“Excuse me?”
“You think the commanding officer who orders you to kill a building full of enemies isn’t just a single man? You think your superiors aren’t just individuals making decisions based on their own personal judgment?”
“They work within a system of rules and—”
“You think when you shoot someone in the head, it isn’t you making the decision to end their life?”
“It’s not the same thing. In a combat situation—”
“I get it—it’s kill or be killed. Exactly. To my mind, so was this.”
Malcolm shook his head roughly. “No. Winslow was captured, confined and in restraints inside the confinement. He couldn’t fight back. He couldn’t defend himself. He was helpless.”
“Do you genuinely think he was going to stay that way? He was the Alliance Prime Minister’s son. He led a multi-colony terrorist organization, and it had already killed thousands of people. He was a monster. But worse, he was a monster with powerful connections and vaults of money.”
“Dammit, Mia, our system is stronger than any individual interest. It can rise above the influence of bribes and corruption. It wouldn’t have remained standing for so long if it didn’t do so on a regular basis. The instant we start allowing people to ignore the rules, to make ‘exceptions,’ the whole thing starts to fall apart.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose. It was a wonderful argument in theory. It was even mostly right. But she’d seen it fail, and it seemed she still had the scars. She’d run so far and climbed so high…was she never going to be able to escape her past entirely?
You have, Mia. Those people can’t hurt you any longer.
No. But he can.
She gave in and let the memories flood her mind until she had to sink against the wall for support. “You said this was about me now? Fine. All I ever wanted was to be able to live in a world where what you believe was true. And I thought I’d succeeded. I’ve tried so damn hard to follow the rules. When I’m able, I’ve tried to support and encourage the flourishing of that world. I agree, ninety-nine percent of the time, it is real for ninety-nine percent of the people.
“But there’s a world underneath yours, a place where the system can’t reach, and every now and then tendrils from this place seep up through the cracks into your perfect world of justice and order.
“Malcolm, in my life I have seen people do horrific things, acts of pure evil. And in the place where those evils occur, sometimes the only justice the monsters suffer comes from the muzzle of a gun. Or the edge of a blade.”
He winced and almost reached for her. “You had to kill the attacker at the hospital. No question—”
“Maybe I’m not talking about him.”
“I don’t understand.”
She moved as close as she dared to the facility and studied it, perplexed. Everything appeared normal. Two guards stood at relaxed attention outside the doors. No gunfire interrupted the quiet.
What if the assault didn’t happen tonight at all? She’d had no reason to assume it would be tonight, none but her desire for it to be so. Or maybe something had gone wrong like she’d feared—
—the doors opened, freeing a cacophony of chaotic noises and startling the guards.
Eli burst forth out of the doors at a full run while yelling at his men and gesturing behind him. They dashed inside.
He looked ridiculous, splashing clumsily through the puddles on the sidewalk as he lumbered forward, wheezing from the exertion.
But no one was chasing him.
He was going to get away.
The hilt of the blade she’d purchased sat clenched in a death grip in her hand; she’d been holding it so tightly her fingers had started to cramp.
The edges of her vision blurred. Her awareness narrowed to encompass Eli Baca and nothing else. Drug trafficker, mob minion, violent and brutish thug. A 24th century feudal lord wielding the power of life and death over all he commanded.
An unexpected calmness settled within her as she crossed the street, her pace deliberate but unhurried.
Mia stepped onto the sidewalk in front of him. He failed to recognize her in the long coat and hood, and made to veer around her.
She took a single step sideways to block his path, activated the blade and plunged it into his heart.
Eli was fat, but her blade was far from tiny. A bloom of red unfurled to dye his sweaty shirt crimson as he gaped at her in shock and confusion.
She reached up with her free hand, pulled the hood off and leveled a cold, malevolent glare at him. “You don’t own me anymore.”
“No, you don’t understand. Maybe you never will.” She regarded Malcolm in sadness, and resignation. “You should go now.”
“You’re really going to…this is not on me. I am not the bad guy here.”
“Of course you’re not. Virtuous to the last, and you can wear the badge proudly. But I don’t have to endure you looking down on me with such holier-than-thou condescension. I’ve had to make hard choices—not to get where I am now, but merely to survive so I could try to find the path that led to the road that would take me to where I am now. And I won’t stand here and flagellate myself for you while you judge me for those choices.”
“I am not—I would never—I only want to understand.”
“I don’t think you do. It would complicate your worldview too much.” She turned half away from him and toward the door. “Please leave.”
“Mia….”
“Leave.”
His jaw stiffened, and the soldier’s mask descended. “Right. I believe I will.” He strode past her and out the door without a glance in her direction. The door closed behind him.
Her composure broke then, not in a rush but as a slow, inexorable crumbling, like the time-lapsed decay of an abandoned structure.
She went to the couch and curled up in the corner to rest her head on the arm. This way the tears didn’t have far to fall.
Fuck love, that it could break her.
I think you—
Not now, Meno. Please.
Then I don’t know what to do to help you.
