It was easier to access these ships than it had been to get into the Huldren. When Mattie saw why, his alarm grew. “These are System ships.”
“Dead?” Shara asked.
If there was even one ship out there still alive, it would attack Anji’s ships—and probably defeat them. The ship’s computer Mattie was burrowing through was from a System warship, overpowered, deadly. “I hope so.”
“Look,” said Ivan suddenly, and his finger fell on the screen in front of Mattie, underlining a single piece of code:
R = aebθ
One of the Macha revolutionaries said, “The computer can’t keep a count—there are too many of them.”
“What does that mean?” Shara asked. “A hundred? A thousand?”
“More than a thousand,” the revolutionary said.
More than a thousand System warships. Mattie stared up at the sparking debris field on the viewscreen, the vast, incomprehensible amount of firepower floating dead in space ahead of them. He had never seen so many ships in his life. This must have been what the people of Saturn had seen in the days before the end, a glittering cloud of ships coming down on them, making new constellations as they approached, eerie but peaceful—until the bombs started to drop.
There was only one thing this many System warships could be, and Ivan must have realized it, too, probably before Mattie had. While Mattie sat silent and numb with horror, he said to Shara, “This is the System fleet.”
“That’s impossible,” Shara said. When no one agreed, she asked, “Could the Mallt-y-Nos have done this?”
“No,” Mattie said. “No, she couldn’t.”
“The spiral ship did this,” Ivan said.
“How do you know—”
“The same thing’s been done to these computers as happened to the Huldren. Get Grace to look at them if you like. She’ll recognize it.”
“All of them?” Shara repeated. “All of those ships?”
The entire System fleet. The Ananke had destroyed it with a thought.
They had to get out of there.
“Do you remember my offer?” Ivan said.
Shara was still staring out at the impossible destruction ahead of them. “I can’t let you go.”
“Then we’ll compromise,” Ivan said. “Let us fly our own ship, but we promise not to leave. The Badh can fly out with us as insurance. The Copenhagen can’t outrun or outfight the Badh. I’m not asking you to let us go. I’m just asking you to let us have our ship. In return, we’ll protect yours.”
It was a lie, Mattie could have told her—just about everything Ivan said was a lie. But this lie at least was in Mattie’s favor.
Shara said, “Do it.”
FORWARD
“I’m not going to tell them how we know,” Ivan snapped.
Mattie was digging through the cabinets on the Copenhagen for whatever equipment he’d packed. Ivan watched him shove the contents of one cabinet to the ground, then slam the door shut a moment later, empty-handed. “Why are we telling them anything?”
With effort, Ivan kept his exasperation from his tone. “We might be saving their lives.”
Mattie had moved to the next cabinet and was tearing that one apart, too, his motion jerky with frustration. “We should get on the Copenhagen and go.”
“We can’t get on the Copenhagen and go until after we’ve fixed their ships. They won’t let us. And even if we could run away now, we’d have to fix their computers before we left. We made Ananke what she is, we—”
“We had nothing to do with making the Ananke,” Mattie snapped. “And watch what you say to them. You’re already half System in their eyes, half one of Constance’s dogs. You want to end up in a cell again or with another gun to your head?”
“We had everything to do with Ananke.”
Mattie made a sound of frustration. A moment later he emerged from the cabinet with a small bag of tools: the System backdoors that Ananke took advantage of often could be closed only by altering actual hardware. “I have only one set.”
“Vithar will have something on his ship I can use.”
“We’re going to work together.”
“We’ll cover more ground if we split up,” Ivan said. “You work on the Macha; I’ll fix the Badh.”
“We should work together.”
“There’s not enough room for two people to work on the Badh. And I have a better chance of persuading Vithar to let us go if I can get him alone.”
“To do what?” Mattie snapped.
“Talk.” Ivan found that his voice had risen to match Mattie’s. He tried to lower it, but some senseless agitation was making him defensive. “We don’t want to gang up on him.”
Mattie slammed the cabinet door shut. “Fine. You’ve made the decision; let’s go.”
“I’ll meet you back here.”
“Sure,” said Mattie, and was gone.
Ivan stood in the Copenhagen alone, unsettled, angry, and ashamed. He could put no reason to any of the emotions: every time he approached a cause, it slipped away from him like some silvery fish. Mattie was unsettled by the nearness of Ananke, Ivan told himself; they both were.
It did not ring entirely true.
Vithar was waiting for Ivan out in the docking bay, leaning against the hull of the Badh. “Shara says you’re going to defend my computer against the spiral ship.”
“I’m very helpful.”
To Ivan’s surprise, Vithar chuckled. He turned back to the Badh and tapped in the unlock code. Ivan tried to read it from the motions of his arm—once the Copenhagen was out in open space, the only thing stopping him and Mattie from escaping was the Badh. But Vithar’s broad shoulders effectively blocked Ivan’s view.
The Badh turned out to be nearly all engine. The cabin was not much larger than an escape pod would be, but even so, with the door opened there was just enough room for Ivan to get at the computer and Vithar to crouch in the cabin behind him.
