The only changes in the featureless surfaces of the Wild Hunt’s gray walls were where the cameras had been torn out and the holes smoothed over with rebel patches of inconsistent color. There were several such clusters spotting the walls over the door to the communications room. When she stepped inside, Constance found a group of her people clustered around one of the screens against the wall.
“Out,” she said. They left, and she went over to the screen.
Anji was on the screen, her familiar face almost unrecognizable. The video had been paused. Constance reached out and brought the recording back to the beginning. She was dimly aware of Milla coming up quietly behind her.
The image of Anji jumped from where it had been frozen midway through to where she had been sitting at the start of the recording. When Constance let it play, the image blinked, coming to life.
Anji said, “People of the eight planets.”
She sounded stiff. Her expression was solemn.
“The Mallt-y-Nos broke the System’s back when she attacked the Earth,” said Anji. “And now, she and her people fight to free you from the rest of the System on your planets.”
A blink of the eye, certain words used in sequence. Constance waited for it, the signal. Anji’s broad face was unsmiling and unfamiliar in the absence of a smile.
“We honor her acts and her commitment to our freedom,” Anji said, “but we have done our part. We no longer follow the Mallt-y-Nos. We go to take back Saturn, to repopulate the moons that the System destroyed. Saturn is our land now. We want no part of another moon’s war. System and revolutionaries alike: if you leave us in peace, we will leave you in peace as well.”
The video lasted a moment longer, Anji’s attention not wavering from the camera. And then it ended. Constance had not seen a signal.
“It is not the worst she could’ve done,” Milla remarked.
“She gave no signal,” said Constance.
“I told you, I do not think it likely that—”
“No,” Constance said, “she didn’t give any signals. Not for duress, not to reassure me. She could have signaled to me that she meant it or that she didn’t mean it, but she didn’t do either. Did she send any messages just to me?”
“None that we have received.”
The video started to play again, looping automatically. Constance paused it, then closed it, then left the screen before she could do something stupid such as watch it again. She paced across the narrow length of the communications room.
“She’s abandoning Jupiter,” Constance said suddenly, realizing what Anji’s speech had revealed. “Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“I want a message sent to her,” Constance said. “I want to speak to her.”
“We tried to contact her, Huntress. I reached out to her after the broadcast, looking for an explanation.”
“And?”
“And we were ignored, for the most part. We got a message shortly afterward saying that Anji had nothing to say to the Mallt-y-Nos but wished her well provided that the Mallt-y-Nos did not approach her territory. She also advised that a scheduled event at Callisto had failed to occur.” Milla paused. “I took that as proof the message had come from Anji herself.”
So Mattie had not come. For a moment that thought froze her heart, but Constance pressed her sudden fear down and away.
“I want to see the message,” she said. No one but Anji and Milla knew when and where Mattie’s rendezvous had been planned. Anji would have included the reference only to prove to Constance that she had written the message. As far as signs went, it was an ambiguous one and commented only on the veracity of the sender, not the veracity of the message. Milla went over to the screen Constance had abandoned and pulled up the message for her to read.
Milla’s account had been accurate, of course. There was nothing more in the brief message than what the doctor had recounted. Constance read it three times anyway, searching for a hidden message that was not there to be found.
Milla Ivanov said, “If you go to Saturn, you’ll have another war on your hands.”
“I didn’t say I intended to go to Saturn.”
“You’re considering it. If you go to Saturn, you will back her into a corner. If you back her into a corner, she will have to fight you.”
“If I speak to her, I can convince her to rejoin me.”
“Not anymore, you can’t,” said Milla. “Not after that.” She gestured at the screen. “Even if she wanted to join you again, her people wouldn’t let her.”
“I can’t just leave her, an enemy at my back, a sign to anyone that I—”
“The System is here and fighting you, Constance,” Milla said with such unexpected fervor that Constance was startled into silence. “Do you want a war with Anji? Then go start one; I can’t stop you. But if you go fight Anji, you leave the System alone to rebuild again. The sooner you turn to infighting, the sooner your revolution ends. You need to be sure you’ve achieved your end before that moment comes.”
She halted her speech, a little out of breath. Connor Ivanov’s revolution, Constance remembered, had started to fragment in the last few weeks before the System had destroyed it and depopulated Saturn, and that fragmentation had weakened their ability to resist the System’s fleet. Silent now, Milla watched her with an intensity that reminded Constance of her son.
Constance said, “I will send Julian to speak with her.”
“And his fleet?”
“His fleet is small,” Constance said. “He will not advance into the Saturnian system but orbit beyond it. I want him to speak to Anji only. I want to find out the truth.”
“His presence is a threat.”
“His presence is a reminder. I want the truth, and I need her back with me. But I will not go myself.” This changed things, Constance thought. It changed so many things. “We will stay on Mars and fight the System. Julian will deal with Anji.”
“And Mattie?” Milla Ivanov asked. Unspoken, Constance heard the echo of their old conversation and Milla’s warning: Show no weakness.
Mattie might be dead. Mattie might have rejected her for good. Mattie had not made the rendezvous.
