by C. Gockel
Noa's eyes got hot. “Is … is … the other Ashley …?”
Agent Ashley took a step toward her and held out her hand as though she wanted to brush Noa's cheek. “I don't know,” she replied, dropping her hand and looking uncomfortable.
Noa looked down. “Oh.” A light at the edge of her vision went on, warning her that the oxygen in the room was decreasing.
“Ashley, we have to get our mother into a coffin. Eight is probably preparing to depressurize this chamber,” a man said. Noa's eyes darted to the speaker. A Eurasian man was climbing out of the first casket. He looked to be in his mid forties and was dressed in a suit. “Mom,” he said, gesturing to Noa. “Come, get in quickly.”
The light at the side of Noa's vision was blinking more rapidly. Still she hesitated. “Mom?”
Beside another casket, James raised his head. “Errr … I'll explain later.”
A woman's voice came from the casket next to James. “Explain what, Dad?
Agent Ashley put a hand on Noa's arm. “I think I understand what he's doing! Quick, you and your pet need to get into a coffin.” Noa looked down at her hand. The light in her mind began blinking madly.
“Eight might depressurize this place next!” the Eurasian man said. “You'll die, Mom.”
She heard a whooshing noise and Carl Sagan squeaked beside her ear. Something made her snap out of her shock, and Noa handed her rifle to Ashley, ran toward the coffin, and practically vaulted in. “I would never hurt you,” Ashley said. “You must know that.” The whooshing grew louder, and another light began to blink at the side of Noa's vision, telling her the pressure in the room was decreasing. The lid of the coffin slammed shut. Airtight, it was sound proof to the outside, and Noa watched as Ashley said something above her, and then disappeared. The Eurasian man put his hands on the glass, and Noa read his lips as he said, “I love you, Mom.” A moment later, he was gone, and Noa was staring up at the ceiling, shaken, shocked, and terrified that their scheme wasn't going to work. She took a deep breath of too-thin air, and felt a bite in her lungs.
She couldn't think of any of that. She had to stay positive. She needed a joke.
“Well, Carl Sagan, remember how I called Airlock1 a coffin?” The werfle made a noise that sounded like a sneeze. She patted his head. “Not so funny now, is it?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
What looked like a shiny trickle of fluid at the corner of the wall by the door caught James's attention. For a barely perceptible instant, his vision went white. It wasn't liquid; it was tiny 'bots. To Monica's agent husband, James shouted, “If you want to help your mother, stop the 'bots from entering by the door.”
Pulling back from the casket with Noa, eyes wide, the agent ran to the door and started stepping on the tiny machines.
Turning his attention to the agent in the next casket, James found a woman who looked to be in her late twenties wearing engineering coveralls. Her eyes were still closed although he'd entered the sequence to begin her wake cycle. He reached across the hard link … the woman's eyes went wide. They were blue like his, although her facial structure appeared Han Chinese. “Hello, James,” she said aloud and over the link.
“I have had an injury. I don't remember your name or your purpose, but if your purpose is located on Luddeccea—”
The agent's eyes got wider still. “Yes!”
“—you need to join me before Eight destroys Luddeccea and your purpose. If you don't, I'm shutting you down.”
“You're not giving me any choice,” the agent observed.
“I don't have time for choices. Do you accept?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Eight's diatribe on the Qcomm attests that what you say is true.” Her delicate jaw got hard. “I accept.”
Plugging the augment key into a data drive by the main port, James said, “I need to give you the programming you'll need. Please enter your security clearance.”
“I do not like this,” she murmured, but did as James asked.
A moment later, he'd given her a data dump of the layout of the station and other logistics while subtly changing her programming. When he yanked out the port and the key, her eyes went wide again. “Dad!”
“Mom's in trouble,” James said. “You need to get up and help your brothers and sisters.”
“Yes!” she agreed, pulling herself out of the casket.
Where she was bracing herself against the casket blocking the door, Agent Ashley said, “I understand what you're doing. If you have a spare hard link and augment key, I can reprogram the others.”
