“Because we owe our families some kind of reckoning. And if we're scared, the crew will be scared. So you need to be able to be strong for them if you can't be strong for yourself.”
Unwittingly, Patty's hand brushed her breast pocket. Paper crinkled between layers of fabric. You have to be better. Stronger. Smarter.
It was different when Wainwright said it. More like when her Papa Fred told her she was smarter than anybody else than when her mother did. Because when Mom says it—said it—the subtext is, was “and you're still not good enough.”
“Casey,” Patty said.
Wainwright slowly shook her head. “Casey would. But she's done, Cadet. I'll kill her if I put her back right now. So what about you?”
Will it kill me, you mean? She laughed inside, and even let the laughter touch her lips. “Leah will be jealous I got to fly first,” she said. “Can you and Richard wire me in?”
Overnight
Friday 22 December, 2062
PPCASS Huang Di
Earth orbit
Min-xue floated undiscovered, and the Huang Di floated as well, immobilized by his will. Richard showed him the images, and Min-xue was glad he hadn't eaten; the column of flame made his stomach clench and roil. The fires surrounding what had been Lake Ontario seemed to gnaw at the darkened landscape, and as the terminator revealed devastated terrain, he wished he could call it back to cover the scene in forgiving darkness. He squirmed in his crash webbing, breathing shallowly, hidden by the very ship he held in stasis, and transmitted aerial images showed him buildings blasted from the foundations, trees laid side by side like wet hairs stroked smooth on an arm.
His breath hurt his lungs, in and out, in and out, as if he breathed the smoke and ash he saw.
Richard.
Listen to me.
I know what to do.
“Min-xue?”
We can use the Benefactor tech to repair the damage.
“The Canadians thought of it. It won't work.”
Tell me why.
“I won't reprogram the nanites to operate and replicate without a control chip. I don't trust the tech enough to unleash a horde of self-programming alien robots on the earth. And even if I would — Earth's ecosystem is a phenomenally complex system, which would take unimaginable processing power to regulate. To heal it without destroying it.”
The nanites do okay in a human host, and that's a pretty complex system, too.
“And look at how many problems they cause. The starships work because machines are simple. An ecosystem?” Min-xue felt Richard shake his head, saw the swirl of colors that was Alan's presence behind him. “Would stress even an AI at full functionality. And I need a bit more space than the nanotech provides.”
I know, Min-xue answered. But you know how to make more of you now. To be many presences in one.
“I do.”
Would the Huang Di hold one?
Overnight
Friday 22 December, 2062
HMCSS Montreal
Earth orbit
It's been ten years since Geniveve Castaign died and we buried her in a green, gently sloped cemetery near Montreal, under the boughs of an enormous white pine. I took Gabe home, the baby girls at their grandfather's place, and I sat down on the sofa with him and he talked for an hour and a half before he cried, and then he didn't stop crying. Even in his sleep, his breath came with a little huffing catch that ripped me open like fishhooks every single goddamned time.
I'd never seen Gabe Castaign cry before. But I'd never watched him bury his wife before either. So I sat up then, and the weight of his body against my chest made it an effort to breathe, and my white shirt was wet through and it was October, and cold, and there had been orange leaves everywhere on the grass in the churchyard and little Leah'd held my hand so tight I thought she was going to squeeze the metal out of shape.
She was at her grandpère's, and so was her sister, and Gabe lay asleep in my arms the way I had imagined more times than I can count. And it wasn't worth it. God, it wasn't worth it.
And that night I could have made it happen. I could have offered him a little bit of myself, and we both could have pretended it was to ease the pain, and nothing else. Just friendly, and just friends, and just for comfort and not being alone in the night. I could have offered, and he would have said yes. And the sleep would have come a little later, is all.
But I was back in Montreal.
And being there made it too hard to lie to myself.
Like I'm back in the Montreal now.
