How strange. To run with her life literally on her back. But then–
She glanced at Dax, with his golden pages strewn across the forecastle, his coins, and that old automaton of hers, which she’d hardly remembered, which she’d forgotten entirely, inexplicably clutched in his hand. Even when he’d let go of everything else, he’d held on to that. Mudflower. Its name had been Mudflower.
The rest of the ship was really quite simple, as Vector Shannon would say. The trapdoor in the chessboard forecastle led down into the berth, which had become more of a common room, although it did have bunks mid-construction being built along its walls and enclosed by cheap bed curtains – which reminded Legacy of a moment she immediately cast from her mind. “Beneath our feet are the storage compartments,” Vector informed them, stomping. “It’s not really a floor. It’s a patchwork of drawers.” Indeed, upon closer examination, there were handles dug into the paneled flooring. A small ladder downward led to a stooped second area, cluttered with communication devices, automatons, gauges and maps. “Communications,” Vector went on. “Rain used this to get in touch with those contacts she was confident were trustworthy.”
Legacy felt a pang. No one had contacted her. Was she a security risk in their eyes? Because of Kaizen?
I just risked my life to tell Icarus of our true intentions, she mentally grumbled.
“There’s a laboratory and a library in the stern of the ship,” Vector said.
“Stern?” Legacy clarified.
“The ass.” Vector shrugged. “And tons of cabins, all in the middle of the ship, kind of next to the engine room, because this baby does still have rudders. Any propulsion is good propulsion, right? Well, it seemed like tons of cabins, anyway, a few days ago. It’s five. Five cabins. So, you know. If more people need to live here, space may become a problem, and we’ll have –bunk buddies! Yay!” Even Vector’s enthusiasm wore thin here. “But, as it stands, the only people living here most certainly are myself, and you, Dax, and you, Legacy, and good old Gustav–” Gustav was a member of the CC whom Legacy and Dax had met weeks ago, while in the Taliko Center holding cell. He’d made himself throw up multiple times to convince the guards to open a window, thereby enabling them to receive a robotic grappling hook, and seemed likewise the rough sort of guy who could manage it fine. “–and Rain basically lives here–”
“Do not!” Rain piped good-naturedly.
“–and Ray, you know, Neon’s old roommate, his girlfriend there, Izzy–” Or, rather, Isabella Whitmore. Legacy didn’t really know them, but she knew of them. They’d frequented the headquarters without being as deeply involved in recent projects. “–who had to leave home, you know, because old Neon went rogue, didn’t he? So, it’s not too cramped right now, because it’s just you, me, you, Gustav, Ray, and Izzy, and they share a room. Oh, and Claire, I forgot about her. She’s down in the library.”
“And Saul,” Gustav added. “Saul’s in the lab.”
“Oh, yes, and Saul moved in, too, and what’s that little kid’s name?”
“Levi!” a gangly, freckled blond boy snapped from where he fiddled with applying a padlock to one of the drawers built into the floor. “And I’m right here!”
Vector grimaced. “Levi . . .” he said. He sighed. “Please don’t do that. You’re going to make people trip, and anyway, it won’t work.”
“Why won’t it work?”
“Because of physics, Levi. It just won’t. Anyway, that’s only . . .” Vector gazed up into his black dreadlocks, counting with his fingers. “You, and me, and you, and Gustav, and Ray and Izzy, who share a room, and Claire and Saul, who also share a room, and Levi.”
“And you have five cabins,” Legacy repeated.
“Yeah, and I stay in one, and then there’s Gustav in another, and Ray and Izzy, Claire and Saul, and Levi . . . Oh. You’re right. Damn, I’m usually good at this kind of stuff, but can’t count to five, I guess. I’m out of rooms.”
“I can move, it’s fine,” Gustav offered quickly. “I’ll stay with Levi and you two can have my room. It’s right next to the engine room, so, you’ll be nice and far from the goings on of the common area, which can get loud, you know.”
Legacy suspected his eagerness to unload the room on them, but still found another detail even more disturbing. She was about to be sharing a room with Dax Ghrenadel.
