by Nick Webb
Except he knew it was more. What was it? Short of taking her apart, there was no way to tell.
She shrugged.
“My dear, what do you think is going to happen here? Do you think I am a Telestine agent, sent to test your loyalty—or worse, kill your species? Do you believe I am planning to wipe out humanity? Believe me, that is not my plan. I want the Telestines gone, and humanity in control of Earth again.”
He watched her for a moment, and pushed himself up to pace around the room. “I spoke of science and technology. I did not tell you how deeply it offends me that we cannot pursue that. It is what we are. The way we have survived for so long is through innovation. We learn, we adapt. To cut us off from that and from our planet in one stroke is to deny us a part of ourselves. Surely you, held in that lab, watching the experiments with a human’s mind but kept from your family ... surely you understand that.”
She bit her lip.
“There is a Telestine military base on the moon,” Nhean told her. “It contains access points that can tell us more about the Telestine defense grid. If you don’t think you can get us to the Dawning.…”
She only looked at him.
“…then perhaps you can help us infiltrate the lunar base,” he finished.
Nothing. Of course. He was beginning to tire of this, but it was imperative that she not know that. Not yet.
“Mr. Pike tells me you were almost intercepted by Telestine fighters on your way off Earth.”
She looked at him sharply. There was betrayal there.
“They didn’t see you. Why?” He made sure his voice was sharp.
She folded her arms.
“Did they not see you, or did they let you go?”
She wouldn’t even look at him now.
“I will not tolerate traitors,” he told her softly. “The slaves, I pity. They had no choice. They aren’t even entirely human. You, however—you have been given every opportunity to help your own kind, and you will not do it.”
Her head shook—just once, an abortive gesture.
“No, that’s not true? Or no, you won’t help us? Which is it? The first or the second?”
She said nothing, and he crouched down next to her chair.
“We don’t have the technology the Telestines have,” he told her simply. “We don’t have the technology to take our planet back without great uncertainty and great bloodshed. All we have is you.” He stood and smiled. “I trust you will help us as much as you can. In the meantime, dinner is ready. I will join you presently.”
She nodded, warily. Her face was a puzzle as she left the room.
Parees lingered in the doorway after she had gone. His eyes met Nhean’s, and the men both nodded before the aide closed the door quietly and left.
I trust you will help us as much as you can. Nhean looked out at the view of the towering dark yellow clouds, and then to the spires of the main city. Even from here, two panes of thick glass and hundreds of yards away, he could see the seething motion of the city’s populace. It never stopped. He often wondered how streets had looked on Earth—if they were ever empty, if there was space that was not crowded with a mass of humanity. Here, there was no natural process to ensure that the scrubbers kept cleaning the air or the cooling and heating systems did their work. There were always people awake, and so all of the aspects of life continued on as well: the cafes, the transit cars. On the other stations, crowded almost to the point of system failure, the hallways were always congested and filthy and loud. And on Venus, those not rich enough for their own floating estates ran stock exchanges that never closed, manned the hospitals, played endless rounds of poker in the casinos….
He would not be sad to see the last of this place. Nhean rubbed at his face. He had to focus.
The girl. How much could she help? He had planted the seed in her mind, but he might not have time for her to decide to help on her own.
He didn’t need her cooperation, he reminded himself. He had her. He had the machinery inside her. His fingers clenched. If necessary, he could deconstruct her piece by piece. It wasn’t something he looked forward to—Nhean was not a man who enjoyed pain, in himself or others—but it was something he would do without hesitation.
For Earth. For humanity.
But not yet. He nodded decisively and made for the dinner hall. To do so would be to make an enemy of William Pike, and that was an enemy he could not afford at the moment. If anyone could discover the truth behind the admiral’s motives, if anyone could guess what her end game might be, it would be the man who—if the information Parees had found was accurate—still loved her.
It was a fine line to walk, but Nhean was used to that. He was accustomed to charming secrets from the tongues of his enemies, and William Pike did not even think of him as an enemy yet. A thought occurred to him, and he paused outside the dinner hall to motion to Parees.
“Has there been word from Tel’rabim?”
“None yet, sir. The lines are completely closed.”
“I don’t like this,” Nhean murmured. “He’s never closed our backchannel before.”
Parees only bowed his head. He did not promise to bring Nhean information immediately; they both knew he would do so. He did not promise Nhean that all would be well; they both knew there was no guarantee of that. Over the years, Parees had come to anticipate his employer’s needs exactly. He bowed and withdrew, and Nhean strode into the dinner hall to greet his guests.
Twelve hours, he decided. The girl had twelve hours to offer information of her own accord.
Then he would take it from her.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Venus, 49 kilometers above surface
Tang Estate, New Zurich
He didn’t like any of this. Pike paced around the set of rooms he’d been given and tried to shake his unease. He’s seen the girl at dinner, perfectly healthy. They’d had a leisurely meal and had been given separate rooms—which made sense, of course. Nhean had taken him aside to tell him that they needed a plan by morning.
