Terminus

by Tristan Palmgren

  In all the time she’d known him, she had never heard him sound so emotional.

  She permitted herself a moment of fury on Dahn’s behalf. He hadn’t done anything wrong. She had. Maybe her crime had been that she knew too much. If all Dahn had done was talk to her and it had cut him off, she had become the epicenter of some kind of plague it was trying to quarantine.

  It had plenty of weapons with which it could burn away the infected.

  Just to be sure, she tried contacting Ways and Means herself. No response.

  However impetuously she’d done this, she’d expected only to be taken into custody. Now she felt like she’d jumped into the mouth of a steel-toothed trap.

  Strangely, that left her calmer than she had been before. Her breathing came easier. Her training had prepared her for emergencies much better than it had the past few days of chasing her own moral shadows.

  “I’m coming back,” she told Dahn, banking the shuttle. If I can. Every moment, she expected the shuttle’s NAI to yank control away from her.

  Her hideaway was not that far, relatively speaking. She could land outside it in a little over an hour. The shuttle’s stealth fields buffered the sonic booms, and muted the roar of the engines. It made everything sound hollow.

  “It must be a satellite glitch,” Dahn said. “Or sabotage. We’ve got to contact Ways and Means directly. Our base transmitter can reach it. Damn! Ways and Means just went below the horizon.”

  “Ways and Means isn’t going to help,” Meloku said.

  Dahn didn’t answer. It didn’t take long to discover why. Their call had been ended. The satellites had cut their transmission.

  The shuttle reached their hideaway without further difficulty. She held every other breath, waiting for disaster – for the engines to cut out, or to steer her into the side of a hill. Nothing. The satellites still provided the shuttle with positioning data. Her mind raced. She had to assume there was some meaning to these contradictions. Hints pointing to a deeper truth she could tease out. Maybe.

  Her and Dahn’s hideaway was tucked into the northeast side of the Alps, deep below a shadowed treeline. The only clearing that could fit the shuttle was a three-minute walk away. Meloku stood on the boarding ramp as it descended, hopped off as soon as she could.

  She tucked her hands inside her field jacket. Naples had been much warmer. She hastened over the pebble-strewn ground. These hills were so remote and wild that it had been years since any native had last wandered this way.

  The door to their hideaway was concealed under a six-foot rocky overhang. A chorus of alarms filled the open bandwidth, the result of Dahn trying about thirty emergency override commands to resume contact with the planarship. Inside, Dahn paced. With a body like his, he shouldn’t have felt the need. Restlessness was a vestigial biological impulse.

  He said, “I’ve tried contacting every nearby agent. Nothing.” Ways and Means had stationed more of its crew in Avignon, and throughout northern France and Germany. “The satellites tell me the signal’s going through. There’s just no answer. No pingback. And none of them are over our horizon, so I can’t contact them without satellites.”

  “Ways and Means is cutting us off,” Meloku said.

  “Ways and Means is still close enough to Earth our base transmitter has the strength to reach it directly. It’s going to rise in another thirteen hours.”

  “It’s not going to listen to you.”

  “How do you…”

  Dahn stopped, went rigid. The distance Meloku had covered in her walk could not hide the rumble of the shuttle’s engines starting. The noise stuttered and muted as the stealth fields kicked on.

  A new and subtly different trill had joined all the other alarms. “It’s the perimeter alarm,” she said, in case he had muted the alarms’ shrieking. In the event that a traveler stumbled upon their hideaway, the shuttle was set to automatically take flight, conceal itself. Procedure had her and Dahn camping out in here until the trespassers wandered away.

  Four natives were climbing the hills to the north.

  Perimeter sensors piped imagery to Meloku’s demiorganics. The four intruders were all men, in poor to middling health that was typical for the region. They stood at a uniformly short stature. Pulse scanning revealed slivers and specks of iron: swords, tipped arrows or bolts, some metal jewelry. Three of the four wore metal-capped helmets.

  The nearest settlement, a commune of farms in one of these slopes’ few fertile regions, was twenty kilometers away. These men couldn’t have set out long after Meloku had bombed the condottieri’s battlefield with electromagnetic pulses. Maybe before.

  They were heading right for her and Dahn’s hideaway – like they knew where it was.

  She signaled the shuttle to halt its startup sequence. The shuttle NAI refused. She scowled. She redeployed her black programs to override the NAI. But the shuttle’s engines continued to heat up.

  Ice trickled through her veins. Dahn looked at her. He had access to the black software she did; he must have tried the same thing.

  Dahn padded over to a featureless wall. A panel opened. From it, he took a white cylinder with a translucent red protrusion. When he held the cylinder in his palm, the protrusion fit right between his fore and middle fingers.

  Meloku had not even known her hideaway contained weapons. The palm pistol was designed for crew with wholly demiorganic bodies. It had no barrel, no sights. She wouldn’t have been able to hold the aim steady past twenty meters. Of them, only Dahn had the fine motor control. It said something that Ways and Means had never imagined there would be a circumstance in which it would want her to use one of these. Only Dahn.

  She didn’t have time to dwell. She asked Dahn, “You were angry with me for scaring some soldiers. Now you want to kill these men?”

