by Nick Webb
Pike glanced at the computer and opened his mouth to reply, just as a knock sounded at the door. They froze. Pike shut his eyes, as if that would help.
Be very, very quiet, Walker mouthed at them.
“Admiral?” Min’s voice said from outside.
They waited, motionless, until his footsteps receded down the hall.
“See that?” Pike said lazily. “I really think you’re growing as a person.”
“I think I am,” she agreed. “So what were you saying?”
“Actually, Dawn mentioned—”
“Stop talking about me in the third person when I’m right here.”
Walker and Pike looked over at the computer open on the deck. “Sorry Dawn. Or how about I start calling you Lapushka like—”
“Nope. Only Ry gets to call me that.”
It had been a rollercoaster of a week. Dawn had revealed herself to Pike first, then to Walker, and it took many long conversations to convince them that she was, indeed, the same old Dawn, just … bigger. No, bigger didn’t quite capture it.
Vast. She was … vast.
She said she was everywhere. Everywhere in the solar system with a computer. In her final moments, she’d reached out to every mainframe, every hard drive, every networked computer—and uploaded part of herself to them.
I’m distributed, she’d said, and it’s a little awesome.
“Fair enough.” Pike gave the computer a look, trying to imagine something, anything, to go along with the disembodied voice. “Anyway, Dawn said she had something to tell me.”
“Oh? Should I go?” Walker stood. “I’ve got another goddamned UN reception to go to anyway. Those things never end.”
“I … don’t know,” Dawn said. “Maybe you should know this too.” Walker could almost imagine the girl looking between the two of them, hesitating. The computer was practically vibrating with tension. “You know how … how one of the sticking points of the armistice is reparations for the drones?”
Pike and Walker exchanged a quick look. Dawn, ever-present, had been suspiciously silent throughout those particular negotiations, not inclined to offer an opinion even when she was clearly more than qualified to do so.
Walker wondered what she’d been thinking. She nodded and gestured for the girl to continue. She caught herself. Could she even see gestures?
Apparently so, since Dawn continued. “Well, I saw one in Telestine London,” she said. The sound of her taking a deep breath, which Walker found oddly humorous, given that she had no lungs. “And … I think—” She had trouble just spitting it out. “I think they were made from people who died in Telestine raids. They weren’t just genetically engineered.”
Walker narrowed her eyes. “What are you saying?”
Pike slowly stood up. “What … what are you saying, Dawn?”
“I … I think I saw your sister in London, before it crashed. And now … I can’t. She’s gone. I don’t know where she went.” she said.
Pike set his jaw, grabbed his jacket, and left the apartment without another word.
“Oh my God,” said Walker, sitting back down. Pike’s sister. His long-dead sister, supposedly killed in a Telestine raid in the mountains above Denver. “You should have waited. You know Pike.”
The computer almost shrugged. “You think he’s going to do something rash?”
Walker glared at the computer. “It’s Pike. Of course he is.” She stood up and started changing out of her formal wear, and, making a decision, put her fleet uniform back on. “And he’ll need some backup. Can we count on your help?”
A pause. “Laura,” Dawn began. She never, ever used her first name. “This is something … different. Something’s off. I should know if she’s alive. Or dead. I’d feel it, either way. But with this, I feel—nothing. I can’t explain it. I don’t know. Maybe she is dead. Ok, she’s probably dead. But, yes. I will help as I can—if she is dead, and Pike discovers she’s been alive all these years, serving the Telestines, he’s going to … uh … go ballistic?”
To put it lightly, thought Walker. Now she was pissed. After the triumph of the armistice, the steady stream of human exiles that had started to return to Earth, and after the assurance that she’d be able to use the Telestine FTL tech to go and explore the nearby star systems, she had finally found happiness. Contentment. But not for any of those reasons.
She was happy because she finally, after all these years, had what she really, truly wanted.
She had Pike. William Pike. And she wasn’t going to lose him again.
Thank you for reading Neptune’s War, book 3 of the Earth Dawning Series. If you enjoyed this book, would you please leave a review?
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