How the Multiverse Got Its Revenge

by K. Eason

  It was also a bit fortuitous; he had exposed the wound in a handful of steel-snapping moments, and apparently without hurting Thorsdottir. She made a noise in the back of her throat. “How bad is it?”

  “Um.” He leaned forward. The cabin teslas were bright, but not obnoxiously so, and there were dark shadows under the edges of the broken suit. He leaned closer and activated his helmet’s headlamp. An unforgiving beam of white stabbed onto Thorsdottir’s arm. The blackness did not resolve into anything recognizable. Was there some kind of hex, concealing the damage? He squinted and dipped his awareness one layer into the aether. As sometimes happened, when one’s visual senses were otherwise occupied, the others asserted themselves. In this case, his sense of smell sharpened, and he caught a whiff of cooked meat.

  He sat up fast. Acid boiled at the back of his throat.

  Thorsdottir watched him with wise, grim eyes. “Bad.”

  Jaed did not trust himself to speak. He swallowed instead, which burned, and busied himself rummaging through the medical kit. What did one apply to blackened flesh? The labels blurred until he had to stop, close his eyes, gasp for breath.

  He was supposed to tell her she would be okay. He had already ruined any chance of her believing that. He made eyelock instead. “The skin’s pretty burned.”

  “Thought it might be.” Thorsdottir nodded. “That’s fine.” Her smile flickered. “There’s a Tadeshi dreadnought out there. We’re all going to look like my arm in a few minutes.”

  Jaed sputtered, caught between unexpected, sour laughter and a reflexive need to argue with her. “The Tadeshi could fix this. We get off a comm to them, ask for help. Tell them you’ve got me to trade, they won’t shoot. They’ll help you, if just to get custody of me.”

  Thorsdottir’s humor dried up and blew away. “No.”

  He was a little bit touched, and a lot relieved, which made what he said next seem the height of poor decision-making.

  “You know it makes sense. They won’t know who you are, or they won’t care, and they won’t execute me right away. There’d be a trial. There’d be a chance for, I don’t know, some kind of negotiation with the Confederation.”

  Thorsdottir shook her head with more vigor than Jaed thought should be possible. That pain-patch must be especially potent. “It’s not about you. If they get hold of this ship, they get Rose, and we can’t.”

  Jaed stared at her. He had forgotten about Rose. The Tadeshi would use it against the Confederation first, but weapons like that had a way of getting loose and finding their way into everyone’s arsenals. The dismissal stung—he had been sincere in his offer of self-sacrifice—but Thorsdottir was right.

  “Then we have to make a run for it.” His voice felt like it came from somewhere outside of him. It sounded like his father, cold and reasonable. Running meant Thorsdottir was likely to die, too. He had, what, a handful of antibiotic patches and a few analgesics? Nothing that could treat burns like she had. If they got to SAM-1 (if the Tadeshi dreadnought did not shoot them, or the Protectorate ship, if SAM-1 was even still intact), there were med-mecha and medical staff who might be able to save her life.

  That was a great many ifs, none of which Jaed spoke aloud. Thorsdottir already knew.

  She closed her eyes. The lids looked especially fragile, wrinkled and blue-veined and swollen red on the edges. “Except that means we have to leave Rory.”

  She sounded like he felt. Jaed reached across her and took her uninjured hand. She would not be able to feel much through the glove except pressure, so he squeezed especially hard.

  There was a Tadeshi dreadnought out there. If it took the Protectorate ship, and found Rory alive. . . .

  Jaed plucked a foil of antibiotic foam out of the medical kit and tore it open, proud of his steady fingers. He squeezed it carefully into the hole in Thorsdottir’s suit, where it smothered the cooked-meat smell with chemical nothing.

  Jaed’s visor sealed, suddenly and unbidden. The part of his brain that was void-station born and trained supplied reasons: sudden loss of atmosphere, some emergency that the hexes detected and he did not. Thorsdottir’s eyes went wide as she came to the same conclusion, but her visor did not drop.

  rose help

  Jaed stared at the text on his HUD. Rose. Of course.

