by Erik Hanberg
“You are going to be responsible for innocent deaths. It’s outright murder.”
“And you are responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not more,” she spat. “Those soldiers lying dead in Saint Peter’s Square would be alive if I’d destroyed the Walden while you were aboard. If I’d acted then—when I should have—there would only have been a handful of casualties. I think even your Aquinas would agree with me that killing you and your family would have been worth stopping the bloodshed that has followed.”
“I am no Catholic theologian, but I suspect he would say that—even if you are correct—it’s not your decision to make.”
Galway’s eyes flamed, and Shaw immediately sensed that he had challenged a cardinal truth—for Galway, there was never a decision that wasn’t hers to make.
“We can come to another deal,” Shaw said, trying again. “A new deal. Fewer days if needed.”
Galway shrugged. “Even if I agreed to that, it would only be for my own amusement. It wouldn’t change the outcome. As I said, you will all be dead anyway.”
“I will stop Brother Florian’s research,” Shaw said. He could feel his breathing was shallower and his heart was racing as he tried to come up with more bargaining chips. It didn’t matter—he had to find something. “He reports to me. I can tell him that—”
“It’s not just Florian anymore,” Galway said. “Anti-Lattice scientists around the world have taken up his research. The Flathead and Navajo research clusters especially are enjoying their opportunity to thumb their nose at us. We still give his research less than a ten percent chance of success, but that’s too great a risk. I need to make an example of Florian. Anyone who tries to follow his lead and destroy the Lattice will be killed. I can’t afford to show any hesitation.”
“The scientists at those clusters will listen to me. Whatever standing I have with the anti-Lattice community, I will use it to convince them to stop their research.”
Galway eyed him with something like a smile she would reserve for a pet. “You just don’t get it, Shaw. There is no world in which you and your family survive this. When this call is done, I can call in a missile strike and blow you to bits. Or I can have drones tunnel through a bunker and wrap you in nanofibers until you suffocate. I can order a bot swarm to eat your flesh from your body and convert it to graphite. I can—”
“What’s your point?” Shaw cut in.
“You’ve lost. No matter what happened on the battlefield today. You lost. You couldn’t do a thing to stop any one of those attacks, could you? You used everything to get to this point, but it wasn’t enough.”
Right as she should have been at her most triumphant, Galway suddenly looked distracted. Her avatar wasn’t wearing a wrap in the chat room, but something from the real world had grabbed her attention.
Shaw’s ring squeezed his finger and he knew something big was going on if both he and Galway were being summoned out of the chat room.
Galway was filled with an icy fury. “Whatever you think, she’s not your ally.”
“What? Who?” Shaw asked. Ellie? Taveena?
“Dvorak has its own satellites. All she’s done is bought you some time.”
“Who is ‘she?’” He asked as the chat room faded away.
Shaw was utterly lost. She? Ellie? Taveena?
He looked around for someone who could explain to him what was going on. He found himself not out on the square, where he’d started the conversation, but on a makeshift cot inside Saint Peter’s Basilica. While he’d been fully immersed in his jump to the chat room, he had apparently been moved inside. Around him on cots and on the floor of the Basilica were rows of wounded men and women, and small teams working their way around the room to help them.
Alberto was sitting next to Shaw. He perked up when he saw that Shaw was out of his jump. Alberto’s face was covered in drying blood, and he had a bandage around his head, but he seemed alert enough.
“The doctors say that you’ll be okay,” Alberto reported. “Nothing is broken.”
Shaw ignored it. “What’s happening? Why did Galway cut the call short?”
Alberto looked back at him blankly.
“How long until the missiles reach Florian’s lab?” Shaw demanded.
“Seven minutes,” Aquinas answered, stepping closer. “They are still on course.”
“What’s happening with my family? Has Galway given an order to fire?”
“Come. I’ll show you.”
Shaw put his ring to his temple and entered another jump.
This time, his avatar was floating in space. In front of him, in all its glory, was the Earth. Despite everything, Shaw couldn’t help but let it take his breath away. Because of its grandeur, it took a moment to realize that his view was partially obscured. Blocking a small part of the glowing planet—right over the easternmost tip of Australia, in fact—was a small black sphere, a tiny back-lit marble when compared to the majesty behind it.
“The Walden,” Shaw whispered. It was a relief. After Galway’s threats, and Aquinas’ cryptic summons, he had wondered if it had already been destroyed.
Aquinas was floating next to him. “The cartel has sixteen lasers within firing range of the Walden right now,” Aquinas said. In Shaw’s vision, no doubt at the command of Aquinas in the guided jump, artificial flares illuminated each of the sixteen satellites. Shaw wouldn’t have been able to pick them out against the bright planet before, but now that they had been called to his attention in the jump, he could see most of them evenly spread out around the Walden.
In fact, one of the satellites was just a few meters away from his avatar.
The black and gray satellite would be ungainly on Earth—like a cannon had been shoved into a mass of putty, it would have been off-balance in an environment with gravity. But here in orbit, it was ruthlessly effective. The laser was housed in the cannon, the “putty” behind it served as both shielding for the core of the laser as well as the battery for the laser’s power source itself.
