Kay didn’t like the sound of that. “Coincide?”
“I collect and examine things. Mull them over. Hence my nickname. I’ve helped Simone study League Enforcer patterns to help her with her small business. In return, I sometimes snag people of interest to me before they begin their journey.”
Avris cut to the point. “Why are we of interest to you?”
Thinkerer did not even glance over at her as he said, “I’m not interested in you. I’m interested in the young lady here, because if I’m not mistaken, she’s from the dead zone. Am I correct, Kay?”
“Fuck,” Avris spat. “He knows your name.”
They had used new identities. Simone hadn’t known their real names. Kay could feel the fear roll off Avris, distracting her from focusing on the enigma in front of her. “What do you want?”
Thinkerer rested his elbows on the countertop. They creaked from the weight. “I’m interested in anything you can tell me about the Doaq,” he said conversationally.
Kay stepped closer in a failed attempt to somehow draw something out of him not carefully present on his face. Casual interest was not what this man really felt. There had to be something deeper.
“It’s alien,” she said.
Thinkerer did not show the slightest hint of frustration or impatience. “That is pretty well suspected,” he said. “Tell me something new. Something shiny.”
“And why would I do that?” Kay asked him.
“Because smuggling out aboard my ship is safer than being packed into a container, as Simone offered you, and hoping for the best. Because after you go into the League, I can bring you back out.” Thinkerer met her gaze. “You will be returning, won’t you?”
“What makes you think that?” Kay asked.
“You are traveling with a decorated Xenowealth pilot who has moved around a lot over the last couple years since an honorable discharge. Suggestive of her being an agent. And you have had direct contact with the alien. And you’re a very rare example of the Okur Caretakers. I couldn’t think of a better contact for the Xenowealth to have on Placa del Fuego.”
Kay quirked the corner of her mouth.
“Oh, really?” Thinkerer said. He acknowledged her signal that he was wrong about any association with the Xenowealth with a slightly bowed head. “I’m not usually that wrong. But it is a reasonable conclusion, yes?”
A tip of the head. Kay folded her arms. “Why are you fishing for information about it? What are you looking for specifically?”
“No specifics. I’m just building a picture.”
“I’m not used to sharing,” Kay said, shifting gears. “I’m used to being the one in control.”
“And yet, now you’re using Simone to smuggle you into League territory.”
“I overreached,” Kay admitted, enjoying the blunt honesty as a strategy. It tasted different, but she felt it was the only tool she had to use on Thinkerer. He would sniff out anything else. By being upfront, she could maybe gain his trust. “I took on the Doaq. It destroyed my entire organization, for the most part, and came for me.”
Thinkerer reached out a hand. “I think you and I would benefit if we worked together.”
Kay looked at the perfectly manicured, golden hand.
“If we’re going to keep playing this little game of honesty,” she said, “I should explain my goal here. I’m looking to kill the Doaq. And I want to use the League and the Xenowealth to do it because I can’t do it alone.”
“That’s just marvelous,” Thinkerer said, hand still out. “I’d like to help.”
Kay laughed, not quite able to take this as seriously as she needed to. She glanced over at Avris, who looked utterly bewildered. “He’d like to help,” Kay said.
Thinkerer did not laugh with them. His smile remained fixed, his hand steady in the air over the counter. “If the people of Placa del Fuego expect to live, if anyone on this world wants to survive, the Doaq will have to be stopped.”
“Why?” Kay asked. “What do you know about the Doaq?”
“Well …” Thinkerer frowned. He looked up. A beam of horizontal, white-hot light punched through the wall and carved through the air. Avris grabbed Kay and shoved her to the ground as it swung through the air above them.
The inside of the junk shop crackled with ionized air. Molten metal spat and sizzled as the ruined remains of shelves slumped forward. Thinkerer crouched down by the floor as well, looking under a hinged shelf at them. “I’m very sorry,” he said, cradling an injured arm. Kay frowned as she saw the dull gleam of metal underneath ruined, bronzed skin. “It looks like I’m not the only one who took an interest in you.”
