by C. Gockel
“I’m fine, James,” he called back, not bothering to encode anything, eyes on Agnes.
James encoded his response in more raps against the door. “All the doors are locked, we can’t get Okoro out, neutralize the prime minister’s Guard …”
“The men firing phasers in a hospital are the prime minister’s Guard?” 6T9 asked, shocked. They were the personal agents of Shinar’s leader. Their job was technically only to protect him. “The prime minister isn’t here, is he?”
“Unknown…” James encoded. There was a pause, and then he encoded, “We can’t get you out either, 6T9.”
“Wonderful,” 6T9 said aloud. He shook his head. “At least things can’t get worse.”
And then the world shook, and outside came a roar that 6T9 wished he could ascribe to thunder.
In one of Sundancer’s aft compartments, Volka finished putting on her envirosuit and picked up the stunner rifle the corporal had given her, her jaw hard. If she had to go in and retrieve 6T9, she was ready. Closing her eyes, she pictured walking out to the bridge, felt the air pressure change, and opened her eyes to find a door had appeared in the wall. Exiting the compartment, she strode to the bridge. From her wrist came the muffled sound of someone clearing her throat.
“Is something wrong, Bracelet?” she asked.
“The ethernet dampener doesn’t extend to the rooftop, Miss Volka,” Bracelet said. “It’s just keeping us from talking to everyone below.”
Volka’s brow furrowed as she entered the bridge and went to check on Carl. She’d put him in one of the Marines’ suitcases—without weapons, it was a generously sized, comfy foam bed for him. He still hadn’t stopped squeaking or incessantly grooming his whiskers, and he barely acknowledged her approach. His ethernet-to-speech device hadn’t worked earlier, but maybe that had to do with his frantic state?
Jerome said, “I got contact.”
Volka bit back the urge to have Bracelet call Sixty. He was busy. Interrupting him would be dangerous.
Bracelet coughed. “I could connect to the suit via the ethernet and talk to it.”
The comment was out of the blue, and for a moment, Volka was confused. And then she was mortified. “Suit talks? I’m sorry, Suit, I didn’t know.”
“Err…not like that,” Bracelet said. “But it can tell me information about the world around us with sensors I don’t have, monitor your vital signs, let me adjust temperatures…that sort of thing.”
“Craters, lost them again,” Jerome muttered.
“Sure, Bracelet,” said Volka. She couldn’t talk to Sixty, but Bracelet could at least talk to Suit. Maybe Bracelet needed to talk to fellow machines? Maybe Sixty did, too. For an instant, she felt a pang of fear...she wasn’t a machine. But then the fear evaporated. In a way, Sixty was Luddeccean, too. It was sort of where he’d spent his “childhood.” And of course he needed to be close to other machines; no one could be everything for another person. That was a child’s understanding of love, the sort of understanding she’d had when she was with Alaric. She sniffed in irritation. Thinking these sorts of things right now was childish. Her ears tried to press back but couldn’t in the confines of her helmet. The kiss with Sixty had set her mind off on this inconvenient track, but she wouldn’t let it distract her anymore.
Striding to the edge of the opening in the keel, Volka peered out. The Marines on the rooftop weren’t talking or in her line of sight, but she could smell them and hear their breathing and shifts in stance. Her eyes fell on a pebble laying on the roof. It was barely the size of her pinky fingertip, and it was the only thing that broke up the monotony of the smooth concrete. The pebble was smooth. Gray. Unremarkable. And then it began undulating back and forth…and it jumped. Volka took a breath, caught a whiff of rotten eggs…and Suit’s visor snicked shut.
Bracelet piped up. “I’ll open that again if you want me to. But the suit’s sensors are detecting rising levels of sulfur dioxide. I suspect the volcano is about to erupt.”
“Carl!” said Volka. She turned to the werfle’s suitcase bed just in time to see it slam shut.
His thoughts erupted in her mind. “Don’t you dare take me out of here or open this thing up!”
“You’ll suffocate!” Volka protested.
“Not for eight point five hours,” Carl and Bracelet said at once.