James ran to the next casket. There were three more agents to go. The casket Agent Ashley was braced against shook, and he could hear a thumping from behind. “I wish I did.”
“I have a hard link and an augment key,” said the agent he'd just awakened, pulling both from her tool belt. “Switch,” she declared, and moved toward Ashley … but then stopped, staring into the casket that contained Noa. “Mom ...”
“Now, Chen!” Ashley cried, holding out her hands. James felt a burst of static along his spine. The others knew each other—knew him.
“We have to save her,” Ashley implored.
“You've locked her in a coffin!” Chen cried. “She has to be scared.” But she took Ashley's place, saying angrily, “Not cool, Dad!”
“Shut up!” said Monica's husband Ryan. “Dad had to do that! The oxygen in here is too low for a human.”
“It's still terrible,” Chen said, bracing herself as something beyond the door shook the casket.
Grunting, Ryan stomped on a 'bot. “Shut up.”
Jamming the end of a hard link into an agent who looked like a sixteen-year-old girl, James began to see another flaw in Noa's and his already unraveling plan. Sibling squabbles seemed to be a matter of convergent evolution for both humans and cyborgs.
Noa surveyed the ceiling above her. “We're not moving, Carl Sagan.” Noa had only been five minutes in her coffin and she was already thinking about knocking on the polyglass in front of her nose and asking to be let out. “We're not being shot at. I should be relieved.”
The werfle squeaked.
“How long do you think we can survive in here, Carl Sagan? A few hours? Maybe the other agents won't be on our side.” She gulped, imagining them ganging up on Ashley and James, and Eight allowing her to slowly suffocate within the coffin. She tried to peer to the coffin's left and right, but the angle didn't permit her to see much of anything.
Rolling over on her stomach, Noa began probing the seal of the container with her fingers. “Maybe if I just loosen it—”
Carl Sagan gave an alarmed squeak, and Noa dropped her hands. “Maybe if I break the seal, I'll depressurize like the vault outside and our blood will boil and we'll die.” She closed her eyes. She wanted to reach into the ether and ask James what was happening, but the local ether would be controlled by Eight. The coffin was cold, but she felt herself begin to sweat. “Nebulas, is claustrophobia going to be one of my neuroses now? What a useless starman I'm becoming.”
A shadow crossed Noa and there was a thunk above. Twisting her body, she saw a little boy sitting astride the coffin as though it was a horse. Grinning, he waved down at her and mouthed the words, “Hi, Mom!”
Noa tentatively waved back. The boy's head jerked up, he reached out, and a moment later, he caught something. Noa gaped. He was holding a phaser rifle—a fully automatic phaser rifle that could fire three thousand rounds a minute—hunting was one thing but … “That is not an appropriate firearm for a child, Carl Sagan!”
The boy bent his head to her, and she read his lips. “Brace yourself!”
Still on her stomach, Noa stretched out her arms and put her feet on the walls on either side of her as best she could. She felt the coffin lift. “Ah, Carl Sagan, that's better—”
The front end of the coffin was suddenly coming toward her head and Carl Sagan was rolling past her face, and then a moment later she was sliding backward along with the werfle. “They're swinging u
s!” There was a sort of muffled thud that reminded Noa of the sound of an impact on a space ship—something she felt as much as heard.
There was another rapid thud, but instead of being flung, Noa felt like she was being pulled back and forth in rapid succession. “Are they using us as a battering ram?” Noa looked up to see the little boy on top of the coffin, mouth open in a silent scream, plasma flares flowing in a nearly seamless stream. It reminded her of child fighters of Six who'd been desensitized to combat and became more brutal than adults. “We're going to have to talk to his father about that,” Noa said. Jostled out of position, she slid into the front of the coffin. The coffin shook and fell. If it hadn't been so well padded, Noa thought she might have bit off the end of her tongue. The front began to get warm, and then hot. Noa and Carl Sagan drew back and Carl Sagan gave a startled squeak.
There was a sigh as the plexiclear panel opened. Noa's ears popped, and with the first breath she didn't need her apps to tell her the air was oxygen rich and had normal pressure. She smelled plasma fire, hot metal, and burnt dust. It was quiet, and she had no idea where they were. Noa swallowed, remembering the masses of 'bots they'd seen in the station. She was amazed they'd made it as far as wherever they were.
