Because now we’re proposing to defuse an alien bomb? Maud’s voice sounded oddly dreamy.
No, she replied. Just proposing to look like we might be able to.
She made for Booger. “So, Fatale—you’ve decided you’re neutral in this? Here for the station and your own survival but not taking sides?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“I can think of two things you can do to increase your chances.”
“I’ll just bet you can.”
“Listen, I’m not the one brought a bomb aboard.”
“You’re the one who punched me in the mouth.”
“I’m offering to make it up to you.”
“How?”
“I can try to get rid of the destructive payload inside Booger.”
“In exchange for what?”
“Give Babs2 a bot so she can secure Ember in Jalopy?”
“How is that not taking sides?”
“Because it’s transactional. Me offering to do something pro-survival for you. You responding in kind.”
Sure enough, that brought Champ’s head up. “Hey!”
“Champ’s yarding on your bulkheads in an attempt to break quarantine,” Frankie said. “He’s damaged two individuals who might otherwise have assisted with damage control.”
“I’m damaged because you punched me in the face.”
“You wanna live or not, sapp?”
“Got a HuskyBOT,” Babs2 subbed.
Frankie signed thumbs-up, hoping Babs2 had her on camera. Her hips were starting to hurt now …
Did that mean she wouldn’t lose use of her legs?
“Mommy has my permission to rescue Ember,” Fatale said.
Mommy?
“As for Champ—”
“Champ,” Frankie said, “is terrible at poker. He only ended up on the pilot leaderboard because his test flights weren’t being sabotaged—”
She tried to think of something more insulting. For one irrational moment, she wished she had slept with him; surely, regressed as he was, a sneer at his sexual prowess would drive him into a rage. “He doesn’t seem to understand, even now, that his sponsors promoted him through the piloting program because he’s got all the impulse control of a ball of yarn.”
Shit. What if he thought that through and decided that having impulse control meant sticking to the current course, the attack on the infirmary? “He’s barely potty trained,” she said. “He let me glue him in a shower tube. You can’t let—”
Ah, that did it. He was coming back toward the hangar, through all those open hatches—fast. She had almost crawled to Booger. “—can’t let a retrograde man-child—”
Now it was her whole ass that hurt, and she still couldn’t move her legs. Pretty rich of me, all in all, to be accusing anyone else of stupidity.
Wait, Maud said. The interior voice sounded even dopier. Was that a glimmer of self-knowledge?
Frankie found herself laughing. I love you, my darling, but fuck off.
Far away, elsewhere in the fray, Maud was laughing too.
“Aaand now we’re back on brand,” they said, together, as Frankie reached the threshold of the escape pod.
Champ, nine feet tall in the pegasus and obviously furious, launched himself through the hangar hatch. “I would love to know what’s so goddamned funny.”
Crawl into Booger, lock herself in, she’d be safe. But—
But Babs2 didn’t have Ember into Jalopy yet. And the quantum comms still needed time.
“Come and get me, big boy, an’ I’ll tell you,” Frankie said, a little giddily, as she tried to think of one way, just one, she could spin this in her favor.
PART 3
INTIMACY COACHING
In my world, the wicked don’t get parting gifts.
—Veronica Mars
CHAPTER 48
NONINTERFERENCE ZONE, PROCYON SYSTEM
EMERALD STATION (INFORMAL DESIGNATION: SNEEZY)
Sarco pods aimed to suspend users in an optimal rest state—deeply asleep, blood chemistry balanced, organs free of stressors, no toxins to flush, no immune-system challenges, no complex tasks. A low-key euphoric and AMDR transmitters ensured happy dreams and a cheerful wake-up. A med called Flush was run through the system for one hour out of forty-eight, raising each sleeper’s pulse and respiration to a rate comparable with a brisk one-hour walk.
In long-haul pods, electrical muscle stimulation was targeted to prevent core strength loss. Luxury rigs even managed a certain amount of stretching and fascial work. The idea was to burst out of deep sleep feeling refreshed: rested and ready to go.