  “She’s pretty messed up,” Jaed said. “Not sure what help you’re going to be.”

  A targeting square appeared over Thorsdottir, on the other side of HUD and visor. He didn’t like the effect.

  rose help

  “By what? Shooting her? What can you do?”

  The HUD seemed to hesitate.

  repair

  Rose did not, Jaed was sure, mean the hardsuit. He was also certain that the most logical question to ask in this instance—how?—would not produce a satisfactory response. Rose was rather limited in their capacity for verbal communication. He cast back to the documentation they’d found on G. Stein. Granted, he had not read it closely—a lot of very small words, and very technical terms—but he did not recall any bits about repair of organic material. Destroy a biosphere, yes, which necessitated an ability to transmute things on a molecular level, but again, that pesky how rose up and demanded a response.

  All right, he knew that answer, too. The mechanism by which Rose would make the alterations would be arithmantic, of the sort that was supposed to be confined to theory, but which someone, somewhere had managed to put into practice. Rose worked by changing the fundamental alchemy of things on the level of aether where everything was just math. Formulae, equations, calculations. Bodies. The actual alterations—whatever variables Rose changed—he couldn’t predict. That—prediction, forecasting, probability, whatever you called it—was another sub-branch of arithmancy, and one that he had done little more than acknowledge in passing as he concentrated on the more practical hacking and reading of auras. Another arithmancer—Rory, Messer Rupert, some k’bal—would be able to say what sort of changes Rose could make—

  Wait. Rose was an arithmancer. Rose could say, if Rose could find sufficient vocabulary. Or if he could meet Rose halfway.

  So, with a breath that felt insufficient, he slid into the aether until he could see the glittering fragments of very tiny mecha who, together, called themselves Rose, and asked, “How?”

  Only when he made that query here, it was not a syllable, or an utterance. It was hex-query, of the sort he might use to begin negotiations with a turing if he were attempting to talk his way past security measures.

  And Rose answered.

  This account will forego an exact recounting of their exchange, as the rendering and translation of arithmancy into print is an under-appreciated and laborious task best left to scholars (see in particular M. Tearle’s By Any Other Name for what is believed to be the most exact version of this exchange), and proves to be of little interest to readers in any case.

  Jaed asked, and Rose answered, and after some time Jaed exited the aether with a headache, a nosebleed, and a thorough, if uncomfortable, understanding of Rose’s intentions. They meant to transmute Thorsdottir on an alchemical level. Not make her something else, exactly—not transmute her to, say, a different species, or a cyborg like Grytt. They meant to integrate themselves into her organic matter, and then transform what they found; in essence, what they had been designed to do, only this time, with benevolent effect.

  “And you are certain?” Jaed asked. “You are certain that you won’t kill her by doing this? Because that’s what you’re for. Killing. You know that.”

  Rose, we may hope, was immune to offense, or their response was simply too limited to express emotional dissatisfaction or impatience.

  yes. no harm.

  Until or unless someone activated Rose’s command codes. Jaed remembered those clearly enough—seeing their mention in the documentation, if not their actual alphanumeric composition. He wished he’d been looking mo
re closely then. He wished he dared access those documents now. But to do so might alert Zhang and Crow to his negotiations, and inject two more opinions, and at the moment, there was only one that mattered.

  “Ask Thorsdottir,” he told Rose. “If she says yes, you can help her.”

  not ask

  He strangled the reflexive why not. Because Thorsdottir’s hardsuit was a fragged mess, obviously. Because magic nanomecha had limits. He glared at his HUD and slowly, deliberately, commanded the visor to rise.

  Thorsdottir was watching, waiting. “What?”

  Jaed let out a breath he had not known he was holding. “Rose says they can help you. They will . . . don’t ask me to tell you how this works, but they’ll sort of . . . bond with you, on an alchemical level, and change you. Repair you. It’s permanent. Rose will be part of you. But that’s all I—we—know. Rose can’t ask you directly because your suit’s wrecked. What should I say?”

