The Broken Third (Digitesque Book 4)

by Guerric Haché

  He looked over to the other ship in this courtyard, much larger than Baoji’s. “I’m her captain, and you’re Ada Liu, right? Listen - got some bad news from up top.”

  She looked up to the night sky. “What bad news?”

  “We’ve been unloading onto the Rorqual Blue , but her captain’s told me she’s full. They can’t take any more refugees, at least not after my next load. Your friends won’t be able to land there anymore.”

  She looked over to Elsa’s and Baoji’s ship. “Okay, I’ll let them know. Where should they go?”

  He fidgeted. “That’s the bad news. I’ve tried talking to them, but either they’re charging extortion prices per head or they’re charity missions. I can’t find any general transports.”

  She frowned. Extortion and charity were not in her vocabulary. “What do you mean?”

  He sighed. “I mean Guwenhua has too much money for people to take pity on them, but not enough money to actually buy their way to safety.”

  Money. More money garbage. “Idiots.”

  “Maybe.” He smiled a little. “Listen, feel free to ask around up there, maybe somebody new has made orbit. But I haven’t found anyone yet.”

  She sighed. “Okay. I’ll do what I can.”

  He nodded. “You’ve done a lot so far.”

  She tried to smile, but her face wasn’t working properly. She turned away, back to her ship. What little that was. Nothing in the face of the fact that, as far as she could tell, she had provoked the Haints herself. But she tried to suppress that thought - there would be time for agonizing over how to fix that… after.

  Up into space again, to the orbiting civilian fleet this time. She warped from ship to ship, taking a good look, relying on Cherry to figure out who even had hangar bays the Peregrine would be able to dock with and who was already full. Almost every window she saw bulged with faces, human and mirran, peeking down onto Chang’e.

  The other pilot was not kidding. Reaching out to transport pilots was an exercise in agony.

  “Sorry, ma’am, we’re a relief mission here to evacuate the poor. People who don’t have the privilege or the means to get out on their own. I’m sure someone will take your money.”

  “We can fit six hundred people. We’ll need eighty-four million credits for the lot of them, or legally certified debt pledges at a sixteen percent higher rate.”

  “Deepest apologies. We are under contract with governor of Kathaskr. APHEC campus does not fall under our mandate.”

  “Mirrans only!”

  “Listen, it’s simple math, people who weigh less burn less fuel to move. Everyone should have yearly weight records on medical file. The financial realities -”

  “Do any of your members have life insurance with either VivaValue or Osskenaka? They would be eligible for 30% discounts on evacuation seating.”

  “We’re focusing on economically underprivileged communities, m’am, and Guwenhua - please stop yelling - I’m sure they can find another way, ma’am.”

  “How many heads? Yes, we have room. Two hundred and fifty thousand per person. Children are half-price.”

  She fired explosive shots across the bough of that last ship, but even as the man on the other end of the comm shouted and protested, he wasn’t willing to drop his ridiculous demand for coins. Much as she was tempted to blow the damned thing out of the sky to make an example of them, she knew that wouldn’t help anyone.

  She finally found a new arrival in orbit called the Western Wind , but they could only hold a few hundred passengers. It would have to do; she suspected she would never find enough space for the thousands of people still down there. She swept back to the dark surface and found the other ship captain waiting. The jumping around had cost her another hour.

  “Hey, the Western Wind is just pulling into orbit. They said they can take four hundred, so I sent them your ship data and ours. They’re waiting for us.”

  “Four hundred?” The captain looked to his ship and Baoji’s, shaking his head. “That’s one trip for me and one trip for Elsa.”

  “It’s actually Baoji’s ship.”

  He kept shaking his head. “I think she’s the one wearing the pants right now.”

  Ada tilted her head sideways. “They’re both wearing pants.”

  The captain blinked and smirked. “Look, I can load up on people and so can they, and then we can go, but we’re looking at the same problem all over again as soon as we’re done. And the time - if we’re lucky, we can get in two more trips -”

  She tightened her mouth and sighed through her nose. “I get it. I’ll keep looking.”

