“While I’m packing,” she said, “what are you going to be doing?”
“Working with Lobo,” I said, “privately, in my quarters.”
“So that I don’t hear anything that might hurt me later.”
“Exactly.”
“This situation is lousy for me,” she said. “You know that, right? I might as well be a little kid.”
“I understand,” I said, “but what we will be doing is beyond your areas of expertise.”
“But it’s within yours?” she said. “Fighting attacking ships, jumping across landings to carefully chosen combat areas, leaving people you care about—that’s all within your areas of expertise?”
“Sadly,” I said, “yes.”
She chuckled. “I guess that resume the agency put up for you had a few holes in it.”
I smiled back at her and said, “Maybe a few.” I shooed her toward her quarters. “Now, pack.”
As she did, I went inside mine. Part of me wanted to keep talking with her, but I knew I was just being selfish, grabbing at every last second I could have with her. I needed to use this time to plan.
“Lobo,” I said, “tell me what you think they’re going to do.”
“They want you,” he said, “and they think of me only as an executive transport, though almost certainly from their visit to me as a heavily armored one and now as a very fast one. So, I won’t be their concern. They seem to want you alive, because otherwise their watching ship could have intercepted and killed you. I predict, therefore, that they will bring multiple ships, ships they believe are stronger than I am, and they will make us land and try to take you by force.”
“I agree,” I said, “so the key is that we have to take out their ships, take out their comms, and strand them while we escape. Our location is good for that.”
“Strand them?” Lobo said. “Strand men who have enormous financial backing and who want to take you captive so one of the most powerful men in the worlds can take his revenge on you? No. We should kill them.”
“Killing them would accomplish nothing,” I said, “and it would be both wrong and a sure way to give Kang ammo to come after us, legitimately this time, with police helping him.”
“What it would accomplish,” Lobo said, “is to increase his cost of chasing you. As for anyone pursuing us, that’s possible only if we leave enough of them behind for anyone to find something. Kill them, then blow them into sufficiently small pieces, and that problem vanishes.”
“No,” I said. “You know I won’t kill if I can possibly avoid it.”
“So let me,” he said. “These people are serving a man who would auction and abuse children. The whole lot of them deserve to die.”
“We’re done with this topic,” I said. “Let me tell you what I have in mind.”
The end
At the jump gate and in the Great Northwestern Desert
Planet Studio
CHAPTER 45
Jon Moore
I went up front for the jump and asked Lobo to open a forward-facing display for me. Zoe finished her packing and joined me. We sat in our pilot couches and watched as the gate filled more and more of the display as we drew nearer to it.
“Is anyone questioning our jump?” I said.
“No,” Lobo said. “Kang’s people cannot be pursuing us legally, so as long as they can track us, having our encounter occur on some other world is probably fine by them.”
“Good,” I said.
Haven’s gate was one of the largest and most complex in shape of all the jump gates at all the worlds. With eight apertures, each connecting Haven to a different planet, it provided a commercial hub for many of the Central Coalition planets. It hung in space like a gigantic, eight-holed, bright purple pretzel; each jump gate is one single color, the same color on every square millimeter of its surface. The apertures through which ships pass are a uniform perfect black, the color space would have been before the moment of creation. On the other side of each aperture is another point in space, usually one many light years away.
We were second in line for the aperture to Studio. As we watched, a commercial cruise ship nosed through our aperture on its way from Studio. It moved slowly until its entire length had cleared the aperture, and then it turned and jetted away from the gate. The ship in front of us moved into the aperture. From our perspective, it was as if the ship was slowly disappearing into blackness.
That ship finished its jump, we moved closer, another came through from Studio, and then it was our turn.
As we pulled closer to the blackness of the aperture, I felt, as I often did at jumps, a moment of perfect possibility. If the gates could in a way no one understood transport us across space instantaneously, what else might be possible? Might not it be possible for me to find Jennie and stay with Zoe, to use whatever it was in me that stopped me from aging and healed me to help others, but without me having to be a captive experimental animal?
Then our nose was through, and we were in the Studio system, at its jump gate, in a different place but still in a place, in a fixed place in the real world of limited possibilities and hard choices.
As soon as we were completely through the aperture, Lobo headed at his maximum speed for the underwater statues in the desert, where we would make our stand.
* * *
By the time we reached the planet, made the additional preparations my plan required, and were hovering above the ground just in front of the cliff facing the artificial lake, it was early in the morning on Studio. Though the planet’s sun was already brightening the horizon, the air outside Lobo was still cold from the night.
I ate some protein supplements and drank some water, a little, not a lot. I made Zoe do the same. Being energized and hydrated was good; being full and needing a bathroom was not.
When we’d finished, I made her put the body armor she’d worn before over her underwear and beneath her clothing. Nothing should happen to her, but it never hurt to be cautious.
“Say it to me again,” I said.
“I was your accidental hostage,” she said. “You kept me locked in the room where I’d slept. All I want is to go home.”
