Cyril10 said, “Have you gone mad?”
“Babs1, whatever you’re calling yourself, command override. Stand down the escape pod—”
“You bloody stand down, Champ,” Frankie snapped. “You sabotaged the project; you’re not marooning us here to die now.”
Champ stared at her in thunderstruck silence as Babs1 started the launch sequence. He rolled out a knot in his neck, trying to stare her down. Finally, he said, “That’s ridiculous.”
Frankie lampshaded all Babs1’s blurry footage of fake spiders and moving blobs near the scenes of the fires. “You are the only one who had a chance to bring a bot aboard before our rollout.”
“Strike for hoaxer talk. The #vandalrumor—”
“It’s not a rumor. We have actual samples of nanotech incendiaries in Appaloosa.”
“Don’t forget the acid,” Teagan9 chimed in remotely. “That’s sabotage tech.”
Frankie hit the launch authorizations, listening to the murmurs running through the metal exterior of the craft as Booger rolled within its launch bubble and popped free of the station. In her peripheral newsfeed she saw the #vandalrumor trending. Related posts were snowballing and getting upvoted; one of the most popular shares showed the offworlders’ representative, Allure18. She was stomping down a corridor somewhere in Garnet, with a security bot on her heels.
And she looks unhappy! Frankie said, “Ember, we’re headed your way.”
“We haven’t tested portal viability—” Champ objected.
She ignored this. “Cycle portal out to hundred-meter circumference. We’re coming through hot and we’re bringing the saucer with us.”
“A hundred,” Ember confirmed.
Frankie fired the pod’s rockets, lining up with the portal. She’d promised Maud she’d make it back.
“I ain’t done—You can’t prove anything!”
“Teagan9, Babs1, keep the lights on. See if you can catch our ghost spider,” Frankie said. “Can you jettison whatever’s in the Iktomi holds? Earth will have sent supplies, printstock, tish starters…”
Champ’s lip curled. He was drifting untethered in the pod, in defiance of regs.
The chances he’d take a swing at her were minimal. Tragically so—if he attacked her, on camera, his pretense of innocence would be gone. Plus she’d have a self-defense waiver; she could hit back.
Frankie’d never hit anyone in real life. Could she? An ancient potential for violence was supposed to be hardwired into her, somewhere. She’d played a lot of combat sims, testing her nerve against mostly nonhuman opponents …
Teagan9 said, “You’ll lose two of the huskies towing Iktomi if I send them chasing after supplies.”
“You take A and C, I’ll keep B and D. You’ll need the supplies.”
Frankie checked the escape pod’s trajectory. They were on profile to hit the middle of the portal. She kept Champ centered in her field of vision and grabbed the HuskyBOTs, aligning the saucer. Multitasking, the remote-piloting equivalent of tap-dancing while patting her own head and rubbing her belly.
“I’m innocent,” Champ said.
She shrugged.
“I’m gonna clear my name!”
“Portal’s no bigger,” Cyril10 hissed.
“Tether in, Champ,” Frankie said.
“You screw this up, everybody at home is going to bury you in strikes.”
Frankie didn’t point out that if she screwed up, they’d probably die.
“Portal’s still not—Oh, there it goes,” Cyril10 said.
“Tether in, Champ,” Frankie said.
He didn’t move.
To reduce distraction, she changed all the moving pieces from camera footage to line graphics. They were closing on the portal even as it spat out vac-packed supplies for Teagan9: food, algae packs, hydrogel, whatever they’d assembled on the fly.
“Just get home,” Ember whispered. “Come on, Franks. Don’t go splat. Death’s the only real dealbreaker.”
Booger was about the shape of an orange seed and ringed, at the teardrop edge, with small propulsion rockets. Setting the pod on course for the middle of the expanding portal was child’s play. The two HuskyBOTs towing Iktomi were the real challenge. Frankie was tracking the incoming loads from the portal network while simultaneously towing the saucer … a hard job, as the dogs were at the limit of what they could pull.
All this while keeping an eagle eye on Champ.
“How many planes you think you can fly at once?” he growled.
Pat the head. Rub the belly. Tap-dance. Could she get Iktomi through the portal before the Kinze shut it down? “My record’s five water-bombers.”
