“Not so much. The Yump have been very illuminating.”
“Then you’re definitely in illegal possession of IP.”
“The Yump say they arrived at the Dumpster three days ago and hit a temporal tripwire. Just a teeny-tiny containment bottle, like this one, containing one half of an anytime particle pair…”
“You wouldn’t be playing for time, would you?” Champ slipped the glass globe off the case. He opened the faceplate of his helmet, tucking it under his chin. “One good jerk of the head should bust her, easy. You’ll all want to consider that when you come at me.”
“Champ, you really don’t want to do that,” Ember said.
He felt unutterably tired. “What do you know about what I want?”
“Think. You break that, the same thing that happened to Hung will happen to you, sooner or later. There’s half a moment in there. The other half is stuck in last week. You wanna get spread between Emerald Station and that collision at the Dumpster?”
Champ winced. “Ember, I don’t care.”
“Leave that thing intact. We can try to unwind it, or … wow, traveling through anyspace will probably be enough to break containment…” His voice trailed away for a second. “Actually, your only chance may be to spend the rest of your life here on Sneezy.”
“I always knew this might be a suicide mission,” Champ said.
Had he? The statement was a bit bleak. He was usually the upbeat one. Sunny side up to Frankie’s hard-boiled Hedgehog. Had Misfortune and Upton programmed in a touch of suicidality when they augmented his augments? Or was all the blood soaking his hands somehow infectious?
Champ sealed the Booger and began checking the prelaunch.
The checks ran automatically, leaving him with a bit of time to check up on the others. Frankie Barnes had got herself a Superhoomin patch, and the KangaBOT was trying to stanch all the fluid seeping out of the small of her back.
“Look at the bloody diagnostics,” she was saying.
Who was she talking to?
“Can we upload?”
Was she trying to get herself disEMbodied into a consciousness vault before she died? Maybe Ember was trying to keep Champ distracted while Frankie …
What? Just dropped dead on him?
“Champ,” Ember said. “If anyone can get you out of this, it’s me.”
Maybe that was true. Champ fisted his hands, and Lipizzaner, responding to the cues, curled up its thingbots into tight coils. They were covered in Yump slime and splashes of Frankie Barnes’s blood. A few of her coarse brown hairs were stuck between the tentacles’ articulations.
He surprised himself by gagging.
“Incoming ships,” Fatale said.
“That’ll be Herringbo, come to save the day.” They’d take him back to Earth and feed him to Misfortune …
But it wasn’t a Kinze saucer. This one was covered in what looked a lot like fish scale, and its shape kept morphing as it undulated. A different version of these pain-in-the-keister Yump who Frankie’d friended?
A second later, a Kinze saucer did appear.
So did a craft like a frying pan, maroon in color and edged with fire.
And then two more of the hollowed-out asteroids.
Champ set Booger to emergency launch. “I was you, I’d tell these hombres to clear Sneezy’s space,” he told Fatale.
“Why would I do that?”
“Because I ain’t just carrying an anytime surprise, remember?” he said, sharing his countdown clock. “This black crate tethered to my fuel tank? Scrap ain’t lying. It’s a big ol’ fashioned kaboom bomb.”
CHAPTER 54
NONINTERFERENCE ZONE, PROCYON SYSTEM
EMERALD STATION (INFORMAL DESIGNATION: SNEEZY)
Jerm, Frankie pinged.
Jermaine. It’s me, Frankie. You gotta wake up.
“Frankie.” His attempt to form words, through mangled teeth and the quantum-comms matter growing in his mouth tissues, was barely recognizable. “Wha—”
She sent huge colorful stop-sign moji. Don’t move. Stay glazed. You’re badly hurt. Text if you understand.
Under her hands, he convulsed a little. Then texting came online. Serious?
She shared KangaBOT’s #bodyfail metrics without any visuals; she didn’t know what would happen if he saw the quantum comms growing out of what was left of him.
Jerm let out a long, terrible moan and sent a string of horrified moji.
