by C. Gockel
Oliver paused, sniffed, and for a moment, James had hope. And then the kid released another ear-splitting wail.
This was obviously why the other James had avoided small people at all costs.
Sighing, James picked up the screaming toddler and affixed the mask. It was a semi-circle of plastic that extended around his jaw. It sucked in CO2, and expelled oxygen around Oliver’s nose and mouth. It didn’t look cumbersome or uncomfortable; it didn’t trap hot air around his face. Oliver still immediately tried to remove it. James was tempted to let him, but didn’t know how much strain the kid’s heart could take in a day.
Holding the mask in place, James carried him to the door. “Come on, Oliver, let’s go play in the elevator.”
The wail immediately ceased. Oliver wiggled and nearly tumbled from James’s arms. James set him down, and the toddler ran down the hall, shouting happily, “Space shit!” making a passing Atlantian blanch.
“Really, can you argue with him?” James asked, smacking his hand down on the access ladder shaft door as Oliver tried to open it.
The Atlantian rolled his eyes and slipped into his quarters.
“He doesn’t have a sense of humor, either,” James said, looking down at Oliver, only to find the toddler had already waddled off to the elevator and had hit the call button.
A few minutes later, Oliver was bouncing on his feet in front of the control panel. Anticipating another wailing fit, James hauled him up to let him press them. “Rights!” Oliver cried happily as he pressed every single button.
They rode the elevator up to the deck just below the bridge, and then down to the lowest deck. And then they did it again. And again. Because he was bored, James's mind was in the ether when the elevator stopped at Deck 7 where Kyun and Jun stood, both burdened with heavy pieces of engineering equipment. And because he was in the ether, he knew the minute Wren searched for his location. James waited for the moment Wren contacted him, but it didn’t come. He barely registered Kyun saying, “Well, we can tell those tick operators their carbon filter and drive box are replaced.”
Jun groaned as Kyun tried to maneuver the wide, flat thing that might be a carbon filter into the small space. “They can sleep there instead of sharing our quarters!”
Oliver squirmed, and James set him down.
“You watching him?” Kyun asked.
“Why, you want to trade?” James asked.
“No way,” said Kyun.
“He ran under the filter!” shouted Jun.
“Damn, I could have dropped it on him,” said Kyun.
“Get out of my way,” said James to Kyun, who was still blocking the exit.
“Awww, it’s all right,” said Jun. “There’s not anything back there he can get hurt on.” He looked up. “I don’t think.”
James went to the side, just as Kyun went to the same side, and then they both moved out of each other’s way, only to be still in each other’s way. James groaned and stood motionless.
“Oops, I’ll move, just a minute,” said Kyun, sliding into the lift. James bolted out, and his eyes got wide. The airlock door was open. The tick Kyun and Jun had been working on was docked there. If the door to the tick was open … James skidded to a halt by the door. The outer door was safely sealed. The boy was confined to the cramped space of the airlock. And Oliver’s mask was still on, which James counted as a victory.
Letting out a breath, he watched Oliver’s head disappear behind a winch nearly as large as he was. A poly-coated cord wrapped around the winch. At one end of it, it had an electromagnet as wide as James’s two hands spread, and the other end could plug into a palm-sized power outlet in the wall. It wasn’t plugged in at the moment, and it was high above Oliver’s head. A few minutes ago, James might have thought it would be impossible for the toddler to reach it, but after turning Jun, Kyun, and himself into the twenty-fifth century versions of The Three Stooges, he decided he wouldn’t take his eyes off of him. James leaned against the door frame, bemused. The little ball of larval human had outwitted, or at least surprised, two adult humans and the computational might of at least one time gate.
Oliver poked the end of the magnet with his metal cybernetic hand. “Whatz?”
“We had to reel in the tick when their engine died,” James said, remembering Noa’s curses.
“Whatz?” said Oliver again.
James's brow furrowed. Of course the child didn’t understand.
He heard the access ladder open, and two sets of footsteps. “Hello, Wren,” he said aloud, not bothering to turn around. To the boy beside him, he spoke over the ether. “Hey, Raif.”
