by Webb, Nick
“Oh, for the love of—if you want to leave, just leave.” Pike swung wide in a gap between a group of miners and shouldered open the door to the docking bays. He shifted his grip with a curse at the ever-present dust and hauled the crate up to set it on an ever-growing stack. “It’ll take him a few days to get here, though. That’s good. That’s enough time.”
“Enough time for what?”
“To get out of here.” Pike waved a hand at the cargo hold of the Aggy II. “To pack the ship up and get Dawn—Lapushka off Vesta before Nhean arrives.” Or Walker. But he did not say that out loud. It felt disloyal somehow.
“He isn’t going to hurt her, you know,” Parees said. He didn’t question the girl’s nickname. In the two days since the Aggy II had come back everyone had started using Rychenkov’s name for the girl, except Pike himself—he preferred Dawn. No one had thought to ask her thoughts on the matter. No one knew enough Russian to know what Lapushka meant, but she, for her part, didn’t seem to mind it.
“I am not having this discussion with you.” Pike wondered vaguely when he had started sounding so much like his father, and decided not to think about that.
He looked around the near-empty cargo hold. James was skulking in the back, trying to take as much time as he could with the crates he had so he wouldn’t have to come out and see Pike.
“Gabby. Where’s Rychenkov?”
Gabriela brushed her hair out of her eyes and looked around herself. “I … don’t know. He was here.” She shook her head. She was clearly exhausted; she had taken over James’s duties as well as her own, and was working herself to death. She snapped at anyone who suggested she rest, and where Pike would have snapped back at her, Rychenkov was inclined to let both her and James exhaust themselves out of their bad moods.
Pike chose not to point out that humanity was handily proving that exhaustion broke spirits rather than mended them.
“Well, if you see him—”
The door burst open behind him. Rychenkov and the girl were both heaving, panting for breath, and the girl was looking over her shoulder as if she expected pursuit.
“What—”
“Bridge. Now.” Rychenkov took off at a run again, leaving the rest of them to scramble after him. “Gabby, stall anyone who tries to get in!”
Parees and Pike exchanged a look as Pike ushered the girl in front of them. The doors to the docking bay remained closed, and Rychenkov was not one to panic needlessly … but he was one to make rash decisions on occasion.
What the hell had they gotten themselves into?
When they reached the bridge, Rychenkov was spreading printouts on the desk, weighted with wrenches and coffee mugs. He beckoned Pike in and shot an unfriendly look at Parees.
“There’s no use trying to keep this from Parees,” Pike pointed out. “If you found out about whatever this is, Nhean’s hardly going to have trouble.”
Rychenkov accepted that with an elaborate shrug. “So Lapushka, here, found the missing iridium. And it happens to be in the care of, you guessed it, a drone.”
“On Io?” Pike looked at her curiously.
“On Earth,” Rychenkov said grimly. “Or at least, soon to be on Earth.”
With a sinking feeling of dread, Pike leaned forward to look. For a while, he couldn’t understand what he was seeing, from the production logs to the transfers between mining and refinery sites, and the shipping manifests. But Parees, leaning over his shoulder, put out a finger to trace the story: a small skim from the top of each mining site, an amount of refined ore far too low for the fuel expended in the refineries, and a ship leaving Vesta two hours earlier, bound for Earth—with no declared cargo.
“How do you know it’s a drone?” said Pike.
Rychenkov only pointed to the girl in answer. She simply tapped her head with a finger.
“Oh. Right.” Pike’s stomach turned uneasily at the reminder of her apparent ability to forge mental links with other drones.
And with him.
“Who’s using that much fuel without any cargo?” Parees asked. He was shaking his head. “And why all the secrecy for such a benign metal? We just need to figure out what type of contracts are lucrative enough for him to go back like that.”
“None of them are,” Rychenkov said flatly. “He’d bring something and swing past one of the other colonies, if nothing else. You can’t make your living in cargo hauling if you only carry things on half your journeys.”
