by C. Gockel
Anita vanished before he could explain that he knew they could believe she was real, that Noa had believed he was “real,” too. He blinked. That was only an observation now. It no longer felt like a revelation, a near religious epiphany. It was like noticing Neptune's hue. He looked out at the sapphire planet. Its hue was gorgeous …
“James!” Frederick called. “When are you going to get your Qcomm channel to the gates permanently fixed?”
“Never,” said James. “I don't like them in my head all the time.” He suddenly realized the whole room was quiet, and all the agents were looking at him.
“What?” he asked.
“You have to go back,” said Joi, her Afro-Eurasian features a picture of dismay. “Eight's going to kill her!”
“Kill who?” said James, and the ether flared—with Eight's thoughts. “This is all wrong … wrong!”
He blinked back into the real world, and was completely unprepared when Noa's thought came crashing into his mind. “Spawn of a bucket of blue-green algae … oh, James, I'm so sorry.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Spawn of a bucket of blue-green algae … oh, James, I'm so sorry,” Noa cried aloud and into the ether. The dry recycler must have been booby-trapped in a way her sensors couldn't detect. Noa's heart fell as the thing crashed into her starboard pulse engine at the same instant another piece of debris that looked like a crock pot plowed into her port side. Lights erupted in her head, telling her that the pulse engines were down. With the port and starboard engines gone, there was no way she could navigate out of this garbage pile, let alone land. She couldn't save the millions on the planet, or him.
Gritting her teeth and dipping her chin, she muttered, “No. There has to be enough junk in this bone yard to fix a pulse engine, there has to be.” If she just turned off her external engines and her time band grav generators to reduce her heat signature, she could hide behind one of the larger pieces and be safe from the patrols. Maybe.
Carl Sagan cheeped, a light on her dash began flashing, and a beeping filled the cockpit. Her eyes flew over the ship's monitors. Someone was trying to contact her by ether. She checked all the read-outs. Nothing indicated any ships in ethernet range of her ship's tiny local network. Someone obviously had a powerful extender—probably disguised in the debris. Noa's eyes widened as her personal channel pinged. Her channel should not be pinging. She was in Luddeccean space and they didn't play with ether, but what was more, that anyone was pinging meant that her personal channel, which no one should know, was known to someone. The ship's ethernet was compromised; if she answered, she was most likely asking for one hell of a headache.
A moment later more pieces of debris spontaneously began to glow; less than a heartbeat later, her phaser cannons were gone.
Carl Sagan squealed. Noa looked up from the monitors and her eyes went wide. The claw-like shape of the robotic repair arm was coming toward her, snapping its pincher-like ends with enough force to crack her cockpit like a rednut. The pinging ether blared from the dash and in her mind. Swallowing, Noa answered.
Static filled her ears. Noa held her breath, and then the static started to form words … at first they sounded like they were stretched too long, but then her mind put together the sound. “Who is this?” a voice demanded.
Noa exhaled. The Luddecceans didn't play with the ether, but they would be scanning frequencies to catch anyone who did. As long as she was on the receiving end, they wouldn't detect her, but answering would be like setting off a flare to the Luddeccean Guard ships just beyond the curve of the planet.
Carl Sagan squealed, and in the corner of her eye, she saw another piece of debris begin to glow; a second later, it hurled toward her ship.
“This is Commander Noa Sato of the Galactic Fleet,” Noa said.
“Commander Noa Sato is dead,” said the voice in her head. There was a clang as the second object hit the port wing, and the ship's gravity vanished for a stomach-lurching second. Directly in front of her, the robotic claw hand opened and its pinchers closed around the tiny ship. Metal squealed and the whole ship groaned. And it was too much. She was so close, to die at the last minute … instead of feeling fear, Noa just felt pissed. Into the ether, she shouted, “Well, in a minute I'm going to be dead, you moldy dung of molting lizzar louse.”
“Her ether has been compromised, someone is impersonating her! And the impersonator knows you are here!” Eight's voice was half between a demand and a wail. “I will kill it. I don't like it.”
