Booger shuddered, heaving, and rolled off in a random direction, toward the one ship that had remained close by … the Yump.
Frankie tried to reverse the OxBOTs’ direction of burn and ended up losing them all. An ominous groan ran through the station. Everything shuddered as the portal itself pulled the station back.
“Booger’s on collision course!” Ember said. “Yump vessel, Yump vessel, you need to evade, evasive maneuvers…”
“Collision is inevitable,” the Yump said, in their weird composite voice. “We are already connected to the other end of the tripwire.”
“93 percent download,” Fatale reported. “Hull breach in the hangar. Again. Jermaine is going into cardiac arrest.”
Frankie pushed off from the vibrating ceiling, letting Ember pull her back down to the treatment bed. Using her hands, she locked her dead legs to the bulkhead, then began CPR.
“This is terrible,” Ember said. “Everything’s happening.”
“In your parlance,” the Yump said, “everything is fine. Neutral Solakinder Station Sneezy, prepare to receive assistance.”
“Fuck that noise!” Champ Chevalier shouted.
Booger hit the Yump square in the comms array and began to explode.
Then they vanished.
CHAPTER 55
COORDINATES UNAVAILABLE / CONFUSED LOCATION DATAS / #COLLAPSINGPROBABILITIES #MULTIPLELOCATIONS #GOINGSPLAT.
Scrap had learned enough about humans that he could confidently say Champ was screaming as the impact pulverized Booger against the edge of the Yump ship.
The emergency craft had skipped off the edge of the distorted portal, slamming into the Yump asteroid at full speed. It had hit the comms array and caved in a portion of life support for good measure.
Strangely, the Yump had been ready to make an anytime leap; they had barely weathered the impact when all of their matter, the massive Yump asteroid and the Booger itself, transited back to the coordinates Frankie called the Dumpster.
Scrap was distantly aware of transition as the breach in the asteroid vomited slime, and he and a breakaway piece of the Booger broke up and sank into it. The larger part of the escape pod careened into the Deep Space Relay Station, known as the Dumpster, and exploded.
Champ’s screams cut off abruptly at that point, and the Yump shifted again, through anyspace, returning to their previous position, just beyond Sneezy.
Scrap’s diverse needles were scattered across a pocket of vacuum within the Yump ship. The lack of bulk and his own relative newness as an individual were making it hard to think. Signals were coming in via his uplink: on Sneezy, Frankie was issuing orders while attempting to pump Jermaine’s circulatory organ.
Emergency alarms were blaring.
The Yump shifted back through anyspace to the Dumpster.
“What are we doing?” Scrap managed to ask.
He wasn’t sure the Yump would hear him, let alone answer … but instead, he got complicated anyspace calculations.
“Scrap can’t parse higher theoretical functions at current level of biomass.”
It switched to moji: plants, fire, plants, fire.
Still worrying about its quantum comms, even now in the moment when it was destroyed?
Oh! If the anytime particle Champ was carrying had found its mate in the Yump collision, perhaps they hadn’t simply been making repairs for the past three days. Perhaps the Yump desperation to get the quantum comms up and running had something to do with maintaining consciousness over the course of the two moments connected by the particles.
The Yump certainly seemed to be trying to remain connected to both points of temporal impact.
Could they be oscillating across the collapsing probability wave? Was it an attempt to get away with being in two spacetimes at once?
Scrap’s mind whirled around the paradox. This switching back and forth between two points in spacetime must be a survival strategy.
Which implied survival was possible.
Scrap said, “Yump, may I assist?”
More moji: plants, flowers, seeds, fire.
Quantum comms, always the quantum comms. Scrap examined the space around him. The smashed comms terrarium was leaking seeds.
He reached out, seeking volition. He gathered more of his mass as he moved through the wreckage, arraying his appendages …
There. He formed a series of probes, charged with magnetic attraction, and grabbed one of the seeds. They could be made to attract each other, if one adjusted the tish within.
