by C. Gockel
“I’m going to blame my slip on the boom,” James replied.
“Only your pride, I see.”
James raised an eyebrow.
Darmadi puffed out a cloud of air and followed the fighter’s path with his eyes. “It’s not you they’re worried about.”
James’s lips twitched. “My pride isn’t so inflated I’d think I warrant a sonic boom.”
The Luddecceans had spies trailing him, but Luddecceans were nothing if not polite, and they were subtle about it. They’d come by the “glitter drones” in the months since Orion had visited their embassy, and James had caught sight of them glimmering in the air currents of his and Noa’s suite. He’d opened the balcony door this morning, despite the cold, turned up the heat, and watched as they were sucked out the door. They’d mingled picturesquely with the snow flurries, giving them extra sparkle. He’d wrapped Noa in his arms, watched, and waved to them.
The fighter was looking for something else. He drew down data on its make. Two person, it could fly in and out of atmosphere. “They’re still searching for the Dark?” They probably had a weere aboard and a pilot.
Darmadi nodded, breath clouding in front of him. The human had heat to spare. He’d even gotten hot and had stowed his scarf and hat in a backpack. James was hauling an extra six kilos in gear in an attempt to retain heat. Still, he should have worn an envirosuit. The cold was creeping up through the soles of his snow boots and the sliver of exposed skin between his scarf and hat. He’d met Noa on a snowy day on Luddeccea, but it hadn’t been this cold, and he hadn’t been skiing for hours.
Darmadi inclined his head in the path the ship had gone. “It’s only been eight weeks, and we were invaded. Everyone is still wary.”
“Silas mentioned something of the invasion,” James said. He’d met Volka’s former employer at Sixty and Volka’s wedding on Odessa.
“Did he tell you his part in it?” There was a wry lift to Darmadi’s lips.
Picking his way up from the ledge, James huffed, remembering Silas blushing all the way to his hairline. “No, Carl relayed that to us.”
“Did Carl relay that Uncle has been practically canonized now?” Darmadi asked, stabbing a pole into the snow.
James paused. “He left that out. Is that how Silas got permission for him and his friend to travel?” Joel was more than Silas’s friend or assistant. James was particularly bad when it came to processing such things, but even he could see the obvious.
Darmadi nodded. “The whole neighborhood saw him walking out of the fire with a lion. The lion sat with him until the fire was finally put out the next day. Somehow it worked its way into the press how Uncle tried to give his life for his family, and how the lion showed up to save him. Uncle is almost untouchable now. He has …” He tilted his head and stared at the snow. “… unusual freedom.”
Silas could live with his “assistant” and “friend,” is what that meant. Sixty had taken affront to that freedom because Silas wasn’t “doing anything with it. He could start a gay rights movement.”
Volka had argued that he was starting a movement, in a quiet, very Luddeccean way. “Everyone knows, except the very young who don’t understand such things. And Silas has shown that who he loves doesn’t exclude him from God’s miracles.”
“It wasn’t God, it was me!” Carl had protested. “Capital M in that ‘me.’”
Volka had smiled enigmatically. “Perhaps God moved your hearts, Carl?”
The werfle had puffed up to twice his normal size. “Theists are impossible.”
James lifted his eyes to the Luddeccean pines. It had been over one hundred years since he’d seen the trees. Snow whispered through their branches. Snow had been whispering one-hundred years ago, too. It was one of his first true memories.
Darmadi asked too solicitously, “Running out of juice? We can head back to the lodge.”
James wasn’t that low on power yet. “Afraid that I’ll beat you to the top?” Digging his poles into the ground, he pushed off and reached the trail.
Chuckling, Darmadi dug his poles in too, skis sliding as easily over the snow as though he’d been born in them. Noa moved as easily through water. James sank like a stone in water. Humans weren’t as strong or as fast, but they were much more adaptable.
James made it to the top of the mountain, but he should have gone back to the lodge. On the way down he stumbled, fell head over heels over a three-meter ledge, lost his hat, lost a ski, and blinked his eyes open to find an orange power warning light at the periphery of his vision.