  “This is different,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “Because I’m going to stop you.”

  With a face like his, she couldn’t read much of a reaction. But he held still.

  She asked, “Do you really think these men know what they’re doing? Are they behind whatever’s happening to us?”

  “No,” he said.

  “I’ve been in worse trouble before.” She had killed a native back then, too, and not even to save herself. She had been rescuing someone else. Another thing she’d had a long time to think about.

  She’d hated herself enough that, put in the same circumstances, she’d expected that she would do the same thing again. Now that she was actually here, though…

  She could sense the argument building inside him, but it didn’t come out. He knew she was right.

  If the intruders were headed right for the hideaway, it was best that neither of them be here when they arrived. Dahn led the way without a word, still holding his pistol. The door rolled shut behind them. It resumed looking every bit like just rock.

  Meloku and Dahn trudged into the shadowed forest. Best to observe from a distance. Then they could see what the newcomers would do with themselves once they got here.

  A white bolt lanced the shadows.

  The bolt was too fast for her to register beyond the flash. Dahn’s reflexes were sharper. He shoved her.

  By the time they landed behind the cover of a larch tree, smoking debris sliced the air on all sides of them, slapped into the dirt. A wave of heat seared Meloku’s skin. Yellow-orange light leapt into the boughs.

  Meloku’s demiorganics tried and failed to mute the ringing in her ears. Her knee hurt fiercely. Dahn had not been gentle. Fire-silhouetted branches cast veiny shadows on their arms and legs.

  Dahn raised his pistol, took aim.

  Meloku retained enough sense to grab his arm. He had the strength to resist her, but not to keep his aim steady while she yanked him. He looked at her.

  She transmitted, “They’re not aiming at us.”

  If he’d thought about it for a moment, he would have realized. She could see their infrared forms per
fectly. If they’d had the ocular sensors to match their weaponry, they could have seen her and Dahn just as easily.

  They hadn’t, though. Three of them had dived away from the fourth man. He held something in his hand. It radiated white-hot heat. He shuddered. After a moment, he waved the others to their feet.

  They didn’t move. They seemed shocked.

  Meloku’s first pulse scan hadn’t detected any electronics or demiorganics. Another one didn’t now. His weapon, any implants controlling him, could have been hidden, deactivated, to avoid detection. That would have taken expert craftsmanship. In the Unity, the technology would have been far beyond the reach of civilians.

  However they’d gotten the weapon, the soldiers hadn’t learned how to use it well. They’d fired too early. The blast had only taken out the hideaway’s front wall. It hadn’t collapsed the roof. Even had Meloku and Dahn been inside, it might not have killed them. Their attackers had blown their advantage of surprise on their first shot.

  The soldiers circled the hideaway, keeping a safe distance between themselves and the flames. The fourth man took aim at the entrance, waiting for anyone to come out. They either didn’t have the tools or the wherewithal to scan infrared and see Meloku and Dahn huddled a hundred and fifty meters behind them.

  Their enemy could arm natives but could not, or did not want to, train them. It could not send competent agents in their places, either. These contradictions revealed weakness. Meloku just wished she could read more in it.

  Dahn transmitted, “If Ways and Means wanted to kill us, why didn’t it do it itself?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “There are crewmembers in Munich. We can reach them in a few days. Less if I go ahead.”

  “We’ll just be putting them in danger.”

  She scanned again. At this distance, she could see the outlines of their armor, their jewelry. The man who’d fired had a necklace with an emblem: a silver shield-and-sunrays, one of the many symbols of the Cult of Saint Renatus.

  Meloku’s gut had stopped roiling. It felt like ice instead. Anger had always tasted better than fear. She plucked it out of the back of her mind, held tight to it. She let it grow.

  She said, “I think I know a direction that might be more productive.”

  19

  Osia waited longer than she should have.

  The Iberian shore had long since escaladed the horizon. A fishing village nestled in the untamed forest like a bird’s nest in the bough: a bundle of wood and spit clinging together. The trees sheltered the homes from the casual observation of marauders. The two short piers were the same coarse, sandy color as the beach.

  Three fishing boats had beached as soon as their pilots saw Osia’s boat. No doubt she’d find the village empty too. These people were accustomed to corsair slave-taking raids.

  If anyone was left watching her, they’d be even more alarmed as she grew closer. No one on this side of the continent had ever seen a Chinese merchant junk.

  Again, buried deep under the air, she sniffed traces of smoke.

  There had always been smoke. It had followed her from coast to coast. It had stopped only at intervals across south and west Africa. Not even during these peoples’ most brutal wars did they burn so much, so consistently.

  From this distance, Osia could have swum to shore without spending much of her power reserves. She nearly did. She had a lot of work ahead. But she had to address her problems in the right order. The golden rule of shipboard life, here or on Ways and Means, was that all work came in its proper order. She could not avoid her task here.

  She stepped down the aftcastle steps one at a time.

  She made herself recall Ways and Means’ voice – its flatness, its equanimity, its self-assuredness. No matter how complicated its thoughts, it could always seem dispassionate when it presented them. It could even make her believe it was disinterested in the end of the Unity.

