Supernova

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Supernova Page 30

by C. A. Higgins


  “I found them fighting a few miles from here,” Arawn said. “Pulled them apart. The young one tried to run or we wouldn’t have tied him up, too—any man fighting the System is a friend of ours.”

  The young man had slate-gray eyes that slid past hers as if he did not have the courage to maintain eye contact. “You were fighting him?” Constance asked the young man, and he glanced at his unwilling companion, then gave her a short, jerky nod.

  “Good,” said Constance. She looked at the System man and thought of Julian and his fleet, thought of the Ivanovs, thought of Abigail Hunter, thought of her own mother, thought of all the people she had known who were gone now.

  She took out her gun and shot him. He fell to the ground, where his blood could freeze with the ice.

  Marisol made a sound like a gasp; it was inappropriate to show shock in these circumstances, but Constance would speak to her later. The Europan boy was wide-eyed and horrified. In his face, she saw the terror she hadn’t seen in the System man’s eyes.

  “You will be our guide,” Constance said to the young man. “What is your name?”

  She did not wish to repeat herself, but he still didn’t seem to understand, looking at her blankly. She started to wonder if he was an idiot. Then Marisol said, “What is your name?” and something about her tone or the sight of her seemed to bring him back to himself.

  “Tory,” he said.

  “My name is Marisol,” she said. “This is Constance Harper—the Mallt-y-Nos.”

  His gloved hands tugged reflexively at the chains that bound them; he was as wary as an animal.

  “Tory,” said Constance, “I’ve come here to free this planet from the System, and I need a guide. You’re from Europa, aren’t you?”

  He hesitated. She saw his Adam’s apple bob. “Yes.”

  “Then you know this region.”

  “Yes.”

  “I want you to lead us to all the System strongholds nearby,” Constance said.

  “There aren’t any,” he told her.

  She’d always found Jovian accents difficult to understand. The emphasis never seemed to be on the part of the word where she expected it to be. Tory’s accent was exceptionally heavy, and so for a moment she imagined she had misheard him.

  “We know that there are System bases here,” Constance said.

  “There aren’t,” Tory said. “The System isn’t here. You don’t need to be on this moon.”

  “If the System isn’t here, then who was he?” Constance asked with a tip of her chin toward the body sprawled on the ice. Tory’s eyes dipped unwillingly toward it and then swiftly away. He seemed to have no answer for her.

  “Marisol,” Constance said, “take him back to my shuttle. Arawn and I will join you in a moment.” Marisol left her side to go to Tory, putting one hand on his elbow to guide him along.

  “Did you run into any trouble?” Constance asked.

  “No,” said Arawn. “Just those two trying to kill each other. Wouldn’t talk to us, though, not even after we pulled them apart. You’re trusting a lot to Marisol.”

  “She’s earned it,” Constance said.

  “She’s still just a girl.”

  “I know that you and Marisol disagree on many things,” Constance said impatiently, “but find a way to respect her. We can have no more discord in this army.”

  She could just see the shape of what might be the edge of the nearest Europan city on the horizon. Only a few people would live this close to the edge of the greenhouse enclosure. The bulk of the population would be deeper in, in the densely populated cities of the central greenhouse enclosures. She would sweep this area first, cleaning out the smaller towns, looking for hidden System bases, and gaining support from the Europans nearby before she took on the massive cities.

  The deeper parts of the Europan ice were a brilliant and startling blue, an unusual clarity to the ice, a color that reminded Constance of the late Milla Ivanov and her lost son. But most of the surface was white with crystals that had melted and refrozen or precipitated as snow or hail from the atmospheric dome’s inconsistent weather patterns. Something about the whiteness of the surroundings and the young Europan man’s light eyes and the chains around his wrists troubled her with a recollection and a comparison she did not want, but she was shaken away from it when Arawn spoke to her:

  “I’m sorry about Doctor Ivanov. She was a hell of a woman.”

  “Thank you,” said Constance.

