Chapter 18
The second Haint fleet did not hurl itself straight at the evacuation corridor.
That was the only good news.
“Ada, what will you do?”
She was drifting alongside the ship that had, under duty and duress, agreed to accept Zhilik’s lifepod. He and a few others, some of them injured, had made it safely onboard and were almost at the jumpgate to Freyja. Ada was not going to follow. “That second fleet is screening the wormship. We can’t attack.” She stared out at the boxy, overburdened passenger ship. “All I can do is help the evacuation, Zhilik. Stay on Freyja this time, no matter what the Union wants from you. I’m sorry we didn’t have time to meet up on the ship.”
She watched pearlescent flickers strung out along the length of the evacuation corridor, small Haints occasionally swooping through thinned Union patrols to strike at civilians. The military was trying to bolster its presence along the corridor, and they seemed to be having some success, but Ada knew that was illusory. The Haints were toying with them.
It was clear in the way that second fleet popped into the system so casually right after the first was destroyed. In the way the first fleet had been just strong enough to almost destroy the Union fleet. In the way Hornet swarms and rogue Vultures continued picking at the fraying thread of the evacuation over the next few hours, indifferent to the eventuality that Ada or a Starfleet patrol would eventually knock them away. They were barely trying.
Ada did not like to be toyed with. But as fast and as fierce as she might fly, the most she could do was take on these small skirmishes one at a time. It did nothing to change the long march of the tides, but each skirmish won might save hundreds of civilian lives, and the larger ships were too dangerous for her and Cherry to approach.
By twenty hours after the wormship’s arrival, ships landing on Chang’e to evacuate citizens numbered in the hundreds. They had forty-two hours left before the Haint wormship and its fleet were close enough to do to Chang’e whatever they did to destroy everything on the surface. Baoji’s physics that Ada found so irritating granted them one small mercy: the wormship was so massive it took hours and hours to make even minor trajectory adjustments.
Ada could sleep in space, but she was both hungry and concerned for her companions. It wouldn’t do anyone any good if she started to lose her focus or succumb to distraction. She swept into the moon’s atmosphere, dipping down through the rain towards the forested world below. Guwenhua was fairly easy to spot once she broke cloud cover, and rain spattered across her shields as she zipped towards it. She settled next to Baoji’s ship and hopped down onto the old flagstone, jogging over to the Peregrine’s cargo hold to find Baoji pacing restlessly.
“Baoji.”
He looked up at her. “Ada.” His ears twitched, and he pointed to cargo boxes piled inside the hold. “Priceless paintings. Originals from Earth, some in stasis. Thousands of years old.”
She looked at the boxes. “We’re going to use the space for people , right? ”
His ears flattened. “I get it, but I also know how much these things are worth to people. These things maintain a connection to history.” He shook his head. “Ada, how are things up there?”
She took a deep breath, let it raggedly claw its way out of her throat. “If it were going well I’d be laughing. What do you think? I can’t handle these.”
His voice softened a little as he flatted an ear. “They’re fucking Haints, Ada. Heavens, nobody expects you to be able to handle an infinite fleet of genocidal space robots. I meant how much time -”
“ I expect it!” She thumped her fist in her chest. “ I’m better than this! Than them!”
Baoji ruffled the fur on his head. “There’s an expression you probably don’t have on Earth anymore. There’s always a bigger fish.”
“I eat fish.”
“I think you’re missing the point -”
“Fine.” Ada leaned against the bulkhead, grumbling. “We need to get these crates out of the way.”
“No, I don’t think - some of these things are too precious to people.” Baoji was shaking his head. “They voted some weighted priority system, and some of the artwork and artifacts got voted higher than some of the people. That’s just how it’s going to be.”
She squinted at him, skeptical. “They whated?”