  Vagabond’s engines fired, then, thrumming up through the deck.

  Thorsdottir rolled one bloodshot eye at Jaed. “Tell Rose, yes.”

  * * *

  —

  Jaed hesitated at the aetherlock. That was the story of his life, hesitation; he reflected on that, with his hand hovering over the control panel, while his guts tied themselves into cold knots of indecision. Going out and leaving Vagabond would be, if not lethal, then at least stupid. His chances of finding Rory in the vakari ship, with no idea of where she had been taken, were not good; and if one added the factors of ship under attack and the sheer brutal competence of vakari troopers and the likelihood that he would be seen as a hostile attacker if he was detected running loose in their corridors, then those chances slipped from improbable to infinitesimal to suicide. And then, somehow, he would have to free her and get her back here.

  Assuming Rory was even still alive. He thought she was, because the vakari had not killed Crow, who seemed much more dangerous. They had not even bothered taking Crow’s hardsuit (possibly because of the danger, or possibly because a naked tenju in the cell violated some protocol or another). The point was, they hadn’t killed Crow, or even him and Thorsdottir, when they could have. So Rory must be alive.

  That certainty made standing here, hesitating, that much worse. Someone had to leave this system and report what they’d seen, and report Rose, but those someones could be Zhang and Thorsdottir. They did not need him to add his voice to the report.

  But what made him hesitate—if he was honest with himself, and not merely critical—was not cowardice, but the suspicion that Rory did not need him, either. It was not that she did not regard him fondly, or find his company, if not useful, at least pleasant (though she had needed his expertise on G. Stein). He did not fret for her affection, although he had long since abandoned any hope that there would be more to her regard than just that; she had made that clear early on, before they ever left Lanscot.

  I need a friend, Jaed. Not a husband. Not a lover. Can you do that?

  He could. He had. They were friends. She liked him just fine. This was not about like.

  This was, if he was still being honest, which was neither comfortable nor comforting, not about Rory at all. She was remarkably able to navigate difficult and dangerous situations. Accidents could happen; of course they could. A Protectorate soldier with a plasma—no, whitefire—weapon could end her life. His presence would not alleviate that risk in the slightest, and it was knowing that which distressed him, even more than imagining what was happening, or might happen, to Rory. He did not like feeling useless.

  In the rear cabin, Thorsdottir was strapped into a seat with a cracked hardsuit and severe burns and an alchemical, arithmantic weapon attempting to rewrite its own protocols and repair her. Jaed wished he’d read the documentation more closely, but Rory had been doing that, and he had been more concerned about the vakari. He was as extraneous on Vagabond as he would be on the Protectorate ship. He could not help Rose. That was why he had come out here, to the aetherlock. To do something. He could not just sit there while Thorsdottir might be dying.

  “Jaed.”

  Zhang’s quiet voice came from the vicinity of his left shoulder. He should have heard her get up, should have heard her exit the cockpit and approach him, and had not. He suspected she knew what he was thinking. Zhang was good at things like that. He also suspected she was here to argue him out of it.

  He turned his head just far enough to see her face. “Aren’t you supposed to be flying this thing?”

  She regarded him with steady, sympathetic, bleak eyes. “How is Thorsdottir?”

  It struck him then: she thought he had left Thorsdottir because she had died. Shame flamed and flooded his cheeks. “She’s fine—not fine. Alive.” He temporarily forgot Rory, or at least set her aside. “Rose thinks they can repair her.”

  Zhang’s mouth opened. Then she closed it again, without speaking. A muscle knotted in her jaw. Questions piled up behind her eyes.

  “Thorsdottir agreed to it,” Jaed said, because that seemed most important thing to relay. “Rose volunteered, but she agreed.”

  Zhang leaned forward as if her boots were fused to the deck and she could only incline so far, which was not sufficient angle to see into the rear cabin. She took a short, sharp breath. “Do I want to know how?”