They exchanged a nauseated glance.
At least they both felt the same way about it.
The laboratory was the first room beneath the common area/communications, lined in strange beakers, bulbs of electrical energy, and jars of pickled body parts, warped and amplified.
“W-what is this?” Legacy asked, staring dazedly at a burbling tank clustered with disembodied arms.
“Uh . . . donations,” Vector answered uncomfortably. “From Rain.” He cleared his throat. “It’s quite simple, really.”
“Is it?” Dax asked, peering shrewdly at his friend.
“It’s an experiment regarding biotechnology that could revolutionize both robotics and medicine, and no one else was going to use them!” the bespectacled boy snapped. This was clearly a debate he’d had more than once now.
“Oh,” Dax said, intrigued. “Can we–”
“It’s not ready yet!” Vector snapped again.
“Uh, hello?” a soft male voice broke into the conversation. A wiry, freckled man with thick, curly auburn hair over his shoulders and dreamy green eyes cropped up from behind a whirring spindle of sticky, white fiber. “Who’s this?”
“Saul, how you doing,” Vector greeted. “Saul, these are Dax and Legacy.”
“Exa Legacy, as I live and breathe, by Jove! I’ve heard all about you!” the red-haired boy said, advancing to grasp Legacy’s hand. “You were on the radio! Just an hour or so ago! Great speech!”
“What?” Dax said.
“It’s no big deal,” Legacy replied.
“Oh, don’t be modest,” Vector disagreed. “She explained the main points of the CC, she stopped everyone from attending the rally in Neon’s message, and she told all the interested listeners to find some discreet way to show their stance and learn more from our members. Really great stuff.”
“Oh.” Dax nodded and seemed to tamp down his pleasure at this. “Well. That’s . . . that might help.”
“The radio stations are global, Dax! Of course it will help!” Vector burst. “Anyone who wanted to hear the news in Icarus, even from Heliopolis, could’ve tuned in! Now people who’ve never even heard of the CC know who we are, where we are, how we are, and why we are! The word-of-mouth will skyrocket! It’s amazing!”
Dax nodded, eyes unreadable. “Yeah, like I said,” he reiterated testily, “it might help.”
Legacy shrugged off Vector’s excitement and Dax’s notable lack thereof. “It’s nice to meet you too, Saul,” she said instead. “Hey, so, what are you working on?”
“Sorting.” Saul beamed. “I love to organize things, and this silk really needed it. I’ve categorized seven varieties of the stuff so far. May I bore you for a moment with its properties? Its tensile strength is comparable to a high-grade steel alloy! It can stretch up to five times its length without breaking and is as difficult to fracture as nylon! It’s also completely biodegradable and resistant to water!”
“It is fascinating,” Vector piped. “I confiscated some of the cargo from the Taliko Center basement for research purposes, and we’ve been running it through various tests here at the lab. The fibers are really fascinating. We’ve already used it to replace the chain on Gustav’s grappling hook. Legacy, Dax, get this: it can stop bullets. We’ve dissolved some into vials . . . it has antibiotic properties, and our wounds have responded quite well! I was all bruised up two days ago! Now? After a few applications of this stuff to the area? Not so! It knits in, and kind of pulls the skin together . . . it’s really amazing. It should come in handy for the biotech project. Heehee. ‘Handy.’” Vector beamed.
The group migrated next to the li
brary, accessible through the laboratory. It was a small, disorganized room with a fine-boned brunette surrounded by stacks of books. She had a sweet but serious face with pallid complexion, bulbous nose, and yawning gray eyes above whittled cheeks. She had her knees drawn up to her chest, examining a yellowed book actually crafted of paper.
“Hello,” she greeted. Her voice was cartoonishly round, but also serious.
“Legacy, Dax, this is Claire Addler.”
“Hey, Claire!” Dax greeted, strangely familiar. “I haven’t seen you in –years!”
For a moment, Vector frowned, but then he added, “Oh yeah! Claire used to work in the archives at CCSS.”
“She trained me when I was still a pup, as they say. How have you been?” Dax asked.
“Well,” Claire replied. “I’m strictly mechanical now. And how are you?”