  She took off into the sky as Elsa emerged from the ship, twitchy and jumpy, to help load people up. She tried all the carriers she could, but for every one she found, the answer was the same - either they were full, or they were already waiting on ships from the ground that were going to fill them up, or they wanted more of the monies. There was no room left, and she soon realized there were no more ships coming through the jumpgate or entering orbit around the moon, either. This was it.

  Many of the civilian ships were already pulling towards the jumpgate as Ada made one last orbit, looking for a transport she might have missed, even though Cherry assured her they had asked everywhere. She had to stop when another group of small Haints made a pass at the last major wave of evacuees, and she was the only one who could keep them at bay.

  No more ships were coming. Too few remained. Two hours to go.

  She landed on Chang’e, and the other pilot rubbed his face in exhaustion. “This is it, Earth girl. I’m grabbing everyone I can fit and getting the hell out of the system.”

  His crew was already helping people onto the ship, and she nodded at him, shaking his hand and bidding him goodbye. They were all just doing what they could. She found Turou and pried him away from the stupid potted ginkgos again, dragging him forcefully and strapping him in behind the cockpit.

  “Ada no! Ada, I have to take at least two -”

  “Turou, they’re fucking trees, let it go!”

  “What if they were the last cherry trees? The last real ones?”

  She scowled. She didn’t have the patience to argue. “Stay here, or I dare the gods themselves to stop me knocking you out.”

  He stayed.

  She stepped out to find people carrying boxes into the back of Baoji’s ship. Elsa was looking on, nerves frayed, tapping her feet impatiently. There was a crowd outside them looking on as the roar of an engine and a flare of light brilliantly illuminated curtains of rain all around them. The Peregrine was the last ship, and Ada couldn’t help but notice people in the buildings, in other courtyards, and even right in front of her - far too many to fit. They weren’t going anywhere.

  People didn’t mob the ship like she had expected them to, though. A group of them moved forward, very orderly, and got onboard, around the small stack of boxes they were bringing with them. The rest of them just… stayed.

  Pain welled in Ada’s chest as she watched them. She looked back to the crates - there weren’t a lot of them, in all honesty, but abandoning the crates and any hope of comfort might make room for four more people. Her fingers fidgeted at the sight of it. Who was she to choose? These people had made their decisions; voted, whatever that meant.

  She stepped outside, and Elsa started counting people. Ada walked up to those who would be left behind, trying not to look at them or -

  Jae Sung. She recognized the young calligrapher’s face in the crowd, looking at her with quiet despair. She was darting into the crowd before she even knew what she was doing, grabbing Jae by the arm. “You’re coming.”

  Elsa started stammering, her tone half warning and half despaired. “Ada - Ada, Turou said the ship could only hold -”

  “There’s cargo we can throw out.”

  “Ada, these people -”

  An angry man stepped out in front of Ada. “What are you doing? She’s not next on the list. There’s no room.”

  “I’m throw
ing out the cargo.”

  The man’s eyes widened. “That’s our history! If we lose our history, we lose a part of who we are.”

  She tilted her head. “Earth lost more than old artwork, yet here I am.”

  “And we all saw what you did on the feed. Listen, this is a terrible situation, but the more we lose our history, the more we lose the stuff that unites us, and the lives and works of thousands of ancestors who built the very cultures -”

  Ada reached out and gripped the man’s head firmly between her hands and jerked sideways, snapping his spine with a loud crack. She let the body crumble to the ground. Everybody around her took a sudden step back, a few people shouted, and she turned to look at them. That scared them more than the apocalypse?

  She dragged Jae Sung along with her, against the young woman’s confused protests, up into the cargo hold. Elsa stepped in front of her, pointing at the crowd. “Ada, we can’t just decide -”

  “Fuck off.”