Darmadi skied around the ledge and met him at the bottom. They were, James noted, far from the marked trail, on the opposite side of the mountain from the lodge. Snow was falling more rapidly, and he was beneath the boughs of the pines.
“Are you all right?” Darmadi asked.
James took off his gloves, slipping a small scrap of paper out of his right glove as he did. He wiped his eyes. “You may have to push me home.”
“It’s that bad?” Taking off his own glove, Darmadi offered a hand.
As their hands met, James passed the scrap of paper to the human, and Darmadi’s brows constricted. James pulled him down to sit beside him.
“It’s safe to open it here, I think,” James said. He wasn’t worried about Luddeccean spies. Republic spies were another matter. The trees would keep away the eyes of satellites, and the snow was distinctly non-sparkly.
Darmadi opened the paper. “This is an address. Aboard Gate 3.” His voice was hushed, drowned by the snow. “Should I ask for what?”
“More Republic riff-raff for Luddeccea to take care of.” James gazed out at the snow. The trees now looked vaguely ghostly, as though he was looking through fog. Snow had protected him and Noa the first time he was here, too.
Darmadi was sitting very still.
Putting on his gloves, James explained. “The android you witnessed, the one who blew herself up—or himself at the time—that is the address to her server. It is … well, I don’t think I can call it a gift precisely, but Sixty and Volka said I should give it to you. They were the ones who found its location. Volka, I’m repeatedly assured, can’t read android minds, but she is sensitive to the presence of active Q-comm.” The case against 6T9 had been dropped; the heir to the asteroid and the “owner” of the ship 6T9 had destroyed had been one of the Infected. He’d died when the Dark withdrew. Lauren G3 had invited 6T9 to a mindscape party to celebrate—not telling him it was going to be a party for two. She’d been very disappointed when James, Bracelet, and FET12 had showed up with 6T9. Carl and Volka had traipsed around Gate 3 at the same time and found the spark of the Q-comm particle in her server.
“Shouldn’t they have been busy with their honeymoon?”
James’s Q-comm sparked. 6T9 had said something cryptic about celebrating the honeymoon before the wedding. Volka had been sick for a week after the battle of Planet Zero and spent the time almost exclusively aboard Sundancer. Sarcasm maybe? But 6T9 had looked pleased at the memory. 6T9 liked to take care of people; it was a core part of his programming, and probably why he had decided to pursue an M.D., Ph.D. with a focus on pediatrics and immunology.
Remembering that he’d been asked a question, James said, “It was something they wanted taken care of. What Lauren G3 did was before the Republic established laws against it. She can’t be tried on our side of the Kanakah Cloud.”
“‘Take care of’ may very well be a death sentence for her.”
James shrugged. “I cannot care about her.” Lauren G3 was a symptom of the much larger problem that was Gate 3. It had tried to kill Noa, and Carl, Shissh, Volka, and 6T9, had endangered the galaxy in the process, and it was presently playing the victim. The largest number of Infected had been in System 3. Having one of its servers destroyed would certainly send the message that it was not omnipotent. Having the Luddecceans do the dirty work would be convenient—they had fusion weapons that could destroy solar systems; there would be no reprisals. Well, not so long a
s those in the Republic who had discovered the address were not discovered.
Darmadi slipped the piece of paper into his glove.
The boom of another fighter slipping through the sound barrier shook snow from the trees. Darmadi scowled at the fighter’s path, invisible in the snow fall. “Do you think it is really over?”
Noa had just gotten another lease on life; a new nano-pharma combination developed on Odessa where weere genetics wreaked havoc on implants. It might be putting him in an overly optimistic frame of mind, but James said, “I don’t think it will seek us out, not for another millennia. By then, we’ll be more than ready.” Galactic Intelligence knew from its drones that the Dark still resided in The People’s previous outposts, but those outposts, though they numbered in the thousands, were just a few specks when measured against the 100 billion solar systems in the galaxy.