“Good,” I said. “Don’t offer more, don’t embellish, don’t guess. The more you talk, the easier it is for any even half-skilled interrogator to spot flaws in your story. Keep it simple. Remember: The ship took off when you were working inside. You were supposed to be at the party, but you came back early to do some work. When I jumped on board, I discovered you here. I locked you in your quarters. You asked what was going on, but I wouldn’t tell you.”
“Fine, she said, “but that won’t help me when they ask why I lied about hiring you when they visited us in Firens.”
“Keep your answer as simple and as close to the truth as possible: You didn’t like the way they acted, so you protected me just as you would anyone else on your crew. When you asked me later why they’d been after me, I told you about them hunting me down because I’d helped save those kids from Kang.”
“Will that be enough to get them to leave me alone?”
I shook my head. “I honestly have no way to be sure. It’s the best we can do, though, so stick with it.”
“And how do I explain this body armor?”
“Tell them,” I said, “that I never meant to kidnap you. I just found you inside the ship and had to deal with you. I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”
“Okay,” she said, “but I think it would be more convincing without the armor.”
“Noted,” I said, “but it stays on. Lobo, have you confirmed links with all the remotes?”
“Are we really going to run this mission that way?” Lobo said. “I don’t think we’re going to have the time for that level of redundancy.”
I looked at Zoe. Both desire and sadness clawed at me, but I pushed away the feelings. “No,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Incoming,” Lobo said.
“Go private,” I said.
Zoe gave me
a look.
“What you don’t know,” I said. “Remember?”
She sighed and nodded.
“All communications now over the machine frequency?” Lobo said.
“Yes,” I said on that frequency.
“Via data from sats I befriended when we were last here,” Lobo said, “I have four ships in formation headed our way. They’re following exactly the same course we took.”
“How long until they reach us?”
“Roughly five minutes. They’re coming in hot, just like we did.”
If they tried to circle us, they risked a crossfire situation. They could arrange themselves so that no ship was directly in another’s line of fire, but they couldn’t know if we would choose to fight in the air. If we did, air battles changed so rapidly that they would be unlikely to take the chance of us leading one ship’s weapons toward another. A more likely formation was for them to face us head-on, the ships spread out, each of them at a different altitude. To capture me, they had to force us onto the ground at some point, so they would probably hope to encourage that behavior by their sheer numbers. They knew nothing about Lobo’s true capabilities, so they would assume they had us massively outgunned and that we would be intimidated by them.
In fact, I was counting on that.
“Zoe,” I said, “strap yourself into your couch and put in your mouth guard.”
She hesitated, so I said, “Now!”
She did.
“Two of the ships are hailing us on every frequency,” Lobo said.
I stepped into the hallway, out of Zoe’s view.
“Accept the calls,” I said, “but do not respond in any way. Images in front of me, audio on this frequency.”
Balin Randar and Hyo Shin appeared on two displays in front of me.
Randar laughed when he realized I wasn’t going to respond.
Shin appeared annoyed.
“Such stupid games, Jon,” Randar said, “but if this is how you want it to go, fine. We have four ships to your one. Ours are more heavily armed. With four ships, we can last longer, and believe me when I say that we will chase you as long and as far as it takes. We have the full resources of both the families we represent behind us. It’ll go a lot easier on you if you simply put down here and let us take you.”
“Mr. Kang wants to talk to you,” Shin said.
“As does Ms. Pimlani,” Randar said.
“I don’t mind finding out if your ship’s armor is as strong as it looked when we visited it before,” Shin said. “Mr. Randar disagrees, but if you give us a reason to fire,” he shrugged, “we will do so.”
“My colleague is obviously more eager for a fight than I am,” Randar said. “I believe Mr. Kang is more willing to accept the news of your death as adequate satisfaction than Ms. Pimlani is.”
Shin shrugged.
“Turn yourself over to us, however,” Randar said, “and you will live.”
“Disconnect us,” I said.
The displays vanished.
I went up front and strapped myself into my pilot couch.
Lobo opened a display in his front wall. “Their ships have assumed a formation on either side of the end of the lake and are holding it,” Lobo said. The display showed models of us and them, with distances and altitudes. Two of the ships were roughly on a level with us. The other two were much higher, farther from the outside edges of the lake than the first two, and slightly closer to us.
“Are the high ones too high?” I said.
I noticed Zoe was staring back and forth at me and the display. I ignored her.
“Not for us to reach,” Lobo said. “For the fall, though, probably.”
“Decrease altitude five meters,” I said. “Let’s see if they adjust accordingly.”
On the display, we drifted lower.
Their ships did not move.
All the ships edged slightly closer, then stopped.
“Those two are too high,” I said.
“We can’t fix that,” Lobo said. “We’re out of time. Make the decision.”