“That was a stunt, Barnes.”
“Just because you can’t commit treason and chew gum at the same time…” Her social capital took a few hundred strikes. Malicious snarkery and unproved allegations … but she’d taken worse. “One little pod and two bots? No sweat.”
“We’re gonna go splat!”
She gave him a sharky grin she’d picked up from her adopted granddad.
“Is he right?” Cyril10 demanded.
“Don’t let him wind you up, Cyril,” Frankie said. “My performance scores and user reviews aren’t fake.”
“But portal expansion has stopped!”
“Circumference?”
“Eleven meters.”
Big enough for the escape pod … and far too small for the saucer. “Ember! Ember, what’s up?”
It was Mardia, Ember’s team second, who answered. “Sorry, Frankie. Ember’s comms are locked.”
“Locked?” Cyril10 demanded.
“Ember’s been accused of industrial espionage. They say he’s the one who stole the portal tech from the Kinze. Allure18’s here … She’s trying to arrest him!”
Frankie put an extra burst on the escape pod, burning hard to bring up their velocity.
“Mardia, can you keep growing the portal Yes/No?”
“No, no, no! We’re locked at eleven meters.”
“Wankers!” That meant leaving Iktomi after all. Frankie reversed direction on the two HuskyBOTs towing Iktomi, attempting to deflect the saucer downward with a minimal-power burn. “Teagan, I need huskies C and D back, or I’m gonna smack the saucer into anyspace and punch a shiny round portal-shaped hole in it.”
“Redeploying.” Teagan9 sent the bot streaking for the saucer.
“Sorry about leaving you behind.”
“It’s a good cause, and I’m an old hand, Frankie. I can take the hit.”
“Mars Control, we have portal contact in thirty, twenty-nine—”
“Stop, stop, abort!” Mardia said.
“What?”
“Your biosample has turned to sludge.”
Mardia shared footage. The HawkBOT carrying the sealed container of biomatter was melting. Butterfly wings flapped in staccato panic as the insects within the bottle died.
“Pull up!” Cyril10 shrieked.
More of the acidic nanobeads, Frankie thought. Nothing to do with the portal.
“Portal contact in fifteen, fourteen, thirteen.”
“No problem, guys,” Frankie said. “I can turn us around.”
Instead, she hit full burn.
The pod leapt forward, prow rising suddenly—she wanted everyone to think she was breaking off. She smacked into a load of hydrogel, sending jellied water in every direction, bringing them off profile.
“Aborting in five, four, three…”
“Barnes!” Champ shouted. “Mars Control, shut down, shut down. She’s lying through her—”
“Oops,” Frankie said.
“—teeth!”
She dipped, swerved. The pod bucked.
They hit the portal.
There was a familiar buzz of sensation, like having her whole body scraped; scalp, toenails, tongue, eyeballs, even the insides of her labia. Cyril10 shrieked—the sensation, on his burned arm, must have been excruciating.
Plus, of course, he thought he was about to die.
Frankie let herself worry about mortality for one intense, mind-clarifying second. Was it her turn to go? She flashed through a complex tangle of feels about Maud and promises made slash broken, that thing Ember said about death being the dealbreaker …
Then she focused on the task at hand. “We’re not going splat, we’re not going boom, it’s okay, Cyril. We’re already through,” she said. “Mars Control—Mardia. Come in!”
“We’re here, escape pod seven. Welcome home.”
“Either you need to open Portal7 wide enough for the saucer or shut it down entirely before we hole-punch Iktomi!”
“I’m not authorized to go big, Mer Barnes. I’m sorry.”
“Close it, close it, close it!!” Frankie said.
The portal glimmered and died, snuffed like candleflame.
“Comms lost, repeat, comms lost.”
Cut off again, but this time from Earthside. Cyril10 let out a heartbroken half-moan that hit Frankie right in the guilt feels.
“Tea, Tea, Tea,” he muttered, bumping his head against the hull.
“Man, that smarts,” Babs said. Split again, the Earthside version of her resolved back into marmalade fur and femme presentation, smoothing her skirt.