Sometimes there’s nothing to be done. Sometimes there’s just…nothing.
It’s not like you to express such a sentiment.
No, it isn’t. I’ll take it back tomorrow. But tonight, I think I’ll simply be broken.
32
AFS STALWART II
MILKY WAY SECTOR 17
* * *
ALEX RAN RICHARD’S MESSAGE through her head for the tenth time today.
Alex,
I won’t bother asking you to tell me what’s truly going on, as I know you won’t—especially not across universes. I also understand why you’re hesitant to talk to your mother about it, but I urge you to be careful not to hurt her, even out of a desire to protect her.
Your memory serves you well, for David assuredly did have a unique perspective on and relationship with God, the divine, or whatever resides out there beyond our sight.
No one loved life so much as he did. He lived it grandly and took from it every centimeter it would cede to him. But this doesn’t fully answer your question.
He once said to me (and I quote, because I’ve always remembered it clearly) ‘the universe looks out for people who act with honor in furtherance of an honorable cause.’ He believed in destiny, but I think this is what he meant by it.
There can be no question that he died acting with the highest of honor in furtherance of the most honorable of causes. I suspect he accepted his death as the price for such an act, possibly even as his rightful destiny.
But if it should turn out the universe was and still is looking out for him, such that his destiny turns out to be something altogether different, I do not believe he would argue with the universe’s judgment.
—Richard
His words were reassuring. They acted as a check that her father had been the man she remembered, and that the man she now knew was the man who had been. Though cr
yptic and philosophical in tone, the message answered her question far better than a simple ‘yes’ would have done.
As for her mother, he wasn’t telling her anything she wasn’t already acutely aware of. She hated keeping her mother in the dark, and she only hoped it wouldn’t be for much longer. But first she had one more painful question needing an answer before she could in good conscience move forward. For everyone’s sake.
Kennedy was ready to start working on a practical adaptation of the Dimensional Rifter to serve as a power source, but they needed her mother’s permission to dismantle expensive AEGIS equipment.
So it was that Alex was standing outside the door to her mother’s office on the Stalwart II at precisely the moment when two disparate interests converged in time and space.
Alex plopped down in the chair opposite her mother’s desk and pulled one leg up to hug her knee. “How has your day gone?”
“Dreadfully. Improve it for me, will you?”
“Way to steal my thunder.” She grinned. “If you insist. We think we have a workable plan for a method to open and traverse temporary wormholes on an as-needed basis—at least for the Prevo-enabled AEGIS vessels, and we might be able to let some of the others hitch a ride.”
“Amazing. Mr. Reynolds proved to be so helpful?”
She shrugged. “His advances in sidespace manipulation were the catalyst that sparked the ideas that led to the breakthrough. So, after a fashion. It’s good to have him here.”
“I agree. It was in actuality your breakthrough, then? You and Valkyrie?”
“It was a group effort. Mia deserves a portion of the credit as well, along with Devon and Kennedy.”
“Hmm. This is new behavior from you.”
“What is?”
“Humility. Understating your own role in an achievement so others can enjoy the limelight.”
“Thank you? I think?” She couldn’t work up offense, though. She’d never been particularly boastful as such, but when asked she did tend to be blunt about her successes, much like with everything else. Also, her mother assuming she was responsible for the breakthrough despite her refusing to own it was a better compliment than any public credit.
“You’re welcome. So what will developing and testing this new technology involve?”
“That’s why I’m here—other than to share the good news, obviously. We need to borrow a Dimensional Rifter. Only a small one, maybe from one of the Eidolons.”
“And by ‘borrow’ you mean…?”
“Take it apart and likely break it.”
“I thought so. I’ll authorize it, but you get to be the one to tell Commander Lekkas one of her Eidolons is being sidelined.”
Alex cringed. “Ouch. Fine.”
Her mother studied her for a few seconds. “So this is a real thing? Soon I’ll be able to take the majority of my fleet through wormholes from any location to any destination I wish, instantaneously?”
“Possibly….” She stopped, then nodded firmly. “I really do think this is going to work. Yes.”
Miriam let out a long, deliberate breath and smiled. “This is good news. Exceptionally good news. I don’t have the words to properly thank you.”
“You don’t need them.”
Just as the awkward silence started to kick in, Miriam straightened up in her chair. “Well, I suspect this means I need to begin devising a new strategic plan. If all potential targets are again on the table, we need to adjust and prepare to act accordingly.”
“Sure. I’ll get out of your hair so you can work.” Alex chewed on her bottom lip. There was no good segue for this. “But…can I ask you something first? Something personal? It’s random and off-topic and if it’s too personal, you can tell me it’s none of my business and I won’t be offended. Promise.”
Miriam dropped her forearms onto the desk in a more relaxed pose. “Of course you can.”
“Right. Okay. Um…Dad’s been gone for almost twenty-five years now. Why did you never move on and find someone else? Or did you, and for totally justifiable and understandable reasons simply not tell me?”
