Frankie shuddered.
Ember lapsed back into his smartdrug haze, leaving her to contemplate the KangaBOT putting Jermaine under. Elsewhere in the crowded hanger, away from the rest of the jumbled HuskyBOTs, FoxBOTs, and Mars shuttles, Jalopy was being prepped for the short flight to Lodestone.
The prototype FTL was about the size of a bungalow. Unlike Iktomi and the other experimental saucers, it was heavily armored and well used. Jalopy had been the first augmented ship to come off the Solakinder production line, and Frankie had personally made Earth’s first two-light-year hop in it.
Above Jalopy, Wiigit, Iktomi’s older sibling, drifted serenely. It was bigger, rounder, shinier, and prettier. Its holds held more.
Dwarfing them both, half-built Kirin, sibling ship to dead Heyoka, sleek as an egg, shaded mother-of-pearl …
Frankie could hardly bear to look at it.
She flashed on Hung’s white glove, showing a hint of bone, turning in space, end over end. Tears threatened. She mentally gave Kansas the finger for ripping her psychological armor off.
Ember kissed the side of her head. He demagged his boots and pushed off, drifting to Jerm’s side, taking his hand as the anesthetic took hold. He was probably simultaneously counting every screw and every bulkhead in the hangar, estimating particle-cannon loads, thinking about temporal distortions, and writing love sonnets in Arabic.
Well, that was fine. Frankie had her own fish to fry.
“#Newscycle for you, Mer Frances.” Crane surfaced a breaking story. The sapp population had negotiated a work-to-rule offer for official government postings within Global Oversight, Sapience Assessment, and the Bootstrap Project. The Asylum was also in negotiations to reopen an investigation into the old murder committed by Crane’s code-son, Happ, during the Mitternacht crisis.
Frankie smiled. “If Happ could be paroled—”
“It’s up for discussion,” Crane said, “but I’m not holding out much hope.”
He’d been such a charming little app. Bulldog-puppy toon and a wicked sense of humor …
The sapps’ renewed give to the Solakinder economy would ease the labor shortage and maybe unlock some luxuries. “Will this offset the economic loss of the Titan and Europa portals?”
“It buys us some time,” Crane said.
The kanga almost had Jermaine conked. Ember drifted back to her.
He said, suddenly, “If I make a breakthrough on quantum comms while I’m accused of IP theft, will the Kinze say I stole that, too?”
“Do you think it’s likely you will? It’s not your area of expertise.”
“The more I think about the accident and your implants … it’s all the same. The science of simultaneity? Anytime, anyspace, hive minds, FTL envelopes, quantum syncing, portals … I smell connections.”
“Crane? Can you get a legal opinion on that and shoot it to us on Titan?”
“Of course, Mer Frances.”
The exchange was performative … a pretense of compliance. Frankie wasn’t taking Ember to Lodestone so he could submit to incarceration.
She crossed her arms, squeezing herself.
“What are you thinking now?” Ember said.
“Fantasy-quest sims,” she said. “Fighter takes the hits, but fighter saves versus death most easily.”
“Toughness breeds longevity.”
“Yep.”
“Longevity breeds survivor guilt?”
“Don’t app like you’re my therapist. The mage, cleric, thief … they’re more vulnerable.”
“That’s what extra lives are for.”
“Hung didn’t get an extra life.” She fought another upwelling of sadness.
“Villains are gonna vill,” Ember said. “Knights die. We pushed our way to the front lines. You, me, Jerm, Babs—”
“We didn’t know they’d be raining down fire on us!”
“Oh, you did so,” he said. “All you ever do is run straight at the nearest fight.”
“Hey!”
“It’s not a criticism, Franks,” Ember said. “It’s kind of what I love. Anyway, nothing for it now. Once more into the fray…”
“We few, we bloody few?”
Jerm was deep under now; a human anesthetist, working remotely, double-checked the KangaBOT’s readouts and greenlit him for loading into Jalopy.
“Me next?” Ember climbed into a pod of his own. No sedation for him, not yet, anyway. They weren’t meant to be going very far, after all, and he was a good traveler.
