Since it was—best guess—a nanotech utility fog, I just asked Singer to lock it out from any override control except for mine.
Having done that, he said, “I’ve got a response from the Interceptor.”
His tone and careful delivery made me cautious, too. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I have some good news for you.”
A flare of hope went off in my chest, so bright and terrible I almost tuned to ignore it. “It’s Connla, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” he said. “It is. And that launch is on its way over to collect you.”
♦ ♦ ♦
Whatever the internal vibrational frequency of my body was, I had reached it. I was as profoundly wired as it is possible for a human to be without the assistance of introduced chemicals, and that was after tuning it back a little. My hands didn’t shake only because the seat ahead of me on the launch had padded grab rails and I was clutching them. The acceleration that pressed me back into my chair was gentle enough so that I didn’t have to let go.
We docked, and I was floating inside the restraints. I felt like I was holding a breath, and had taken another breath on top of it. I fumbled my restraints when I went to unfasten them, which was a pretty magical accomplishment, considering that they had a quick release and I’d spent literally my entire life opening restraints and I was finally back in the comfort of zero g again. And that was with my nerves tuned way down. If I’d been trying to do this without my fox, I think I would have been catatonic in the corner.
Except I had done it without my fox. I had done all sorts of things without my fox, and while I’d been labile, weepy, angry, and generally deregulated with a head that was a no-fun place to live inside of, I had still done them. I had. Me. Or whoever I’d convinced myself to pretend to be while the person I’d been programmed to be was offline temporarily.
Who the hell was I, anyway?
You know, I had no idea.
I still dialed it back a little more since I had the option. When I had finished, I was as far as I felt I could safely go without making myself groggy. I didn’t want to be dulled, unpresent. But taking the edge off could only help my focus.
Two constables—one human and one Vanlian, and both officers rather than full Goodlaws—met me at the airlock and escorted me into the Interceptor. They were kind enough not to attempt small talk beyond a few soothing pleasantries that let me know where the head was and that I wasn’t in immediate trouble. I also introduced myself to the shipmind, as was polite, and SJV I’ll Explain It To You Slowly was pleasant and personable. The crew called her Splain.
It was strange, moving freely without gravity again after so long. It was stranger being around people who weren’t my enemy and only company all rolled into one.
They took me to the bridge—a ship this size, with a reasonably big crew, had something a little more formal than a command cabin.
And there was Connla.
He was wearing the pilot’s dusty-blacks we’d never bothered with on Singer, and he looked dashing as hell. He had a cat in his arms. A spotted orange, white, and black cat. Shedding all over his crisp uniform. He was looking at me. The cat was Bushyasta.
“You lucky son of a tramper captain,” I said. “I should have known that flying.”
I started to cry. I kicked over to him and held out my arms.
He gave me my cat.
I hugged Bushyasta. She purred and snuggled into me, but didn’t open her eyes.
Tears behave strangely under gravity, and on the Koregoi ship I’d done enough deregulated crying about everything that I’d gotten used to the way they broke their surface tension and streaked down my cheeks, requiring no further maintenance. Now they swelled from the surface of my eye, blindingly obvious and blurring my vision completely.
I turned away so Connla wouldn’t see. Tears made him uncomfortable, and him being uncomfortable made me shy.
I gulped and said, “I swear there’s something wrong with this cat. Low blood sugar. Narcolepsy.”
“That cat just has a clear conscience,” he said. “Singer mentioned that you had a stowaway?”
“Yes,” I said. “Two of the constables who came over stayed on the ship to keep an eye out for her. And to make sure she didn’t take off with it while I was over here.” Not that she stood much chance of hotwiring it with Singer inhabiting its brain.
That was when Mephistopheles zoomed out from behind the control console, ricocheted off my legs hard enough to start me spinning, then snagged her nails in the carpet and settled into position with her ears flat and her back firmly pointed in my direction.
“You would not believe how they scratched me up,” Connla said. “I stuffed them inside my suit after the hull integrity blew out. We were all just lucky we were aft, and they were already in their skins and webbed in.”
I had been weeping more or less genteelly. At that, I lost control completely. I clutched the damn narcoleptic cat and sobbed and couldn’t stop myself spinning even when my afthands bounced off a bulkhead or two. I’d probably have drifted helplessly around the Interlocutor’s bridge if Connla hadn’t snagged my elbow and steered me to rest.
Connla isn’t big on touching people.
He hooked his lower extremity on a support rail, wrapped both arms around me, and pulled me against his broad, well-muscled (they’re gengineered for it, on Spartacus) chest. He embraced me with one hand while he stroked my hair with the other, squeezing me tighter until the cat trapped between us made a protesting noise.
“You have hair,” he said, when I’d slowed down a little.
“Couldn’t read enough alien to figure out which bottle in the bathroom was the depilatory,” I joked. I wiped tears and snot on his shoulder.
He didn’t complain.
♦ ♦ ♦
“I have a surprise for you,” Connla said, and the tone in his voice indicated that he thought it would be a pleasant one.