James closed his eyes and listened to the snow whispering next to Darmadi, a Luddeccean. This was the world of James’s first memories. Was he a Luddeccean, too?
It was warm for a snowy day. The snow was a light powder, not slushy, but not the sharp icy flakes that had whipped nearly horizontally across the low rolling hills of Alaric’s parents’ home. He took a deep breath of air that wasn’t filtered and stared up at a sky that went on forever. He wasn’t looking forward to going back to a ship. He’d joked with Alexis that after losing two of his vessels, you’d think the Guard wouldn’t want him in command again. But they needed him—the Republic was in disarray, was likely to break apart, and who knew what sort of accidents could result in that confusion—he would go wherever the Guard posted him, and they were already saying another fighter carrier.
His hands clenched in his gloves, and he felt the scrap of paper there, the address he’d already memorized.
“Thank you,” he said belatedly. The silence had been so comfortable, he hadn’t realized how much time had gone by. He lifted his hand. “For this.”
Sinclair turned to him. The android had snowflakes on his eyelashes and in his hair. “I …” Sinclair’s brow furrowed. “I have given you a problem to deal with. Volka said though that you’d want to take care of it yourself.”
Alaric’s eyebrows rose. “She was right.”
He’d been bitter when he’d suggested that she and Sixty should have been enjoying their honeymoon. He wasn’t bitter that she’d gotten married; he was actually … relieved. Android General 1 was competent and would keep her safe. Alaric had learned more about the disbanding of the Skimmers, the assassination attempt against Volka, and the attempted imprisonment on the prison planet. Not all the people that had set those deeds in motion were dead. He was glad that she wasn’t alone. Also, he’d heard about the general Galactican response to the destruction of System Zero … when and if her part became known in that, he suspected she’d be reviled, at least in the inner, more civilized systems. He wasn’t bitter that she'd married, he was bitter that he couldn’t protect her himself, that he’d failed her in so many ways.
He huffed. If their relationship had continued, would she ever have found the Little Ship? Would he have been captain of the Uriel; would it have fallen to Ran? Would Alexis be a schoolteacher in some remote outpost, and not The People’s translator and the rescuer of Dr. Zeller?
He let out a breath and the bitterness. He was the most fortunate of men. He’d had the love of three strong women in his life: his mother, Volka, and Alexis.
Alexis was back at the lodge, taking skiing lessons with Sam and Lukas and hitting the beginner slopes—her parents hadn’t thought skiing was properly ladylike. He prodded the snow with his pole. It was not sticky enough for snowmen, but snowballs would be possible. He wondered if James would be up for a battle against his boys—after a charge, of course. The idea was appealing, but he hesitated. His android friend’s silence was comfortable, and he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to enjoy it again. Glancing up at the sky, noticing the hour, he rose though he didn’t want to. “We should get back.”
Sinclair remained where he was. “I wasn’t joking about needing the push.”
Rolling his eyes, Alaric held out both hands. Sinclair took them. Grimacing, Alaric just managed to pull the android up. “You weigh too much.”
Sinclair shrugged. “Wait until I’m pointing in the right direction, and you’ll just have to give me a nudge.” He rotated a few degrees. “Okay, now.”
Sighing as though he were put out, though he wasn’t, Alaric put his hands on the android’s back.
“Did I mention,” Sinclair asked casually, “that the bio-holo about you is the number one download in the galaxy? You may even be immortalized in a sex ‘bo—”
“Do you want to roll home?” Alaric asked, seriously considering shoveling snow down the android’s back, but nixing it for fear of having to tow the machine back to civilization.
Sinclair actually laughed. Alaric gave the machine a vicious push, and then realized he was laughing himself.
Another sonic boom cracked beyond the veil of snow. Alaric glanced up, silently grateful. He knew Sinclair’s theory that the odds of running into the Dark again were something of the order of .00001%. It might have been Alaric’s superstitious, illogical Luddeccean background, but he thought that James was wrong.
31
The Dark Accord
Uncharted Space
6T9 came online to find red lights flashing and an alarm blaring. Unlatching his safety harness, he tried to rise, and his left leg gave out, sparking wildly. Circuits screamed. His Q-comm flashed white. “Volka!”