“We could’ve been killed!” Champ said, infuriated.
“Yeah.” Frankie relaxed against the bulkhead, waiting on a retrieval team. “You’re still the one to blame, though.”
It wasn’t much of a victory. She might as well enjoy it while it lasted.
CHAPTER 18
NONINTERFERENCE ZONE, SOL STAR SYSTEM
MARS REGION-GARNET STATION
Hi, Maud, how’s your day been?
Thanks for asking! First, my primary partner publicly accused her commander of sabotaging the Bootstrap Project. Then Allure18 showed up on Mars with a security bot in tow and tried to grab Ember.
It was Allure18 who had given the Solakinder the one #supertech they hadn’t had to develop from the ground up, the hotly debated form of digital imMortality that let people upload their memories and personas into consciousness vaults, and then—assuming they didn’t decohere—load themselves back into printed bodies. Allure18 was, herself, a digital imMortal, reEMbodied, as her subscript suggested, eighteen times now. When she’d designed her first Mayfly™ body, she had optimized the look so it would appeal to a wide cross section of the public. Almost as tall as Jermaine, with high cheekbones and a queenly air, she drew the eye.
Maud had been standing, rigid with tension, nails digging into her own arms, when the ghost strode into the control room, OxBOT in tow, and made straight for Ember. He was glazed and oblivious. Calculating his way through stabilizing the carousel, probably, triple-checking the numbers ensuring Frankie’s safe route home.
Maud threw herself in front of her packmate and surprised everyone, herself included, by actually bellowing, “Stop!”
Stretching out her arms in a barrier, like a child on a playground, she glowered up into the flawless, printed face of the alien representative. “What do you think you’re doing?”
The OxBOT loomed at Allure18’s shoulder, red lights blinking. Would it push past her and snatch him? Could they do that if Ember wasn’t being violent?
Her heart was hammering. She felt a thin thread of something that might be … exhilaration? Memory flashed—that first glimpse of Frankie, outmatched, on the run, and full of righteous fury.
“Ember Qaderi stole technology from the Kinze,” Allure18 said.
“That doesn’t give you the right to kidnap him!” The OxBOT’s pilot must have agreed, or at least feared an outpouring of strikes—it drifted back a meter.
“We’re taking him into custody,” Allure18 said. “It’s a perfectly rational—”
“Footage or it didn’t happen,” Maud snapped. “Show me this theft!”
“I took nothing,” Ember said, barely sounding interested. Had he and Frankie been expecting this, too?
“We Solakinder don’t lock people up on unproved allegations,” Maud said.
“I’m not one of you, and under the law—”
Before Allure18 got any further, Crane tooned in at Maud’s side, along with a stranger whose tags showed him to be a criminal lawyer.
“Mer Sento is correct,” Crane said. “Ember’s alleged offense involves no violence or danger to public safety.”
“Danger to public safety?” Allure18 said. “What about the Emerald Station crew?”
“I can assure you, Ember is no threat to them,” Crane said.
“Aren’t you the codefather of a murderer?” Allure18 smiled. “Your word might not carry as much weight as you think.”
“This will require a hearing and Diplomatic will be involved.” The lawyer’s voice was courtroom-loud, comfortably authoritative. “In the meantime, perhaps we can agree that if Mer Qaderi accepts restricted Sensorium access—”
“House arrest at least!” Allure18 said. “The Kinze demand that much as a courtesy.”
“I’m good with house arrest,” Ember said. The OxBOT proffered a black clamp; he held up a hand to catch it, and it tossed the hideous item over Allure18 and Maud’s heads.
The alien representative forced a thin smile, then whirled. “Why is that portal still open?” she demanded.
“You gave us half an hour,” said Mardia. “We have seventeen minutes left to get our people back.”
“You wouldn’t be demanding that we abandon them, would you?” Crane put in. His tone was mild. Nobody needed to point out that the argument was verging on half a billion realtime follows.
Reframe the conversation. “Sneezy was sabotaged,” Maud said. “If Ember’s getting arrested on your say-so, maybe Champ Chevalier should too.”
“That’s not how the law works!”