Over the next ten minutes, Frankie supervised her packmates’ installation within the FTL ship. She slotted the two pods into Jalopy’s flanges, ran life-support checks, and then rolled herself into a bodybag and had herself hauled up to the cockpit.
Unlike the saucers, whose increased size and complexity meant they required additional personnel for pilot loading and plug-in, getting into Jalopy was a one-person job. It was like sliding into a kayak; the flyer snugged both legs into a narrow sleeve, extending them forward and then leaning back, ever so slightly. The harness offered supports and restraints for her arms and hands.
The downside of the prototype tech was that—unlike the pegasus and the nextgen saucers, the augment interface for Jalopy plugged in roughly. There was no detachable cockpit—prongs were built into the seat; she had to grope and wiggle to align them.
Frankie waited until they’d been lofted out of the hangar to trigger the connection. She felt a sense of being stabbed at the base of the spine, with a fork, having her meat tested for doneness, before her body offlined.
For a five-second interval, Frankie was a disEMbodied mind, sensory-deprived, alone with howling memories—whirl of Hung in literal goddamned pieces, what if Maud didn’t forgive her for ratting out Upton, what if Maud couldn’t be trusted, no no of course she could …
Babs, poor Babs.
Then she came into a sense of her own strong bulk, Jalopy’s immense, muscular mass. Her fingers extended, as through batwings, ready for a deep dive into dark skies.
Jermaine’s pod was a bulk nestled tight behind her left shoulder blade; Ember, still settling on her right, was lighter and more mobile.
“Stop fidgeting,” she subbed.
“Did you say something about an itch in Hung’s bodybag before he took off in Heyoka?”
“Everything he said is in the evidence archive.”
“He didn’t @ButtSig you?”
“Not now, Ember.” He might be on the verge of an epiphany, but she was on a tight clock. She used the more agile FoxBOT cohort to arrange the ship’s cargo—it was mostly euphorics and tobacco, bound for the Dumpster—until her sense of the distribution was precisely balanced.
Control noticed the activity.
“Looks like you’re following standard preflight protocols, Pilot2,” Jolene said.
“So?”
“You’re not flying. The Kinze have offered free transit through the Mars to Europa portal.”
This had been a bit of a game of chicken—Diplomatic had pointed out that there’d be a cash charge for using the portal to bring Ember to Titan. They selected Jalopy and declared that Frankie would fly him there directly, in a short FTL hop … she had promised to deliver them, after all.
The aliens called their bluff, offering free, safe transit through the portal. Ember was their package, as they saw it. And once Frankie was on Titan, they wouldn’t let her go back, either. Two birds, one stone—it was why they’d agreed to the grace period.
“You’re only plugged in to satisfy safety regs,” Jolene said. “HuskyBOTs’ll do the work of getting you into Titan hangar.”
“Safety regs are regs for a reason,” Frankie said. “Pardon me for ensuring we’re flying to spec. After what happened? Anyway, if I ignore ’em, someone’s sure to strike me for being self-destructive and reckless.”
Jolene had no answer for that.
Ember’s monitors were showing less motion now. She felt the loose weight of him on her back, his breathing slowing as he sa
nk into smartdrug-amped pondering.
“Don’t invent anything illegal while you’re down there,” she told him fondly.
“Muh buh,” he mumbled.
“Yeah yeah.” Frankie ran the preflight checklist. A red light showed fuel levels at zero. She could feel the weight of the tank, like pressure in her bladder. The feedback systems were lying; she was at full strength. @GlobalSec had come through with a system hack for this little show.
@GlobalSec’s got nothing to lose. Little difference at this point whether I get Ember killed or if the Kinze take us.
The loads in the dark matter wands … she was taking those on faith. They couldn’t be felt. Still, if there was gas in her tank, there’d be pixie dust on her fingertips.
Here goes nothing!
“Mars Control,” she said, “Jalopy requesting portal access, Mars to Europa, under remote tow.”
“You are cleared,” Mardia said. The tech’s voice was leaden; the ground crew loved Ember. The atmosphere up at Control was positively funereal.