Something yanked the rear wall of the shop away and men in scarred yellow mechanized armor rushed through the gap. “Hands open and out,” they ordered. “Face on the ground.”
“We’ll continue this conversation later,” Thinkerer said cheerfully, ignoring the command to lie down as he stood straight up.
One of the yellow suited men raised a rifle and shot him in the chest with a burst of concentrated hellfire.
He made a “clank” sound as he hit the ground. Metal hitting concrete. The skin had been burned away from Thinkerer’s chest. What remained was bronzed metal, hissing as something beneath the flanged ribs reacted to the dissipating heat.
Thinkerer grunted, and then closed his perfect eyes with a faint, untroubled grin directed right at Kay.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Tiago followed as Pepper limped his way through the spaceship, using his hands to guide him along the corridor walls.
Piper appeared, a sudden digital ghost flowing through the corridor with them. “Those League ships aren’t taking off; they’re just coasting towards us on the ocean’s surface.”
“Messages?” he asked.
“They’re not talking. Probably worried about me or Nashara infecting their ships,” Piper replied.
“As they should be.” Pepper paused at the entrance to the cockpit and nodded his chin back at Tiago. “The boy?”
“Tiago. Street kid. Nashara picked him up on Placa del Fuego while looking for you. He’s been helpful. He knows the island.”
Pepper remained in place, a salty, degraded statue of machine and man. “Someone on the island put that alien with a wormhole for a mouth, the Doaq, on my tail …”
“Kay,” Tiago said, finally speaking up. “That was Kay.”
Pepper nodded. “You’re scared of her.”
“She’s dangerous,” Tiago said. “And obsessed with the Doaq.”
“I’ll want to talk more about that with you,” Pepper said, and then stepped into the cockpit. “Piper, any word from Parliament?”
“Our request for any hostile engagement with The League has been denied. We face censure from them if we engage. They will denounce us to The League.”
Pepper sat down heavily on one of the large chairs. It began to wrap itself around him, which Tiago found somewhat creepy. Cushions and metal moving as if alive. “What resources do we have?”
Gina tapped Tiago on the shoulder. “Get in one of the chairs. Everyone is going combat ready ship-wide. You need snugged in.”
Yuki followed her in, and then Ian, and finally Goz. Tiago realized that one of the chairs had already wrapped itself fully around Nashara, who’d gone ahead of them.
“We have two ships,” Piper reported. “The Jericho and the Selby.”
“Bustamante’s still running Jericho?” Pepper asked.
“Yes.”
“Who’s for Selby?” he demanded. The chair had covered up his torso and legs now, only his arms were free. Tiago got into his own couch. He leaned back.
“That’s Matty Mallette,” Piper said. “Those two League ships aren’t sure what’s going on, but I’m sure they’ve identified us, and they know who would normally be on this ship. You and Nashara aren’t shy about broadcasting your preferred flagships.”
Tiago was trying to pay attention, as well as look around for buttons or anything to push that would
turn his chair on and get it to wrap around him. He couldn’t find anything.
“They’re not going to try and attack us in neutral territory. But they will start dogging us when we fly into League space,” Pepper said. “Maybe we can use that to muddy things at the Trumball wormhole.”
Piper paused a moment, then cocked her head. “So you still want to go ahead with this?”
“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t serious. We need to get through that wormhole. And we need to do it now.”
The hologram of the mind that floated through the spaceship appeared to take a deep breath. “Listen, we follow you. We’ve stood by you. But we go through that wormhole, the League will gleefully unleash unholy hell on us with everything they can lay their hands on. And we don’t know what’s on the other side of that wormhole. The League’s a totalitarian dark zone. So, it’s only fair that the crew know what’s going on.”
Pepper looked around, as if looking at the entire crew on the bridge. “The League is getting ready to shut down the Trumball wormhole and cut themselves off from all the other worlds. They’re going to go even darker.”