  “Maybe. I do. But I think Rory’s the only one with enough arithmantic theory to get it.” Jaed cast a guilty look at his hand, at the aetherlock pad.

  Zhang sighed audibly. “Do you think we could find Rory out there?”

  Jaed entertained a thrill of hope. Zhang had said we. They might go together. That would give them a chance, or at least a better one than he’d have alone. But that would leave Thorsdottir on Vagabond with Crow, which was as good as leaving her alone, and Zhang wouldn’t do that.

  It was the worst choice. Leave Thorsdottir, badly wounded and in possession of Rose and Crow, or leave Rory behind, condition unknown.

  Zhang let him think through it.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I want to say yes. But I don’t really believe it.”

  “I would like to argue that Rory would tell us to leave,” said Zhang. “I don’t really believe that, either. What I do know is that you are the only arithmancer we have right now, and if anyone can explain what Rose is and what Rose does to the people who need to understand, it’s you.”

  “You don’t need an arithmancer for that. You’ve got the documents. And you’ve got Crow up there on the arms-turing. You don’t need me.”

  Zhang pressed her lips together. Whatever she would have said—and Jaed supposed it would be a well-deserved admonition against self-pity—was interrupted by Crow’s bark from the cockpit, “That dreadnought’s launching breaching pods. We need to go now.”

  And that settled it. Jaed jerked his hand back as if the aetherlock controls had spat whitefire at him.

  “Come up to the cockpit,” Zhang said. “We do need someone on comms.”

  It was not true, but it was a kind offer, and Jaed loved Zhang for making it.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Thorsdottir was still alive, a condition which, upon reflection, she found surprising. She recalled the smell of cooked self, the smell of hot metal, hazy impressions of Jaed Moss leaning over her. She recalled pain, which was entirely inadequate to describe the sensation’s intensity or duration; but also fear, equally inadequate descriptor of the emotion. She remembered agreeing to something having to do with Rose, though the details of that agreement escaped her. She could only recall Jaed’s face, and the palpable, smothering despair smearing his features that she knew she was the cause of, and wanting to say whatever she could to alleviate his distress.

  Then there had been the small matter of Vagabond attempting an escape from Sissten, and she had not been on the arms-turing to oversee everything. There had been a xeno in her place, a, a tenju, whose name eeled past Tho
rsdottir’s grasp.

  So yes. That she was alive proved revelatory, bordering on the miraculous. Vagabond—because this was Vagabond, there was that tatty 2D poster of Jane Link from the seventh installment in the series (the one where Jane had gone undercover in a k’bal arms dealer’s entourage) affixed to the side of the weapons locker—was still flying. They had not been reduced to ashes or particles. She appeared to be unsuited, which caused a momentarily flash of embarrassment, because Jaed must have been the one to oversee that operation. She was still wearing her skinsuit, however, and its sour clinginess testified to its originality. Her entire right arm felt cold, which, she realized, was because the skinsuit sleeve was missing from the shoulder. The arm itself was not, a realization which only compounded her pleasant surprise. Her forearm was swathed in inexpertly applied dressings from the emergency kit, and she was pleased to see fingers poking out of the appropriate end, and even more pleased that those fingers wiggled when she willed them to do so, and that the wiggling did not hurt. There was a pulling sensation, as if on a scab. She eyed the bandages. No need to unwrap those just yet. The rest of the arm, the unburned skin above the elbow, pebbled in the chill of the ship’s atmosphere.

  She glanced at the hatch that separated the cabin from the aetherlock and, beyond that, the cockpit. Of course it was sealed; that made sense, in a potential combat situation. But she was a little perturbed nonetheless to find herself isolated. At least Jaed had left her more or less upright, strapped into the seat, and not attempted to maneuver her onto a bunk. (Thorsdottir did not know that Jaed had tried, and then given up under the twin pressures of time and a fear of doing her more damage in the attempt.) She was only grateful for his failure, and a little jealous that he was in the cockpit and aware of current events, sitting at Rory’s station and—