“Voted - we have this thing called democracy -”
She shook her head. “This is ridiculous. We should just get you to build ships like Cherry that can warp around. Then we can close the jumpgates -”
He leaned against one of the crates, idly peeking under the lid. “Ada, at this point our entire economic and political infrastructure is about to collapse. Nothing your ship does makes any sense to me. You said your own ship told you there are no others around Earth, and there’s no way to access blueprints or shipwrighting designs. The Haints beat us up last time but left us standing - we can only hope they’ll do the same this time.”
“Hope? That’s not -”
He slammed the lid shut. “Damn it, it’s all we have.” He glared at her. “Unless your girlfriend back on Earth is hiding a warfleet up her sleeve, we’re all screwed.”
She opened her mouth to respond, but with what? After a moment she ran her fingers through her hair, yanking, as though she might pull out some ideas that way. Nothing came, except the thought of leaving and running back to Isavel.
But that would mean leaving this mess behind, and leaving all these people to die on the altar of her own decisions and her own quest for knowledge. That was…
She turned away from the cargo hold, but Baoji called out to her. “See if you can find Elsa. I don’t know where she went.”
Ada turned to look at him again, and he shrugged.
“I just want her to be safe.”
She tilted her head. Huh. “I’ll find her.”
She walked back out into the rain, quickly moving through the campus. Turou’s room was already barren. When she reached the cherry grove, a mockery she would not be sad to see disappear, she heard Elsa’s voice and followed it into a large building with a vast, open hall. Elsa a few others were arranging boxes that were each slightly larger than human heads, inspecting words on them and calling out names.
“Tong Eisendorf? Ming vase, 1475 BA, item number 162-”
A middle-aged woman scurried from a waiting crowd and grabbed the box. “Thank you. Thank you.” She glanced at Ada. “This one - it’s such a unique work -”
Ada stepped past her to Elsa. “Elsa, what is this?”
“We’re going through the evacuation list. These items got voted onto the ships and assigned a caretaker.” Her tone was flat, her expression betraying nothing as she called out the next box. “Sala Wei; Xiyou Ji , 2248 BA, Old Embassy imprint.” She looked around for the person in question. “First colonial copies? Hello?”
A man with shaggy brown hair stumbled forward and wordlessly grabbed the box. Ada watched him go, bewildered. “Can someone explain to me why the hell we’re bringing boxes onto the ships instead of people?”
Elsa shook her head, but her tone did falter. “Their life’s work is in those boxes. Some of the few connections we still have with where we come from are in those boxes.”
Ada watched them all, these huddled scholars waiting for their prizes. Had it hit them, yet, that their world was about to end? She wasn’t even sure it had hit her, but she was already inclined to burn the place down entire and drag its denizens away from the strange mesmer of these artifacts. “Baoji’s looking for you.”
“I know, he’s asked me three times already to go back to the ship. I’m fine. The wormship is days away -”
“Less than two days.”
Elsa paused. The bags under her eyes suggested counting sleeps wasn’t a reliable method of keeping time right now. “Some ships might be able to make two round-trips between here and Inti. I’ll be fine.”
Ada sighed. “Where’s Turou?”
“In the gardens by his
room, last time I saw.”
“I must have missed him.” She clapped Elsa on the shoulder, staring at the pile of crates. She understood the value of ancient relics and archives that did something, but what did these do? “Don’t stay too long.”
As she stepped into the rain to look for Turou, a roar overhead announced another ship jetting into the area. For all that it was much smaller than any city, Guwenhua appeared to be getting quite a bit of attention from evacuation ships. Was it all the artifacts? She shook her head as she stepped into the garden.
Turou was indeed there, staring at a two rows of potted plants. There were maybe two dozen of them, each a meter or so in height, and Turou looked like he was counting them. Surely he knew how many there were. “Turou? Turou, what the hell are you doing?”
He turned around and stood up, gesturing at the clay pots. “I don’t know what to do with them. I don’t know how many I can fit. Baoji doesn’t want them rolling around in the cockpit or taking up cargo space, and we can’t really pack them like boxes -”
Good gods, what was it with these colonials and their stuff? “What the fuck are these?”