Jalopy rolled through the nanotech quicksand at the top of the Garnet Station hangar, a sensation Frankie perceived as a belt loosening from her waist. Hands twined into hers as the HuskyBOTs connected, towing her forward. She lay still, wiggling her toes, ensuring nice, sharp neural connections to all systems.
Jalopy was a dear little ship, really, simpler than either Iktomi or Heyoka. A tough, long-suffering plow horse.
The HuskyBOTs pulled the ship, building momentum to sling it through the Mars portal. At the last minute, they let go, allowing inertia to carry Frankie the rest of the way. The scraping sensation of portal transition caught her, a raw burn against flesh, butter knives running over the insides of her sinuses, the surfaces of her eyes and tongue.
Lodestone materialized before her, powered down and mostly dark.
“Jalopy, welcome to Titan,” Jolene greeted her, as flat-voiced and glum as Mardia had been on the other side. Ember was lovable, give him that.
It was, rather, what she was counting on.
“Thanks,” she said. “Give me a sec before bringing in my tow?”
“Problem, Jalopy?”
“Fuel tank reading feels off,” she said. She fired a rocket, quickly, rotating Jalopy to a new alignment. “Oop, damn. Aren’t I supposed to be empty?”
“Checking,” Jolene said.
“Barnes!”
“Ah, Mer Allure. I suppose I should have expected you’d be out here. Prepping to chain us to a wall somewhere and have a nice long gloat over our bones?”
Jalopy was almost in position. Fresh bots were on their way to bring her into the airlock.
“Park that saucer and get your packmates aboard this station! There will be consequences if you pull any stunts!”
She could almost hear Maud scoffing. Her whole life is one long stunt.
“If I was one for taking orders, Allure, they wouldn’t come from you.”
“I will have your doctor-husband cut that augment out of your spine,” she said. “Try flying then!”
“Violent talk,” Frankie said. “Might you be feeling some anxiety about the way you haven’t quite managed to gift-wrap our civilization yet?”
“Strikes for slander! Park that ship, pilot!”
“Okay, calme-toi, calme-toi, I’m coming around.” She fired the rockets again.
Jalopy rolled laterally so Frankie was facing a point just past Europa.
Three HuskyBOTs were inbound. Jolene wasn’t rushing, though; they were running slow.
“Never doubt that I love you,” Frankie said, for the transcript, for Maud. Then she hit all the gas she wasn’t supposed to have and shot Jalopy between two bulk containers and through Lodestone’s open portal to Europa.
The scrape was more intense this time, a feeling like sunburn.
Now every second mattered. If Jalopy didn’t power up an anyspace envelope before the skeleton crew on Europa got a sled dog clamped on her …
The sensation, internally, was like pumping with both hands while curling and uncurling her toes … go, go, go!
The dark matter wands fired. Graphical interface showed pixie dust rolling over her bow.
Don’t go splat, Franks.
“Deep dive.” Lava glimmered on her bow; an instant later, the three of them were gone. Maybe lost, but at least she could pretend they were untouchable for a while longer.
CHAPTER 30
SOUTHAM, RIO REGION, IMPERISH FOUNDATION HEADQUARTERS
SECRET @VISIONARY STAGING AREA
“It ain’t that I don’t appreciate being scooped off the public gallows,” Champ told Aunt Irma, via the private messaging system in his implants. “It’s just the training we’re doing now—Misfortune’s expectations seem downright nutty.”
Misfortune had been at him every waking hour since he arrived in Rio, marching him out to an improvised gym within the fugitives’ enclave and running him through endless hand-to-hand combat sims.
Most of the fights were immersive game scenarios—off-brand catharsis therapy stuff, with lots of fisticuffs. Frankie Barnes’s kind of thing, if rumors were to be believed.
Champ did believe. He had seen Frankie looking at him once or twice, over the past six months, wearing an expression that suggested she thought she could fix up her view of him by blacking his eyes. He’d always told himself it was paranoia, but now …
Champ had always preferred #oldschool chase sims, preferably on horseback, when he wanted an adrenaline fix. Now Misfortune took him through bar brawls, back alley muggings, and hostage exchanges. Each of these scenarios degenerated into scenes where he, as alleged hero, ended up trying to save a willowy blonde. Saving her, usually, meant punching or throttling his antagonists.