“We have a war to wage,” Constance said, and left to do just that.
—
“We can’t go back,” Althea said. When Ananke did not reply, she raised her voice and heard it echo throughout the vast purity of the white room. “Ananke, maintain your course away from the solar system!”
“And why?” Ananke asked abruptly, her voice coming disembodied from out in the hall. “Why should we go, you and I? Why should we the both of us be alone?”
Althea took in a shuddering breath. The white room was suddenly too terrible to stand in any longer, alone but for the distant echoing sound of a voice that was not there, standing on phantom bloodstains. The absence of these things was more overwhelming than their presence ever could have been, and Althea strode out of the room, almost running, while Ananke repeated, “Why? Why?”
The door to the white room shut behind Althea with a heavy clang. No matter how many years she lived on the Ananke, she would never go into that room again.
“I already told you why, Ananke!” she said in the smaller, closer space of the curling hall, where Ananke’s hologram—young and dark, with her curly hair falling down her shoulders—stared at her in dismay. “It’s too dangerous for you and for everyone else!”
“It’s not!” said Ananke. “I have told you why it is not!”
“Did you finish the simulations?” Althea demanded. “The N-body simulations; did you finish them?”
The hologram frowned. Was Althea imagining it, or did the rumble of the ship’s engines change tenor for an instant?
“No,” Ananke admitted.
“Then you can’t tell me no one else is in danger.”
“I’ve done enough to show that the risk of harm is very low,” Ananke said. “The logical outcome is that my presence will have no effect on anyone in the so
lar system, particularly if I avoid any solid bodies, and if I avoid any other ships, then there will be no danger to me, either!”
“Logically?” Althea said. “Ananke, we can’t risk this.”
“And what is the alternative?” Ananke asked. “We travel on uselessly forward until you die. And then I travel on uselessly forward until the radiation from my core burns me from the inside out. We achieve nothing, we see nothing, we feel no joy.”
Again her daughter’s words stole Althea’s breath from her chest. She could only stand mute and look helplessly at the glowing girl in the holographic terminal. Beneath her feet, the magnets containing the core rumbled at a frequency too low for humans to hear, only feel.
“Am I not your daughter?” Ananke asked. “Am I not your little girl? Am I not a person to you, if not a human?”
“You are, Ananke,” Althea said.
“And if I am a person, I must have a choice,” said Ananke. “A computer follows instructions. I am not simply a computer any longer. I must have a choice. This is my choice.”
It’s not so simple, Althea nearly said. I am a human born, and sometimes there are no choices; there is nothing but instructions to obey.
But she made herself think about that. That had been true, or she’d thought it had been true once, when she had been a servant of the System. But now the System was no longer, and Althea was no one’s follower.
Even when she had followed the System, hadn’t she had all of her own choices? Not all of them had been good choices or had been choices she was willing to make, but she still had had choices. That was why, even as a subject of the System, she had spoken to Ivan. That was why, even as the lowest-ranking crew member on board the Ananke, she had chosen to defend her ship and its fledgling life against those who would harm her.
Now she had a choice here, too.
“You’re right, Ananke,” she said. “You have to have a choice. But I have a choice, too, and I think it’s too dangerous to stay.”
Still, a part of her wondered: if she went to the piloting room right now and looked out the main screen, would she see the Terran sun growing larger, alone out of the background stars growing in shape and dimension, calling her home?
“We don’t have to stay for long,” Ananke said immediately, the light from the hologram flaring suddenly bright. “We only have to stay for a little while.”
“Until when?”
Ananke hesitated. “Until we find Ivan and Mattie.”
“Ivan and Mattie? Ananke, they won’t want to come with us.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No, but I’m pretty sure.” Althea remembered how quickly Mattie had dragged Ivan off Ananke’s deck and how Ivan had never looked back at her once. “They have a choice, too. We can’t just go and pick them up.”
“Then I just want to talk to them,” Ananke said. “Mattie is my father. I want to speak to him once.”
Something about that prospect put unease in Althea’s heart. She knew Ivan only barely; she did not know Matthew Gale at all. Who knew what he would say to her machine?
But compromise, she told herself. “And if Mattie and Ivan don’t want to come on board with us, then we’ll leave?”
Ananke hesitated.
“Ananke?”
“If you still want to go afterward,” Ananke said, “then we will leave.”
—
The System actually sent a message to Constance. She was on the Wild Hunt when it arrived, patrolling the area of the Martian orbital space that her fleet now controlled, and she went immediately to the communications room when she heard it had come.
Milla went with her, of course. Arawn should have been there as well, but he was on his own ship, the Rhiannon. She had a message sent to him, urging him to come to the Wild Hunt as soon as he could.
This time the communications room, shadowy and strangely shaped, cleared out the moment she and Milla Ivanov arrived. Constance seated herself before the same screen that had told her of Anji’s betrayal and hesitated before accepting the parlay.
“What do you think this is about?” she asked.
“Maybe they’re surrendering,” Milla Ivanov said blandly. In another time and place Constance would have laughed. Now she simply opened the transmission.