Ember hadn’t gone into a luxury pod. It was bottom-barrel packaging, barely more than a consciousness vault clamped to his head and a bit of nanofoam cushioning, a life-support system flashing red alerts because—Babs2 was furious to see—the pod had authorized extra pain meds.
“What did Champ do to him?” she asked Fatale as she used the husky—wrong bot for the job, but a fox wouldn’t have had the strength to get Ember into Jalopy, not with the hangar still venting atmosphere.
“Dislocated Mer Qaderi’s arm,” Fatale said. “Would you like to see the footage?”
“I can’t believe you’re sitting this out.”
The other AI sent a shrug.
Grabbing the sarco’s tether and dragging Ember over to the Jalopy had been easy enough. Now Babs2 coaxed its hatch open, dropping air pressure, losing precious oxygen. Using her HuskyBOT’s big lobster claw, she muscled the limp pod into the hold, feet first, and pushed.
It ballooned, knocking his head against bulkheads and bouncing back.
Babs2 used the sled dog’s bulk to keep Ember from drifting back into the hangar, while bringing around its slightly more dexterous left arm. Groping for the release toggles on the sarco, using a load-hauler like this, was like trying to pull a zipper in mittens.
Cameras tracking the full hangar view showed Frankie with her boots locked right in front of Booger. She’d got its hatches open.
“Opting for neutrality and embracing station regulations was the only way to bond, rather than dissolve, as my triparental entities merged,” Fatale explained.
“But you’re a whole person now. Couldn’t you pick a favorite?”
“What makes you think it’d be you if I did?”
“Because I’m charming.” Babs2 dove deep into the HuskyBOT’s code, looking for a way to override station protocols.
“Don’t bother trying to hack the sled dog,” Fatale said. “My code-gramps is the Angel of Death!”
“Is that why the villainess fandom?”
“Greyscale Brigade, 2060. Morally ambiguous women of action. Diana from Ek thi Daayan, Black Widow, Xena, Sook-hee, Ursula—”
“I remember the franchise. But your heroes cover the moral spectrum. Why not lean into the redemption-arc babes? Nobody’s gonna object.”
“Champ might,” Fatale said. “He’s still in command of station. The reason I gave you that bot, Mommy, was so you could rescue personnel. Which I’m required to do as resident station consciousness.”
Mommy. Was it a cliché that she kind of didn’t love that?
“Does that mean you’ll let me reboot this pod once Ember’s loose, so we can try to load Jerm into it?” Babs2 finally got her clumsy right limb onto the release clasps for the sarco. Hoping she was making the right move, she popped them, giving the pod another push into the Jalopy hold.
“I’ll take it under advisement.”
Babs2 glanced at the time, wondering how fast Ember would come around and whether he’d be able to help them distract Champ until the comms were grown.
Could it really matter so much if the Yump got their comms up? Nice humanitarian gesture, sure, but things had escalated to the edge of a bloodbath. They might get a distress call out, hope the Kinze got their alien knuckles rapped—
—and, okay, that might help with the whole foreclosing-on-Earth’s-economy thing. Which, admittedly, was a bigger issue
than making it to the next Feral5 superversary.
Frankie was, once again, throwing all her chips, life and family included, into a bet on the big picture.
Speaking of whom, Champ had just spotted her dangling in the open Booger hatch.
“Sorry pal sorry pal sorry—” Babs2 used the right HuskyBOT claw to clamp onto Ember’s shoulder.
“Still sorry still sorry…”
She jiggled.
A cry of pain broke across the thinning air. Frankie and Champ both turned in her direction.
“Dammitall, you had to wake him up?” Champs demanded. “What damn difference you think that’s gonna make?”
Babs2 used the HuskyBOT speakers. “Oh, Champ, you wondered what we brought back with us from the Dumpster? It’s math, honey.”
Hint of a frown. The flyboy would dismiss it, probably, but every second counted. More importantly, Ember would be interested. The prospect of calculating his troubles away was the only thing Babs2 could think of that might—
And indeed, he had stopped screeching.
“Big juicy reality-shattering equations,” she added, hoping it was true. For all she knew, the Yump had actually sent chess moves or a bill for damages to their ship.