Ivan started the computer without starting up the engines and eyed the inside of the cabin. You could tell a lot about a person from the inside of his or her ship. Vithar had a scrap of fabric tied to one of the maneuverability controls, red, ragged. No saying what it was a memento of. There was a knife under the control panel, a gun concealed to Ivan’s right, and two more knives—all of different shapes, all looking exceptionally well cared for—above Ivan’s head.
“There’s one in the back of the seat, too,” Vithar said.
“Very nice,” Ivan said as the computer woke and requested input. “Your collection?”
“Things I’ve picked up here and there.”
“It’s good to have a hobby,” Ivan said, and did a brief check of the most obvious System backdoors. All sealed: well done.
“Explain what you’re doing to me,” Vithar said.
“I’m sealing the System backdoors into your computers.”
“I thought I’d already done that.”
“The System left multiple redundancies. Most of them have been forgotten. Some of them don’t exist on all machines.”
“But you know about them.”
Ivan smiled. “Mattie and I made it a professional priority.”
“I see.” Ivan could feel Vithar watching him from over the edge of the chair. “And is there a backdoor in the engine controls?”
“Sometimes,” Ivan said. “But apparently not this time.” He backed out of the systems that controlled the Badh’s top speed. “Mattie is working on the Macha right now. The Copenhagen is already secure.”
“And how do you know that this will stop the spiral ship?”
Ivan frowned down at the computer display, as if that was what was taking up most of his attention. “I saw how she accessed the Huldren and the System fleet.”
Silence. Vithar seemed to know enough about computers to be able to tell if Ivan was sabotaging his, so Ivan moved carefully, aware of Vithar’s attention on his back.
Vithar said, “What do you know about the spiral ship?”
<
br /> Most of the backdoors Ivan was going to seal had been shut already. And most of the sensitive areas Ivan tried to edge into—like engine control and navigation—were well defended against any kind of sabotage.
Much as this ship itself was well defended, with weapons wedged into every corner.
Like the teeth of gears interlocking, catching with a mechanical jolt, Ivan’s memories of where he had met Vithar before slotted into place.
Ivan said, “Strange for a diplomat to travel alone.”
“I’m traveling with the Macha.”
“But the Macha aren’t your people; they’re Shara’s. Why did Anji send you?”
“I’m her diplomat.”
“Are you? Mattie and I met you on Puck. One of Constance’s contacts had started to leak information. She sent me and Mattie, we figured out who it was, and then we did as she ordered and we gave the name to you.”
Ivan should have understood the true nature of Anji’s “diplomatic” mission the moment he realized it consisted of two warships and a troop carrier at full capacity.
“The next I heard,” Ivan said, “that man was found dead on the ice outside the greenhouse enclosure.”
Vithar said, “The past is the past.”
“It still affects the present. Your computer is all set.” Ivan smiled pleasantly at him. “May I leave?”
Vithar moved aside. Ivan carefully stepped out past him, never once turning his back. “I’ll be seeing you,” Ivan said, and wished that he had been able to at least sabotage the Badh’s weaponry systems while he had been inside.
He should have realized it before. If all Anji had wanted was to speak to Constance, she could have broadcast a message to her. Instead, she’d insisted on sending some of her own people. And she’d wanted Ivan and Mattie to take Vithar directly to Constance.
Ivan already had brought enough destruction to Constance and those in her orbit. Whatever happened, he could not let Anji’s assassin reach Constance or her fleet.
BACKWARD
The Annwn landed on Mars in a cloud of red dust and a sonic boom. The sound was inaudible through the ship’s hull, but the vibrations were not, and so Ivan knew that the sound of their landing had echoed through the atmosphere, ringing out over the edge of the scarp and into the valley below.
In the moments after the Annwn had landed, just long enough for the ship’s systems to settle into quiescence, for the heat of its landing to dissipate into a safe range, the hull door opened and then shut again with a bang.
Mattie glanced at Ivan, but Ivan didn’t stay to meet his look, rising from his chair in the piloting room to let himself down the sideways hall in a controlled fall, reaching the hull door seconds after Constance had slammed it shut.
The air outside was still hot from the Annwn’s rapid descent. Ivan had to squint through the heat warping and the settling dust to see her, Constance Harper, walking across the scarp toward the shadowed height of her bar. She shrugged her shawl up farther over her freckled shoulders and brought the edge of it to cover her nose as she walked away from him.
He stepped out onto the Martian stone and set off after her. She must have heard him coming, but did not stop.
“Constance,” he said when he was near, but she ignored him. He stopped a moment, shut his eyes, took a swift breath. Don’t push her, he told himself. Be calm. Be clever.
He started off after her again at a brisk walk now, not a run.
“I’m sorry about what I said,” he said when he had come near again, and grabbed her arm this time so that she could not ignore him. Constance tugged her arm from his grip immediately, but she did stop to face him, her hazel eyes blazing over the edge of her fringed shawl.
A gust of wind blew the settling dust around them, between them. Ivan had come out without scarf or coat; the dust pricked his skin, dried his mouth, tickled his throat. The Martian air was chill and thin. He showed none of this, not to her.