“Ginkgos, remember?” He sighed. “The last ones, maybe? You said you’d never seen them on Earth -”
She grabbed Turou by the shoulders and shook him a little. “Hey! Hey, these are plants! Come on, Turou, we need to get people out of here. There are big ships in orbit waiting to take people in, and you need to start getting people up there now!”
“Ada, they’re not just plants, they’re -”
“Can they imagine a happy future and then feel sad knowing it won’t come to pass?”
He blinked. “That’s not -”
“Can they destroy Haints?”
“No, but -”
“Then you can leave them without feeling bad.” She grabbed him by the shoulder. “Remember how angry I got about the cherry trees? You thought I was crazy.”
He nodded, slowly.
“Well, maybe I was.” She sighed. “Come on, go help get people moving. Gods, Turou, we need to save people .”
He sighed. “Okay, okay. I understand. Right.”
It was the last evening on Chang’e, and they managed to get Baoji’s ship into space within a few hours, where a large civilian carrier was waiting to accept refugees. Ada and Turou stayed on the planet, sending Cherry up alone to monitor the situation and the evacuation ships. Getting people ready was difficult; watching people who, through some process she didn’t understand, already understood they were staying behind… She hated it.
Another ship on the outskirts of the complex managed to take several hundred people and their belongings, but there were still thousands more left here. Ada was beginning to doubt they could get everyone - maybe even half of everyone. Even imagining what must be going on in huge cities like Tianzhou felt painful.
Night bruised the sky as Baoji’s ship returned, empty again and ready for another run. They had about thirty-six hours left; zero hour would be early in Chang’e’s morning, before the sun rose over Guwenhua. The colonials were getting exhausted, and Ada was growing increasingly tense as time passed, so when Turou collapsed in his empty bedroom to sleep, she lay down on the floor and did the same, back to back. When she woke up it was dark, and Cherry informed her that they had twenty-five hours before the wormship arrived. Ships needed to be gone within twenty-two to stay out of range of the Haint fleet.
Elsa and Baoji both looked exhausted when they found them again, bags under Elsa’s bloodshot eyes and Baoji’s ears sagging limp. Ada looked at them with concern, shaking their shoulders. “You two look like crap. You need to sleep.”
Baoji simply shook his head, and Elsa produced a small bottle of white pellets, popping one in her mouth. “We have to fly.”
Ada pointed at the pellets. “What are those?”
“Amphetamines. Can’t sleep, have to focus.”
Baoji reached over and put a hand on Elsa’s back. “Anything for a fur-face?”
“No mirran meds.”
Ada turned around, looking out at the people crowding around the airfield. “Baoji, lie down in your seat and try to sleep. Elsa, can you pilot the ship alone?”
“Sure. It’s just annoying.”
“Do it. This idiot needs to sleep.”
“I’m not a sleep.” Baoji blinked slowly and frowned, flicking his ear in confusion.
Ada left them to their own devices while she and Turou herded people into ships. As she did, she started recognizing patterns she had ignored before. Older people seemed the first to get picked up, some bringing large amounts of cargo with them. Why were they saving old people first? Then again, there was little she could do about it.
They loaded up ships as Baoji slept, and in an hour Elsa pulled the Peregrine into the sky again, making for one of the orbital refugee carriers. A call came through to Ada, then, through her suit, from Cherry. She put it on.
“Ada Liu, this is Admiral Derksen.”
Her eyes widened. “Felisha! You escaped?”
“Onboard a lifepod, yes. Ada, we -”
“What about Sanako? Ensign Oshimi?”
There was a strained silence on the other end of the transmission. “I haven’t reviewed the personnel lists. She may be fine.”
Was she dead? Ada took a deep breath, remembering the picture Sanako had showed her of herself and her mothers. She had been something new, a woman who could never have existed in the old world. She had tried to help Ada, even if Ada hadn’t ever properly returned the favor. If the Haints had killed her…
“Ada, we need you. A large Hornet formation is headed for the refugee fleet in orbit, but first…. Whatever you did to the Chieftain to accelerate it. We need you to do that again, with the King .”