“Oh, heart ripped out my back,” Dax explained in an upbeat tone. “You know how it is.”
Legacy’s cheeks caught fire, and Vector pointedly avoided looking at either or commenting.
“Here you go,” Claire said, handing him a thin booklet at her side. “Maybe this would serve you, then. Poetry.”
Vector cleared his throat and swept his arm toward the serious brown-haired woman, drawing her attention back. “And, Claire, this is Exa Legacy, metalsmith and speechwriter. The two will be joining us and taking over Gustav’s cabin.”
“This book is made from paper,” Claire suddenly piped.
“Hand-me-downs,” Vector replied brightly. He looked back to Legacy and Dax. “Most of this stuff is about physics, biology, systems. But, obviously, you can find your odd compendium of poetry, too. What are you reading, Claire?”
Claire blinked. “Spiders. I’m making notes for you. Lots and lots of notes.”
Vector smiled kindly. “Thank you, Claire. Well. What do you two think? Would you like to be shown to your cabin? Start putting your stuff away? After all, Dax, I don’t know if the common room is the best spot for all of one’s most prized possessions. Not with this lot about!”
It was hours later that the young revolutionary returned to the cabin she’d been half-forced to share indefinitely with an ambiguous ex. Augh. So awkward. His hatred of her, however stifled, was nonetheless palpable.
In the past few hours between early evening and late night, Legacy had regaled the group with tales of her triumphant infiltration of CIN-3 (“Last seen advancing in the direction of the aerial docks,” reports since had come in, “where her trail has now gone cold”), eaten a hearty dinner of potent vitamins, and taken a bath in a cold barrel of clean water. It had been nothing like the bath Legacy most recently recalled, trailing steam and rose petals, not to mention the complementary orgasm, but at least she was free here. Or, rather, she was fighting here. As much as she longed for the luxuriant existence of a duchess, or simply for Kaizen, it was impossible, no matter whom she loved. No matter whom she slept with in the oil dens of Groundtown.
Gustav’s cabin was sweltering with heat due to its proximity to the engine room, the bed vibrated (one bed), and there were resounding clanks and groans every few minutes. Legacy had suspected that this would happen.
She began removing her garments. She unstrung the white scarf from her neck and let it fall onto the bed. She shrugged off the inside-out frock coat, puddling at her feet. Next came the metallic vest, the boots, and the harem pants. Only her blouse was left, but the room was too stifling for such trifles. That had to go too, and Legacy was unfastening the third pearl drop button when the cabin door shuddered open and Dax stepped in.
He glared, and the cool blue eyes ticked from her face to the exposed cleavage and back again.
“Well –don’t look!” Legacy sputtered, whirling and pinning her blouse shut again.
“I wasn’t! I don’t care!” Dax scoffed. “I’ll just . . . take a short walk, so you can finish up, all right?” he snapped. The door shuddered shut again.
She unfastened each button, fingers trembling, and crawled into bed. She tugged the sheet up to her neck and rolled onto her side, so that when the door shuddered open again, she didn’t have to look at him. She smoldered instead at the square of light falling in from the narrow corridor, smoldered instead at his silhouette thrown against the panels of the wall. Then the door shuddered closed for the last time, and it was dark.
The sheets stirred and the mattress shifted as Dax climbed into bed beside her.
For awhile, her heart thundered in her ears and neither said anything. She was somehow sure, gauging from the tension in the air and the stiffness of both their bodies, that neither was sleeping in spite of the heavy silence.
“Dax?” she finally whispered.
“Yeah,” he replied.
“I saw Mudflower.”
There were a few beats of silence.
“Yeah,” he said again.
“I didn’t know you still had it after all these years.” Still, Legacy stared into the wall and refused to face him. “I don’t even remember what happened to him.”