“Hey, James,” said Raif across the channel. “What are you doing?”
“Watching Oliver,” James said to the older boy over the channel, not moving from his place in the door frame.
“Professor Sinclair,” Wren said, walking over to stand beside James. “Just the man we wanted to see.”
James smelled sweat and fear on the other man. He turned to face Wren, but the stunner bolt from Wren’s hand exploded into James’s side in nearly the same instant. It was an older device, and the force of the unexpected charge threw James off balance, momentarily pinning him against the door frame.
Raif screamed, “No!”
Recovering, James reached out to grab the wide-eyed Wren. The other man lurched to the side and back, but James's fingers caught the fabric of his shirt collar. James gave a ferocious yank forward, Wren twisted, there was a loud rip, and Wren tumbled backward against the outer airlock door, leaving a piece of soft, frayed fabric between James's fingers. Blinking in shock, James's gaze shifted to Wren, sitting on the floor, leaning against the door, upraised stunner still in his hands.
Oliver screamed. Raif was chanting something unintelligible.
Feeling his body charging from the stun bolt, his processors blazing bright with anger, James almost lunged—and then through the haze of his fury realized that Wren wasn’t pointing the stunner at him—Wren was aiming at Oliver’s head, his body blocking the toddler's escape from the airlock.
“Oliver!” James shouted.
The toddler tried to jump over Wren’s outstretched legs, but the man easily caught the boy and jerked him onto his lap. A stun to an adult's head could be deadly; for a toddler, it definitely would be.
James let the visual of the scene project over the ether to Noa, along with a curt command. “Talk to Raif, I’m going to try and reason with Wren.”
He felt Noa’s attention shift from whatever she was doing and felt her comprehension. He knew she’d contacted the older boy when he heard Raif say aloud, “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know …” in a sob that was almost a song.
Not closing his channel, letting Noa hear and see what he was seeing, James said, “What are you doing, Wren? Let that boy go, and you’ll live, kill him and your life is—”
“Live?” Wren cried, shaking the crying Oliver hard enough to dislodge his mask. “You saw the time gate! There’s no way we’re going to fix it. We’re going to die out here!”
James held up his hands. “No, Wren, you’re wrong. The band isn’t damaged. We’ll repair the disperser ring …”
“With what?” Wren demanded over Oliver’s cries, leaning against the door and sliding to his feet.
“Our own charge dispersers if we need to,” James said. Hadn’t Manuel complained that the Ark needed more dispersers than its size indicated simply because it was old and inefficient?
“Then this hunk of junk will be even more useless,” Wren muttered.
James corrected him as gently as he could over Oliver’s cries. “Then we’ll be safe with One.”
Wren’s hand shook.
“Dad, don’t!” Raif said. He tried to rush past James, and almost succeeded. James held out an arm and just barely blocked him in time.
Tightening his hold on Oliver, Wren snarled, “Don’t think you can use him against me, he’s useless!”
Raif gasped.
“Wren
, what can you possibly get from this?” James asked. “The only way you can survive is by putting the boy down, and giving this up.”
Wren’s jaw tightened. Raif shook against James’s arm. He heard the ladder access hatch open, and in his mind Gunny’s voice was cool and calm. “I’m here for you, James. The commander is, too, and—”
“Tell them to stay back!” Wren shouted, sliding sideways, and tightening his hold on Oliver so much that the child gasped.
James felt the bright white spark of insight. “You wanted me, not him.” For parts? James thought of the Luddecceans who had tried to apprehend him on Adam’s Station. Wren had been on the Luddeccean vessel, had been there during the firefight at Adam's Station … he knew the Luddecceans were still looking for James. “Put him down, and I’ll go with you,” James said. If Wren just let go of the boy, he could overpower him.
Noa’s voice whispered over the ether, “Oh, James …” It was the first time she’d reached out to him. She’d obeyed his order to communicate with Raif, but when she’d become worried for him, she’d broken the promise. Both actions were sweetly satisfactory. He wanted to tell her that she didn’t have to worry about Wren stunning him, but … couldn’t.