Ada frowned. “The damaged carrier?”
“Yes. It’s jumping back into the system in two hours. And before it does, please stop those Hornets. We only have two frigates ready to intercept and there’s a large cluster of civilians passing through.”
Ada took a deep breath. “I’ll do what I can.”
She let the transmission click out and looked up to the sky, seeing the long, faintly illuminated shapes of the evacuation transports glimmering in the night, splinters of a dying civilization in the sky. Each desperately hoping not to get blown to pieces.
And on the other side of the sky Chang’e Major, still illuminated by its distant star, glowed a white still bleeding into jagged shreds of Haint veil that reaching ever closer to the moon.
She made for Cherry in that old courtyard, jumped in, kicked off. She angled the fighter upwards, zipping past everything else in the cloudy night. On her way up she saw Elsa piloting their ship back down and waved, though she doubted Elsa could see. Let her concentrate, then.
In moments she was in space, dancing above the dim atmosphere of the moon. Cherry figured out where the Hornets were - about thirty of them - and Ada set to work. It was tedious, any glory in it long burnt to smoke. She warped behind them into their white contrails, between them and the rest of the Haint fleet, and opened fire. Even as her shots blasted Hornets to pieces they turned around and fired, starfire flying wide but away from the moon and the civilians both.
She placed her explosive shots carefully now, each one hitting the side of the Haint ship furthest from the moon, so that the explosive force would at least nudge the debris away from the evacuation fleet. She did what she could. She cut them into a scattering of debris, her shields strong, and before moving on to the fleet she looked out and saw the wormship approaching, flanked by elongated, flat-sided Leviathans and many smaller Hammerheads and Vultures and swarms of Hornets saturating the space between them.
Tomorrow was on its way far too quickly.
Ada zipped across the corridor between Chang’e and the jumpgate, picking off Hornets and Vultures that tried to get close. Surely they must know it was a suicide run for those individual ships? Of course, it didn’t escape her that they might be specifically tryi
ng to keep her busy.
Even without distraction, there was little she could do against the hammer of the Haint fleet. When the King - still charred and scarred - jumped in through the gate, she allowed it to position itself the way the Union wanted it before setting up a massive levitation sigil behind it, pushing it along. Cherry highlighted what was already obvious - it was on an intercept course with the wormship. They were probably going to try ramming it.
Back to the moon, back into the atmosphere, her shields warded off the flames and fire of reentry. She dove through the night, the final rains from the last clouds racing her down to the ground. She could win if she wanted, but she wasn’t interested in the splash. She landed gently on the airfield as another ship took off, and stepped up into the Peregrine to find Elsa fidgeting with screens and Baoji still strapped into the pilot’s seat, asleep.
“Everything okay in here?”
Elsa looked back at her, twitching a little. “Fine. All fine. Lots to do. Get people in the ship. Ready to go.”
She didn’t look okay, and Ada put a hand on her shoulder. “Elsa, are you -”
Elsa slapped her away, pointing outside. “Go. Get people. Just go. I’m fine.”
Raising her hands in surrender, Ada walked away. Whatever they wanted. There was less than a day left to get out of here, but it was time enough for them to do what they want before the Haints forced their hand. So long as she could get her friends out of here when the time came.
They kept packing things and people away. Chang’e’s night shifted from a fresh, slightly aglow dark to a deep black above the clouds. Hours washed away in rain as they shuttled people and cargo up to space and back down again. Rainclouds hid the Haints from sight, but every time she broke atmosphere Ada saw they had gotten closer, tricks of perspective making it seem like the white claw was opening up to crush the moon in its grasp.
Nine hours before they had to leave, a stranger tapped her on the shoulder. She turned to find a grizzled, pale human she had never met before. “Who are you?”
The Broken Third (Digitesque Book 4) Page 31