by Rick Partlow
He sagged in his seat, closing his eyes for just a brief second before he began manually programming in a course for the Consensus space station. Behind him, he could hear Sully already on the radio, trying to call his contact, and it reminded him he had a call of his own to make.
He used his neurolink, piggy-backing it onto the shuttle’s transceiver, using the sophisticated military encryption built into his communications implant to attach it to the signal Sully was sending.
Devon, he transmitted. This is Sam. Don’t respond, this signal is only secure one-way. We’re coming in hot and we’re going to need a quick ride out of here. Prep the ship and be ready to go.
And hopefully, she’d be free and able to do just that rather than locked in the Consensus Security brig. Sam turned in his seat, pulling against the restraints until he could look Telia and Fellows in the eye.
“We’re not going to have much time after we dock with Fortuna. I know you both are in the shit here, so I wanted to offer you the chance to go with us to Aphrodite.” He moved his head slightly, the most of a shrug he could give while still under three gravities of acceleration. “It’s not ideal, but at least you’d stay out of a detention cell. For now.”
“I’ll stay here,” Fellows said immediately. “I got friends…maybe not powerful enough to straighten all this shit out, but I think they can keep me in play.” He snorted with what might have been humor, or possibly disgust. “There ought to be someone out here with their head not stuck up their ass.”
Silence for a moment, and Sam thought perhaps Telia was going to let Fellows speak for her as well.
“I’ll go with you,” she decided. “There’s nothing left for me here.”
“All right, then,” Sam sighed the words out. “Maybe when we get home, we can finally figure out how much of what Valley told us was true.”
“Sam.” Priscilla’s expression was somewhere between fond and pitying. “You know me now. You know what I am, and what Jeddah Valley was.”
He did, and he was still trying to process it.
“Whoever you were,” he told her…and himself, “you’re not that person anymore, Pris.”
She smiled wanly at his attempt at comfort.
“The point is, Sam,” she said, “knowing what you know, what the hell makes you think Mother will tell any of us the truth?”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Dauphin City sparkled in the light of its moon, Adonis, full and red and low on the horizon, and Priscilla paused for a step on the transparent walkway, entranced.
“She’s beautiful,” Sam murmured. He was staring at the city with the same longing she felt…and perhaps mixed with the same sense of dread.
She felt the presence of their escort behind them, even if the two, armed Security troopers kept respectfully silent and didn’t try to hurry them along. If they weren’t Consensus Guardians in faceless armor, the two young men and their holstered weapons were still a reminder of how fragile their situation was.
“It’s been a long time for you,” she told Sam, walking again now, taking his arm.
He didn’t hesitate over the vertigo-inducing drop into the heart of the city visible beneath their feet, projected onto the surface of the walkway with more clarity than any glass or plastic could confer. But then, he was a pilot; he didn’t get vertigo and he certainly wouldn’t be afraid of heights.
“It has. For you, too, in a way.”
She understood what he was leaving unsaid. In real terms, she’d only visited Aphrodite once before, and that only for a few days, just after her creation. But her memory of the world was Mother’s.
I remember before it existed, she whispered into his mind. I remember the nanite assemblers building it layer by layer out of bare rock. She sighed in her thoughts, just for him. The memories aren’t mine; that is, they don’t feel personal to me, more a documentary I once watched than a vacation I took.
It must be confusing, he said, very diplomatically, she thought.
It didn’t used to be. In the beginning, it was just who I was. Once I met you…that’s when things got confusing.
A hint of a smile at that, as she’d intended.
There hadn’t been much to smile about on the flight from Earth. They’d barely been able to talk their way out of a holding cell, mostly thanks to the efforts of Fellows and the Guard troops he’d left behind. Mostly, the station administration had let them go because they hadn’t wanted to have to explain why they’d been allowed on Earth in the first place and were happy to see the “damned Rezzies” go.
She’d thought being in the Raven and in Transition Space would have been a relief, but they’d come aboard to the news of several sets of orders in from Aphrodite, each more urgent and annoyed than the last, each demanding their immediate return. The crew had already been keyed up and on edge…and then Sam had decided he had to tell Devon what had happened.
“It’s only fair,” he’d insisted.
They’d been in the ship’s med bay checking on Telia, watching the progress as Carlos Raines replaced most of her right arm with fresh components produced by the ship’s fabricators.
“She’s going to be flying into a political hornet’s nest. She needs to know the situation.”
“She’d be better off if she could claim ignorance,” Priscilla had argued. “I wish I didn’t know half of it.” She’d hesitated, unsure how to approach the next part. “And there’s something else. Someone else who might hear.”
She’d gestured as subtly as she could with raised eyebrows and a slight cast of her gaze upward and Sam had understood. She’d been referring to Raven’s AI, which, for all its bonhomie, was still a loyal agent of the Patrol and the Resolution government.
In the end, she’d trusted him to tell whatever he felt was safe and left him to it. And she’d spent every waking minute since trying not to think about the ship’s AI reporting the whole thing to the Diplomatic Corps office the minute they Transitioned into the Epsilon Eridani system. When the security detail had met them at McPherson Station to escort them down in the shuttle, she’d half-expected the guards to slap them both into neural restraints. Their aloof politeness had almost been worse, leaving a Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads the flight down from orbit.