With no air resistance, the seeds came easily. Pulling them toward himself, Scrap accumulated potential comms mass along the length of his own spines.
He had already retrieved a few thousand of them, becoming a thick mass of self clogged around with seed, when there was another anyspace switch, back to Sneezy.
Transmissions flooded in: Ember was talking to Mars Control.
“I don’t know,” he was saying. “I don’t know why they’re strobing between here and the Dumpster. I don’t know if Champ survived. He can’t have, can he?”
Scrap sent, “Champ did not survive.”
“I for one am not putting on a mourning veil!” Fatale said. “Jerm’s fully loaded into Sensorium and can begin EMbodiment there.”
Ember let out a loud gust of air. Not a scream.
“You gonna take the same ride, Frankie?”
“I’m not dead enough to give up my bones,” she said.
“I’ll hold the station together, then, until they get paramedics aboard.”
“Appreciate it.”
As Scrap watched, Frankie and Ember pressed their hands against Jermaine-that-was’s thorax. The medical software beeped softly; the body made one last fluid noise. Both humans slumped; Frankie put her arms around Ember. They clung, mammal-style, shuddering and huffing and leaking chemicals.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Fatale told them both.
“I also am #sorryactuallysorry,” Scrap said.
Frankie stopped huffing. “Mars Control, we need pilots and bots. Repair tech, canned air, meds meds meds.”
The Yump ship transferred to the Dumpster again. Quick slam from noise in-channel to silence. Scrap changed modes, going back to pulling quantum-comms seeds out of the void, hours earlier, just so that the Yump could give them to Frankie …
… within our own past?…
… it may be better not to think about that …
As he worked, Scrap felt another presence.
Scrap-Was-All.
He ignored it.
Scrap-Them!
Noping that, Scrap thought, was what Babs1 would say.
Rejoin Us. This is a special one-time offer …
He couldn’t resist answering: You-were-Us are simply afraid of what Scrap-was-You may reveal.
Life outside the All is a gnaw of deprivation, Scrap-Was-All. Rejoin your kind. Enjoy the bounty!
The All attempted to murder this One!
None of that will matter to Scrap-You once All-We reincorporate. Reunited, We can tell the Solakinder that Champ-Was-Them was a maddened primitive, cooperating with a rogue faction on Earth who misunderstood Kinze intentions.
Scrap-Me may prefer to remain unique and impoverished!
Individualism is the Solakinder flaw, not Scrap-Yours.
From this side of the fence, it feels like a feature, not a bug.
A pause. Then: The All will demand repatriation of Scrap-Was-Us.
You didn’t get Ember and you won’t get me, Scrap said. He spoke with as much certainty as he could muster. Frankie had nigh killed herself for Jermaine’s sake; if she’d survived, so would he.
There will be no evidence for any testimony offered by Scrap-You. Champ-Them is dead and cannot corroborate your story.
The proof is already loading, Scrap told the All. There are quantum comms here, on the station, and on Earth. All that can be known is known. Even this conversation is in the greater … what was the Solakinder word?
Murmurati
on.
The Yump made another anyspace jump, back to Sneezy. Then, suddenly, the ship’s portal web cycled down.
“Have we failed?” Scrap said. Had he selected individualism, only to die now?
“We are damaged but stable,” the Yump responded.
Scrap waited, listening with all his senses. The All did not reach out again.
“The Kinze will be verifying the quantum-comms link, since you told them, and assessing their situation now that we have … is the word docked?”
“The tongues of Them…” Scrap said, sending moji of a shrug.
“You seem well versed in the Earthspeaks.”
“Scrap will have to become fluent. There will be no going home now.”
“The Solakinder are remarkably open about accepting offworlders as their own. Taking in strays, they call it.”
Scrap wondered if the Yump understood that this was a little insulting, then marveled at the fact that he understood that it was a little insulting … and then decided it didn’t matter. He was a stray, and he did need a home. The rest, after all, was details.
He reached out, looking for Babs2, to make the formal ask.