Sliding off the counter, James said aloud, “No, wait—there could be another explanation.” Perhaps the Luddecceans were trying to coax him into leaving Eight? If he hadn't changed his programming, he'd probably leave in a nanosecond for Noa.
“You don't care about her, do you?” Eight demanded.
“No,” James said defensively, feeling his tattoos begin to darken with the heat of his annoyance and anger. “If it isn't her, we need to know who it is, and if it is her, we need to know how.”
“Why?” said Eight, turning his thoughts into voice, and blasting it over the intercoms.
“Because it means there is a gap in our intelligence,” James responded, trying to maintain his patience.
“Commander Noa Sato is dead.” Eight directed the words to Noa's ether channel … James's mind had already leapt to monitor it. In the off-chance it was Noa, she possessed intel he didn't have, and it made him feel off balance. His jaw hardened. Better not to alert her that he was here … let her—or whoever—be off balance as long as possible.
“Well, in a minute I'm going to be dead, you moldy dung of molting lizzar louse,” was the response. “Get this giant algae-crusted crab claw off of my ship.”
“That is her,” James said, his mind sparking and imagining a lizzar louse; they were a handspan wide, bright green, and their excrement was—pungent. He had no idea if they molted, or if dried algae could crust. James shook his head. She must be in the debris of the frigate with Eight's peculiar drones.
“Lizzar louses do not possess the intelligence to—”
“We need to find out what she knows,” James snapped.
“Humans lie, and this is the sister of Kenji Sato. We can never trust her.”
Gritting his teeth in frustration, James explained to the empty air, “If you bring her here, I can extract the truth from her.”
Noa's thoughts pierced the ether. “Who is this?” she asked. Even in her thoughts, James could hear the tight set of her jaw, but also the faintest bit of fear. For the first time, he didn't care if she was afraid.
“You do have direct experience in human interrogation techniques,” Eight murmured.
The thought of Noa in pain and terror didn't make his vision go black, or make his hands shake. He wasn't a slave to his programming anymore. James's mouth curled into a thin smile. “That I do.”
The hull was shrieking, the sirens on Noa's dash were blaring. “Who are you?” Noa demanded again. Movement outside made Noa look up. Her jaw fell. The movement was her. She was being towed by the robotic crab thing. Her dash continued to blare, but the hull's shriek lowered to a groan.
Who was she talking to? Shutting off the blaring warnings on her dash, Noa said, “Think Noa, think … it can't be the Luddecceans.”
Carl Sagan gave an inquisitive squeak.
Noa shook her head. “Whoever it is has no qualms about accessing the ether …” Her breath caught. Her brother had said the gates were aware, and hadn't she “talked” to the gates—or a gate—last time she was in this neck of the galaxy? “Am I speaking with Time Gate 8?” Noa asked carefully. Her thumb went to the stumps of her fingers. Outside Noa's vessel, the crab-claw thing cleared the rest of the debris. In just a few minutes the Luddeccean Guard's armada would come into view, and she'd be fired on by the gate, the Guard, or both.
“It has to be Eight.” Or she was dead. She might be dead anyway. Noa exhaled slowly. Hadn't they been on the same side before? There was a diplomatic way to ask this �
�� “Hi, Eight. So, you may remember I asked you if anyone aboard needed a lift last time we met?”
Carl Sagan squeaked on her lap.
“I'm not a diplomat, Carl Sagan,” Noa whispered.
“You were asking for human survivors!” the voice in her mind thundered, making her jerk back.
She opened her mouth … and her words flowed through her lips and the ether. “At the time, I wasn't really sure of that, but as you were so kind as to defend us from the Luddeccean Guard, I asked anyway.”
“I was protecting the archangel, not you,” the voice replied.
An obviously sleep-starved, PTSD-induced, perverse part of her blurted out, “Ouch, that hurts.” But it wasn't the slight that hurt. It was that he-she-it was bringing up James, who was in Luddeccean custody. Who knew what the Luddecceans were doing to him? Had done to him already. She couldn't go to James right away even if she got planetside. She'd need to raise an army, gather intel, track him down … and that would take weeks or months. By that time, all that might be left was vengeance. This little spat was costing her precious time. “Eight, may I call you that? The Luddecceans have James … the archangel. I was on my way to try to help him, but if you drag me into view of the Luddecceans’ armada—”
“Humans lie!” Eight replied.