Volka looked toward the aft compartment and thought about taking the case back there and wrestling Carl into his envirosuit…
“No,” said Carl. “Focus on getting us out of here before the volcano erupts.”
“Fleet said we have twenty-four hours,” Volka protested.
Bracelet chirped happily, “In point of fact, they said that it would erupt within twenty-four—” Bracelet’s voice was lost in a boom so deep that Volka felt it in every centimeter of her body. The four Marines below the ship crowded, half kneeling, backs together beneath the opening in Sundancer’s keel.
A few seconds went by. Volka’s eyes were still on the pebble…it still danced between the Marines’ feet.
There was another boom. Volka couldn’t see the peak of the volcano, but outside the ship, the world was getting darker. One of the Marines swore. “That isn’t Mount Enmerker. It’s Little Loaf.”
“What do you know? Fleet and the Geological Council of Shinar were both wrong,” said another Marine. Some general cursing about “eggheads” followed.
“This could last for days. How exciting!” said Bracelet cheerfully.
There was a light tap outside the ship. And then another. It sounded like hail…
“Oh, volcanic rock,” Bracelet exclaimed. “There was 5.7912 meters of rock and ash deposited in Pompeii.”
The ship darkened around them. “I don’t think Sundancer likes this,” Volka whispered. Sundancer was impact resistant, but maybe not burial resistant. Sundancer had been trapped for a million years under ice, but she’d been able to melt that…A picture of Sundancer covered in ash passed through her mind, the ship shivered, and Volka felt a knot of cold dread in her stomach.
“Sundancer is afraid,” Volka said to the Marines. “She might not be able to get us out of here if she gets buried. I have to warn the others.”
One of the Marines looked up sharply. Through the helmet’s visor she just barely made out Ramirez. “No, you have to stay here. You’re the only person who can fly the ship.”
“Carl can—” Volka started to protest.
“Stay,” Ramirez commanded. Handing off his electrical disruptor to one of the others, he took off in a blur, and Volka remembered that his augments made him as fast as Sixty.
Volka dropped to her heels, prepared to jump down and follow. “I can still help.”
One of the remaining Marines pointed in the direction of Carl. “The Little Guy isn’t himself at the moment.” Carl didn’t open the case, pop out, and threaten to murder the Marine for being called “Little Guy”—which proved the man’s point.
The Marine continued, “Ma’am, if we lose you, this mission will likely fail.”
Volka could feel her heart picking up speed. If Sundancer became trapped, Okoro would die; they all might likely die for nothing. And the mission was about more than rescuing Okoro. It was about Okoro’s ability to protect the entire human race.
Maybe she would be more helpful below…
Volka huffed. “I hate waiting.” Her voice was just barely audible over the continued booms from the volcano.
“Ma’am, I understand completely,” the Marine replied, gaze going beyond the roof. “Feel pretty useless right now defending the ship from enemies that haven’t arrived yet and might not ever.”
His words hit her harder than an order to stay put. He was just as worried about his team as Volka was about Sixty—she could feel it. He was staying here because that was his part.
Sixty probably wouldn’t want her to go in after him. She swallowed. The needs of the entire human population of the galaxy were greater than her personal need to go in and retrieve him. If their
places were reversed, Sixty probably couldn’t go in after her. He would have no choice but to help the most people and could never hurt or kill. He was like an angel like that, and didn’t she want to be on the side of the angels?
18
The Side of Angels
Galactic Republic: Shinar
When an enormous boom was added to the shaking world, 6T9’s circuits dimmed and relit with a sudden dread of what might have happened. The volcano. His Q-comm began unhelpfully downloading data on the last eruption.
Agnes looked over her shoulder toward the window. “There’s more of you and you brought artillery?”
Her question snapped his Q-comm back to the present. “What?” he blurted.
“Your terrorist group is firing on this facility. I understand your reasons, I do, but you’re going to get innocent people killed...the people you are trying to save.”
“You think we are some sort of terrorist organization?” 6T9 asked. Booms continued in the background.