“You are a surprise for me,” I retorted, my hands full of ecstatic cats. Any moment now they were likely to decide that the greeting had gone on long enough and commence Reunion Stage Two: The Spurning of Haimey for Her Absence, Again. But for now I was going to bask in the affection as long as it was still coming down.
“I honestly was afraid we’d never catch you,” Connla said. Not easily, the way most people would, but with a little edge of self-conscious nervousness over the vulnerability. But that didn’t matter, because—wonder of wonders—here was Connla, and he was talking about his feelings of his own accord, without any chasing, prying, or prompting.
Who says progress is measured over generations?
“I missed you too,” I said, drifting along behind him. He seemed to be leading me back toward the crew quarters. This vessel was significantly bigger than the tug had been, but in addition to its twinned white bands it had massive engines and a respectable range of weaponry. It also boasted a crew complement sizable enough to field squads of constables capable of dealing with those occasional violent impolitenesses to which even a rightminded society can be prone.
The combination of those things made it one of the most cramped and claustrophobic space ships I personally have ever been on.
The tug had been small. And yet, by comparison, its tiny crew and plan of two mostly open cabins had given it a sense of airiness. This ship, by contrast, had no gangways, no open-plan cabins. Each tiny space opened directly onto one to three others, and in many of those cabins were people—eating, sleeping, playing games.
So many people. So many of them—going about their paramilitary routines with no reason to pause or to acknowledge me at all. A few, polite or lonely, took a moment to raise a hand or nod a chin or wave a tendril or flick an ear as we went by. The vast majority, though, were either sleeping or bent to their tasks without allowing themselves distraction.
So many people. So incredibly many. I literally had no idea what to do. I felt surrounded. Oppressed. Even stalked.
I had obvious
ly been spending way too much time alone.
I knew it was foolish. It was just that I had been away from people other than Farweather for a very long time. I had been deregulated a long time, and only reregulated for a matter of minutes. And the result was a learned anxiety response that was not helpful to me or to anyone right now—that was, in fact, maladaptive in the extreme.
It made me angry to be so reactive. Which of course was just the same damned reactivity again. Connla’s promise of a “good” surprise had been good strategy on his part, an indication that he knew me. I hated surprises. But he also knew that my curiosity was bottomless.
We swam into the final hatchway. Connla, ahead of me, cleared it. And I found myself confronted with a small cabin that from this vantage point looked to be networked with a forest of what appeared to be bamboo, except it was all growing at random angles. I stopped in the hatchway, which was a stupid thing to do, and after a moment’s more inspection I realized that the bamboo was, in fact, giant exoskeletal legs, and a lot of them.
Being paused in the hatchway was even less safe on a ship than on a station. As I hung there, braced on the lip with both forehands, a small head jeweled with vast, faceted eyes turned to regard me.
“Cheeirilaq?”
Friend Haimey, it answered. Please do move into the cabin. I should despair if anything untoward befell you.
Cats and all, I drifted into the cabin. The cats seemed undisturbed by the presence of a massive, predatory alien. I assumed that a sentient insect could be counted on not to eat pets, so I turned them loose to wander around. Or, in Bushyasta’s case, to drift, leaving a trail of tiny kitty snores.
As for me? I put a hand out and steadied myself against one of Cheeirilaq’s scaffolding of legs. It didn’t seem to mind. And in so doing, I realized why the cabin seemed so very full of not-bamboo. Cheeirilaq had braced itself into position in the center of the small chamber with its limbs wedging it against each available plane. It looked like a secure position. I hoped it was comfortable.
“Well,” I said. “I was not prepared to meet you all the way out here, Goodlaw.”
It lifted one foot daintily and gently tried to dislodge Mephistopheles, who had tackled one of its enormous legs with both front paws and was bunny-kicking its exoskeleton. At least, fairly gently. I didn’t think the claws would get through.
The pleased surprise is mutual, it said.
It was so nice to have a working fox again.
“Do you require assistance?”
Cheeirilaq put its frondlike foot down again. The cat was still wrestling with its ankle. Your small friend seems unlikely to harm me. Is it an infant?
“No, it just acts like one. It is a pet. So, what does bring you out here to the nether reaches, then?”
I expected it to say something about having been sent to retrieve the Koregoi ship. I was not prepared for what actually came out of my translator.
I was following you. Or rather, I was following your pirate captain, because of her links to Habren. If we can get them both into custody, it increases the likelihood that one of them can be induced to provide evidence.
“She’s not mine!” I protested.
It made the laughter sound. We were very much afraid that when—if—we reclaimed the Koregoi ship, you and Singer would be found to have perished. All aboard are relieved at your safety and well-being. Do you have Captain Farweather in custody?
“Ah,” I said. “So there’s a funny story about that.”
I proceeded to tell it, in three-part harmony. Connla was hanging silently beside the porthole and watching, half melted into the background, so it would save me having to tell it twice, anyway. Halfway through it Cheeirilaq noticed me yawning and sent out for stimulants, which I drank gratefully before finishing my story off and adding, “So if you’re chasing Habren, how come you’re out here after Farweather instead of back on Downthehatch?”
I spent enough time there. And I know that the pirate has a link to Habren. I need to know whether they’re partners, or whether Habren is a victim of extortion before we proceed.