The moon rose through the window. Gabriel, mon ange, stirred against my chest. He whispered a name—Geni—and it was my name but it's not my name, and I didn't care, for a moment, because he slept in my arms when he would not sleep without, and the hours passed slowly, and morning was a long time away. And if I could have put my hand out and stopped the moon in the sky, I would have done it without thinking. Come to think of it, if I had that kind of power, I wouldn't have these problems, would I?
Gabriel cries the same way now, wedged into my narrow bunk with me. Hard, almost silently, pushing his face against my shoulder, yellow strands of hair curling between my steel fingers while my other hand strokes his face, his back, in raw counterpoint to the rhythm of his sobs.
I haven't a fucking clue how he held it together out there for as long as he did. Fragments of words are all he manages, intermittently, although his hands bruise my back through my jumpsuit when he drags me close. I mumble nonsense into his ear. I'll cry later.
Really.
Richard?
“Feeling better, Jenny?”
Conscious is not better, Dick. A silent chuckle curls out on my breath, more a staccato exhalation than a sound given voice. Any word—? I can't finish the sentence. He knows. Gabe's racked breathing slows a half-step, and I shift against him, pulling his face into the curve of my neck.
“No one in downtown Toronto could have survived.”
Nobody.
I knew that. Razorface, Genie, Elspeth. The boys in the pilot program, unless the military got some or all of them out, though how you'd do that, I don't know. Indigo. Holmes, and I don't feel much pain for that one. Boris.
I know. It's so much. A blow too stunning to even feel, like a shotgun blast, a violation like rape. Razorface, like a punch in the chest.
He was twelve years old when I met him. His name was Dwayne, and he hated it.
Riel?
“Was at her cabin. It has a bunker, and it's outside the destroyed range. Chances are—”
That's something, then.
“Yes,” he says, and I know he's keeping secrets. “That's something. I'm talking to Charlie Forster, Jenny, and Riel's science adviser. Dr. Perry. The dust from the comet impact is going to up our timetable. Remember what I said about a snowball Earth?”
Like it was yesterday.
He laughs, and it doesn't quite sound like human laughter anymore. “In addition to the immediate damage, Jen, what's happened will trigger the equivalent of a nuclear winter. It's going to get very cold down there. Very, very fast.”
How cold is — never mind. Forget I asked. What's Charlie say?
A heavy sigh. “Charlie thinks Min-xue's wild-ass plan is crazy enough to work.”
Oh. And then, into a silence I wasn't sure I wanted broken. Richard?
“Jenny, my dear?”
What exactly is Min-xue's wild-ass plan?
Dawn
Friday December 22, 2062
Somewhere in Ontario
Genie breathed in against the stabbing in her side. She smelled smoke and tasted blood, and something pressed her down. Hands. Hands moving over her body, gentle and firm, and leaves rustling under her. It was bitterly cold, and the light looked—wrong—sunrise-slanted, but yellowed red as if shining through a pall of dust.
“Kiddo, you waking up, hon?” The redheaded soldier, who leaned over her and probed gently, ignoring the red trickling down her own face from a gash under her helmet. Genie dre
w a breath and hissed at the agony of breathing. She was used to hurting, though, and she breathed in, breathed out again.
“We're alive?”
“Most of us.” The soldier sat back on her heels.
“Ellie?”
“She's seeing to the pilot. She said she was a doctor, sort of. She's okay. I think you've got a cracked rib, kiddo. Can you breathe okay?”
“It hurts, but I'm okay. We got down.”
“Yeah, we got down. Gordon got through to HQ, and they're sending a pickup team. Which is good. We have wounded and there are forest fires.” She rubbed a hand across her face. It left a track through the soot and grease and blood. More red trickled thickly across.
“Fires?” Genie swallowed. “Can I have some water?”
The soldier shook her head. “Not until we make sure you're all shipshape inside, I think. Okay?”
“Okay.” Genie tried to raise her hand to cover her cough. It wasn't pink or foamy, and she saw the soldier's look of relief. “It's okay. I have CF.”
“Are you cold, sweetie?” A quick tilt of the woman's head as she shrugged out of her coat and laid it over Genie. “What's CF?”