Agnes was kneeling beside Celia. Leaning close to 6T9, she whispered, “I know you think of yourselves as freedom fighters, but this is not the way. Not everyone here is a political prisoner. There are a lot of dangerous individuals in this hospital. They’re not like Joseph.” She gestured to the man on his cot. “The law will set free those wrongly convicted of religious expression. You just have to be patient.”
There was another boom outside.
Joseph got off his bed. His clothing was simple and neat. He was noticeably clean. Raising his hands, palms out, he said, “Brother, maybe you’re here for me. But my religion doesn’t justify this, and I will not come with you if you are successful.”
The room darkened as though the sun had been eclipsed by a storm cloud.
“Doctor, sir,” 6T9 said, the pieces fitting together. “I’m with Admiral Noa Sato of the Galactic Republic Fleet.”
For a moment, Dr. Tran’s face softened. What sounded like hail began to ping against the window and thunder on the roof.
6T9 continued, “We are here to request the release of Mr. Okoro, a Fleet researcher. By Republic law, Fleet is authorized to do so in the event of a natural disaster.”
Pulling away, jaw getting hard, Agnes said, “What natural disaster? The earthquake today hasn’t been confirmed.”
Oh, Nebulas. He glanced at the window and saw it pelted by rocks.
Somewhere in the hallway, someone began encoding, “Eruption in process. Ship is nervous.”
6T9’s focus returned to Agnes. She could open this door and Okoro’s door in minutes. She could maybe even lock the cell that the Minister’s Guard was in, so they didn’t let loose any more grenades.
“If it was Admiral Noa Sato out there,” Doctor Agnes said, “why did the Minister’s Guard open fire on you?”
They did not have time for this. His nostrils flared. He could make her open the door. She was a Shinar native. She was even frailer than Volka or an Earthling. He could make her hurt so much. He’d been designed for pleasure, but pain was just the other side of that coin, and it was a coin he knew how to flip. He could break her. His eyes flicked to Joseph. He could break both of them.
“That is a question, isn’t it? I’d really like to know.” His voice came out flat.
Agnes drew back.
“Easy, Brother,” said Joseph, putting himself between 6T9 and Agnes.
6T9 tilted his head. It was almost as if they knew what was going through his mind. How curious. He stepped toward Agnes and Joseph…and his Q-comm fired, and 6T9 shuddered. If Volka knew he’d tortured these two humans…He closed his eyes. Volka would not approve. Why was he even contemplating it?
There was another boom outside.
He was contemplating it because it was faster, and speed mattered—he’d just let a human die because of a stupid line of code that hadn’t let him commit accidental harm. But Volka wouldn’t torture them, and she had superior fight or flight reflexes. The Marines wouldn’t either. Pirates would…
Why wouldn’t Volka use torture? She could kill, violently, in ways that were more savage than a phaser shot.
An especially large rock hit the window. He didn’t have time to ponder the why. How would he have solved this nonviolently a few days ago? He began accessing his personal databases for anything he had on Dr. Agnes Tran…and found quite a lot he’d downloaded when he’d been with the independent traders and struggling to understand why they were the way they were. When he’d first read her work, he’d come away thinking the independent traders he’d worked with weren’t really that bad. They didn’t murder or kidnap, at least. She had not been lying about most of the inmates here being dangerous; every apprehended serial killer, rapist, and mass murderer in this system was in this prison.
He tried the simplest, most direct tact. “Dr. Tran, there is a volcano erupting outside. You can see the debris on the window—”
“Debris from your weapons. There isn’t going to be an eruption. The prime minister is a member of the Geological Society and is an expert. He has stated there is no danger.”
For a moment, he was dumbfounded again. She didn’t believe what she saw with her own eyes. But why should she? She’d been assured her whole life the volcano was managed and safe, and she was a busy woman who had more important things on her mind—she had been busy writing hundreds of academic papers and books for lay people—so she’d taken it on faith. He had to appeal to her area of expertise. His Q-comm sparked. When some activists had pressed to have the prisoners at this hospital relocated to the isolated but more leniently guarded rehabilitation islands, she’d stood before the legislature and dissented. She believed the “patients” in this hospital would be a danger to the other prisoners on those islands; that although someday rehabilitation would be possible for them, science did not know how yet.