“And Habren is your special project.”
“Dirty as hell,” Connla said. “And just a little too smart to get snagged on it.”
Yet.
Connla said, “We’ve had some time to compare notes, and we’re pretty sure that Habren was the source of the intel that lured us out to that sunforsaken sector in the first place, actually. Though the goal of that—”
“I came to the same conclusion. And what I think is that Farweather wanted to get her hands on me,” I said. “That’s what the booby trap on the Jothari ship was for.”
“Huh?” Connla blinked his large, bright blue eyes at me. “I don’t get it.”
“Backstory,” I said. I was suddenly much too tired to explain all the nonsense with my memories being altered and my juvenile record for terrorism and how my clade, my mothers and sisters, had used me as a weapon of mass destruction and then cut me loose as soon as I was inconvenient—and then abandoned me utterly and completely. I had nothing but rage, and I had no place to put that rage, so expressing it seemed pointless. “She used to know an ex-girlfriend of mine who was mixed up in some shady stuff. She thought maybe I had some additional information she would find useful.”
Connla tilted his head at exactly the same angle that Cheeirilaq was using, but they both let it slide. I suspected Cheeirilaq, being a Goodlaw, probably had more information about the whole mess than I did.
Connla said, “And she’s at large in the Koregoi ship.”
“Yep.” I stretched against the ache in my back. “Sorry about that.”
Well, it can’t be helped. I guess we shall just have to go over there and fetch her.
“Cheeirilaq, no.”
Its head swiveled to assess me with first one flittering teardrop eye, and then the other. I beg your pardon?
“The Koregoi ship. It’s under gravity. A little heavier than Terran standard, I think.” I shook my head. “Too much for me, anyway. Or nearly. You can’t go over there.”
There is much in what you say.
I almost thought it was a joke. How can you tell when a giant insect is winking?
Then it said, Well, we’ll just have to figure out how to lower the settings on the gravity, won’t we? What good luck that we have such an exceptionally competent engineer!
And an artificial intelligence who has gotten control of the ship’s systems, I thought, but that seemed like it could be explained later.
♦ ♦ ♦
Connla and the cats joined me in the lighter on the way back over, together with a couple of peace officers. He leaned his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes. For such a madcap pilot, he was always pretty neurotic when somebody else was flying—even if they were flying sedately.
I stared out the window, looking from ship to ship until I was distracted by Connla muttering, “Your friend the grasshopper is pretty cool.”
“I like it,” I said, trying not to sound too brittle. I was having an emotional dia. Mephistopheles mewed from her spot in a carrier under the seat in front of me. I hoped she would not be singing the traveling song of her people the entire way back. It was probably just a protest about being cooped up, however, because she settled down after a complaint or two, and that allowed us both to relax a little.
He still didn’t open his eyes. He just rocked his head back and forth. When he quieted, and I thought he was dozing off, he surprised me again by saying, “What are we going to do when we get home?”
I blinked at him. “Home.”
We were going home to the Synarche. Assuming we lived through catching Farweather, but we had a pretty good set of backups now.
That reminded me: I needed to send Cheeirilaq a message about Farweather being potentially rigged to blow up. Good news, good news. I wondered what the Freeporters thought a reasonable commute time from the Core to whatever pathforsaken outpost we’d been headed for was. I never had gott
en around to asking her.
I fired that off quickly, before I again forgot about it. Then I remembered that my fox could remember these things for me again, and felt like an idiot.
I hoped Singer hadn’t noticed.
Connla grimaced and kicked the deck at his feet, missing the cat’s cage. It was Bushyasta anyway. She was unlikely to take offense, let alone so much as notice anything except a dollop of cat food under her nose. “You and Singer. Where am I going?”
I grimaced back, but I didn’t kick anything. My afthands were still too damn sore from all the damn gravity.
Gravity I was going back to now. Sigh.
Well, nobody loves a whiner.
“Wherever you want, I guess, given what you can do,” I said. I pointed to our escort, the Interceptor, receding as the launch took us back toward the Koregoi vessel. “The constables seem pretty excited to have you on as a pilot. That doesn’t seem like dull work.”
He blew air out through his nostrils. I had no idea why he was being so sulky, and I didn’t like it.
“I’ve done something to make you unhappy.”
“It’s not you,” he said at last. He shook his head, the ponytail whipping. If we hadn’t been strapped in he would have shaken himself right out of the chair. “I just . . . you and Singer have a life to go to. You have a place, and important work. I’m . . . going to wind up doing milk runs or something.”
It was so strange to look at this man, this friend, and see an echo of all my own insecurities and fears of inadequacy and abandonment.
“You know,” I said, “I’ve been feeling really sad about you going off to have adventures and be a fancy pilot while I get to go to the Core and play test subject for the foreseeable future. I don’t want to do that. I want to go out and crawl around space with Singer and the cats and you.”
“Nice to know I get billed under Bushyasta,” he said. But he was smiling.
“Do you want to stay together?” I asked. “It seemed presumptuous to ask, before.”
“I want to not feel disinvited from the party.”
“Never,” I said, pretty sure Singer would entirely agree. “Why didn’t you mention this earlier?”
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