Tiago waved his hand at Yuki, the closest to him and paying just as much attention to Pepper, and pointed at the chair.
She realized his confusion and said, “Lean your head back against the top and think the words ‘immersion’ and ‘activate.’”
He did so, and the chair leaned itself back and shifted underneath him. Tiago yelped slightly as soft metal climbed up from below, handcuffed his ankles and wrists, then hugged his torso.
It felt firm and soft, like solid foam, as it slid all around him.
When it began to move around his head, like a helmet, Tiago struggled and the chair moved with him.
“Don’t fight it,” Piper said, her voice suddenly right next to him even though he could see her shimmering in the center of the cockpit. “Relax.”
“Oh, okay,” Tiago said. He took a deep breath and the foam moved with him.
“If it gets really dangerous, the foam will climb down inside of your throat to protect your airway,” Piper said. “In that event, don’t panic, the chair itself is a fully contained life support system. It can’t do surgery on you like the medbay, but it can just about everything else needed to keep you alive. You are in the safest spot in the entire ship, here.”
Tiago was still breathing a bit hard, a little nervous. “Okay,” he said again.
“If you’re feeling nervous, you can ask for a sedative,” Piper said.
“That might be a good idea in general,” Yuki said. Tiago turned to look at her, and saw nothing. The chair had covered his head, there was nothing to see.
“You’re hearing our voices over a private side channel,” Piper explained gently. “I know this is all new to you. The chair isn’t showing you any information, but I can peel off a small part of my personality to remain here and introduce you to what information you would like to see.”
Tiago felt a wave of calm seep over him. Something rumbled in the distance. Engines powering up, machines coming to life. “Is that … good for you? We’re going to be in a fight, right?”
“It’s fine, and …” Piper chuckled slightly. “We’re more or less already in a fight.”
“What?”
“We’re in the air and boosting. Would you like to see?”
“Yes,” Tiago said.
And the world around faded away. He flew over the ocean. To his left Placa del Fuego lit up, highlighted in a mild green glow.
Red arrows pointed behind him. Tiago looked back to see two red blips, pulsing and surrounded by odd shapes and constantly shifting lines that reached out at him.
“I’ll patch you into the common channel. You’ll hear everyone, but they won’t hear you. If you need anything, just ask me,” Piper said in his ear.
Pepper’s voice faded in. Tiago knew this because a small nametag appeared over his view of the world outside the spaceship. It pulsed in time to Pepper’s voice. “Placa del Fuego isn’t the only area with a dead zone. The League has seen two appearances. I got into League territory to find out what they were freaking out about, trying to build up my own intelligence networks on the other side. The zones expanded, so The League decided to act. They have a wormhole killer. It’s built into a refitted ship called the Saguenay.”
“We’ve heard rumors,” Nashara said.
“They’re true. They’ve isolated two worlds and destroyed their wormholes to prevent contamination. They’ve gotten aggressive. They view this one as a threat and they’re moving Saguenay into place to shut down the Trumball wormhole. If we don’t stop them, all those worlds will be cut off from us.”
Goz cleared his throat. “That don’t sound too bad. No more nervous standoffs, spies, and small wars every time some new world comes over to us.”
“We’ll lose access to half the human race that’s on the other side. We’d never be able to look into getting back to Earth,” Pepper said. “They can’t just rip that all away from us.”
Tiago’s view of the whole world grayed out for a second as something heavy sat down on him. The water blurred underneath. They had sped up abruptly.
“We’re in Trumball airspace, we’re being challenged,” Piper murmured.
“Here we go,” Nashara said.
Up ahead, Tiago saw the floating city of Trumball light up in warnings, glyphs, and hundreds of aggressive spotlights locking onto them.