“I’m fine!” Volka shouted back over the alarm’s roar.
“Where are you?” 6T9 demanded.
“Ship, please turn off alarms,” Volka ordered.
The alarm went silent, and 6T9 noted the absence of the whoosh and hum of life support, although the lights were still on, and the ship’s local ether was still active. A safety harness snapped unlatched, and then Volka was leaning over him, haloed by red emergency lights.
“Look at me. Look at me,” he whispered urgently.
She did. Her eyes glowed in the low light, but he could make out her pupils, and measured their dilation. “No sign of concussion.”
“No.” She smiled. It didn’t reach her eyes, and a line threaded its way between her brows. “I’m worried about you, and James, and Noa … but I’m fine.”
He glanced down at her midriff.
“The baby is fine, Sixty. You made us turn our seat around, remember?”
He did remember that. She had chided him for being overly protective. When the ship had hit the ground, her seat would have absorbed the majority of the impact.
Still … he put a hand on her stomach, closed his eyes, and specialty sensors he’d had embedded in his fingertips delivered the sounds of a perfectly normal five-month fetus heartbeat. His world began to knit itself back together again; he hadn’t realized it had shattered.
Volka put a hand on his arm. “I’ll call Sundancer, but—”
Noa groaned, and Volka looked worriedly over her shoulder.
This was still an emergency. Noa was injured, possibly James was too, and they didn’t know where they were. These were all manageable emergencies, though. His world was still whole, and he could be calm.
“Go to her,” 6T9 said. Volka pulled away, but then his left leg sparked, and she paused, eyes wide. He gritted his teeth. “Looks worse than it is. Go.”
Volka spun on her heel. He heard her saying, “Noa, I think you need to lean your seat back. You may be concussed.”
“Lizzar dung mites,” Noa swore. “James?”
“He’s not online—”
“He should have let me drive.”
“I’m going to tilt back your chair now.” There was a whirr, and Noa said, “James, are you still offline? How is Sixty?”
“I am fine,” Sixty replied. He was, mostly. The ship’s hull had crumpled on the left side. His chair had mostly withstood the impact but hadn’t covered the lower part of his left
leg. He had no control over his left knee or anything beneath. Ripping the knee of his pants, he exposed the joint, pulled back the synth skin, stood with his right leg, and awkwardly set his left leg so it was straight, and then popped open the kneecap and locked it. He reached out and connected to the ship’s ether and hopped awkwardly to the front. The ship was tilted twenty-degrees to the left. Peering through the front view pane, he saw a pinkish sky with small wispy clouds and identified the source of the impact: a really big rock. It would almost have been funny, if James, Noa, Volka, and he weren’t in the ship. The Eschelon Puddleskipper was top of the line, had faster-than-light capability, and time bands. It could flit in and out of atmosphere, resist minor impacts and phaser fire, and it could skip to the next galaxy.
It had been downed by a rock.
Admittedly, not just a rock. The trouble had begun out of atmosphere. As soon as they’d emerged from the jump, they’d realized the stars hadn’t been right, and they’d been in the midst of a superconductive cloud of dust. The ship had immediately started to malfunction, and James had charted a course to this planet. And now James was—
“James?” Noa asked again.
6T9 hopped faster down the aisle.
“He’s sparking, but don’t get up, Noa,” Volka said. “Sixty will help him.”
James groaned. “I’m fine.”
Noa sighed. “Liar.”
6T9 released a breath and glanced at James. The other android’s head was leaning against the dash panel. If he’d been human, his neck might have broken.
“Sixty,” James said, “please look at Noa.”
James was lying about being “fine,” but he was also right. Noa was in more danger. Leaning against her seat, she lifted a hand to her neck, winced, and dropped it. “I think I may have broken a rib or two.”
“I’m more worried about your neck,” 6T9 said, noting the path the hand had tried to make.
Noa tried to get up. 6T9 held her down with a hand and a glare.