“Cystic fibrosis. It's icky. Makes me cough a lot. Have you seen my Aunt Jenny's cat?”
“The orange tabby? He's hiding under the pilot's seat. I think he's okay. Maybe a little dented. You want me to go get him out for you?”
“Wear gloves,” Genie said, and laid her head back on the soldier's coat. “Where are we going?”
But the soldier had already left.
Blood slicked Elspeth's hands, bubbled between her fingers as she groped the injured pilot's thigh and pressed down hard, feeling for the artery, feeling for the source of the ragged flood. “Dammit,” she muttered. “I can't find this. I can't see a damned thing.”
The big soldier — the one who'd picked Genie up — kept ripping down the seam of the pilot's flight suit with a jagged-edged knife, laying his hairy pale leg bare to the dust-dimmed light. Elspeth sucked in between her teeth. The pilot whimpered as her fingers pressed the inside of his thigh, not far from his groin. “Doc?”
“You got a bit of a puncture there,” she said, her voice stunningly level. Med school was a long time ago, Ellie.
What do I do? Cold, fingers shaking, pale under all that blood. Her saliva went bitter; she would have turned her head and spat, if she hadn't been elbow-deep in gore. What do I do?
And then a voice that was her voice, and not quite. The voice of a different Elspeth. Younger and more certain of the workings of the world. Tourniquet, Direct pressure. Pray he's not bleeding inside.
He could lose the leg.
He will lose more than a leg if you don't stop fucking around, El.
Dammit, I'm not a real doctor.
Ellie. And it was a calm voice. Not her own panicked whine. She leaned down on the wound and opened her mouth, and the calm voice came out. “Soldier—”
“Marquet.”
“Marquet. I need a belt. Webbing. Anything like that. About three feet of it. And a straight stick or anything to twist—”
“On it,” he said, and lurched to his feet.
The pilot winced, looked down, and glanced up at the barren trees, swallowing hard. His blood froze to the edges of the leaves. “Doc, am I gonna lose that leg?”
More blood filled her mouth, and it wasn't his. “Not if I can help it,” she said, and pressed down harder.
“Thanks,” he said, eyes bright, and then he drifted away.
The chopper came fifteen minutes later. Elspeth climbed into it beside Genie's stretcher, which Marquet and the redheaded soldier lifted. A medic had run an IV into Genie's vein, and as her pain slid back under the pressure of the drugs Genie mumbled something and turned her cheek into Elspeth's hand. The gesture went in like a knife through her breast.
Boris lay curled against the girl's side and wouldn't be moved, and Elspeth decided it was just as well.
There was blood under the fingernails of the hand Genie leaned against, and the sheet on the second stretcher was drawn taut from top to bottom.
It hadn't been enough.
You tried, the calm voice said. Elspeth shook her head, stopped herself just before she pressed the bloody heel of her hand to her eye. “Shit,” she whispered, and looked back at Genie, drifting. “Shit.”
“Hey.” It was the big soldier, Marquet. He laid a hand on her arm in an awkward caress. “Doc.”
“I'm sorry,” she answered, looking down, leaning back against the chopper's cabin wall as the rest of the survivors trailed in. “I'm sorry I couldn't do more.”
Marquet shrugged, squeezed, dropped his hand back to his side. “He could have died scared,” he said. “He didn't die scared, Doc. You did everything you could.” He turned away, leaving Elspeth blinking after him. She dropped into a jumpseat as the chopper rose into a toiling sky.
0600 Hours
Friday 22 December, 2062
HMCSS Montreal
Earth orbit
Gabe paces me, a shadow over my shoulder as I come along the long, curving corridor toward the Montreal's bridge. My feet fall by their own volition. Richard and his Chinese pilot friend have hatched a plan that's only a little less sane than my last one, and it tumbles over and over in my head, spinning with the velocity of the damned asteroid we almost caught.
Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, Jenny.
And H-bombs, I hear a long-forgotten drill instructor say.