“Mom, quick, get out,” said a young woman's voice.
Grabbing Carl Sagan, Noa pulled herself up.
“Don't touch the casket!” the girl said. Noa's eyes got very large. The capsule was orange with heat. One of those impacts she'd felt had to have been from a plasma cannon.
“Right,” she said, putting a booted foot on the edge and jumping out. The girl held out a hand to steady her. They were in an airlock. One door had a sign that said “Emergency stairwell” and the other said “Tarmac 5.” By the door to the tarmac, a female agent dressed in engineering clothes was sitting on her heels, elbows deep within a section of wall that Noa was 99% sure was supposed to be covered by paneling. Beside her, James was hard linking with the Luddeccean Premier. Noa blinked. An agent, again, obviously. She swallowed. So they had considered impersonating people in power, not just collecting data. The boy with the plasma rifle, Ashley, and another man were also with James and the premier. The agents all had weapons that had bits of metal and poly attached to their stocks—they looked like they'd been yanked off Eight's 'bots. As though sensing Noa's attention, Ashley—Agent Ashley, Noa corrected herself—looked up. The expression on the agent's face was filled with such deep concern that Noa had to look away. Once James had looked at her like that. Noa's thumb went to her missing fingers. She had to put it out of her head. The girl beside Noa touched her shoulder. “Mom, we need to get you in a suit. There's one in the emergency locker.”
“Right,” said Noa, letting herself be guided over to the indicated locker, and pulling out a suit.
The girl beside her whispered, “Mom, so my other brothers and sisters … they're adopted, aren't they?”
Noa's head jerked in the girl's direction, and for the first time, Noa really saw her. She was beautiful. Dark hair in loose ringlets cascaded past her shoulders. Her wide eyes were a rich brown, she had full lips, and skin that was exactly the shade you'd get if you combined Noa and James. The agent's appearance was perfectly Afro-European and the other agents … Noa looked to the other agents standing beside the tarmac door. The other agents looked more obviously Asian—except for James and Ashley, of course. All of the agents were staring at Noa and the girl now. Ashley was rubbing the bridge of her nose, James was wincing, the rest had wide shocked eyes—as though they'd just learned they'd been adopted. Noa thought they knew they were agents, but maybe there was some messiness in their “family app.” Touching the girl's arm, but focusing on James, Noa said, “We'll discuss this later, darling.” Grimacing, James shrugged and held up his hands in a gesture of supplication. Noa turned her attention to the other “children.” She wasn't a great liar. Sucking in a deep breath of air, she managed to say, “I love you all … equally.” That seemed to satisfy everyone. They turned away, except Ashley, who still looked at Noa the way James once had. The girl put Carl Sagan into the duffel bag with a CO2 converter and Noa hurriedly put on her suit. As soon as Noa was done, she walked over to the agents. They'd gotten a multi-hard link port from somewhere and more line. They were afraid to speak aloud, and couldn't use the ether on Eight, and evidently hadn't felt comfortable using their “Qcomm,” whatever it was. The little boy with the rifle handed one of the lines to her. Lifting the visor of her suit, Noa plugged it in.
Noa found herself in a detailed mindscape of the airlock they were in, but with the door open. Her eyes fell on the starboard side of her ship, only thirty meters away. Completely repaired, just as James had said it would be, but the hatch was closed. To get in, she'd have to get underneath and use the ether override panel and her access codes—which would be difficult while being fired on by the swarm of 'bots. To the avatars of the agents that stood around her, Noa asked, “What's your plan?”
Frowning, the avatar of Agent Ashley said, “James suggested we run in, guns blazing.”
Noa's gaze shot to James.
He gave her a sad crooked smile. “I learned from the best, what can I say?”
Noa turned quickly away from his easy display of emotion and focused on the conjured imagery of the anti-incendiary crates that contained the explosive devices she'd been taking to Luddeccea. They sat on the tarmac just a few paces from her ship.