But the more he thought, pacing up and down on the exquisite floors, the more it seemed to him that something was wrong. This wasn’t his world and these weren’t his kind of people. Blake had been entirely correct about that. He didn’t understand the way they worked. He couldn’t get a straight answer out of Nhean about ... anything.
But he could fix that problem. The door to his room wasn’t locked, and Pike grabbed his rifle before slipping out into the darkened hallways. He half-expected to see someone waiting outside his rooms, but Nhean was apparently not worried about Pike leaving. Where would he go? Jump out into the golden clouds?
Nhean knew Pike had nowhere to go—and that made Pike furious. Pike looked around and set off in the opposite direction from the main rooms.
He wasn’t entirely sure what he was hoping to find. A journal, with all of Nhean’s secrets laid out neatly in one place? He grinned. That wouldn’t be half bad.
The floor sloped down gently as he walked. The estates on Venus, especially in the cities, used many levels rather than large ones—although even Pike’s rooms were larger than some of the ships he’d served on in the cargo guild. He was, by his estimation, four levels down when he heard the clank.
He’d heard that noise before, though he couldn’t remember where. There were two parts to it, three if you listened carefully. It came again and he frowned. There was one door for this level, only a few feet away. He put his hand on the knob and pulled.
If this were Nhean’s own estate, Pike had no doubt that he would have been locked securely in his rooms. The private estates had their own security systems, their own house-loyal guards. If Nhean had taken the risk of bringing them to his estate….
The door came open with a jerk and Pike stopped dead on the threshold.
The room was in chaos. The girl had clearly been trying to escape. The bed was on its side, pieces of it ripped off—she had been trying to find something to wedge into the door, he guessed. Her room had no
thing that might be easily used that way.
By design, he was sure.
“Are you hurt?”
She shook her head.
“I think we should go.”
And? her eyes asked him.
“I don’t know. We just have to get out of here.” The more he thought, the clearer it seemed. Everything was off about this, just subtly, just enough to worry him. Pike grabbed her hand and hauled her up. He searched around on the floor for a weapon of some type and handed her the dull knife from the bowl of fruit nearby. “It’s not much, but it’s something. Come on.”
He took them down the ramp rather than up, on the hope that it led down to the docking bay. It did, though the door there wouldn’t budge. She pushed him out of the way and felt over it with gentle fingertips, and whatever she touched, the door slid silently open for her. She pulled him down the hallway, breaking into a run.
The ship was still there, silent and empty. Pike hadn’t appreciated how big it was when they arrived, but it went up at least four stories, and extended back until it disappeared in darkness.
Thankfully, the crew was absent and the cockpit was empty. Pike punched at the controls at random until something turned on, and gave a silent sigh of thanks when the ship’s protocols opened the docking bay doors as well.
Taking a deep breath, he engaged what he thought were the maneuvering thrusters, and with a jolt the ship lurched off the deck, nearly crashing into the ceiling before he arrested the ascent. He tried hard not to clench the controls, but he noticed his knuckles were white. He guided the ship back slowly out the bay door as the girl peered at the computer, lips pursed. Every once in a while she would tap something. She was searching, but for what, he didn’t know.
Pike checked the fuel gauge as they zoomed away from the city, and finally remembered to breath. Good. There was enough to get them to fuel stations where he was known.
That was a risk, however. He sat back in his seat, and was surprised to see the girl lean forward to punch coordinates into the guidance systems. He studied them for a moment.
“Earth?”
She shook her head.
“The moon?”
She nodded.
“Is that where Nhean wanted to go?”
Another nod.
Only then did it come crashing down on him what he’d done, and he put his face in his hands.
These aren’t your kind of people. What had he gotten caught up in? He’d been raised in a place where mistakes meant death, where people talked straight with one another because there was no reason to do otherwise. He didn’t understand a world where Nhean claimed to be doing the same work as the Rebellion but wouldn’t trust them, where Walker had shadows behind her eyes.
He didn’t want to know if the girl who had saved his life was a Telestine agent.
He had to. He picked up his head and wiped the coordinates out of the computer with a few stabs of his fingers.
“Are you trying to help us get Earth back?” he asked her. “Or are you one of theirs?”
Her face went white. She stared at him like he’d slapped her.
“Look, I don’t know what the hell is going on here.” His voice was rising. “I don’t know who you are. All I wanted to do was get back home, and then when I found you, I thought maybe we had a shot. I just don’t trust that guy.” The words sounded idiotic. He forced himself to look at her. “So when you say you want to go to the moon base—is it to destroy it? Or to get the information we need to get these fuggers off our planet and take it back?”
She nodded.
“You think he’s telling the truth about that?”
She sat back in her chair. Her nod this time was quieter. As if she was working something out.
“Why?”
She didn’t have an answer for that, of course.
“All right.” Pike clenched his hands and tried to think.
“I have to make a call. Let’s hope he was lying about the fleet being missing, because we really need some backup.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
1 million kilometers sunward of L1 Lagrange point, Earth
Bridge, EFS Intrepid
“Pike?”