Parees swallowed. “And that’s why … that’s why you think he’s also got a bomb. That he’s a drone.”
“Yes,” Rychenkov patted a side beam and stared meaningfully at Pike. “And the fact that she thinks—feels, rather—that he’s got a bomb. We should be able to catch them in the Aggy II, but the ship we’re following has diplomatic clearance through the Daughters of Ascension.”
“They’re delivering a bomb—”
“Their ship is delivering a bomb.” Rychenkov held his hands up. “No way to know who controls that drone. If anyone. Or if he’s even planning on detonating it, or just delivering it. Either way, the drone gave the proper flight clearance requests to the Telestine authorities.”
Pike nodded. Any ship cleared for Earth had to submit a destination and a flight path through Earth’s air space. “And?”
“Supposedly, it’s refueling somewhere in Europe—I think that’s what these coordinates mean—and then it’s picking up a shipment.”
“Or not, of course.” Pike leaned his elbows on the table and squeezed his eyes shut. He had to think. “Why the hell would the Daughters of Ascension send a bomb?”
“I don’t think they are,” Rychenkov argued.
“It’s their ship! How can they not know?”
“Why would you assume they would? Tel’rabim took over the whole damned Telestine government with a secret navy. And they couldn’t even find the Exile Fleet until they attacked Earth. Clearly, Telestines are not so good at figuring out who has weapons.”
“Okay, riddle me this.” Pike shot him a glare. “If he’s got another Io-type bomb, and when that bomb explodes, it’s not going to take very long for the Telestines to figure out it was a Daughters of Ascension ship that delivered it. But they’re an aid group. They don’t have a fleet to protect themselves with—so who would really think it was them, trying to start something?”
“Did your mother mate with one of those cows you talk about? Or a chicken, maybe?” Rychenkov gestured wildly. “It doesn’t have to hold together if you really think about it, it just has to hit the Telestines where they’re weak and make them hate humans. It is a human pilot. The Daughters of Ascension have been giving us all kinds of shit the Telestines didn’t want us to have for years. They give us medicine, they give us technology, they clear humans to fly their ships to Earth, they come and live with us on the stations. The Telestine government has never liked them, and now one of their ships with a human pilot is possibly about to detonate a bomb over a Telestine settlement. Who does that help?”
Pike stood up suddenly. “Oh, my God.”
The girl nodded.
“He waltzed in with a fleet and took over,” Rychenkov said quietly. “But he knows if everyone starts questioning him, he can’t hold on to power very long. Maybe Telestines think differently than humans do, but I haven’t seen any evidence that says they’re more honest or more honorable than we are. And I can tell you that if I were Tel’rabim, right about now I’d be wanting the humans to do something heinous so the rest of the Telestines would think they needed to take some strong action. Getting them all to hate humans is a lot easier than getting them all to love him.”
“They’ll shut down the aid groups,” Pike whispered. His chest felt cold. If the aid groups were shut down, humanity would run out of food within months—more likely, within weeks. Filtration systems would break down, illnesses would take down whole stations. Humanity was far from self-sufficient, and it would take so little simply to relegate them to death in the cold black.
“We have to take down that ship.”
“We have to take down that ship,” Rychenkov agreed. “Or at least intercept it and let Lapushka interrogate the poor soul. And you should tell Felicia to warn Ka’sagra.”
“I’ll do it.” Parees’s voice was quiet.
Pike looked over at him and frowned. Parees looked resolute, but was trembling slightly.
He swallowed hard when he saw Pike watching him. “We can’t wait for Nhean.” His hands clenched. “I’ll go talk to Ka’sagra. We need to find out who programmed that drone. She’ll get us close to figuring it out.”
Pike nodded. “You do that. We’ll take down the ship.” He looked at the girl. “And since Nhean is coming here, you’re coming with us.” He shook his head at her look. “Nope. No discussion. I’m not trusting him in the same room as you. Parees will find the done, you’ll help us with the tech at Earth—maybe talk to this guy’s ship the way you talked to some of the other ships before, remember? No one on Rychenkov’s crew can do that.”