  People were in her way, but they shrank from her as she crackled a short-lived and angry levitation sigil into the air behind the cargo, propelling it all onto the flagstone where it smashed to pieces and spilled its contents everywhere. Plates; ornaments; books; paintings curling in the wind, matted down by the rain. Even Jae was fussing, looking absurdly guilty as though this were somehow her own fault. “Ada - Ada, please, those are -”

  “Paintings. You paint, don’t you?”

  She blinked. “Those were made -”

  “Shut up and live and make more yourself.”

  Ada stepped out the cargo hold, let her eyes fall on the crowd, and did something she knew Isavel could never do with such ease. Something she knew would vindicate all the criticisms of her elders at the Institute. Something she knew should fill her with shame and doubt and self-reproach. It utterly didn’t.

  She picked three people. Not even at random; she had no need for elaborate self-deceptions. She picked three strangers whose faces she liked, who she felt she might have gotten along with in another life. She relished how hollow this judgement was. They could do nothing. She didn’t have to respect what mattered to them.

  Others started shouting things at her. Claims they had children. Names of lovers or family members. Specialized skillsets. She ignored them all.

  She shoved the last person into the cargo hold and Elsa held up her hands, a nervous look flickering over her face. “No more. This is it, Ada. This is all we can take without people getting injured when we take off.”

  Ada nodded and pointed to the sky. “Then get out of here, Elsa, and stay safe. I’ll be up there soon.”

  The cargo bay closed, the Peregrine slowly rose into the sky, engines blasting off into the night. Before returning to Cherry, she looked at the people left behind. The living dead. They watched her silently.

  Doom was coming for them. She knew she would want to face doom on her own terms, not on the terms of some interloper. She knew she was looking at a civilization having its teeth kicked in by a crushing alien menace, and that every time she trampled over their own sovereign decisions, she was just putting another alien boot to their jaws.

  She did not care. Cultures died; life persisted. The gods’ whims were life, death, and transcendence. So were hers.

  Gods-damned colonial cherry trees.

  She could take miniscule comfort in knowing those atavistic aberrations would turn to ash with the rest of the moon, but the thought of eternal cherry blossoms made her think. They were not the work of gods, but of ancient ancestors toiling for a love of beauty and life. And as living things rather than dead artifacts, they had gone on to transcend the very doomed culture that created them.

  Turou had talked about this. There was other life humanity had cultivated in the face of doom. She leaned against Cherry’s hull. Damn it.

  Cherry - ginkgo trees. What do you know about them?

  A great deal.

  She huffed. Are they extinct on Earth?

  Yes. Orbital scans suggest the last ginkgo groves went extinct in central China in 2672. It is believed that without human cultivation, they would have -

  She made a detour. Shit. Why was she doing this?

  Life, death, transcendence. Her ancestors had done it with cherry trees, Turou’s had done it with ginkgos. Maybe it was hope for the future, maybe it was pity for another living thing. Maybe she was finally going stupid. She found Turou’s row of potted ginkgo saplings in the garden, tender little things reaching about as high as her waist, and called for Cherry. Get over here. We’re going to leave with a few.

  She heard the ship take off, slowly lowering into the garden, fins awkwardly and unevenly spread out to achieve an even footing. Ada pointed at the pots. “How many can we take?”

  I can reconfigure the metamorphic storage space behind your seat to secure six of these saplings. I suggest taking the six to the far left, two from the row nearest yourself and four from the second row. Ginkgos are dioecious - trees are only male or female. You will need both, but more females are optimal.

  Six. Okay. She hefted the first one up, heaved it into the fighter, and found that Cherry had opened round storage compartments behind the pilot seat. She settled the first sapling in, watching the top of the compartment shrink over the pot to leave only a small opening for the sapling’s stem. Good; she didn’t want dirt flying around the cockpit. “I never knew you had storage back here.”

  A polymorphic metamaterial matrix. Its shape is highly flexible.

  Ada snorted. “Like magic. Could you build in a second seat?”

  In theory, yes.