Ember shook his head, grabbed for a handhold, and started moaning and wriggling his way out of the sarco.
Would Champ come after him now instead of Frankie?
No. The ephemeral threat—get back, we’ve got numbers in here!—didn’t rate against the prospect of Frankie maybe defusing his Booger-bomb.
The Jalopy hatch began to close.
“Draw hangar air, Ember,” Babs2 said. “Pressurize, get yourself some atmosphere.”
Ember asked: “Is Jermaine…”
“Hanging by a thread,” she said. “And we’re about to lose Frankie.”
“I need pain meds. I need Superhoomin. I need smartdrugs.”
“We’re working with some shortages.”
Some very un-Emberlike cursing followed this.
“Walk it off, pal—I gotta go.” She tucked the consciousness vault against the HuskyBOT’s bulk and got moving.
Frankie, meanwhile, was telling Champ he didn’t have to do this.
Is it Crane’s fault she’s always offering him a way out?
“No more yammering,” Champ barked. “I do have! I do have to do this.”
Reaching up with two of the pegasus’s upper-right-side arms at once, Champ made an odd motion. One of the thingbots flicked its terminal point against his own helmet, near the right temple.
It made a plinking noise.
Lipizzan surged toward the Booger.
There was a moment, maybe, when Frankie might still have locked herself inside the escape pod. Instead, she pushed off and up, toward Iktomi, which was still venting air through its smashed-up cockpit.
Champ ricocheted, changed directions, and closed the distance. He caught a trailing strand of nanosilk from the improvised sacral bandage, jerking sharply. Frankie’s trajectory turned into a spin and he snagged her ankle. Cybernetic tentacles spaghettied around it, and he squeezed.
Babs2 heard something snap, but Frankie didn’t react.
In another second, he really had her caught. He snaked a limb up around her ribcage, squeezing.
Frankie slapped a glue patch on his faceplate.
Champ was shouting inarticulately by now, almost barking with rage. He tried to fire himself at a bulkhead, clearly meaning to crush Frankie against the hull.
Which was when Babs2 rammed him from below with the husky. It wasn’t a great hit, but it kept him from bashing Frankie’s brains out.
“Hey! Bad mom!” Fatale objected. “You’re supposed to be taking the sarco pod to the infirmary!”
Champ seized the HuskyBOT with three of his arms, grabbing for the lobster claw, shaking and yanking. Trying to rip it out by the roots.
Frankie took the opportunity to slap a second glue-pack onto Champ’s C02 vents. Tried to, anyway.
She was struggling to breathe. They were getting ever closer to Iktomi and open space …
Champ had an abundance of arms to deploy. He brought one up and smashed at Frankie’s face. She caught the blow, barely, with a billowing airbag of nanosilk.
Babs2 fired the HuskyBOT’s air cans, attempting to bring the three of them to mid-hangar again, away from the aft side of Iktomi and the venting atmosphere.
Champ ripped the bot’s arm off.
Frankie was struggling to breathe in the thinning air. She configged her load of nanosilk, gathering it around her upper body, programming more padding for her head, neck, and face.
“You think I can’t rip that off you?” Champ hollered. “Think I can’t tear your head off your goddamned lying…”
“I’m actually trying—” she gasped.
Champ adjusted his grip on Babs2’s sled dog and flung it up toward the hull breach, embedding it in the gap in the station between Iktomi, the mail slot, and space. Air continued to whoosh out of the hangar, rattling the dead drone.
“Trying to avoid—” Frankie went on.
Champ punched at her nanofoam hood. The angle was awkward, but Frankie’s head snapped back all the same.
As he retracted the arm, he tore away over half of the protective nanosilk padding her face. Frankie dispersed it, letting it turn to particulate and reform as a sheet of silk. The remaining mass of nanosilk rearranged itself into another pad—a much smaller one.
“Trying. To minimize damage. To your mount.”
Champ’s helmet was smeared with glue, so Babs2 couldn’t see his face. Even so, she could imagine the incredulity on his mug as he started to laugh.