“I was too harsh,” he said with as much bared sincerity as he could show. “I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not,” Constance said. “You meant every word.”
But he was sorry this time. The things he had said while they had flown away from Luna after delivering the Terran Class 1 bombs to Julian had been more than he had meant to say, and he had said them more harshly. He hadn’t meant to hurt her, punish her, or push her away. He simply needed her to listen.
“I can mean every word and still be sorry,” Ivan said, but she only turned her head aside, and he could see the sharpness of her furious jaw when the wind blew her shawl against the edged shape of it.
She moved to leave.
His hand darted out before he had decided to grab her; he found himself face to face with her from extraordinarily close, his hand digging into the thin fabric that covered her upper arm. The nearness of her, the ferocity of her unyielding regard, once would have excited him. But now he could only look at her blazing eyes and fear.
“If the idea of becoming like the System doesn’t frighten you,” Ivan said to the air and the shawl that separated her mouth from his, “then think about what will happen after the war begins.”
“Justice,” Constance said. “War is the whole idea, Ivan—”
He shook her. He didn’t mean to do it, but he did, and that frightened him as deeply as she did. He was on a precipice as high and deadly as the scarp they stood beside, and Constance had the power to push him off. “Everyone will be trying to kill you, Constance.”
She laughed at him, releasing her shawl to the wind. It was the way a goddess might laugh, sure and joyless, a terrible sound from a harpy mouth.
“Then think about me,” Ivan said, because if he had to, he would cover himself in dirt to pull her aside. “I’m with you; they’ll be trying to kill me—” He changed tack again in the face of her blazing contempt. “And they’ll be trying to kill Mattie.” That was a real horror: Matthew Gale bloodied and dead and Constance stepping past his fallen corpse without a downward glance. Ivan could see it so clearly, the total loss of everyone he had ever loved. “They’ll kill Mattie—”
“You don’t even know how to talk to me without trying to manipulate me, do you?” she said, and silenced him.
She looked at him a moment longer, that long and dire goddess glance, and then she pulled her arm from his hand again and strode off across the scarp, catching the edge of her shawl between her snaring fingers.
“Constance!” he called, because he would tell her the truth now if she wanted it: that he had loved her after a fashion, no matter what she thought; that he would love her again, if she so wished it; that he would love her better now rather than face this terrible failure again, because he had failed her, he had led her to this, and now he could not stop her from going headlong into it and becoming something she should not be, something terrible and cruel.
But she did not turn this time, and this time Ivan did not have the courage to go to her and grab her arm.
He watched her enter her bar alone and stood in the sand that was settling slowly after her passage. Mattie was waiting for him at the door to the Annwn, watching the exchange with furrowed brow.
He would try again, Ivan told himself. Anyone can be convinced of anything if you found the right point to apply pressure. Anyone could be controlled. He wouldn’t let Constance fall off the edge of the cliff he had brought her to. He would find her, and he would save her, before it was too late.
FORWARD
“We need an alternative method of getting information.” Shara’s voice came hazily through the Copenhagen’s radio.
Mattie jiggled his leg restlessly beneath the computer panels. The call had come through when he had been piloting their ship—newly freed—and Ivan had refused the offer of the chair.
“What kind of alternative method?” Ivan asked Shara.
Vithar’s voice hummed through from the Badh. “The communications relays are all down.”
On the viewscreen, Mattie could see the Badh darting
around not far from the Copenhagen. He wished Ivan had managed to sabotage the other ship when he’d been in the computer.
The Badh was a one-person ship. Shara made them redock on the Macha whenever Vithar needed to sleep. Maybe Mattie could find some way to use that to their advantage.
“Not only do we need information,” Vithar was saying, oblivious to Mattie’s hard math, “we need to warn Anji about the spiral ship.”
The mention of the Ananke was enough to draw Mattie’s shoulders up tight with tension. “Without the relays, you’ve got fuck-all chance of getting a message out to Saturn.”
“That’s why I asked for an alternative,” Shara snapped.
“System relay stations,” Ivan said. “If we can get to an actual relay station and it’s not a pile of smoking rubble, we can gain access to what’s left of the network.”
“How much is left of the network?” Shara asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Do you know where any are?”
“There’s one pretty close,” Mattie said. “They’ve got a few in the asteroid belt. I can send you the coordinates.”
“Do it,” Shara said.
“When we get there,” Ivan said, “the System computers will be protected against non-System use. You’ll have to let Mattie and me go down there.”
“Vithar will go with you,” Shara said, and cut the connection.
But the relay station, when they found it, was blackened and broken. Mattie went down with Ivan anyway, docking into the part of the station that was still mostly intact. Inside, they had to pick their way over rubble, Vithar at their heels.
The computers were in as bad condition as the rest of the station. Mattie checked them quickly. “Nothing’s working but the internal systems. Ventilation and cameras.” Typical of the System to make sure the cameras still would work even in the event of an otherwise total shutdown.
Vithar had brought a handheld communicator. Stepping carefully over crumbled concrete, he activated it. “Shara, this place is dead.”
The communicator buzzed with incoming transmission. “Are there any other stations nearby?”
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