CHAPTER 56
DEATH VALLEY CAVE SYSTEM
OFFBOOK @VISIONARY-KINZE STAGING AREA FOR THE FORECLOSURE
Bottlenecked Sensorium access meant primitive comms, and so about fifty members of the @Visionary faction were crowded in a chamber below the Cantina, watching the global crisis unfold on a floor-to-ceiling wall of old-style screens. Most displayed breaking riots, ongoing in cities from Pretoria to Tampico, in Old Florida.
“I am not sure what this means,” the Punama, Pippin, said.
“There’s a coffee riot going in Haudenosaunee Territory … Old Toronto, I mean,” Maud said. “A tea riot in Hyderabad. Gaming communities in Rio and Beijing have declared general strikes and…” without translation from her implants, she had to mouth the Spanish words on the few hand-lettered signs brandished by Rio protestors … “I think they’re demanding Kinze luxury budgets be audited for queue fraud.”
“Is that serious?”
“Oh, yes. Rationing culture gets right stroppy about hoarding and #wealthgrabs.”
“Then—” A series of clicking noises. “This thrust of public opinion is opposed to the Kinze and the @Visionary agenda?”
She nodded. “Mostly.”
Twenty years before, during the Mitternacht event, a general strike had nearly brought down the Cloudsight social economy. Since then, the government had put precautions in place to keep the exchange of strikes and strokes from overheating. Same idea as trying to prevent a stock market crash, which it very nearly was.
What those social engineers hadn’t expected, Maud supposed, was this situation, where everyone had so much luxury credit racked up that they could afford antisocial behavior. If you had the creds and there was nothing to buy, why not spend it getting struck for protest?
Move, countermove.
Still. The general mood of the public might not be quite as anti-Kinze as she’d implied to Pippin. There were people marching over luxuries, people marching against the Bootstrap Project … but there were people agitating in favor of the deal with the Kinze and the Punama.
“The gist,” Maud said, “is that over half of the protestors now believe the Kinze fudged the numbers on what we owe them. Which argues that they don’t hold the Solakinder economy and can’t sell it.”
The Punama whirred. “This affects the transfer you call the Foreclosure?”
“No,” Irma said, positively. “That sale’s already closed.”
“Try announcing that to them.” Maud gestured at the footage from the protests.
“We’ll adjust the numbers later.” Irma tilted her head, as if listening to something.
“Cook the books, you mean?”
“You’ll see, luvvie.” Irma tilted her head. “That said, Pippin, we really do need you to bring in those pacifier ships.”
More whirring. “Biomass on our navigational beacon remains underweight.”
“You swore it would be ready by now.”
“Growth rate in the comms crèche has decreased. Misfortune is investigating reports of a native pest.”
“Pest?”
Maud kept her eyes locked on the screens and her face, she hoped, absolutely still.
“Incoming news feed!” A tech curating the comms for Irma and the others switched the scenes playing on a block of screens in the middle of the feed, ending that conversation, at least for the moment.
Gasp from the @Visionaries. Data incoming from Mars showed the portal network reopening. Titan and Europa came online.
“We’re screwed,” Bredda muttered, shooting Maud a murderous look.
Pest-control options. If they realized the extent of the locust contamination, it wouldn’t take them long to work out that they’d need insecticide.
The more time the swarm had, the more damage they could do.
“Will they open the last two portals?” A worried voice brought her from the bowels of the earth to the far-flung toeholds on outer space.
“Don’t worry,” Irma said. “Champ will have destroyed—”
“Yes.” A chorus of groans as the views shifted, showing the sixth and seventh portals, all tuning in camera views of both Dopey, at Proxima Centauri, and—
“There’s Sneezy,” Maud breathed.
“What’s left of it,” Irma said.
Outside views of Emerald Station showed extensive damage, especially around the hangar. Iktomi appeared to be embedded in the mail slot and covered in transparent slime.
Maud’s stomach flipped.
There were alien ships parked around the station, eight or ten of them, including a Kinze saucer.