  “And I’m sorry about your friend Julian. I never met him, but I heard he was a friend of the Ivanov family.”

  “He was involved in Connor Ivanov’s revolution somehow,” Constance said. “I never learned the details.”

  “An old secret, then,” Arawn said. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  With Julian dead and Milla and Connor Ivanov dead, Constance supposed it didn’t. Arawn said, “You’ve lost a lot of people lately.” He was standing close enough to her to block in a buffer of slightly warmer air, close enough that Marisol, Tory, and the rest of Constance’s army seemed for the moment far away.

  Arawn said, “Not everyone who cares about you is gone, Huntress.”

  The light of a Europan orbit was curious: the darkness behind the planet, the dim day when the sun managed to hit the Annwn Regio askew, the orange gloaming with light reflecting from Jupiter onto Europa’s surface, not all that drastically different from the brief time when the sun managed to reach the point of the moon on which they stood. She and Arawn stood in a strange twilight on that icy moon. For a moment, Constance saw it, his skin bared and hers, his arms around her waist and his beard scratching her skin as he kissed her in supplication, falling to his knees before her.

  “We have work to do,” Constance said rather than dwell on that thought, and followed Marisol into the shuttle.

  The shuttle was a large one, designed for troop movements. The main computer display already had been changed to show a map of the silver surface of Europa, scratched through with brushstroke surface features, a jagged white line outlining the parts of the surface that were covered by the greenhouse enclosure. The light from that display paled the interior of the shuttle: the bare walls and the marks on the floor where the additional seating had been folded away again. Yet even though this was one of Constance’s largest shuttles, about as large as a ship could be while still being efficient for use in an atmosphere, the room still was cramped and the ceiling still was low. Marisol had unfolded one of the chairs against the wall for Tory, and when Constance came in, she was uncuffing his hands.

  “Hey, now,” Arawn said as he followed Constance. Constance gestured for the technicians still in the shuttle to get out, and they did. Marisol gave Arawn a sour sort of look and continued what she was doing, which was recuffing Tory with his hands in front of him rather than behind.

  Arawn couldn’t plausibly protest that, and at a glance from Constance, he shrugged. Constance went to stand in front of Tory, who was cuffed and still, watching her with a wary eye.

  “Where does the fleet hide?” she asked him.

  “Fleet?”

  “The System fleet,” Constance said. “We know they’re here: where are they landed? Are they on Europa?”

  “No.”

  “Do they use one of the other moons as a base, then?” Constance asked. Another thought struck her. “Do they hide their ships in Jupiter’s clouds?”

  “The fleet isn’t here.”

  Arawn scoffed. “Fleet has to be here,” he said.

  “Anything you can tell us will help,” Marisol said.

  “I can’t tell you anything,” Tory said. “The fleet isn’t here. I don’t know why you think it is.”

  “We had reports,” Constance said.

  “Your reports were wrong.”

  “Think we were wrong about this one, Constance?” Arawn asked with a meaningful glance at Tory.

  Constance. Had he always named her so casually? She said to Tory, “We found a fleet of dead ships around Jupit
er—my fleet. Those ships were commanded by my ally, my friend, but they were all dead, the computers wiped clean. Someone had done this without even boarding them.” Tory was looking at her with recognition on his face. Constance said, “Whoever killed them did it through their computers. Who else could do that but the System?”

  “The System didn’t do that,” Tory said.

  “Then what did?” Arawn demanded.

  Tory hesitated. “Nobody knew,” he said at last. “We saw it pass—not up close, just as a star that moved faster than the rest. And when it passed by, we knew it passed, because it made all our computers its own. They stopped working, or they started working strangely. The screens showed nothing, or showed static, or they said ‘Wake up.’ Nothing but ‘Wake up, wake up.’ Over and over again, ‘Wake up.’ ”

  “What, a ghost story?” said Arawn.

  “What else?” Marisol pressed.