“Are you sure, Mer Allure? Didn’t you just imply this was all unprecedented? I mean, sabotaging a station launch … we used to call that sort of thing treason, didn’t we?”
Everyone turned to Crane’s lawyer, who lit up—this was clearly the most entertaining case they’d ever had. “Beyond! I’ll query @Interpol.”
Subvocal and audio channels devolved into shouting, spawning lengthy comment threads from all their follows. In the midst of it all, Ember locked the manacle on his wrist. He raised his eyebrows, mojing mild surprise.
“Ember?” Maud subbed. “You okay?”
“Heavier than it looks. And Sensorium’s firewalled,” he replied. “Comms with immediately family only.”
Maud shot him a shareboard of pics from the Surprise party, highlighting a portrait of himself in rags and fake bruises, dressed as a prisoner of war. “We should redo your primer. Cosplay as public protest.”
“It’ll be all right. Vulcan High Command is headed to Daley Plaza to register a complaint. And now Frankie’s back—”
Was she? Maud brought in a closeup on Booger, even as Mardia affirmed: “Escape pod’s coming through.”
They watched the pod as it ripped through the portal, Cyril10 screeching all the way. The pod appeared on the orbital cameras near Earth. Frankie immediately dropped the craft into the queue for Portal2, at the Moon.
“Round and round and round they go,” Ember singsonged. He sounded confident, but Maud saw a little shiver of relief run through him.
The connection to Emerald, out at Procyon, went dark, cutting off Teagan9 and the other instance of Babs.
“Comms are down, comms are down. Portals six and seven are closed,” said Mardia. “Stabilized loop reestablished for Portals one through five. Repeat, Portals1–5 are up and stable.”
“Be with you in half an hour, Mars Control,” Frankie sent.
Maud pivoted. “Come on, Ember. Let’s wait in Arrivals.”
Her packmate followed willingly enough, but the move didn’t gain them the solitude Maud was hoping for. Everyone not managing portal tech came with them: Crane, the lawyer, Allure18. The OxBOT was quietly dangling another manacle—for Champ?—as they crowded into the elevator.
By the time they got to the lounge, Teacakes’ awkward great-something-grandson, Wilbur Mack, was in Arrivals too, waiting with Irma du Toit and a bunch of medics.
Booger docked. Champ came through first, stepping straight into Irma’s arms. @Interpol had indeed filed charges against him: tags in his aura of augments indicated he was #underarrest and #underinvestigation. Looking truculent, he stuck out his wrist so the security bot could cuff him.
“I haven’t done a blessed thing,” he said. “I’m innocent!”
“Me too,” Ember said, with a cheery note in his voice that set Champ almost to snarling. Then Frankie stepped through the hatch, and Ember all but skipped around him to hug her. The pilot’s expression darkened into fury.
Frankie rapped her knuckles on the cuff. “We’ll get you out of this.”
Ember nodded, unconcerned.
Maud fought back a quick stab of pain, heightened sense of being left out, an afterthought. She could feel someone—Irma, she thought—watching with interest. Instead of speaking, she mojied—follow me—breadcrumbing a route home. Her packmates fell into step around her.
“We’re demanding that Ember Qaderi be ceded to Kinze custody,” Allure18 yelled at their backs. Maud caught Frankie’s hand, folding it into hers before the Hedgehog could throw back an obscene gesture.
“The minute you think you got it all beaten back…” Frankie sagged as legal documents filled the family sharebox. Her resting brawler face gave way, just for a second, to something tired and worried and vulnerable.
The Ferals caught a train, riding deep below the shuttle port, then emerging into Dragon City. The Martian capital, at dawn, its fungiplex domes dusted in red, seemed to glow with the light of the sun they obscured, like upended glassware backlit by candlelight.
Frankie and Ember were looking at each other, across the shuttle, talking without talking. More secrets? Maud buried her face in Frankie’s sleeve, hiding her unease from all the cameras.
The subway let them out under a dense hub of greentowers, a cone of habitation and food-production tech built half below the surface of the planet, half under the cluster of conical fungiplex domes.
“Here’s my pop-in,” Ember said.
The first thing Maud saw was that Ember had marked up the walls on the main room. As they walked in, he picked up chalk and eraser—
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