Miriam’s lips parted. “That is an unexpected question. You’re correct…I wouldn’t have told you. Not until recently, at least. But no.”
She sank back now, as deeply as the military-issue chair allowed. “It was a decade before I was even willing to entertain the notion, but eventually I subjected myself to a few dates. Most were disasters. Poor saps didn’t deserve the treatment I inflicted on them. A few were good men, though, and in other circumstances there might have been a connection. Two of them succeeded in persisting through a second date, which in retrospect was rather impressive on their part.”
Her mother smiled faintly. “But they didn’t stand a chance. No one did. There was, and is, no room in my life, no room in my heart, for anyone else when your father has never left it.
“Someone like that—like he was—doesn’t fade away. He was the best thing that ever happened to me—I would say ‘except for you,’ but you wouldn’t be here if not for him. He still is. He’s in my head and in my heart, and he’s not leaving either.”
“Mom…but you know he would want you to be happy.”
“I am happy.” She paused. “Has it been hard, being alone? I’d argue I’m more skilled at it than most, but certainly it has. Sometimes harder than others. But I close my eyes, and I can hear your father in my head…so I’m not quite alone. And I prefer the memory of him over a second-best, real but pale imitation.”
Alex knew well what it was like to hear him in one’s head, if a bit more literally. She clenched her jaw; if she opened her mouth, she’d cry.
Miriam seemed to sense it. “It’s all right. There are far worse things in the world than to have known the truest kind of love for nineteen years. And I have you, and now Caleb. I have a family. I have friends, and people to take care of. A lot of them of late.”
Alex nodded understanding, still not trusting her voice.
Her mother regarded her with kindness in her eyes. “Why ask now? Why is this on your mind?”
She managed a halting response. “I don’t want you to be lonely.”
“I’m not. It’s rarely silent in my world. And when it is, your father’s with me in my mind. It’s enough, because it has to be.”
No, it doesn’t. “Okay. Thank you for indulging me.” Alex stood, wiping a single tear from her cheek and working to put herself back together. “Back to warfare and wormholes and intangible dimensions. I’ll let you know as soon as we’re ready to test the tech with significant AEGIS assets. It’ll be a few days, but then you can get back to kicking these Anaden fuckers’ asses.”
“Put as eloquently as ever.”
“I thought so.”
Outside the office, she went around the corner before sinking against the corridor wall.
This is a ‘yes,’ isn’t it?
I…dammit, Valkyrie. I got the answer I came here looking for. But she’s never going to forgive me for keeping all this from her.
You did so to protect her.
I did, but Richard’s not wrong. When I first made the decision to keep this a secret, I never imagined we would end up here, on the brink of a real possibility for him to live.
We did take the scenic route here.
She chuckled. That’s the truth. But nonetheless…eto pizdets! Am I willing to sacrifice my relationship with my mother to have my father back? Once upon a time it would’ve been shamefully easy to answer, but now?
I submit it’s no longer up to you. Not in any real sense.
What do you mean?
I know your mind, thus I know you believe I am alive in every sense of the word. I assert that your father is now easily as alive as I am. Do you disagree?
I don’t think so, no. I mean, it wouldn’t be ethical for me to box him up again, not now, because it feels like he is alive.
Then if he wishes to have a body once more, it being his natural and familiar state, the decision is now his.
Not yours.
She’d already had the same thoughts Valkyrie was expressing, and had claimed to espouse them. But out here in the real world, she’d continued to act as if she were his caretaker. As if she were in charge. I understand—I mean I agree. If he’s a living, sapient being, he has free will and the right to his own self-determination and agency. It doesn’t change the fact that she will never forgive me for keeping her in the dark and taking all these steps on my own.
Perhaps you should tell her now. Every action we take from here forward will only increase the perceived transgression. Rectifying the slight today will be better than doing it tomorrow.
She won’t believe me—she won’t believe he’s alive, or that what is alive is truly him. She won’t agree to what we’re proposing, and given her position, she can block anything we try to do.
Your mother has been an outspoken supporter of the rights of Artificials. In fact, she staked not merely her career but her personal freedom on the defense of those rights.
Yes. But believing something intellectually is not the same as believing it in your heart. She hasn’t spent the last year and a half engaged in a symbiotic neural bond with an Artificial. She knows you have consciousness, but she doesn’t know you have a soul.
Do I?
Of course. The point is, to her, my father was and will always be a man. Heart beating blood to organs and skin, breath flowing through lungs to and from lips she could kiss. Anything less isn’t him. It can’t be.
A body is genuinely so important to humans?
It is. You’ve always been both quantum and synthetic, so you don’t feel as if you’re lacking in any way from the absence of one. But someone who was born a physical, organic being can’t be fundamentally whole without one.
I suspect the Kats would disagree.
And they’re kind of tragic for it. But even they have a body to go home to, should they ever want it.
If your father feels the same way, you realize what his decision will be.
I do. And it means I sacrificed my relationship with my mother over a year ago, before I really knew what I was giving up.
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