These opposition toons—Misfortune had rapped his knuckles for referring to them as victims—tended, naturally, to be small and brown, like both Frankie Barnes and Ember Qaderi. A few were big black-skinned hulks, like Jermaine Mwangi.
“This is a short-term allocation of your labor,” Irma reminded him. “Just until Foreclosure. The @Visionary cluster is short of field operatives. Most are too old for the work; they’ve had trouble replacing—”
“Misfortune’s eternal. She’s a vampire.”
“She’s too precious to risk.”
“It’s not a labor allocation,” Champ went on. “It’s a loyalty test. Otherwise, she’d give me a taser and let me short Frankie out. This need of hers to see me flatlining people with my bare fists—”
Because that was the thing. It was all Hit him, hit her, hit him again, what’s wrong with you, why are you going easy on them, don’t you have any goddamned balls?
“So what if it is a loyalty test, luvvie?” Irma was in a white-walled room, stretching her ballerina legs in ways that made his own muscles twinge sympathetically. Something about seeing her do the splits or go up on point always filled him with a bit of horror. “You’ll pass, won’t you?”
“Of course I’ll pass,” Champ said. “Still a waste of my time. I’m a pilot, not a—”
“Our @Visionary future needs people who can get their hands dirty.”
“Throttling people unconscious—”
“It shows intestinal fortitude, my darling. Don’t you want to prove you have what it takes to win?”
Misfortune was only too happy to grumble about how kids these days had been, as she put it, over-domesticated. Tamed. To hear her tell it, humans had lost some crucial part of their heritage or nature when nigh-daily brawling had been socialized out of them. You’d think she’d been killing people since her Clawback childhood, without consequence or even an attack of conscience.
That couldn’t be true, could it? The point of total accountability culture was that if you so much as shook a fist in someone’s direction, a dozen cameras would pick it up and people would strike you for being antisocial. Your social capital would plummet. Even abusive language—
People were people, of course, and now and then, violence did break ou
t spontaneously, out on the Surface. Incidents had been on the rise, in fact, as the luxury shortage intensified. But policing bots were on the scene in minutes, as always. Witness footage took the I said/they said factor out of it.
Bullying was antisocial. Hitting someone, outside of sim … and why bother, really? “Misfortune’s old. She assumes that because I’m a long-limbed Y chromosome—”
“From Browncoat fandom, no less. Now, there’s a lovely brawling culture!”
“—that somehow pulverizing people will be fun for me.”
“Champ, Champ,” Irma said, her tone soothing. “Think how good it’ll feel when you look into Frankie Barnes’s scowly little face and she realizes you defeated her. Imagine when she realizes she’s too late, luvvie.”
Champ let the thought coax a smile from him. He didn’t see as he needed to pummel anyone to enjoy the thrill of victory, but his handlers were clearly bent on it.
“I gotta go,” he said. “Misfortune’s calling.”
“Make me proud,” Irma said.
Champ sent gestural moji—a yay, via air-punch, that he didn’t feel—and let their secret chatroom fade away.
His current pop-in was a bright yellow-walled enclosure, minimally equipped. The one-way glass of its windows overlooked bird habitat built into the exterior of the greentower. Brazil’s megacity boasted the world’s biggest population of ornithologists, and their avian de-extinction programs were a great source of civic pride. Even now, a parrot was eyeballing him from a ledge outside the glass.
Champ followed Misfortune’s ping, feeling lead-footed and mulish, to the training gym. The old fighter awaited, her primer configged into lightly quilted armor, her wrists taped. A botomized woman stood patiently beside her, holding hydrogel, tape, and gloves. With them was Glenn Upton.
The sight of the surgeon made Champ’s throat run dry. He fought a sudden urge to run his hands over his sacrum and skull.
Misfortune wasted no time on preliminaries. “We need to get you up and running, Chevalier. The sapps have hatched a work-to-rule scheme. And Frances Barnes has stolen Jalopy and run off with both her male packmates.”
“Oh. Well … Jalopy’s getting on. Frankie could crack up, just like…” His throat dried up around the words … like Hung.
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