“I can't help him if I'm shot out of the sky!” Noa roared aloud and into the ether. The desperation in her own voice caught her off guard.
“You will help him,” Eight said, just as the Luddeccean Guard ships surrounding Gate 8 came into view through the scaffold-like structure of the crab-claw 'bot. Noa pulled Carl Sagan close. Was she really going to fly through a blockade? Ahead, she saw lights on a fighter carrier and a cruiser appear to go on—plasma cannons—and if she were right, not warming up so much as swinging in her direction.
Noa dropped Carl Sagan to the floor. He gave an indignant squeal.
“Sorry, need all eight of my fingers,” Noa said, bending over the dash, digits flying. She did not trust the ether controls—not with her ether compromised. She'd turn the ether off, but it was her only communication with … whoever, or whatever. “Time bands, we still have them—even if we don't have engines to propel us forward. I can still use them for phaser deflection.” She gulped. For a little while. The densely packed time bands of the Jachtwerft required a lot of charge dispersers. Charge dispersers got hot. In a vacuum, without the movement of particles to cool the electronics, the heat was usually expelled through the engines even when the ship wasn't in motion. But they weren't working. Noa turned the internal temperature control to maximum, turned on the time bands, and prayed.
Hot air buffeted her, light shone in her eyes, and her stomach rose as gravity in the cabin went up instead of down. The sensors wailed a warning, she heard something banging against the hull, and the crab-like bot was abruptly gone. Another bolt of plasma fire flashed, but Noa's inversion worked just enough. Plasma flowed above the cockpit in a brief river of orange and heat hot enough to make her sensors scream. The monitors outside her ship went dark, even as the scene before her lit up with fire from Eight and the Luddeccean Guard. The cruiser and the fighter carrier turned their guns on the gate, but out of the carrier, Noa saw a squadron of fighters emerge. Their cannons were nothing like a heavy warship, but they'd be able to get close, and there was just so much her gravity-inversion trick could handle. On her dash, a light screamed that the time bands were about to overheat. Gravity died completely, and even the warning lights dimmed. Overhead and below, shapes shot from behind the Jachtwerft. Noa held her breath as pieces of “debris” tore off toward the squadron. Through the cockpit she saw other bits and pieces of … things … attach to the ship's wings. Her internal apps told her she was being towed again—or rather, pushed, but not fast enough. The debris wouldn't be enough to stop the fighters hurtling toward her.
Silver flashed from one of the gate's air locks, and Noa watched as missile-shaped objects launched themselves toward Luddeccea. From where she sat, they looked like a school of silver and white striped fish. Carl Sagan, floating by her ear, gave a squeak.
Noa zoomed in with the Jachtwerft's monitors. The shape of the “fish” was familiar; the white stripes weren't. She sucked in a gasp. “Those aren't warheads,” Noa whispered, “Those are fuel pods … they look like they've been fortified to withstand entry into the atmosphere.” They were the same sort of fuel pods that had made the chrome “forest” she and James had hidden in on the tarmac of Adam's Station. Could the pods have been weaponized? Her heart stilled. Even if they hadn't, the environmental damage they would wreak if they landed on Luddeccea would be devastating—the impact alone would be deadly. When they burst, the environmental damage would leave kilometers uninhabitable for decades. The fighter craft abruptly veered from their course, and the path between Noa and Eight opened up. Noa couldn't help but look down. The cloud cover was scant and her apps were powerful enough that she could guess that they would land near Prime on Luddeccea's most inhabited continent. Noa's entire body went still. She had the feeling that even her thoughts had come to a standstill, and even with the heat in the cockpit on high, her body felt as cold as the void.