She remembered leaving the Resolution Government Megaplex nearly four years ago, remembered the respectful nods and nervous greetings as she’d passed the day shift duty staff in the snow-white uniform of the Diplomatic Corps, her ID chip reading the highest rank possible. Coming back in the dead of night, dressed in borrowed utility fatigues, the only glances she received were perverse curiosity at the security escort, the only acknowledgement the wave to pass through the ID station.
The lights were subtly dimmer at night, even though the halls of the building were staffed around the clock. It was for psychological reasons; studies had found it allowed the night workers to adjust their sleep rhythms better. Or something…she’d seen the title of the report but never audited it. But the lower light and the quiet demeanor of the workers gave the place a more subdued air, as if the whole planet was holding its breath.
It’s not intentional, she repeated to herself for the third time in an hour. We just happened to arrive at Dauphin City at night. They’re not sneaking us in under cover of darkness.
The lights brightened the closer they came to the Planning Center, probably for psychological reasons as well, though less benevolent ones. She’d taken a step towards the entrance to Planning when one of the guards interposed himself, shaking his head.
“Not that way, ma’am.” He nodded on down the hallway. “They want you in Examination.”
A chill crept up through her chest. Examination wasn’t a place you entered lightly or left easily. If they were being taken to Examination, the guards weren’t for courtesy or for show.
Sam, she called urgently. We have to…
The mental voice wasn’t Sam’s; it was an automated message, cold and impersonal.
We�
�re sorry, but all neurolink transmissions are temporarily unavailable for security reasons.
Oh, shit.
The entrance to Planning hissed open at the passage of one of the Whitesuits, a woman she remembered from before, a scientist named Erdahl. Pris moved without thinking, acting on instincts she hadn’t possessed when she left this place, planting a deep stance and chopping a forearm across the side of the neck of the guard closest to her. The man squawked, his eyes rolling back in his head as the blow interrupted the flow of blood up the carotid into his brain and he collapsed to the floor, but her left hand swept his sidearm out of its holster on the way down.
Her reflexes were jacked, her system running on doses of artificial adrenalin and time slowed down; it seemed she had minutes to consider her next move. The gun was a laser, a typical Resolution weapon firing pulses of focused infrared light through a semiconductor rod from a magazine of crystal capacitors, and it was security-coded to authorized personnel only.
Had they updated the list to remove her from it? If they had and she tried to fire the weapon, it would deliver an incapacitating shock. She made the decision in less than a tenth of a second, tossing the gun end-for-end, grabbing the receiver and slamming the grip into the second guard’s temple with measured force. He fell like an oak in a windstorm and she knew she’d concussed him and felt a stab of guilt, consoling herself with the knowledge that medical care was very close by.
Before either man hit the ground, she was grabbing Sam by the arm and yanking him behind her through the door, slipping through just before it slid shut. His face was slack, still in shock, the attack as big of a surprise to him as it had been to the guards.
“Follow me and stay close!” she snapped, tugging him along and taking off in a sprint.
Eyes darted toward them suspiciously, mouths half opening preparatory to shouting a warning or a challenge, but the alarm beat them to it. It was a warbling klaxon, but beneath the warning tone was a voice, announcing “Unauthorized personnel in the Planning Center. Security to the Planning Center.”
They had seconds at most and the only reason automated sonics hadn’t disabled them already was because of the high-level staff-members lining the offices and the hallways. But she only needed seconds…
The side-corridor wasn’t marked, and neither were the double-doors at the end of it, but everyone in Planning knew what it was, knew never to go in, never to disturb what was behind them. She pounded on the doors with the butt of the laser pistol while Sam faced back down the short hallway, eyes wide, still in shock.
“Let me in, damn it!” she screamed, desperation making its way into her voice. “You know who I am, Mother! Let me in!”
“Pris…”
She turned at the warning tone in Sam’s voice and saw the Security troops galloping noisily down the hallway toward them, a full dozen of them, a few armed with sonic stunners while the others carried lasers.
“Mother, don’t leave me out here!” She was pleading, crying now, hating herself for it. After everything Mother had done to her, all the lies she’d told, why would Priscilla believe she’d help them now? “I’m your daughter, damn you!” The words were a ragged scream, burning her throat on the way out.
The Security troops were bellowing orders, one’s voice stepping on another’s, three of them moving ahead of the rest, sonic stunners raised. The one thing all of them seemed to want was for her to drop the gun.
“Shit,” Sam murmured, hands up.
Her instincts had been wrong. Her time was up.
Pris hissed out a breath, dropping the laser pistol and raising her hands above her head. The weapon was heavy and she started at the loud thump and clatter from its impact on the tile floor.
“Put your hands behind your head,” the lead guard barked at her. The woman’s face was red, either from excitement or fear, and Pris was fairly certain she’d stun them both without thinking twice about it. “Put your hands behind your head now and get on your knees!”
Pris closed her eyes and began to sink to the floor.