Shaw was familiar enough with how the lasers worked that when a red light began to slowly illuminate the inside of the cannon, he knew all too well what it signified. As he watched, the laser began to build up its charge, and his insides tightened, like they were trying to squeeze everything foreign out of his body. He was ready to be sick.
“Did you bring me out here to watch my family die?” Shaw cried.
“You should know me better than that by now,” Aquinas answered.
“I can see the laser warming up!”
“Patience,” Aquinas counseled.
The red glow emanating from the inside of the laser was much brighter now. Shaw had to assume the other fifteen lasers were warming up just like this one.
“Galway is going to kill them!”
“Patience,” Aquinas repeated.
The weapon fired.
The red light inside pulsed bright and faded to black. That’s all it took to fire.
But within a microsecond of firing, with the light of its firing still lingering brightly in his vision, the satellite itself exploded in a ball of flame.
All around the Walden, in fact, a circle of sixteen explosions soundlessly detonated, revealing the location of the cartel’s satellites far more effectively than the artificial flare Aquinas had used.
The fireballs faded quickly in the cold of space and after just a few seconds more, they were gone. The satellite closest to Shaw was now clearly visible. The “putty” in the back had broken in two, and the cannon itself was almost entirely gone, with only a twisted base remaining. All around the satellite were pieces of ejecta that were flying away from the wreckage.
Shaw looked around at the husks of the sixteen satellites, all now inert and all emitting the same ejecta, twinkling in the sunlight as they traveled.
Perfectly timed, each of the sixteen satellites had fired on one of the others, a circular firing squad that had entirely eliminated the threat surrounding the Walden. In just a matter of seconds, El
lie and Jane had earned a reprieve.
“How?” Shaw asked in wonder. He felt near tears.
“It’s not for me to say, I think,” Aquinas said. “But Grace Williams would like to speak with you.”
Grace Williams.
She’s not your ally Galway had told him. Now that he knew who she was talking about, he knew that it was true enough. She’d used him as bait to lure Tranq. She’d voted to kill him within in a week if he didn’t get off the Walden. And probably more that he was forgetting.
And yet, she’d saved his life in the Mediterranean. She’d pulled Ellie out of Saint Louis. And she’d just saved Ellie and Jane again.
The jump changed. Aquinas was gone, Shaw was now perched on a settee in the sunken sitting room of Grace Williams’ airship, the Flying Eagle.
Grace and her partner Nosipho sat across from him, each with a glass of red wine in their hands. They clearly weren’t surprised to see him. Shaw decided to wait for one of them to take the lead.
“A ‘thank you’ is usually customary in these situations,” Grace finally said.
“You ordered the cartel’s satellites to fire on themselves?” Shaw asked.
“I did.”
“With the goal to remove the threat from the Walden?” he clarified.
“Yes.”
Shaw smiled and closed his eyes. He nodded. “Then thank you. Truly.”
“You’re welcome.”
“But why?”
“Why?” Grace asked.
“Why did you do it?”
“To save your family, of course,” she answered.
“Why else?” Shaw pressed.
Grace smiled. “Of course you’re correct. Saving Ellie and Jane from execution was not my sole motivation.”
“Not a surprising revelation, considering you voted to kill them two days ago,” Nosipho said wryly.
Shaw didn’t understand why she would say something like that to Grace, though he’d been thinking nearly the same thing. Then he remembered—Nosipho’s brain had an implant that changed her mood at random. A strategic bit of game theory that kept anyone she was negotiating against uneasy and off-kilter. He’d been taken aback by her sudden about-faces on the ship in the Mediterranean and he still couldn’t fathom how anyone could be in a relationship with someone like that. He looked back to Grace, who seemed to handle Nosipho’s dig against her motives with aplomb.
“Why save your family? Besides the obvious. Well…” Grace took a sip of wine. “I decided to intervene when Galway told you that she was going to act alone. ‘I don’t care how or what the cartel voted.’ I believe those are the exact words she spoke that made me take control of the firing systems. And yes, I know you’re listening, Zella!” Grace called to the air. “You brought this on yourself.”
Grace took another sip of wine. “Galway was telling the truth, for what it’s worth. She had resolved to kill you, your family, and everyone who was researching ways to destroy the Lattice. It was a unilateral decision, and it would have damaged all the companies in the cartel. I felt that it was unacceptable to let Altair’s fate rest on her monomania. So I took control of the satellites and destroyed them before anyone in the cartel could stop me. Your family is safe. For now.”
“Thank you. Again,” Shaw repeated.
“But to answer the question that I’m sure is in your mind,” Grace continued, “yes, I did say ‘for now.’ Unfortunately, Dvorak Systems has another forty laser satellites under its direct control. The good news is that they are stationed on the other side of the planet. It will take at least eight hours to bring them within range of the Walden. Well. Seven hours and fifty eight minutes. Galway has already given the order to reposition them.”
“Do you have anything that can stop them?” Shaw asked.