  “The holographic projectors turned on by themselves,” Tory said. “They all showed the same hologram, but it was flawed. It was a woman. At first she was dark, with blue eyes and curly hair, but the hologram kept failing and showing a different woman instead…pale, with dark eyes.”

  “What makes you say this wasn’t the System spreading some computer virus?” Constance asked.

  “I’ve lived with the System, too,” Tory replied. “There was no reason for this. It was some sort of virus, yes, but the virus doesn’t do anything. The computers are just chaotic.”

  “And couldn’t that be the function of the virus?”

  “If the computers are down,” Tory said, “the System can’t use them to access the cameras left here.”

  It was a good point. Constance paused for a moment and tried to imagine the System willingly giving up access to its own surveillance even for a moment.

  She dismissed the thought. The System was desperate now; that much was clear. “Then what do your people say it was, if not the System?”

  “Some people said it was an old god coming back to punish us for our sins. Some people said it was a monster that the System had kept controlled and the Mallt-y-Nos had set free. God or monster, it’s the same theory, just different words.” It was as if speaking of the ghost ship had freed Tory’s tongue, and his words came spilling out with the cadence and shine of a story; it was like the way Ivan spoke. “And some people say it was a rogue ship that was System once and had its computer infected with a virus, and it’s spreading that virus now.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “I don’t believe in gods that fly by and fry circuitry. That was a ship. I don’t know whose it was, but it wasn’t the System’s.”

  Killing Constance’s people was the kind of thing the System liked to do. And it would make far more sense for the ship Tory described to have a base somewhere among Jupiter’s moons than for it to have been rogue. A single ship, all on its own? People could not survive on their own now; they had to band together, to take sides. That ship was System no matter what Tory said. “And you know nothing more about that ship or where it might have gone?”

  “I don’t know anything about that ship at all,” Tory said.

  Constance was beginning to doubt that. “But you will know about where the System is on the surface. Marisol—” She gestured toward the map on the wall, and Marisol came obediently forward to gesture at the surface, at the spot where Constance’s fleet had landed.

  “The nearest towns are here and here,” she said, her arm dark against the light of the screen. “Are they System or free?”

  Arawn caught at Constance’s arm, his fingers curling around her skin. He said, “He’s System, Con. I don’t know why he was fighting that other man—maybe some sort of training.”

  Constance pulled her arm from his grasp.

  Tory was saying, “They aren’t System. There’s no System here.”

  Marisol hesitated, glancing at Constance. “What about the cities?” she asked, gesturing toward the center of the greenhouse-enclosed portion of the map. “What about Mara and Aquilon? Is the System there?”

  “There’s no System on this moon.”

  “That’s not what we’ve heard,” Arawn said.

  “There are people who call themselves System, but they’re not System anymore,” said Tory.

  Arawn showed the canine glint of his teeth. “Then why don’t you tell us about these people who aren’t System anymore?”

  Tory glanced from him to Constance. His hands were twisted into fists beneath his restraints. Whatever he was looking for from Constance, he did not seem to find. “I don’t know anything about them.”

  “Bullshit,” said Arawn.

  “I don’t—”

  Arawn crouched down at Tory’s side suddenly. Tory’s breath was coming fast. He looked again to Constance as if he were asking something of her, and when she didn’t move—what could he want of her?—he looked instead to Marisol.

  Arawn said, “I don’t believe you.”

  “I don’t know anything,” said Tory.

  Constance said, “You were fighting a System man when we found you. Why?”

  “He was trying to rob me,” Tory said.

  Arawn laughed. Tory was leaning as far from him as he could without falling off the chair. Marisol said, “Listen. Maybe you don’t know anything about the System, but you could help us find someone who does. Do you know about any revolutionary groups on the planet?”

  “The Conmacs,” Tory said. “There’s a group in the Conamara Chaos; I know about them.”

  “Arawn, send someone to make contact with the Conmacs once we’re done here,” Constance said, and Arawn rose to his feet as she came forward to face Tory. “That’s good,” she said, “but it’s not what we want.”

