait - entry trail.” Ada remembered flying into Earth’s atmosphere with Cherry, how the world outside had heated up. “The outside of the ship is going to get really hot and bright, right?”

  “Of course. Why?”

  She turned around, slowed time down, and set to work. At this point she barely needed to think about it, and in what felt like half an hour, she had a wraith floating in front of her again, connected to her by the communicator sigil inside it.

  “- again.”

  She turned around. “Sorry, what?”

  “I said oh, that again.”

&nbs
p; She smiled. “Let’s get this thing on the outside of the ship - I can code stuff that will absorb the light and heat on the ship’s exterior and turn it into energy for… eh, something else. I don’t know.”

  Baoji blinked. “What can you do with that energy?”

  “Blow things up, reinforce things, make things float -”

  “Like that thing in the hall that screws with gravity?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you, I don’t know, point that at the ship? If we could somehow slow our descent I could use less thrust, which means less flare, which helps us keep a low profile.”

  She bit her lip. “Of course, I can… well.” The more she thought about it, the more she realized she should be cautious. “I’m not sure I can land it myself. I can make it… lighter, I guess. Floatier. Or - well, actually, I can probably code a levitation sigil onto the surface somewhere that we could land on gently.”

  “Can you actually do that? Have you done it before?”

  She wrung her wrists. “I once broke up a mountainside into pieces and turned them into energy to levitate a giant metal box out into space from Earth.”

  Elsa snorted. “Well, shit, that’s more than I’ve got. Baoji, can you get us a good entry vector?”

  He scratched his right ear, and as he did so Ada slipped into the wraith, briefly, moving it down into the airlock she had used last time. “The wraith is in the airlock. I’ll attach it outside the ship and start working. Shouldn’t take too long.”

  “You’ll want to do the underside of the ship - we really, really don’t want to be spinning on our way in, so all the hot and shiny will be on the underside.”

  She nodded. In a few moments the door slid open in front of the wraith, and Ada pushed it into the emptiness of space. She reached out with its code, clawing the wraith across the ship towards the underside, and set to work. She had used these absorption sigils before - hell, on Earth she had fired her gun at one, and it had done perfectly fine. She covered the bottom of the ship with several large ones, weaving their power outflows into a knot at the rear of the hull. “Okay, done.”