6T9 met her gaze and repeated her own words. “In the more than six centuries since Freud, we have found that we are not complete masters of the human mind.” She’d spoken those words to the legislature.
Dr. Tran stood a little straighter.
“Doctor,” 6T9 continued. “Do you think a planetary system, altered as it is by both its own internal workings—its geomagnetic cycle, the cycles of its mild seasons and sun, the activities of the billions of species that interact on its surface, the planetary bodies in its solar system, their orbit, the entire system’s orbit in the galaxy, and the galaxy’s movement in the universe can ever be fully known?”
Her body relaxed, and then Joseph said, “Only God can control a volcano.”
Agnes’s expression hardened.
6T9’s hands rose in front of him, half clenching. That was not how you convinced a scientist, but then he caught himself. Dropping his hands, he said, “No, humans can control their environment. But maybe it’s presumptuous to consider you’ve mastered it? Not because it’s God, but because it’s incredibly complex.”
For a moment, Dr. Agnes stared at him, open mouthed. 6T9 tried not to count the milliseconds ticking by. And then her face crumpled, and she put a hand to her eyes. “The Prime Minister’s Service brought Darlene Tong here. They said that she had committed blasphemy, but I knew they were just looking for an excuse to arrest her. She’s been criticizing the Geological Society’s management of Mount Enmerker for years now, and she’s run for office, though she never got much of a vote.” She dropped her hands, and her face became imploring. “I really think that they were worried about her causing a panic.”
Another large rock hit the window. The sky was as dark as twilight. Sundancer was out there, and she was afraid. Sundancer’s fear would infect Volka. He wanted to shake the woman, shout at her to open the blasted door, but kept still.
Agnes gulped audibly. “That was really Noa Sato? I thought it might be when I saw her face, but then the shooting started, and—”
“It’s really her,” said 6T9, eyeing the rocks pelting the window. “Please let her in. Let her just talk to you.”
She eyed the door. �
�Without the ethernet, I can’t access the computers without—”
He yanked out the cords he kept in his coat. “Can you jack in with one of these?”
“Yes,” she said shakily, taking the cables as the world shook again. She jacked one end into her neural port and the other end into an outlet. A plate in the wall slid open, revealing an iris scan. She was shaking, and her movements were slow. 6T9’s processors whirred with all the unpleasant possibilities that could occur if she didn’t hurry. The thoughts were ugly, and they crawled through his consciousness: Sundancer smothered in ash, Carl and Volka slowly dying within...Trying to knock the thoughts out, he tapped an encoded message on the door as he waited. Admiral, I have someone who wants to meet you. Two minutes and twenty-three seconds later, the door slid open.
Noa was taking shelter in an alcove across the hall. The visor of her suit was shut and all that was visible of her was her nearly black eyes. Those eyes took in Agnes, still jacked in, and then checked down the hall where Marines were barricading the Prime Minister’s Service inside a cell. Crouching, flipping up her visor to expose her face, she hurried into the doorway of Joseph’s cell. “Dr. Tran, I didn’t get to finish my introductions. I’m Admiral Noa Sato.” Taking off the gloves of her suit, she extended her hand, and Agnes took it in both of hers, smoothing her fingers down the outside of Noa’s wrists and gazing down as though trying to ascertain what she saw and felt were real. In a universe where holo-disguises existed, it wasn’t an unnecessary precaution, but it was wasting precious seconds.
“I thought it was you from Escape from Luddeccea…” Agnes said, referring to one of the more popular holodramas of James and Noa’s fateful mission. “…You have that 6T9 unit. The one with the Q-comm.”
6T9 blinked. A woman who watched historical holodramas all the way to the end to find out what happened to all the main characters. Not that he’d been a main character in the Escape from Luddeccea; he’d been more the comic relief.