“… incoming …”
The world exploded in chaff and thumps. The chair squeezed tight around Tiago. Something slimy wormed its way down his throat and into his chest as the entire world pinwheeled, jerked randomly, and blurred around him as they stuttered their way through the air toward the black disc of the wormhole ensconced at the heart of the gray, blocky city.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Kay yanked at the shackles and chains securing her to a simple, and very uncomfortable, metal chair that was bolted to the concrete floor in a windowless room at the top of the gray, featureless building they’d been hustled to. She wasn’t getting free of them. But it helped to pull at them. It made her feel like she was testing things. Doing something.
Avris, on the other hand, had slipped deeply into fear. Her ashen face drooped. Thinking about torture; being a League prisoner.
Kay thought about talking her out of it. Guiding her into a stronger headspace.
But she wanted a nervous foil to keep whoever came in that shielded door occupied. Avris was more useful to Kay scared right now.
The door creaked open.
Their interrogator, a middle-aged bureaucrat with tired eyes, sat at a small metal table across from the both of them. Kay watched him closely as he blinked, reading information that only he could see laid over his eyeballs.
“The Xenowealth pilot, a spy, we understand that,” he said. “But the child from Placa del Fuego? What is your role here?”
Kay leaned forward and projected calm and confidence despite the fact that the handcuffs and chains stopped her from reaching the table. “What is your name?”
That annoyed him. Her presumptive calm. But then, Kay had always found that unaffected calm intriguing when she’d been on the other side of a table in interrogations of her own.
“My name is Danielle,” the man said. And pointedly didn’t add his last name.
“On Placa del Fuego that’s usually a girl’s name,” Kay said conversationally while leaning back. “Avris, is that a girl’s name throughout the Xenowealth? Don’t they usually go with Daniel?”
Avris looked vaguely horrified.
“My mother named me after a hero of the Revolution,” Danielle said. Despite Kay’s attempt to needle him, he didn’t seem that bothered.
So she put her hands on her lap. “Well, Danielle, it’s a shame you’re the one in here talking to us when you’re not anyone with any sort of power here. I’m looking to defect, and you’re just one of the local suits in Trumball, hoping to get something out of us to curry favor wi
th the real heavy hitters on their way from the League.”
Danielle’s lips twitched in anger. He turned to look at Avris. “You came to Trumball under false identification. You are a Xenowealth spy. You know what that means. But we want to work with you, and talk to you about why you are here. I can get you a lawyer, and work with you to maybe send you back to your side. If you’ll talk to us.” He crudely, Kay thought, tried to project sympathy.
Kay leaned forward again. “You’re talking to the wrong one.”
Danielle looked confused.
“I’m the defector. Avris was here to help me. A guide to this world, if you will. She doesn’t know anything.”
“Do you really expect me to believe a girl smuggled a dirty bomb into my city and the Xenowealth pilot is …” Danielle trailed off as he saw the shocked expression on Avris’s face as she mouthed the words ‘dirty bomb’ to herself.
Danielle swiveled back to Kay, then shook his head slightly.
Kay smiled brightly back at him.
“Who the fuck are you?” he asked.
“I’m Kay,” she said, burrowing deep behind his eyes. “Dust the bomb for prints. You’ll find mine. You won’t find hers. It’s my bomb. I got it. I’m the one who wanted to use it.”
Now Danielle started to look vaguely uneasy. He was losing control of the interrogation. “What were you going to do with it?” he asked, squinting at her.
“It’s Xenowealth made,” Kay said. “And I was going to find a nice population center further upstream and detonate it to hopefully begin a war. The trail would lead back, if I did it right, to Placa del Fuego. At the same time, I’ve left a number of breadcrumbs for people in the Xenowealth to urgently look into happenings on Placa del Fuego.”
Danielle looked sick. He fumbled for words.
“What I’m looking for,” Kay explained slowly, “is for both parties to descend on Placa del Fuego. In the dead zone. With a great deal of firepower.”
“But … why?” Danielle asked.
“That’s something I’d like to talk to your superiors about,” Kay said, and folded her arms.
The Apocalypse Ocean Page 13