“I’m sorry,” Frankie said, “I’m sorry, I am. I can’t figure out how to configure … if you want a shot at digital imMortality … the Kanga says we need an imminent death certificate to send to Sensorium.”
Assuming we can get Sensorium online, that is.
Another terrible groan.
“I’m sorry. I’d dial up your pain meds, but…”
He texted, “But that would put me under again.”
“Yeah.”
“Babs? One?”
“Dead. Ish. There is, however, a Babs two. The station manager’s currently named Fatale,” Frankie said. “She’s on standby.”
“I’m right here,” Fatale said. “There’s space here for one download; it’s the last sarco pod. Far from optimal, but it’s the only lifeboat we’ve got.”
Moaning all the while, Jermaine ran through the system checks.
“Frankie,” he said. “You’re not that far from #crashburn yourself.”
Frankie said, “I’m gonna stick it out a little longer. Someone’s got to stay out here and fight off the zombie horde.”
She had taken all the recovery meds the infirmary had left … Superhoomin, a pain blocker, something that was supposed to help her blood pressure. Now, as she held Jerm’s hand and watched the status bar on his consciousness upload, new prescriptions popped up, orders to take two different liver boosters whose purpose was unclear, and antirejection meds for the tish at the base of her spine.
“We’re meant to be saving you, honey. Stop doctoring me.”
“I have extra…” Jerm’s body twitched and texting futzed for a second. “Bandwidth. Please, take your meds. If the last thing I ever do is get you home—”
“Yes, fine, doing it.” She pushed her way over to the meds cabinet, took the three indicated doses. By the time she got back to him, she felt shaky and enervated. Her tailbone was throbbing and her legs were numb again.
“If you’re feeling well enough to doctor me, Jerm,” she said, “you should go say something to Ember. It might be your last chance—”
“Asking them to come to us,” he said.
Suddenly, Ember and Babs2—marmalade presentation, California accent, leather jacket—tooned in around her.
Frankie felt an odd urge to cry at the sight of them … and at the absence of Maud and even Crane.
“Okay, Ferals. If we’re going to evacuate, we need to get a portal up,” Ember said. “Station’s #crashburned. Fatale’s barely keeping the air on.”
“You two are most at risk,” Babs2 said. “We’re data. The two of you are meat.”
“Assembly of ghosts,” Frankie said. She’d finally gone out too far on a limb, burned the bridge behind her, painted herself into the corner. Maud always told her to leave herself a margin for survival …
Maud, she thought, you there?
Nothing. Hardly surprising, considering what she’d done to her implant, not to mention Maud’s play with the locusts.
“Yump? Can you copy our disEMbodied personnel onto your systems?”
“The tech is incompatible. However, quantum-comms mass is now sufficient to—”
“We can load Jerm into the quantum comms?”
“Stored consciousness decoheres in quantum environments. However—”
“Incoming ships,” Fatale said, for the third time.
A crescent, incandescent white, whirled into view, throwing off anyspace streamers. Two more asteroids, bristling with comms tech, were next. Then a dark shape, hard to see even with cameras trained right on it.
&
nbsp; “Uhhh, Yump? Are these friends of yours?”
“What’s going on?” Ember said.
The Yump sent two streams of data at once: one a long string of mathematical notations, the other text: “Parties have come seeking leverage in a long-running trade dispute.”
As Frankie tried to decide if she could handle a more nuanced explanation, another ship appeared.
“Frankie,” Fatale said. “Champ’s told them to back off. He’s launching Booger.”
“Oh!” Ember said. “About that. He’s carrying explosives and a temporal tripwire.”
“Scanning,” the Yump said. “The anytime particle in Booger is connected to the one we are seeking. We struck its partner at the Dumpster. Containment breakage will connect to our accident.”
“That’s bad, right?” Frankie said. “Ember?”
He sent moji: an old cartoon coyote going splat off a cliff.
Frankie said, “Fatale, don’t let him out of the hangar.”
“Did you hear me say bomb? He’s gotta go.”
Frankie couldn’t hit him with a HuskyBOT.
Couldn’t fly either Jalopy or Iktomi.