For a moment, Wren’s face relaxed, and James could see him considering the option. He silently willed Wren to put the boy down.
Ghost’s voice jumped to life in the ether. “Commander, I don’t have control of Deck 7’s airlock.”
White flashed behind James's eyes. The airlock was out of ether control.
His eyes slid to Wren’s shoulder, abutting the edge of the outer door—right where the door latch mechanism was. There was a tick still attached to the vessel. Without a vacuum on the other side, the double safety latch wouldn’t be on. James’s arm trembled. Wren wouldn’t have to spin the handle set in the wall, all he would have to do was—
Wren knocked the button behind his shoulder. The airlock opened.
“Wren—” James said.
“No!” Raif screamed, ducking under James’s trembling arm, and lunging toward his father. James strode forward, trying to pull him back.
Stepping backward into the tick, holding the wailing Oliver, Wren fired the stunner at Raif. It hit the boy dead in the stomach and he flew into James’s chest.
James caught the boy just in time to see the outer airlock door close.
Sliding Raif to the floor, he ran to the controls.
“Briggs, take Raif to medical,” Noa commanded one of Sterling's men.
James pressed the airlock release button, but the door would not open. A siren sounded.
“He’s unlatched the tick! It’s a vacuum out there!” Gunny said. “Stop, James!”
Noa’s voice flooded the ether. “Wren, what are you doing? You’re heading to your death.”
Everything seemed wrong, and backward. James felt like his thought processors were firing backwards, and it made his skin itch. “It’s me you want,” James said across the same channel. “Oliver is worthless to you!”
He heard Noa’s mind reaching to Sterling’s men on guard in Airlock 1. “Can you incapacitate the tick pulling away from Airlock 7 without harming the occupants?”
The response came from Manuel. “No, Commander! That tick is a GN-2301 model. It won’t withstand a phaser rifle shot—let alone a blast from a phaser launcher!”
“Commander?” the guards in Airlock 1 responded.
“Hold your fire!” Noa commanded.
Wren's channel pinged James. He let the other man's thoughts into his own. “Sorry, James, you’re a bit too much for me to handle. But Oliver isn’t worthless. How much do you think a parent will pay for a toddler’s heart?”
Manuel’s voice flooded the ether. “Wren, his heart is high-end cybernetics and derives its energy from his living tissues. As soon as you kill him, his heart dies. It’s worthless to you!”
“I’m sure the sawbones can deal with that,” Wren replied.
James heard a clang against the hull. The tick was disengaging, but had not yet pulled away. His eyes slid to the electromagnetic anchor. All he had to do was close the inner airlock door, plug it in, open the outer airlock, toss that anchor out into the black, and turn it on. Without a way to escape, Wren was bound to surrender. It would mean exposure for James—there would be no way to hide his nature if he allowed himself to be sucked up into the vacuum. He didn’t care. The humans couldn’t do it. There was too little time for them to put on their suits—or for the men suited up, and at the ready in the first and second airlocks to come here and activate the electromagnetic tow rope.
He tried to order his body to move toward the inner door, to close it … and his feet wouldn’t move. He tried to move toward the winch. And again he was frozen.
People were talking around him. The ether was exploding with questions. He could see the ship through the Ark’s cameras disengage from the hull. He heard the other ticks’ operators reaching for Noa, asking for directions, and her response. He felt Manuel reach for a strange ether channel … “Hisha, I’ve lost him! I’ve lost him,” and realized that Manuel was reaching for his dead wife.
At the same time, Noa said, “He must be rendezvousing with one of the ships we’ve been seeing in the cluster.” He heard her curse and saw the moment the tick crossed to the debris that shielded the Kanakah Gate from the rest of the cloud, and then the ship was out of range—or its signal was disrupted by the obstacles. It would be able to slip through the cluster, unlike the Ark, and could rendezvous with a ship, and be gone before the Ark could reach the other side.