  For most of her life, that was how she’d tried to make herself sound. She had not always succeeded. But it was how she had always wanted to feel.

  Coral was red-faced from so long spent working the sails’ lines alone. Osia had been afraid that, in the two days since Osia had gotten this close to thir, thi would have degenerated, become like Ira and Braeloris. But the look thi gave Osia was more tired than baleful. Thir blond hair was askew. Thir eyes remained piercing, and that was all.

  “I’m not getting any closer to shore,” thi said. “I can’t sail safely alone. Not unless you release Straton to come help.”

  “This is as far as I need,” Osia told thir. Their progress here had been unsteady, but better than Osia had expected with so small a crew. Fortunate, though, that Osia had only needed to sail in a direction rather than to a specific place.

  “And now you’ll just allow Straton and me to move along?”

  “If I’m ashore, I can’t stop you from going.”

  “That’s a pile of shit. Now that we’re here, what’s next?” Thir voice broke. “Kill us yourself, or just tell them where to find us?”

  Osia had to keep playing the villain. It was the only way Coral could see her, the only thing thi would believe. She said, “I will not tell the partisans about you.”

  “You don’t think they’ll make you tell? Do you know who you’re working with? They’re not nice to anyone who holds out on them. They’ll torture you to find out.”

  “So don’t tell me which direction you and Straton are headed. By the time they compel me to say anything, you’ll be long gone.”

  “Why do you want to get to them so badly?”

  “I’ve got a lot of bad choices to make. No matter how bad my options are, I believe there’s always a correct choice. This is where I need to go to find out what it is.”

  Coral stared. But Osia had known that would bounce of thir. She had said it more for herself.

  Thi said, “Even after all this time, I didn’t think I knew you. But I thought I knew you better than this.”

  Osia held Coral’s gaze. “Did you?”

  Osia had lived with her constructs for thirty years, but she had never told them much about herself. Not where she had come from. Not why she had joined Ways and Means. Nor why she had left it. They knew only that she wanted their company, and also that mostly she ignored them.

  “If we had known you, we would have stopped you long ago.”

  Osia nodded to the aftcastle, where she had dragged and bound Straton two days ago.

  Straton lay out of sight below the aftcastle railing. She had tied his arms and ankles with cord taken from their spare lines. Straton probably had the strength to break free, but she figured the sound of it would give her warning. She had let him and Coral talk, on occasion, to prove to Coral that he was still alive.

  “We’re through here,” Osia said. “You can go get Straton.”

  She did not have to worry about him breaking free now. He was dead.

  Three hours ago, she’d approached him. Since the other constructs had destroyed their memory cells the moment they’d died, she’d figured that the only way to get his was to take it while he was still alive. She must have been too obvious. As soon as she had crouched over him, he jerked, spasmed. Infrared sparks flared up and down his body. His memory cells were gone, burnt out.

  Osia had positioned him near the railing, letting Coral see him, think he was still alive. He would have needed to collapse from exhaustion about then, anyway.

  Every task in its proper order.

  “Coral,” Osia said, as thi passed by.

  Coral stopped, turned. There was no question on her lips. She already seemed to know that there would be something else, that Osia had not told her everything.

  “Call for Straton. See if he answers.”

  It took only a moment. Thi glanced to the forecastle, and then thir head snapped back. Thi understood why Osia would do this, what she wanted thir to find. Thir eyes widened. There was a flash of heat in them, of terror.

  Osia could no
t be so obvious about getting the memory cells this time.

  The way out was not just to play the villain. It was to be the villain. The virus had deeply ingrained itself into her constructs – and Osia had bet that their personalities affected it too. She had seen it happen before. The virus saw through Coral’s eyes, thought with her thoughts.

  If she was going to take this last chance to get a memory cell, she needed Coral shattered, lost between shock and rage and grief. Too distracted to think. The virus would be too. She needed its attention, and Coral’s, on her voice, her eyes, the still body on the upper deck.

  Anywhere other than Osia’s feet bracing against the deck.

  Osia’s fingers had not been made to cut. But she did have strength and leverage. Her blow was messy but it struck true.

  Coral had no subdermal armor. Thir skin on thir abdomen was no more difficult to punch through than an ordinary human’s. Slime spattered Osia’s forearm, a swill of false blood and rapidly solidifying liquid crystal emulsion.

  Osia’s sense of time stilled. At the speed with which this virus worked, she likely did not have the time to let Coral finish thir indrawn breath.

  Osia did not waste time physically seeking a memory cell. It would likely be a burnt husk by the time she pulled it out. As fast as her fingers moved, neural impulses moved faster. Nanowire filaments extruded from Osia’s fingertips. They wrapped around the tightly wound threads of Coral’s nervous system.

  This virus could easily travel back up the connection, poison Osia too. Her safeguards were not invulnerable. But if that had been the preferred method of assassinating her, Osia was sure it would have happened already.

  She need not have been concerned. Her intrusion programs broke through the virus’s initial quarantines, stifled its countermeasures. The virus had been a match for her constructs, but not for her. Its security countermeasures were civilian-grade software. Hers were a step beyond military.