“But …?” Noa asked. There had to be a “but” in the sadness of that smile.
“We can't open the doors from the tarmac to the airlocks the ships pass through,” James replied. “We can't overwhelm Eight's ether. We tried …”
Chen looked up from where she worked on the floor. “I thought I could short circuit all the local hotspots, but Eight was able to reroute the 'bots' control within nanoseconds.”
Noa nodded to herself. Getting out of this alive hadn't been their first objective.
The little boy beside Noa took her hand. “We can upload ourselves.” Noa looked down at his small, pixyish face. “But not you.”
“I won't upload myself,” James muttered.
“What is your problem, Dad?” Noa heard another say, in a distant, far-off way. Noa was still looking at the little boy whose name she didn't know. She was afraid to ask, lest her ignorance short circuit his programming. He had brown eyes, with flecks of gold around the irises. So much care had gone into his creation. He squeezed her hand and whispered. “Mom, I don't want to upload myself without you.”
Noa's lips parted. In her gut, a very primal sense of maternal protectiveness was uncoiling. This little 'bot or cyborg was why 'bots weren't supposed to look human, but she found herself squeezing his hand. “Who am I to argue with millions of years of evolution?” she whispered.
He tilted his head. “Mom?”
Across the link, James said, “I always thought you were going to be the one to get us killed, but it looks like it is going to be my fault. Sorry, Commander.”
To the group he said, “We'll ignite the explosives with our phaser—”
“No,” Noa said, squeezing the little boy's hand, furious at James for already conceding defeat. “Give me the schematics of the inner wall of the gate. We're not giving up on getting out of this thing alive.” She pointed at Agent Ashley. “And you will not do any fission blastedly stupid self-sacrificing again, either.”
Ashley gaped, and then the schematics of the inner wall were playing in Noa's mind. She felt a twisted, feral smile forming on her lips. “I have a plan.”
Eight was madly trying to reach James through the ether. Gripping a stolen pistol in one hand, and a casket handle in the other, James gritted his teeth and ignored the ceaseless pinging. He was protected from the still-hot material of the casket by a glove borrowed from the suit locker. Chen was still working on getting the door to the tarmac open. Ashley, the premier, and Ryan were also gripping casket handles with free hands, and also were armed. Noa stood by the side of the door, a rifle
James had stolen from a 'bot in her grip, a pistol in her belt. The agent boy whose name he didn't know stood beside her, his own rifle ready. The girl who'd declared herself his and Noa's only biological child had the duffel with Carl Sagan and all their food supplies strapped over her back. In either hand she grasped a salvaged pistol.
“Almost ready!” Chen said.
To the room, Noa said, “If I don't make it, the ether override code to the ship is 394567-Alpha-Bravo-Thomas-William-Xray-69345. The panel is at the center of the aft hatch, you'll see it.”
The small boy said, “You have to make it!”
She did. James didn't want to be found by Fleet without Noa to act as an ambassador.
“Ashley and I will go first,” James said, even as he dreaded it. To the boy and the girl he said, “You go next, Mom between you. Ryan, Leetier, Chen take the rear.”
Noa briefly met James's eyes. “You're our best pilot,” he said by way of explanation, and it was true. Noa looked away, too quickly, and closed her visor. James felt no sense of failure, but that strange emptiness was there. Maybe it was just the memory of the emotion of before that caused that sensation?
Ryan said, “Mom, you asked for schematics of the inner ring wall. The ship's cannons aren't enough to blow through that.”
The thumping at the door to the stairwell grew louder. James felt heat on his back. They must be trying to cut their way through now.
“I'm not going to use the ship's cannons to blow through it,” Noa assured him, shouting to be understood through her helmet and over the noise behind them.
“Then what—” Ryan began.
“She knows what she's doing,” James proclaimed, worried that Chen's manual disablement of the stairwell door wouldn't hold. “Be ready.”
“Got it!” Chen cried. The door to the tarmac whooshed open, and Noa fired into the darkness. In the glow of her phaser fire, James saw writhing bodies of 'bots. Their collective hum almost drowned out the sound of the 'bots trying to enter from behind.