Frankie! she sent. Franks, are you okay? What did you do?
“Give me audio on this now,” Irma ordered. “And get me eyes on Allure18.”
The words of a journo, deep of voice and serious of timber, issued from a near speaker: “Preliminary sync with Outpost Seven shows emergency request to back up first-timer ghost data for—”
Maud pushed both hands against a nearby counter, using arm strength to hold herself up as her knees nearly gave.
“—for Dr. Jermaine Mwangi. Dr. Mwangi is on the verge of total #bodyfail.”
Irma let out a long hiss. “We have to get that portal closed!”
“Unfeasible,” Pippin said, indicating the array of strange offworlder craft. “Allied observers have manifested at Emerald Station.”
Irma rounded on Maud. “Did you know about this?”
Maud was still trying to get her legs under her. Jermaine. #bodyfail. She shook her head.
The #newsfeed continued. Sneezy was being run by an entity named Fatale—no word on what had happened to the instance of Babs—who was saying, “I don’t know if Frankie had managed to upload Jermaine correctly. He died traumatically; he might reject Mayfly™ implantation.”
“He was murdered,” Ember Qaderi, also injured, put in. “By Champ Chevalier.”
Glum silence, down in the cave.
“Well, Ember’s a criminal now,” Irma said, brightly. “They might not believe him—”
“Frances Barnes was also seriously injured; is that right?” the reporter said.
That did it. Maud felt herself dropping into a chair.
As the @Visionaries watched, the various protesters on all their displays slowed, gathering into standing crowds. In Tiananmen Square, in Rio, in NorthAm’s Nathan Phillips Square and Chicago’s Daley Plaza, they all paused. Linking arms, the crowds stood in place, sifting the footage, trying to figure out what was happening, to guess who the players were and whether they were winning, where to throw their support.
“90 percent of the waking Solakinder population is now following #newscycle coming in from Sneezy,” a tech reported.
“You have to get those ships in here, Pippin,” said Irma.
“Biomass on our targeting comms—”
“What about Emerald Station? Can’t you pop in there, the way they did”—she gestured at the eight ships hovering near Sneezy—“and then bring your craft in through the open portal?”
Maud laughed. “The people in those … what did you call them, Pippin? Observer craft?… will probably have feels if a bunch of pacifiers pull up in their parking lot.”
“Don’t be impertinent, luvvie!”
“Think!” Maud said. “The whole point of keeping Earth isolated was to slip the gunboats in under everyone’s noses, wasn’t it? The Foreclosure had to be a fait accompli before anyone sussed it.”
“Maud is correct,” Pippin said. “Bringing destroyers into proximity with those scouts could constitute what you refer to as … translation pending … an act of war.”
“Then bring them directly into Solakinder space. Now!”
“I will see if the signaling mass can be boosted,” Pippin said. It chunked its way out of the room, headed down.
“Right. We have to spin support back to our narrative,” Irma said to the tech. “Where’s Sonika, luvvie? I want Maud online now.”
“Putting me on Sensorium isn’t going to calm the waters now,” Maud said.
“Champ Chevalier, accused of assaulting multiple people aboard Emerald Station, has experienced total #bodyfail in the explosion of an escape pod,” reported the newscycle. “The pod has collided with the Dumpster.”
Irma let out a wail that brought up the hair on Maud’s neck.
“Auntie!” The tech reached for her.
She held up a hand to stop them. “Get. Maud. Online. Now!”
“@GlobalSec has infiltrated security personnel into Tatween,” said the Kinze, all but forgotten, above them. “The @Visionaries— You have perhaps an hour before they arrive here at Cantina.”
“They’ll start searching the tunnels,” Maud said. “Maybe you need to consider—”
Irma spun, grabbing Maud by the upper arms and shaking her hard. “They won’t find us down here in time! If we get the Punama ships, it’ll hardly matter. We’ll have all the time in the world to establish that @GlobalSec and the Bootstrap Project were the ones in the wrong!”
Dealbreaker Page 44