“What?” he said. “Are you kidding?”
“I’d like. To have a pegasus again,” Frankie said.
“You just turned your implant to hamburger,” he said. “You’re never getting back in the saddle.”
“Please, do something,” Babs2 begged Fatale. “He’s going to kill her. Survival of station personnel, remember?”
Champ wound one of his arms around her neck, coiling like a snake, bellowing in frustration. The nanosilk inflated to protect her neck; he smacked her with another arm, and Frankie’s whole body jolted.
All for nothing. A little padding, a trick with hot glue … none of it would make the slightest difference. Champ had traveled into some realm beyond reason.
Frankie made a retching sound and slapped, ineffectively, at the pegasus latches.
They had been rising toward Iktomi’s exposed cockpit at the top of the hangar this whole time.
“Goddammit, gonna kill you, a waste of, gonna tear your head off, gonna pulp you, Barnes, you and your boy and your other boy—”
They were sucked to within a meter of the gap.
All of Lipizzan’s arms redeployed, unsnaking from Frankie’s throat, releasing her ankle and torso, making hard magnetic connections to the hull, to Iktomi. The pegasus extended, maximum size, grabbing everything it could—the saucer, the bulkheads. A grappling hook shot lazily from its hind end, harpooning the far deck. Starfished, the pegasus locked down within the hangar.
“What in the ever-living fucksticks is happening now?” Champ howled.
“Emergency overrides,” Frankie said, groping for the cable attached to the grappling hook.
“Fatale!” he shouted.
“It’s not me,” Fatale said. “Lipizzan’s in safety lockdown. You can’t go EVA with an unshielded crew member in your arms and all that nanosilk blocking your vents.”
“EVA?” he snarled.
“You’re near the hull breach,” Fatale pointed out.
How had he not noticed? What was wrong with him?
“I am going to kill you, Barnes!”
“Indeed.” Her voice was raspy, but the dry, faintly interested, superior-British tone was more Crane than Hedgehog. “You proposing to come out of the safety suit and do it with your bare hands?”
Champ bellowed.
Frankie started inchin
g her way, hand over hand, down the long cable.
“She’s not doing a very good job of calming him,” Ember subbed.
“Welcome back,” Babs2 said. “You got anything to contribute besides color commentary?”
“This calculation your new chums sent is really. Very—”
“They’re not my chums. Franks and Jerm decided we had to get all humanitarian on their asses, remember? Babs1 was totally against it. Is there anything in there we can weaponize?”
“Not yet. But it’s really—”
“Yeah, yeah, interesting. So glad you’re having a good time.”
The hangar fell silent, momentarily, as everyone regrouped.
“She’s going to suffocate if we don’t stop losing air,” Ember said.
“We gotta get her out of the hangar or get Iktomi’s rear door shut.”
Before they could contemplate ways to pull that off, Fatale said, “Something very unexpected is happening out by our outer camera array.”
Frankie’s expression, under the bloodied nose, broke into a bit of a grin.
Champ was still yelling and thrashing against the hold of his pegasus, oblivious.
“Incoming ship,” said Fatale, voice placid.
“Incoming ship?”
“Now, this,” Frankie said, mushmouthed but suddenly sounding much more like herself. “This should be bloody interesting.”
CHAPTER 49
DEATH VALLEY CAVE SYSTEM
OFFBOOK @VISIONARY-KINZE FORECLOSURE STAGING AREA.
Maud woke in darkness and cold. She was nude, lying on flesh-warmed marble. Back in the alien-held cave system, she’d bet.
She put out both hands, groping for surfaces, letting out a hiss of breath as her fingernails scraped stone. She scrambled up, pressing her back against the wall, listening so hard she felt like her eardrums might bleed.
Feeling her way slowly around the perimeter—square room, rock walls, no windows, heavy fire door—she tried to think. Count the steps; do it again. The room was about ten meters square. No furniture around the perimeter.
She could feel sand between her toes, in all her crannies …
… but not against the blisters on her feet.
She pressed a heel against the wall. Felt nothing. No raw skin, no bandages.
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