A fire within heated James's skin. He remembered jumping into oncoming fire to save the boy, and throwing himself over a wall and into a channel to deliver a replacement heart. He’d done those things for Noa. His eyes slid to Oliver’s mask, still softly hissing as it released oxygen. He’d failed …
His skin heated. Could cyborgs feel pride? Because for the first time, he wanted to rescue the little boy who’d nearly gotten him killed twice for his own sake. An idea formed in his mind. He wanted to turn to Gunny and say, “I have a plan …” But again found he could not.
Why?
And then he felt a dark thread of suspicion unwind in the circuitry that was his mind. He’d risked his life before for Noa, even when he’d saved others. Maybe he couldn’t risk himself for anyone else? Just like he couldn’t love anyone else.
With a growl muffled by his jaw's inability to form the right shape, he pounded his arms against the airlock door … He wasn’t as in control of himself as he’d thought. He raised his head. He wanted to scream … and couldn’t. He turned to the humans standing just outside the airlock. His mind leaped into the ether and he did scream.
Noa saw James brace his hands against the outer airlock door. His sleeves were pushed up to his elbows and his tattoos were so dark his skin was almost black.
She issued orders to one of Sterling’s men in Airlock 1 to report to Airlock 7. She knew the man would be too late, they’d never cast the electromagnetic anchor out in time, but she had to try.
James turned, his face perfectly expressionless, but his hands were balled into fists. That was the only warning she had before the general ether erupted in a scream of rage so pure that for a moment, her vision went completely red. She felt her fingers stiffen, as though she were preparing to claw at someone, but the anger was so intense she couldn’t bring herself to move.
Someone down the hall echoed the scream of rage … it took a moment for Noa to realize it was Manuel.
The red faded and she was staring at an avatar of James projected over the general ether. It was wearing the gear he’d worn at Atlantia. S8O5 rose up behind James’s avatar—as well as sun magnifiers. A roof—was it the roof he’d jumped from? His avatar's face was livid with rage. She heard someone gasp, and realized that James’s emotions, and his ability to project scenes, were probably alien to everyone aboard the ship except for her.
He raised his hand and pointed at Noa. “You will
order me to go after him?”
For a moment, she stood in shock. Was it a question, or a demand?
And suddenly the scene shifted and they were falling through the night. She felt the cold certainty of death and heard James’s last words as he threw himself from the roof. “I have Oliver’s heart.”
Black swirled around James's avatar. The black was the water of Atlantia, she realized, just in time for the scene to shift again. She was staring up at 6T9 reaching down from the elevator on Luddeccea, and once again, James projected his certainty that he had reached his end.
“Oliver can’t die!” His avatar screamed.
Noa felt her heart constrict, feeling what he was saying. See what I suffered? See what I endured? The universe cannot be this unjust.
The universe didn’t care about justice. Noa’s jaw hardened. But she could. “Of course we’re going to go after them,” she said aloud and into the ether. “No one is going to get away with selling augment parts.” That was the way to chaos.
Sterling and Chavez’s channels made lights flash in her neural interface. Her apps tagged their emotional response as admiration, determination, and relief.
“You’ll send me,” James’s avatar said, his jaw tight, mouth twisted in a look of determination he’d never made in the real world.
She didn’t want to send him. She’d rather go herself, with Gunny, and—
Gunny’s avatar materialized beside her. “James is a good choice, Commander. I’ll want him on my team.”
Noa couldn’t breathe.
Gunny thoughts whispered softly. “Manuel needs to stay … and so do you, Commander. You’re the only one who can hold this ship together.”
Noa swallowed. Her hands clenched at her sides, nails biting into her palms. “James, you’ll go with Gunny,” she said aloud. “Gunny, assemble the rest of your team.”
“Thank you,” James said. The vision of the final battle on Luddeccea’s surface faded, and Noa was staring at James—the real James. He nodded at her. “He has to have a contact, someone he’s meeting. That tick can’t go very far.” He turned to Gunny. “I have an idea.”