I let my mouth run along with my feet, trying to keep Gabe with me, keep him focused. “Richard says Leah is safe on Calgary.” He grunts, so I keep talking. “Wainwright is EVA with a repair crew, patching the solar sail. I broke the vane. Richard says if we can patch it the right way, nanosurgeons will do the rest.”
“That was pretty nice flying, Jen.”
I check my stride to force him to catch me, slide my steel arm around his waist. “Elles pourraient être vivantes.”
He just looks at me, lips thin, that bruised look still splotching his face. “Ne pas me mentir, Geni.”
“Jamais. Shhh. No, Gabriel—” I dig in my heels.
He keeps walking, not speeding up but not stopping either.
“Gabriel!”
“Quoi?” He stops. He turns, filling the narrow corridor.
“Gabe, if you left people for dead just because it looked bad for them, I wouldn't be here having this argument with you.”
“Oh.” He looks down at his hands. I cover the few meters between us and take those hands in my own, running my steel thumb over the discolorations on his skin. Bad burns, bone-deep. There were some on his arms and chest, too, but not like those. Those were as bad as mine, though not as extensive. There aren't many people in this world who will crawl through fire for somebody.
His eyes are just as blue as they ever were when I look back up. “I want it over with, Jenny. I don't want to sit and wait for the pain, and know what the answer will be before I ask the question.”
“They're dead or they're not dead,” I answer, looking hard for the words before I say them. “Nothing we can do will change that. But we have things we have to do right now, and I need you with me.”
“What did you just say?”
“I said I need you with me—”
“Jenny.” He's big and warm and he pulls me close for a second, and then sets me at arm's length. “You never needed anybody in your life.”
I look up at him, and shake my head. How can anybody as smart as he is be so goddamned wrong? “Just keep thinking that, Castaign,” I mutter, and elbow him in the ribs as I go by. At least he's laughing. It sounds like he might strangle on it, but he's laughing. So help me God.
I pause by the locked bridge hatchway and rap on it with my metal hand, hard. Richard, tell Patty it's us, please.
A few moments pass, the AI's voice tickling my inner ear. “We've found the problem with Min-xue's idea.”
What's that?
“I think we ca
n get the Huang Di down with its core elements intact. The Benefactors managed it on Mars, and there's more atmosphere to work with in Earth.”
So what's the problem? Patty undogs the hatch and we step inside. She looks exhausted, her eyes bruised and black. One of the sublight pilots is in his chair, and two security guards just like the last two stand in the back corners of the bridge, as unobtrusive as anybody in body armor and bearing weapons can be. Their sidearms make my flesh crawl, and I scrub my right hand over the holster of my own to make sure the strap's snapped down. “Hello, Patty.”
“Master Warrant,” she says. “Are you my relief?”
“Go get some sleep, kid. I'll have you rousted in twelve hours or so, okay?”
Richard gestures with his arms, a motion like a circle hung in space. His hands fall and tumble before his chest. “The crew won't survive it.”
If I close my eyes and tilt my head just right, I swear I can smell the burning. But it will work? It's the only thing that might still work? You said there were other ways, before—
“That was before the impact event. We're talking catastrophic damage now, rather than slow decay. We're out of conservative options.” Which is as close as he would ever come to saying I don't see a choice anymore, Jen.
Then forgive me if I don't give a fuck who survives the landing, Dick.
“The other problem is that the Huang Di's computers don't have the processing power to make up the difference. It would take Benefactor-style processors from at least two ships of her size to handle the load. Firewalls and controls; I think I've learned enough about the differences between the Benefactor programming, our protocols, and those of the Chinese. Maybe if we could somehow move the core of the ship tree from Mars to Earth—”
But that's not realistic, is it?
“No.”
Patty nods before she turns for the door. Gabe is already moving toward an interface terminal, affect flat except for the lines at the corners of his mouth. Oh.
Richard, what does this hulk have for lifeboats? I know the answer, more or less. The Montreal's specs are identical to those of the Indefatigable, and I've learned those cold.
“Not enough for what you're thinking.”
Scardown jc-2 Page 28