We’d ringed the lake with multiple electromagnetic pulse charges that would blanket the skies around the lake. Combat ships routinely carried them; civilian vessels almost never did. Lobo would activate them on a delayed timer and then shut himself down. Upon impact, his emergency crash systems would activate—they were completely separate and had their own small power source—open the main hatch, and begin bringing up the rest of him; standard features for combat craft. The pulses would fry everything electrical that was currently running in the other ships. We were low enough that Zoe and I would survive the fall easily, though we’d be shaken up. The occupants of the lower two of their ships might be hurt, but they should live. It would take a few minutes after the crash for Lobo to become fully functional, but the other ships would be fried. The people in them should be pretty shaken up and slow to function. Even if they recovered quickly, we had the lake between us and them.
The problem was the two higher craft were just too high. The people in them would not survive the crashes from those heights. I hadn’t expected them to keep any ships that high.
On the display, all the ships inched closer to us.
“Make the decision,” Lobo said.
I took a deep breath. No matter how hard I tried, I sometimes could not avoid killing. Any other path forward involved more fighting, though, and more risk.
“Activate the EMP charges,” I said.
On the displays, the two lower ships suddenly descended further, so they were slightly closer to the ground than we were.
“Signal sent,” Lobo said. “Pulse in fifteen seconds. Shutting down in ten. They may suspect our plan, but they can’t shut down in time.”
The couches expanded around us and encased us in protective foam.
“Zoe,” I yelled, “it’ll be okay. It’ll go dark, and then we’ll fall, but we’ll be fine.”
I put in my mouth guard.
The world turned silent and pitch black as Lobo powered off.
We fell.
CHAPTER 46
Jon Moore
Despite the padding from the couch, I felt the impact on every centimeter of my body. We shuddered for a moment from residual vibrations, and then everything was black and silent. A few seconds later, the crash-activated emergency circuits clicked in, and light came along the side corridor from the hatch they opened.
I pulled out my mouth guard and yelled, “Zoe, are you okay?”
I heard a murmur but could not understand the words.
I clawed my way out of my couch and went to hers. She was still stuck inside it. I moved some of the padding and helped her sit up. She looked dazed.
“Are you okay?” I said.
She shook her head slowly, as if making sure it was still attached.
“Not yet,” she whispered. I held up a finger in front of her eyes and moved it. She tracked it, but slowly.
“Stay here,” I said. “You’ll feel better in a bit.”
I ran out of the open hatch and stopped four or five meters outside Lobo. I surveyed the damage to the other ships.
Far off on either side of the lake, dust surrounded two ships that looked as if each had collapsed under its own weight. No way anyone in either of them had survived. I shook my head. I hadn’t meant for anyone to die.
The two ships opposite us on the other side of the lake looked fine. They must have had the same type of emergency crash circuits as Lobo, because their hatches stood open. As I watched, men stumbled out of them. It was hard to see them clearly, but several appeared to be bleeding. A few fell onto the sand as soon as they were outside.
From the ship on my right, a man emerged leaning on what looked like a walking stick. He stopped as soon as he was outside and leaned against the ship. He lifted what I now realized was an old-fashioned rifle, a weapon with no electronics in it.
“Jon?” I heard.
I whipped around.
Zoe was standing a meter behin
d me, on the sand outside the open hatch.
I dove for her and yelled “No!” at the same time.
The sound of two gunshots in rapid succession drowned out my scream.
Zoe spun, fell, and hit her head on Lobo’s edge.
I landed holding onto her feet.
Blood pooled on her upper left side.
I couldn’t tell what the shot had hit. I crawled up to her shoulder and checked her. The body armor had saved her from one shot, though its force had hit her chest hard. She was bleeding from a wound on her shoulder near her neck, above the armor, and from her forehead, where she’d fallen. She was unconscious and breathing shallowly. I couldn’t tell how much damage she’d sustained in the fall.
I raised to a crouch and beat the sand with my fists. “She was innocent!” I screamed.
Another shot sounded as pain exploded in my upper left quad.
They needed me alive, but they apparently didn’t need me undamaged.
I fell flat on the sand. Zoe faced me, but her eyes saw nothing. Her breathing turned ragged.
From across the lake I heard the sound of laughter.
Laughter.
They’d shot Zoe, whose only mistake was to care for me.
They’d shot me.
Two ships of their own men had died.
And they were laughing.
I shook my head and fought back the scream that was building inside me. If I gave into it, I wasn’t sure when I would be able to stop. I could have told the nanomachines to turn off the pain, but I didn’t; I wanted to feel it all. I wanted the strength it gave me. I wanted it because I had let this happen, and I deserved to suffer for it.
I had let it happen, but they had done it.
All these years, all the hundreds of times I’d controlled myself, I’d walked from the conflicts, I’d let the guilty live, I’d done everything to avoid killing, and here I was.
Here Zoe was, soaking the sand of a world that wasn’t even hers with her blood.
Here I was, shot yet again, bleeding yet again.
Somewhere in the worlds, Jennie, my sister who had healed me, who had given me so much, waited for me to find her, her life ruined by the same type of people who had sent these men.
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