“It’d not been working all day, and you asked me to take a look at it for you,” Dax explained, voice flat. “I worked on it –for weeks –and then . . . then your dad gave you Flywheel, and you forgot all about Mudflower. But I kept working on it, anyway, because I thought it’d be a cool surprise, sort of sweet, even, if I could just –give it to you one day. Just give you back this cruddy old automaton from when we were, what? I’d just turned fifteen. And it’d be functional, and have all these old messages to play for you, and old alerts to go through, and –yeah.” The tempo of his voice shifted again, from accidentally happy to waterlogged again. “Anyway . . . I thought it would’ve been sort of sweet. But . . . I never could get it to work.” He sighed. “Kind of . . . symbolic, isn’t it?” he asked. “Me, trying to get something fixed that is totally beyond repair. And you . . . not even realizing or remembering what you lost.”
Ouch.
Legacy wanted to respond to this, but what could she say?
In truth, she didn’t want to say anything, except maybe that she was sorry. She just wanted to hold him. To go back in time, to when things were simple. When it was just them. Before the Companion test. Even just to that night in the brass forest would’ve been fine. But she didn’t say any of this, because it all sounded so stupid and pointlessly dreamy, the very brand of logic she herself despised as well, and was still trying to put her feelings into decent words when she slipped off to sleep, her back still turned to Dax, untouching.
Chapter Five
The floating cities of New Earth, big and small, had been separately inflamed with the speculation caused by this stranger’s voice cutting across their afternoon of labor, so husky and yet tight with controlled rage. Before nightfall, even the busiest of factory technicians in Heliopolis whispered the rebel leader Exa Legacy’s name. It was especially Kaizen Taliko who regretted using the news network of CIN-3 as such a political crutch. It had only been his recent mistake, but one his father had made the entirety of his term, and never before had it backfired like this. They’d trained the local people to turn to Dyna Logan for the answer to their every question, comment, complaint, and now, someone else – someone not so easily bought, even with love itself – had grabbed the mic. All of Icarus had heard. All of New Earth, if they had not heard firsthand, had heard second.
And so Kaizen had spent the next twelve hours holding court.
He’d fallen asleep sitting up in his own throne three times now. Sunrise was approaching. He couldn’t remember Malthus ever doing these things. Had Malthus’ thumb always been so much stronger than his own? Or perhaps this tension had been building beneath that thumb for a long time.
The steward, Claude, was talking. He seemed like a nice guy, but . . . did he always have to be talking? “The likelihood that the monarch, Ferraday–”
“I know who the monarch is,” Kaizen snapped, massaging his temple with his middle finger.
Claude cleared his throat. “–w
ill personally come to Icarus is . . . certain, now,” he finished. “Even in spite of the duration of the voyage. I know you’ve expressed wishes to quell this insurgence yourself, but–”
“Why would he come?” Kaizen demanded, sitting forward with eyes that flashed the mania of exhaustion. “He doesn’t know anything. Isn’t he busy enough? As far as he knows, it’s fine. We had an accident –an assassination –and he offered his own interrogatory force, and they’ll be arriving next week, and that’s all fine. As far as he knows, nothing more has happened. Icarus has been quiet. Still. Calm. Tranq–”
“My lord,” Claude interrupted, “even if he did not hear Exa Legacy’s original broadcast, he certainly would’ve been alerted at some point thereafter, and honestly . . .” Claude winced. “The tone of the show, even today, even this past night, has dramatically shifted. Dyna put callers with comments on the air in an attempt, bless her, to defend the regime. But . . .”
“But?” Kaizen prompted.
The scribe, Kristoff, dug through his notes for those which contained questions to relay, found cropping up on CIN-3 throughout the course of the prior evening. “They, uh, some of them wanted to know if public sanitation was a human right? Or if they were entitled to a certain amount of personal space in their living conditions?” Kristoff cleared his throat uncomfortably. “A lot of them accused her of lying and knowing support of a corrupt official –that being . . . you, and a lot of people wanted to know where these imports were coming from, if Old Earth is a dead planet. Oh, and . . .” He hesitated again, glancing up at Kaizen as if the young duke might behead him if he continued.
“Well?”
“Ahem. One citizen commented that, to them, the castle had always seemed like another reality altogether, until they heard Legacy’s words on the matter and realized . . . that the archipelagos should be part of greater Icarus, made public, and . . . shared.”
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