She looked as if she might protest, but she couldn’t argue his point. She assented with a weary nod.
“Good.” Rychenkov rolled the documents back up and stowed them behind a wall panel. “None of you saw these, and we sure as hell don’t have them. And get the cargo off the ship. Our Aggy’s fast, but not fast enough for us to wait through a customs inspection.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Mars
Elysium Planitia City
United Nations Headquarters
Nhean adjusted his cuffs as he strode through the all-white hallways of the UN headquarters. He spared barely a glance for the Martian sky above. He’d become accustomed to the acidic yellow of Venus, and everything about Mars made him feel cold—and trapped. He resented this necessity—as well as the extensive weapons scans and ID checks he’d endured in the main building—but the yelling from the council chamber ahead told him just how important it was that he be here.
The guards tracked his progress down the long hall, eyes passing over the badge on his chest and examining his clothing for the distortions of weapons underneath. When they reached out to open the main doors for him, however, he held up a hand for them to pause. He was not going to walk into this confrontation unprepared, and from the volume of the voices inside, the conversation was past the point of any easy resolution.
“It was suicide!”
Nhean had never heard Walker’s voice like this. She was beyond furious at being outflanked, outplayed, outnumbered, and well beyond her usual simmering anger at the situation in which humanity found itself. He realized now that he had never seen her so overcome. In her long years on the stations, she had learned to control her anger lest it destroy her, the way it destroyed so many others.
“No—it was a strong, united front!” That would be Essa. Nhean recognized that voice from the broadcasts he’d played, trying to get a read on the man.
“How strong can it be when there was no cover, no adaptation to their plan, and you used our most powerful weapons recklessly?” Walker’s voice was still rising. “It took us years to build up that cache of nukes, and you threw them out there with no strategy!”
“You use the tools you have at hand!”
The guards, Nhean noticed, looked deeply uncomfortable with this. The last Secretary General had been so weak and ineffective that it was doubtful they had ever heard much more than a murmur from beyond these doors. No one had prepared them for Essa and Walker’s rivalry. Now they looked fixedly at the floor rather than acknowledge, either to each other or to Nhean, that they were hearing this confrontation.
“And if you use them poorly, sometimes they get turned around on you! You lost us three ships—three crews! Good men and women who didn’t deserve to die this way!”
He’d heard enough. Nhean raised a hand and the guards swung the doors open.
Three heads swung his way. Nhean saw confusion in Essa’s face, a muted relief in Walker’s, and open dislike from Morgan.
“Hello,” Nhean said pleasantly. He adjusted his cuffs again and gave both Essa and Morgan a once-over. He’d learned long ago that an impersonal, assessing glance tended to set his opponents off-balance—and that off-balance opponents tended to cave without as much of a fight.
Essa, however, was not cowed. A big, burly man with his greying hair cut short, he wore a military dress uniform with ease. He matched Nhean’s pleasant tone with ease. “Welcome. Who the hell are you?”
“This is Nhean Tang,” Morgan said, before Nhean could speak. “He provides … information.” The words dripped with condescension.
“I also,” Nhean said, “provided you the new fleet.” He allowed annoyance to creep into his tone.
Both men looked at him with renewed interest.
“Now. To get all of the early points of contention out of the way, it is obvious to all four people in this room that the last battle went very poorly, that the original Fleet formation was inefficient, and that Captain Walker has significantly more experience with Telestine tactics and fleet utilization than Admiral Morgan.” Nhean held up a hand as Essa opened his mouth. “No. You know that’s true. This man is in charge because you still hold a grudge about her taking the Exile Fleet from you. You know damned well that he’s not as experienced as she is, and you also know damned well that you wanted to humiliate her and you’re unhappy that her tactics resulted in a victory over Ceres.” Nhean stared Essa down. “So let’s make a deal. There aren’t any cameras on. There isn’t anyone to see this confrontation. You will lose precisely zero credibility if you reinstate Walker as Admiral of the fleet, with—of course—a slap on the wrist for disobeying Admiral Morgan during the battle. You and Walker will put out a joint statement addressing the rumors of infighting in the Exile Fleet and showing that you have resolved your differences, and you will allow Walker to choose the tactics of the fleet from here on out. Walker, meanwhile, will publicly support you.”