“Oh Laura, thank god.” Pike’s voice was scratchy. She heard him let out his breath in a whoosh. “Please tell me the fleet is okay.”
Walker sank back in her chair. She was alone in her quarters. No one could see her break down. She pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes and took a moment to steady herself.
“The fleet is ... holding.” He didn’t need to hear the worst of it, but she couldn’t bring herself to lie outright to him. “After we couldn’t find you we fled back to our favorite hiding place in the glare of the sun. What happened to you?”
“Have you ever heard of a man named Nhean Tang?”
“No, but give me a moment.” Walker pulled up one of the databases and began a search. “Anything more you know about him? I have a few records, one on Ares station, one on the cargo freighters, and—” Her breath caught. Venus. Technical analyst and head of a small company called Data Enterprises. “Oh, my god. He’s our contact on Venus.”
“Let me guess.” Pike sounded so bitter that she swallowed hard. “He’s the one who told you about the Dawning.”
“Yes.” Walker had the sense of an immense pattern swinging into place. She could still only grasp the merest part of it, and yet what she could see made her start to question everything. Data Enterprises—she’d never heard of it until now, but from the data file, it looked to have its fingers in a lot of pots. Connections to several large banks. Cargo freighter construction companies. The Venetian branches of the Catholic and Mormon churches. The Dalai Lama. The cargo guild. The UN. Shit. She did not like this in the least. But Laura Walker had never been one to run from facts, though. “Tell me everything.”
“He contacted me during the raid on the laboratory,” Pike told her bluntly. “He wanted me to bring the Dawning to him, not to you.”
And Pike’s shuttle was coming at them from Venus. Her heart contracted.
“Did you?”
“No! No. Well....” He sighed again. “Not exactly. We didn’t find it.”
“At least he was honest about one thing, then.” She could hear Pike’s same bitterness echoed in her own voice. “Start at the beginning: what happened at the lab?”
“We damaged the lab in the first attack—your fighters must have seen it crashing—so we split up to try to find the Dawning. Nhean somehow hacked into my earpiece—from Venus—and guided me to where his intelligence said it was. I got to the room and the only thing there was a girl.”
“A girl?” Walker tapped at her earpiece. “Did you say a girl? Like, a kid?”
“Yes, a girl. Not a kid—older. Maybe nineteen or twenty. I couldn’t just leave her, so I brought her with me. Our ship crashed—you know that—and we had to get off-planet. By the time we got a shuttle up though, he’d decided she had something to do with the Dawning. He told me Jupiter had been attacked and the fleet was on the run, and to come to Venus.” There was a pause, and she could just see him rubbing his forehead the way he did when he felt out of his depth.
She almost smiled. She had missed him.
“I suppose that was all lies,” he said quietly. “Dammit. Walker, I’m not cut out for this—”
“Not all of it was lies.” Walker considered. “After we got your capsule down, they traced the fleet to New Beginnings. We lost—well, it’s not important. But we lost too much, and we’ve been on the run, that much is true. He just didn’t tell you that we were nearby. We didn’t abandon you there, Pike. We were waiting for you.” And planning to make the Telestines pay. He didn’t need to know that, though.
“I should have waited.” Pike’s voice had the same flat tone he always used when he was angry with himself.
“You didn’t know.” She knew from experience that she’d never convince him, not where his own failings were concerned, but she could at least try.
“You did the best you could, under the circumstances. In any case, there was a fight on when we arrived, so maybe it’s best you weren’t there.” She sighed. “You’re coming back, though? You’ll meet up with us?” She wanted to see with her own eyes that he was alive.
“Not just yet. Remember that girl I mentioned?”
“Yes.” A stab of—what was this, jealousy? Walker gave a fierce shake of her head at her own foolishness.
“I think he was right about her,” Pike said. “I think—I think she actually can do things with their technology. At one point, a whole squadron passed right by us because of something she did. I don’t know what, but ... look, he mentioned a lunar base, one of theirs. If we can get onto there, there’s a chance she can get us the same information we’d have had with the Dawning.”
Walker froze. Reason returned slowly with each breath, in the mantra she had repeated for years: Think logically, don’t be seduced by hope or fear, pick the best choice, keep moving. “She thinks she can do that?”
“I ... think so?”
“Well—can she or can’t she?” She frowned at the comm unit. “She’s with you now? Put her on.”
“I can’t really do that. I’ll explain later—”
“Why not?”
He hesitated. “She, uh, doesn’t talk.”
“Doesn’t? Won’t? Or can’t?”
“I don’t know. Can’t, I think. Listen, Laura, I think we’ve got a shot. I really do. If the fleet can cover us....”
There was a pause. When his voice came again, it was muffled, as if he’d put the comm unit down. “We can’t possibly get in there on our own,” she heard. “We don’t have guns on this ship, we need the fleet.” A long pause. “You honestly think we can get in there alone? And that’s a better option than going in with their cover?” he said, obviously talking to someone else. She heard him sigh.