James raced down through the concourse of Time Gate 8, swerving around and skipping over drones building other drones. A flash of silver outside the massive windows on the promenade caught his eye. Skidding to a halt, he watched as fuel-pods-turned-warheads dropped silently toward Luddeccea. Noa would be devastated. He did not care. With a skip, he resumed his passage, patting a stunner he'd stolen from the rotting corpse of a guard. His heart leapt. He was free.
Noa clutched Carl Sagan as the cutter was sucked into a dark airlock and rolled to adjust to the station's gravity. Eight hadn't said a word to her since the fuel pods had dropped. She hadn't spoken a word even to Carl Sagan. The ship shook, and starlight spilled into the cockpit from above as the ship was lifted into an industrial area of the station. Above her, she saw the skylights of the inner rim of the gate on either side of the gate's immense time band. Besides the starlight, the tarmac was dark. Noa squinted. In the dark space, she thought she saw moving shapes.
Eight's voice cracked over the ether. “Get out.”
Noa scowled and her jaw got hard, the memory of the fuel pods still making her feel sick. Had she entertained, even for a minute, that she and this thing were on the same side?
“Get out,” Eight said again.
Noa unhitched herself from her seat belt. “Hold your lizzars,” she muttered.
“I do not keep any aboard,” Eight said. “They are dirty and require carbon-based nutrients.”
“Right,” Noa drawled, feeling a dangerous brew of anger and helplessness uncoiling within her. She'd traveled extensively on her home world … had the canisters fallen in the warmer, wetter, southern regions were rice was the main crop? Or in the north … near her former home, near the camps. She straightened and her hands balled into fists. She'd seen excessive force in the Fleet, had used it herself accidentally after bad intel. She couldn't judge this now. If she was stupid and shot off her mouth—as she had in her Fleet days to the intel ops—she might not make it off the station, and she couldn't help anyone if she didn't find a way to get planetside.
Carl Sagan crawled up onto her shoulders. Noa gently disengaged him and set him onto one of the crates. “You'll be safer here, Little Guy,” she said. She looked longingly at a phaser rifle she'd taken out of one of the crates weeks before, but didn't pick it up. If Eight wanted her dead, it could open the airlock and she'd be sucked out into the vacuum in seconds.
“What is taking you so long?” Eight said.
“Coming,” Noa said. Steeling herself, she walked to the hatch and pressed a button in the panel of the inner airlock door. The platform dropped. Cool air rushed into the ship, bringing with it the smell of oil, grease, and metal, but she could see nothing but a spattering of small lights in a space she guessed by the echo to be immense. Hand still on the panel, she diverted all power re
serves from life support to the cabin lights. Light poured from behind her, and in front of her, she heard a masculine, human-sounding gasp.
Noa's jaw dropped. At the bottom of her ship's platform, a man in expensive, casual clothes stood, holding an arm over his eyes to block out the glare. Above the arm she saw familiar dirty blond hair with nearly-white highlights.
“James?” she whispered in shock, taking a step down the ramp, barely daring to hope. She saw a long gash down the side of his face—instead of red, it was black. She wanted to rush toward him, but she could feel something was off. Maybe it was just that she was in the literal belly of the beast—and doubtlessly being watched by Eight. She took another step down the ramp. “James, they hurt you …” She wanted to reach out, but put her hands behind her back. It might not even be James.
He lowered his arm. If it wasn't James, it was his double. Noa swallowed.
The maybe-James smiled. Noa halted in shock. The smile wasn't nice; it was mocking and manic. “Hello, Noa,” the James doppelgänger said. His eyes were bright. Noa's focus darted around him to the scene on the tarmac. Her eyes widened. All around her ship was an army of twisted looking 'bots made of scrap. Their camera eyes were all on her.
“He isn't your slave anymore,” Eight shrieked in her mind. “He's reprogrammed himself. He's free.”
James's smile widened. He slipped his hands into the pockets of his coat and rolled on his feet. “I am free.”
“And he will get the answers of how you came to be here using every method your people used on him!” Eight roared.
James tilted his head. “Mmmm ...” The hand came out of the pocket lightning fast and before Noa could blink or move, a stun caught her in the stomach.