She would never fly augmented ships again. Couldn’t power her way out of this.
Probably couldn’t get Fatale to take a side …
“Does your society have a concept of neutral ground, Yump?”
Yump said, “In what sense?”
“What if we invite you all aboard? You’ve all got issues to hash out, obviously.”
“Our comms are more than adequate for discussion.”
“Really? You never do the face-to-face on neutral turf thing?”
“That station is not neutral territory,” came a familiar voice—Herringbo. “Solakinder debts for cost of Bootstrap developments—”
“Are null and void if you tried to sabotage the project. We call that acting in bad faith, pal,” Babs2 said.
“Accusations of sabotage are unproven!”
“Are you kidding me?”
“As far as the Kinze are aware, Champ-You is responsible for all recent station damage and assaults on personnel.”
“Well, we could invite some of these independent offworlder observers on board and see what they think.”
“We can hardly come aboard, given the state of the station and sad loss of our Scrap—”
A voice piped up. “Scrap is not dead!”
There was a long silence.
“Scrap, we are delighted to hear it. Return to us … all will be forgiven.”
“All?”
Champ launched Booger. The big ships were easing back, moving beyond the range of whatever explosive he was carrying.
Frankie took a deep breath. “Fatale, Champ’s off station. Am I ranking officer?”
“Frankie Barnes, you are indeed in charge. At least, you are until you lose consciousness.”
“What? Glaze? When I’m about to win?”
“You’re about to what now?”
“Charge the portal membrane. Is everyone in those ships listening in?”
“Who can tell?” Fatale said.
“Everyone present is attending to all comms,” said the Yump.
She drew a deep breath. “Look, aliens—all of you aliens. I don’t want to die here.”
It was true. Her self-destructive impulses—and now, at long last, she admitted that they were just that, desires to self-hash before she got abandoned yet again—seemed to have drained out of her.
“Scrap doesn’t want to die either, presumably. Jermaine, Ember, Babs, Fatale … we’d all like to live to see tomorrow. We weren’t looking to get wrapped up in some vast dispute of yours.”
“The Solakinder and Emerald Station need to get our portal up and running. We have injured personnel needing emergency evacuation. If you have any concept that translates to humanitarian aid, we bloody need some. We can’t buy or borrow any of that. We’re bust, understand? The Kinze have taken everything we’ve got. If we can offer a neutral space for you to hash out your issues—”
“You’re not neutral,” Herringbo repeated. “You are, in fact, the property under dispute.”
“Do we have any power to stop you—any of you—from waltzing in and taking over? Did we ever?”
It was the Yump who answered. “Your current level of technology is incompatible with victory conditions in a conflict of force.”
“If we can’t beat you and we can’t join you, we’re effectively neutral.” Frankie wasn’t sure this was actually logical, but her vision was beginning to grey at the edges. “An antelope can’t choose between the alligators trying to eat it.”
“Portal launch detected,” said Fatale. “Unrelated: about your choice of metaphors—”
“Leave her be, Fatale,” Ember subbed.
Shimmering anyspace energy rippled across the portal membrane. A small disk manifested across the sky, five meters across.
“Do we have comms?” Frankie demanded. “Is there Sensorium link-up?”
“Comms in five. Four. Three. Two…” Fatale said.
Out in Emerald’s nearspace, Booger changed direction.
“One. We have comms. Repeat, we have comms.”
“Back up Jermaine,” Frankie said. “Then request aid and commence full datasync.”
“Stop!” That was Champ. “Surrender the station to the Kinze and tell all these Exemplar busybodies to take a hike.”
Ember straightened up, looking alarmed. “Champ’s headed for the portal. He’ll lose containment on the end of the tripwire. He’s gonna loop himself, the portal network, and that bomb, if it exists—
“Of course it exists, you idiotic niggler!”
“Champ,” Frankie said. “Champ, this is going to kill you. You’re going to bind all seven portals to the accident at the Dumpster.”
A weird crowing sound was her only response.
Dammit! “Fatale, can we pause Jermaine’s download?”
“Negative.”
“Can we go faster?”