  “I don’t know anything about how the cities are divided,” Tory said.

  “Then tell us about the nearby towns,” said Constance.

  Arawn was still standing over him, near and silent, his hand resting on the knife at his belt. Tory looked up at him, then back at Constance. He said haltingly, “Gwern. Midir. Cadair. Idris.”

  “And those are all System towns?” Constance asked him.

  Tory hesitated.

  “Well?” said Arawn. “Answer the Huntress.”

  “Yes,” Tory said. “I don’t know. Yes.”

  Constance looked to Marisol. Slowly, almost as if she were hesitating, Marisol reached up to the display and began to mark the towns, the touch of her fingertips on the screen boxing them in red.

  Constance studied the array of towns. They were all south of her position, leaving the north completely unmarked. “What else?”

  “Cuun,” said Tory, thickly. “I think Cuun, too.”

  Marisol marked that one down as well. It was to the east of Constance’s position. To the west, there was the line of the greenhouse enclosure, the path that her fleet had taken and where it had found nothing.

  To the north was where they had found Tory.

  Constance said, “I think you’re lying to me.”

  Marisol said, “Constance—” Again so personal a naming.

  “What town is up here, then?” Constance asked, walking over to the screen to gesture at the empty part of the map. She lowered her hand. “It’s your town, isn’t it?”

  Tory’s eyes darted fast from the map to her face, providing unspoken confirmation of her guess.

  “Why,” Constance said, coming back slowly to where he sat rigidly, bound in the chair beneath Arawn’s shadow, “would you not want us to know about your town?” She stopped a few bare feet from where he sat. “Is it because your town is the one that’s truly System?”

  For a single and terrible moment when she looked at Tory, cuffed and seated and pale, it was no longer Tory who sat there but Ivan, chained down in a white room and watching her, hopeless, and in that terrible, flashing moment her heart faltered with doubt and sudden fear.

  Then Tory said bitterly, “You know, they used to talk about you like you were a god.”

&
nbsp; “Did they,” said Constance.

  “Do you want to know how they talk about you now?”

  “Tell me.”

  “They say at least the System knew when to stop.”

  “And would you prefer the System was back?”

  “I might!”

  “Arawn and Marisol,” Constance said. “We go north—”

  “No!” said Tory, starting to rise. Arawn pushed him back down with one hand. “No, please, they aren’t System—”

  “Constance,” Marisol said, taking a step toward her, her hands stretched out, half beseeching. “Please, let’s think about—”

  “Enough,” Constance snapped. “We leave now.”

  A target, the System at last. It was a relief to hunt.

  Arawn hauled Tory to his feet, and Marisol trailed after them as Constance opened the door to the ice and the chilly wind. “To your ships!” she shouted to her people, and they moved like one creature to obey. Arawn handed off Tory to one of his people, and Tory begged, “Please, you can’t do this. I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

  “You can’t do this,” said another voice, not Tory’s, and Constance turned to see that Marisol was staring at her from the shuttle door as if she had never seen her before.

  “Can’t do this?” Constance said.

  “They’re not System,” said Marisol, whose voice was clear and carrying; she was not bothering to lower it. “They’re just people.”

  “They are System. You heard him.”

  “I heard him say that they’re not System! Those people are not System, and you can’t kill them just because he made you angry!”

  It was like a blow to the throat; Constance was wordless.

  “This is wrong,” Marisol said, her voice clear and heard by all. “Arawn might be happy to do this for you, but I won’t. I’ve kept quiet, I haven’t said anything, I’ve trusted you for all the other towns on all the other places on Venus, Isabellon, but not this, not this—”

  “Rayet,” Constance said, “Marisol is not well. Take her away.”

  “No,” said Marisol, furious, and “No!” to Rayet when he laid his hand on her. “You can’t do this,” she said to Constance half in fury and half in disbelief. “You can’t—”

 

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