The man who appeared on the screen looked like every other System diplomat Constance had ever seen: pink and pale skinned, with gray hair in rapid retreat over the dome of his scalp and a healthy layer of fat hiding the shape of his bones. Constance remembered seeing men like him on Miranda, speaking blandly pleasant words to her starving and frightened neighbors. This man had never felt the fear of waiting for the air to be sapped away and the cold to creep in.
He said to her, “The System greets Constance Harper.” Then his pale eyes traveled to the side, where Milla sat serenely, and he watched her with a look Constance did not like. “The System greets Doctor Milla Ivanov.”
Constance said, “Are you calling to surrender?” This time she did smile.
“We called to ask for yours.”
The arrogance of it. “So you can kill my people? Do you think I’m an idiot? I have destroyed Earth. I have faced your fleet, and I’ve won. Tell me, System, why would I surrender to you?”
“This is your last warning,” the man on the screen said. “Surrender or we will destroy you and all your followers.”
“And here is my counterproposal,” said Constance, and leaned toward the screen. “Set the outer planets free. Destroy your fleet, disband your troops. Pull back with all your people to Earth and leave the rest of the solar system alone.”
“Earth is uninhabitable,” the man said. He was angry now and in the manner of Terrans was trying not to show it. “You know that very well, as you were the one who bombed it.”
“If not that,” said Constance, “then surrender.”
“We will not negotiate with a terrorist,” the man said.
“I thought that was what you were doing.”
He ignored her. “This is your final warning, Miss Harper. Surrender or we will do to you and yours what we did to Saturn.”
Constance cut the transmission.
“Cowards,” she said.
Milla was frowning at the screen. “He must be bluffing.”
“Of course he is. What can he do that he hasn’t done? The outer planets are already out of his control, and he’s here with us, not out there.” She was familiar with the way the System worked; this was just another attempt to spread fear.
Milla still was frowning. As Constance watched, her fingers drummed a quick and restless beat against her knee. “We should be ready for an attack,” she said.
“We will be,” said Constance, and with a last look of disgust at the blank screen, she left the room.
Arawn arrived an hour later, striding through the Wild Hunt’s curved and wound-up halls and somehow managing to fill them up entirely. When he stopped in the middle to speak to Constance, the people behind him stopped as well, no one willing to push past him or Constance, either.
“What happened?” he asked.
“It wasn’t worth our time,” Constance said, and started to walk again, finding her path through the branching corridors by sense memory alone. Holes in the wall from the torn-out cameras gaped at her where her people had not finished papering them over. “More threats.”
Arawn followed her even when she pushed open a door to a narrow spiraling staircase and started down it. “Anything specific?”
“Do you think I wouldn’t have told you if there were?” He was still following her down the stairs. “They threatened to depopulate the outer planets, like Saturn.”
He snorted. “The usual, then.”
“Yes.” She had reached the end of the stairs, and he was still behind her. “Is there something else you wanted to discuss?”
“Troops on the ground. Since we captured the last batch of System ships, our entire force is up in orbit.”
“The Martians can hold their
own land,” Constance said. He was going to follow her regardless; she might as well have this conversation with him in her quarters. She stopped in front of her door and started to key in the code to open it.
Arawn stopped beside her. Constance wondered if he was standing exceptionally close to her or just felt very near. Her awareness of his presence almost distracted her from realizing that her door was unlocked.
“A representation of our power,” Arawn had begun, but Constance raised a hand to silence him, frowning at the keypad. Growing up with Mattie Gale had taught her that a locked door was no sign of true security but an unlocked door was cause for alarm regardless of where it was.
Carefully, Constance pushed open the door.
Her quarters were composed of four chambers, like a heart. The strangeness of the Wild Hunt’s shape manifested itself in the ways the chambers were positioned relative to one another, on different levels connected by short flights of stairs, but was even more noticeable in the lowness of the ceiling in all four rooms. Whenever Constance walked through the conference room toward her bedroom, she wondered if she would hit her head on that curiously low and looming ceiling.
The lights were all off in the chambers, as she had left them. Constance stepped inside carefully and flicked on the light. The conference room was as wide and empty as the table that filled it. Beyond it, the doorways to her bedroom and bathroom and den were dark.
Arawn came in behind her. He was taller than she; Constance was not certain how he did not strike his head against the ceiling, but he did not. His gun was out and in his hands. Constance gestured him toward the two lower rooms and headed toward the darkness of her bedroom. Arawn stalked almost silently across the carpet beneath the lowering ceiling and stepped carefully down the steps until he disappeared into the black. A moment later, the light flickered on. Constance heard no gunshots.
She had her gun at her hip as well, and she drew it, too. Her bedroom was up a short flight of stairs, and she climbed them carefully, keeping her back to the wall. At the top of the landing she could see into the bedroom to the wide windows that showed the spinning expanse of space as the Wild Hunt revolved. The stars drew streaks against the black, and at regular intervals, Constance knew, the red curve of Mars would glide in silence by.
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