  Ada frowned, settling the second sapling into the storage container. “I asked you once about transporting a second passenger.”

  He was a prisoner. I assumed it was unsafe to seat a prisoner behind you, where he could stab or strangle you.

  “She.” Ada nodded even as she corrected. “Fair enough.”

  One hour before the Haints reach firing distance on all ships leaving orbit for the jumpgate. The Union fleet will be able to engage the wormship at that time as well.

  Ada hurried with the last saplings, neatly tucking all six away behind her. They were as snug as they’d get. She slumped back against her seat, willing the glass shut and taking off. She flew back over the airfield, but nobody remained except the lone corpse she had put there herself.

  “Where did they all go?”

  Given the biomedical readings of the individuals I detect in the area, they appear to have ingested euthenasic drugs.

  “What?”

  They are committing suicide.

  She looked out at the old stone campus, barely visible in the lights from Cherry’s fins. Empty - if not now, then very soon. Before the Haints even got within range.

  She turned her eyes to the sky and got the hell out.

  Chapter 19

  Ada kept the Peregrine within sight as they left moon’s gravity well. She would have liked to shunt them along more quickly, but between the relative positions of the moon, planet, jumpgate, and the danger zone between the two opposing fleets, any boost to their speed would throw off their navigational computers too much to be able to reach the gate safely.

  “Can we get the trees over to them?”

  Cherry projected a moving image in front of her. I believe they have an airtight container on their ship of this design. If they send it out the airlock, I can temporarily pressurize an area outside the cockpit within our shields, allowing you to grab the crate, store the saplings, and return it to their airlock.

  She nodded. She didn’t want to be responsible for these things longer than necessary. “Send him an image of the crate. Baoji? I want you to throw a box that looks like this out the airlock. I’ve got a present for Turou.”

  Baoji’s quick acknowledgement gave way to Turou’s concerned voice. “A present?”

  “Just wait and see.”

  It was a simple process, for all that it took more time than she’d like. The greyish, metallic crate popped out of
the Peregrine’s airlock, and Ada intercepted it, pinching it between the fighter’s fins. Then Cherry did as promise, filling the space within their hard light shields with air. It was still nerve-wracking when the cockpit slid open, in wild open space, but the air remained perfectly breathable.

  The saplings and their clay pots were a tight and slightly awkward fit, but she managed, and not long after the crate was back in the other ship and she was safely behind solid glass again, Turou’s voice blustered through the comms. “Ada! The ginkgos -”

  “Just enough, hopefully.” She glanced over at the two fleets rearing to ram into each other. “You’ve kept them going this long. Don’t stop now.” She spun the ship away. “I need to go. Get some rest and call me if you get into trouble.”

  “Ada.”

  It was Elsa. Ada frowned a little at her tone. “What?”

  “Be careful.”

  She pursed her lips and didn’t answer. Instead, she extended a warp field around herself, snapping across the selenial system in less than a heartbeat. The Chieftain loomed beside her, and as she started mulling over the next engagement it addressed the rest of the fleet.

  “The King will enter Haint firing range in twenty minutes. It is on-course for impact. We need to maximize hull longevity, particularly in the aft.”

  She whispered. “What’s aft?”

  Cherry highlighted the rear of the ship in her eyes. They have stockpiled explosives in the rear of the ship.

  Ada frowned and zipped over to the suicide carrier, crewed only by volunteers running the most basic systems. This sacrifice wouldn’t even be necessary if the Union wasn’t culturally terrified of robots. What was she supposed to do, though? Gods knew she had the most useful ship in this miserable fleet, for all that it was the smallest.

  From within this thicket of colonial warships she could see the wormship and its smoky escort sliding towards Chang’e, trailing an impossibly huge column of white veil behind them. She wasn’t sure what exactly would happen when it reached the planet, but this Union carrier was large - as large as those Leviathans - and even if it wasn’t loaded with explosives, she couldn’t imagine it slamming into the wormship without dealing crippling damage.