“It’s an entire human being, Frankie.” Fatale said: “We have to close the portal.”
“We’re not losing Jerm,” Frankie said. “We’re not losing the portal and we’re not losing Jerm and we’re not bloody losing Earth.”
“Mer Barnes,” Herringbo said, “I might be in a position to stop Champ-Them.”
Frankie’s lip curled. “For a price?”
“Of course.”
“Like … we concede Ember stole IP and we owe you bigtime? Shut up? Stop making a fuss?”
“That is, quite simply, the truth.”
Frankie turned to Ember. Champ and Herringbo would hear anything they said. If they didn’t manage sweet harmony now, they’d be screwed.
She held out her hands, as if she was holding a volleyball, and then brought them together, interlacing her fingers as she did, crushing the imaginary sphere down to a golf-ball-sized imaginary handful.
Ember raised a brow.
Frankie put a finger to her head, like an old-style gun, but pointed high—the kind of shot that might glance off the skull without penetrating. Cocked her thumb and fired. “Pew pew,” she said.
“Mars Control,” Ember said. “Are you there? Clear traffic on your side of Portal1. Mars Control, clear traffic.”
It was Mardia, bless her, who answered. “Should we break contact?”
“Negative. Maintain Sensorium upload. Set to outcome, simulation four sixteen.” He spewed some numbers.
“Negative negative negative! We can close portal if there’s a hazard, but…”
“Oh,” Ember said, awkwardly. “Did I say hazard?”
Such a bad liar.
“Awww,” Champ said. “Did someone veto whatever scheme you had?”
Ember’s eyes narrowed. He raised his hands, imitating Frankie’s crushed circle, and then expanded it back out and raised one hand flat. He waggled it, ever so slightly.
“Are you kidding?” Frankie asked. “I promised Maud I wouldn’t pull stunts l
ike this anymore.”
“Can you fly it or can’t you?” He cocked an eyebrow, teasing.
The mashed bits of her face protested as, unbelievably, she found herself grinning back. “Challenge accepted.”
“Sending numbers,” Ember said serenely, reaching out to take her hand.
Frankie glazed, taking possession of the OxBOTs holding the station on profile. A safety override popped up and she said, “It’s either this or you die too, Fatale.”
The override message vanished.
Pat the head, rub the belly, shuffle the left leg. Frankie sent one ox forward, another back, pulling Sneezy on its axis.
The station fought. Once a portal was formed, the energy of the connections held the membrane in absolute positions, relative to each other.
“Scrap,” she said. “If you can hear me, if you can do anything, assume crash position.”
“Status bar on Jermaine, 57 percent downloaded,” Fatale said.
“Six,” Ember said. “Five, four, three…”
Booger sailed toward the portal, Champ firing rockets to increase speed. Emerald Station bucked as the bots dragged it out of proper alignment. The perfectly circular disk of the portal wavered.
Frankie felt it, distantly, as her grip on Jermaine’s treatment table broke and her body drifted toward the infirmary ceiling.
Just a bit of stunt flying, not even that hard, really. Pat the head, rub the belly, kick the leg. Move three separate remote tugboats in three different directions. Pull, pull, pull.
As Sneezy moved off profile, the portal began to warp into a teardrop. It stretched, like a balloon. Shrinking toward a point on its outer circumference, it pulled toward a point on the edge of the apparent disk …
“Jermaine: 65 percent.”
As Champ saw the effect, he tried to change course, to aim Booger more squarely for the center of the now-malformed portal.
“Champ,” Frankie shouted. “There’s still a chance for you. You’re a great pilot. Evade the portal. Don’t—”
“Upload of Jermaine, 73 percent,” Fatale said.
Flying through a partial portal would punch a hole the size of the portal into Booger … but as long as that imaginary bullet didn’t hit Champ or the bomb he was carrying …
Impact.
The portal, now less than a hand’s width across at its malformed point, struck the edge of Booger. It punched out a chunk of the hull, front and then back, drilling a core sample neatly in its heavily shielded outer bulkhead, sending the debris homeward.
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