“No. I took control of the sixteen satellites already deployed to the Walden. If I had thought I could have used them defensively against Galway’s satellites, I would have. I decided it would be better to destroy them instead of risking one of the other companies wrestling control away from me. Meaning there are no more satellites at my disposal. Your best hope now is one of the governments. Like—”
“—The U.S. or China. I know. I’ve barked up that tree already.”
“Your wife may end up living longer than you, however,” Grace said. “Galway has deployed more than just the satellites. Don’t forget, there’s still a war on the Italian peninsula. You might have won a battle, but Galway isn’t done with the war. She’s arming thousands more Northern troops, shuttling in thousands more cartel mercenaries, and stockpiling enough missiles for a slaughter. After what she has planned, it may be lights out for the Eternal City.”
“What does that mean exactly?”
“She’s coming for you. And especially for Florian. The missile she is targeting at his lab is just three minutes away.”
With his attention turned to the lasers in space, Shaw had forgotten about the missile launched in battle. “Has Florian taken cover?”
“He is still working. What else would he do? There is no cover from what is coming.”
“Is there anything you can do?” he asked.
“That depends,” Grace answered hesitantly, and Shaw instantly knew that they had reached the reason for Grace to request that they meet in a chat room. She wanted something, and she’d waited until the missile was almost at the Vatican before broaching the subject to increase the chances she would get it. “If you are willing to pledge that you will stop Florian’s research into the means to destroy the Lattice, I will devote all the resources Altair has to the defense of Rome. Including saving Florian’s life right now.”
“To be clear: you’re not bargaining with my family?” Shaw asked. “Ellie and Jane don’t come into this?” After all the times they had been used as pawns, Shaw had almost grown used to these powerful men and women trying it.
Grace shook her head adamantly. “I’ve done all I can for them, I hope that’s clear. As it happens, this deal saves your life more than theirs. We’ll arm you against the Northerners and Dvorak Systems. Galway won’t be able to ‘rain down fire’ on your position, as you put it to her. But to get our help, you must stop Florian’s research.”
“You truly believe Florian has a chance to bring down the Lattice?” Shaw asked.
“The thought of the Lattice going down again terrifies me more than anything,” she said. For all of Grace’s ability to shield her true motives, Shaw thought she was telling the truth.
“Then it’s a deal,” Shaw said. “Blow the missile out of the sky.”
“That’s an order,” Nosipho said toward her wrap. She turned back to Shaw. “We’re using a missile of our own for the counter attack. It will neutralize theirs in less than fifteen seconds.”
“You are able to launch a missile that fast?” Shaw asked, his eyebrows raised. “Did you have one stationed so close to Rome?”
“We launched it as soon as you joined us here. It’s been shadowing Galway’s missile for the last minute waiting on our order.” There was silence for a moment as Nosipho watched her wrap. “It’s done,” she said, looking back to Shaw.
Shaw looked around the room. “I was just dropped here by Aquinas with no information and with the speed of the new Lattice it’s almost impossible to tell… is this a chat room or am I a projection in your airship?”
“A projection. We’re en route to Rome to join you. We’ll meet you in person in two hours. In the meantime, our resources in Europe are already at your disposal. Your saints are integrating with our systems now. They will present you with battle plans.”
“We’ll be ready.”
Grace shook her head. “There were a variety of reasons you were able to win the battle in Saint Peter’s Square. Almost all of them don’t apply anymore. This final battle won’t be anything like that one. Don’t get fooled into thinking you will be able to win the same way.”
“Noted,” Shaw said.
Nosipho sat forward. “Now it’s my turn
to make sure we’re clear. When you leave your jump and return to the Vatican, your first job is to…?”
Shaw felt like he was being talked down to by an elementary school teacher. “To tell Florian he needs to stop his research?”
Nosipho nodded. “Any further help from Altair is contingent on that.”
Shaw hesitated. “Listen. I know you both are personally… financially invested in the success of the Lattice. But look at all the terrible things it enables. Is it the worst thing to know how it could be destroyed?”
Nosipho and Grace stared at him blankly.
“I’m surprised,” Grace said. “After all you went through, you still can find it in yourself to ask that question?” Shaw hesitated and Grace continued, “You tell me, Byron. You’ve seen the world with the Lattice and you’ve seen it without. Which do you prefer?”
“I won’t do it!” Brother Florian shouted.
“It was not a request,” Shaw answered evenly. “I am your Grand Master and you owe me your obedience.”
Florian scoffed. “You aren’t a priest or a monk, let alone someone who deserves the title Grand Master. You are a mercenary, plain and simple. And I will continue this research until we find a way to bring down the Lattice.”
“I defeated your enemies on the battlefield, who outnumbered us two to one. And I just saved your life from a missile attack. Does that mean nothing?”
“We were prepared to die before. We are prepared to die again. You bought us more time to find a solution, that’s all.”
Shaw was confused by this unexpected stubbornness. But was it so unexpected? It seemed that the only time Florian had ever been happy to work with Shaw was when he had been given the order to start up this research again. “I wanted you to begin this research because I wanted a bargaining chip to force the cartel to call off the war. I never intended to actually use it to destroy the Lattice.”