The doors behind her hissed open, the sound so soft and sibilant she nearly missed it over the shouting. She couldn’t miss the words though. They weren’t spoken aloud, they were broadcast over her neurolink…hers and everyone else’s around her.
Let them be.
There was no doubt who had said it. It wasn’t a voice anyone but Pris would recognize, wasn’t a voice anyone outside the Planning Center would have heard in centuries, but it was unmistakable.
“Mother,” the guard closest to Pris breathed the word like a prayer, eyes casting down automatically as if she wasn’t sure whether to bow or kneel.
Slowly, almost reluctantly, Pris turned and looked into the room. It resembled nothing quite so much as a womb. The walls were curved and warm and pulsing with life, every surface soft and yielding. No human waited for them there, but something did, something you could feel even if you couldn’t see.
Enter the Chamber of Communion, daughter. A pause, perhaps a chuckle, subtle, under the tone. And bring your man as well.
Pris took a step through the door, keeping one eye on the armed troopers, half-expecting one of them to get antsy and shoot them both in the back. Apparently, the same thing had occurred to Sam, because he was still standing by the door to the Chamber, unwilling to turn away from the soldiers. She put a hand on his arm and tugged gently.
“Come on,” she urged him. “It’s all right.”
Doubt battled trust across Sam’s face, but trust won out and he allowed her to pull him inside. The moment he was a centimeter through the entrance, the doors slid together with the speed and power of a guillotine and his gaze jumped back at them, looking up and down quickly as if he expected a piece of him to lay severed on the floor.
You are agitated, Samuel Abanks-Avalon, Mother said.
Sam glanced around instinctively, searching for a source of the voice in his head even as Pris guided him into the center of the room.
“I…uh…” he stammered.
Perhaps this will help.
***
Sam stood on a floor of the clearest glass, as clear as the walkway across to Dauphin City, and beneath his feet Aphrodite turned, backlit by the glare of Epsilon Eridani. Adonis hung over his right shoulder and a million stars stared back at him, unblinking.
Gradually, he became aware Pris was standing beside him, her hand warm on his arm, her eyes locked on the surface of the world on which they’d been standing only seconds before.
“It’s merely a projection, of course. As am I.”
The woman was tall, though not towering, statuesque and blond and…looked very much like Priscilla, enough to be related to her. Which, of course, she was, in a way. She wore a robe of shimmering silver, so light and feathery it couldn’t have been real, rainbows sparkling off the prism of its fabric, and long, loose hair swept by a wind that only seemed to exist for her.
“Thank you for letting us in, Mother,” Priscilla said, nodding with respect.
Mother. This was Mother. Sam couldn’t quite wrap his mind around it. Mother was always an abstract concept, a mind above all others, working behind the scenes to assure their safety and comfort.
“Earthers have to die to meet their God,” Mother told him, reading either his face or his thoughts---he didn’t know which scared him more. “You should feel fortunate you weren’t born with such restrictions, Captain Avalon.”
“We need to talk to you, Mother,” Sam said, finding his mouth dry even in a mental simulation. “Things are falling apart. Earth and the Belters are at war, and there are those among our own people who’ve been working to make sure we aren’t able to intercept the ramship. We don’t have much time…”
“She knows exactly what’s happened,” Priscilla interrupted him. The reverent tone of before was gone. There was still respect of course, the sort of respect you might give a dangerous animal if you ran across it in the forest. “She’s known all along, Sam.”
“Pris…,” he wanted to caution her, wanted to tell her not to push it, but she waved his words aside impatiently.
“Sam, it’s been a while, but I’m a part of her. I know her as well as I know myself.” She speared the image of Mother with a glare. “Valley wasn’t lying. You sent that ship. You made it.”
“Ah, Jeddah,” Mother sighed, shaking her head. “She was a faithful soul. You never know what will happen when an avatar goes off on her own.” A chuckle with a hint of fondness. “Witness how quickly you changed, Priscilla. But Jeddah stayed true, completed her task as best she could. It’s a shame she didn’t return to reintegrate, I would have loved to have had her memories as part of me.”
“How could you do it?” Sam blurted. She was a goddess who could snuff him out with a stray thought, and yet he couldn’t help himself.
“Valley didn’t believe she would,” Priscilla declared. She was pacing back and forth in front of the taller woman, which seemed incongruous to Sam since they were walking on nothing, hanging over a planet. “She basically said as much, and I’m sure she’d convinced Tejado of it. She thought this was all what they used to call a ‘long con’ to entangle the Consensus in a war with the Belters, to keep them out of our affairs, maybe take control of their colonies. She thought Mother would destroy the weapon, or deactivate it before it hit, and so did Tejado.”
Priscilla cocked her head to the side, looking at Mother sidelong. The icon of the oldest sentient AI in existence regarded her expectantly, a parent wondering if their child has learned the lessons they’d taught her.
“But that’s not true, is it?”
“No, my daughter,” Mother agreed. “It was never true. The weapon was built to be used.”
“But why?” Sam heard the pleading note in his own voice, the desperation, but he felt no shame. This was their very last chance, the one shot they had left at saving a world. “Why the hell would you want to destroy Earth?”