There was a long silence. Walker’s lips were pressed together in a thin line, but she did not protest. She’d come in here expecting to be thrown out of the fleet for good, Nhean was sure of that, and she knew she was never going to talk Essa down on her own. Morgan looked furious, but he, too, knew that protesting would not help his case. Nhean raised his eyebrows at Essa. It all came down to this man, then—bull-headed and prone to tedious displays.
“She disobeyed my orders,” Essa said flatly. “Not once, but twice. Her tactics are too reckless. If she loses the fleet, she leaves our settlements undefended—and when she has the fleet under her control, she does the same. She has not ordered the fleet split to protect all of our locations. In fact, she has refused to do so. She cannot be trusted.”
“Split the fleet,” Nhean murmured. “So your position, then, is that not a single human settlement can be lost, and we should divide our forces to protect every one of them?”
“Of course!” Essa’s genial expression hardened. “If you do not feel the same way, Mr. Tang, you should leave this room right now. I will not accept defeat—unlike some here today.” He shot a venomous glance at Walker.
“I see. And your goal for humanity is…?” Nhean raised a single eyebrow.
“To retake Earth,” Essa spat. “To kill every last one of the bastards that took it from us.”
“A fine plan,” Nhean agreed. He sighed at the look on Essa’s face. “That was serious. I agree with you. However … a plan like that, with a fleet like ours, and an enemy like Tel’rabim, will result in human casualties—and not just within the fleet. Tel’rabim’s plan is to kill us all. He is already attacking, claiming self defense because many of his own kind will not accept the totality of his plan, but that stage is close to over—he is gathering support within Telestine society for a full extermination, and when he has it, he will n
ot hold back. His attacks will exceed what we can defend. Our victory will be as costly as our Exodus, if not more so. The only way we will win is by striking our enemy where he is weakest, and that means letting human settlements die if we have to.” He nodded his head to Walker. “She understands that. Do you?”
“You’re wrong. We will meet this Tel’rabim on every battlefield he names, and we will defeat him.”
“A fine sentiment, but one on which we cannot deliver.” Nhean spoke the words with weary pain. “And I think you know that—you once commanded the Exile Fleet. We are outnumbered and outgunned. What would splitting our fleet do for us? What could a single ship do to protect a settlement? Do you think that Walker chooses not to split the fleet because she wants human lives lost? Do you think I advocate her strategy for the same reasons? No. We do so because Tel’rabim has a larger fleet than humanity will ever have, with weaponry we cannot hope to match. The only way we will win is tactics, and those, Walker has in abundance. Reinstate her, or humanity falls.”
“No,” Essa said simply. “She’s always thought she was invincible, that her way was the only way to bring humanity forward—but, tell me, are we better off than when I commanded the Exile Fleet? No.” His eyes were locked on Nhean’s—regretful, implacable. “We have been dragged into a war too early for us to win.”
“We had to get the Dawning.” Walker’s voice was tight.
Essa talked over her without a flicker. “We have a Telestine planning our full extermination. This is not a game to be won like chess, with one important piece. We cannot afford to see humanity all but exterminated, even if that wins us Earth. It is not one battle. It is all of them.” He spoke slowly, each word enunciated clearly. “I will win every battle, for every settlement. I will not accept defeat.”
“No.” Nhean shook his head. “You won’t. Let me be clear, Mr. Secretary. Your fleet is composed of four aging carriers made from retrofitted cargo haulers, thirty-odd destroyers and frigates, and fifteen state of the art new carriers with full carrier groups—that I built at my own expense. I will determine who commands those fifteen ships.”