Forgotten Suns (44 page)

Khalida hauled him back. “Not toward an airlock, damn you.
You’re coming to the bridge with me, and you’re making yourself useful. No more
hiding. No more wallowing.”

“Talking to yourself now, Captain?”

“Is it working, Lieutenant?”

“No.” But he stood straighter. When she pushed him forward,
he walked, and did not try to escape.

~~~

She had had nothing in mind for him to do, but by the time
she herded him onto the bridge, she thrust him in front of a screen and said, “Monitor
traffic. Out as well as in. If anything makes a move that doesn’t feel right,
alert me.”

He blinked at her. “Something wrong? What do you—”

“Ordinary and sensible precautions,” she said, “and a
feeling in my gut.”

He nodded. “I’ll keep watch.”

Maybe he would. Maybe he would fall back down into despair,
or maybe he would wander off when he grew tired. But he was disposed of for the
moment.

Part of the feeling in her gut was hunger. She dealt with
that, and considered sleep, but the thought of leaving the bridge made her
shoulders twitch.

She still had patterns to ponder, and a mystery that needed
solving. Too much, her old self would have said, before it ran to hide. This
new self, after Araceli, let it all run together.

~~~

“Captain.”

Khalida snapped out of a half-dream. In it, she had been
swimming through a sea full of stars, following a shadow that sometimes had no
shape at all, and sometimes looked back at her with a woman’s face.

Zhao was still at his screen, but his voice spoke directly
in her ear, through a focused weblink. “What do you make of this?”

The feed he sent seemed unexceptional. Flow and ebb of
traffic. MI ships reaching jump points and vanishing from the system. Other
ships coming in—free traders, a cruise ship, a freighter or two.

“Not out there,” Zhao said. “In here.”

He meant around the docking bay, not inside the ship. Inside
was quiet, even in the brig.

Every bay had its quota of human traffic, even at this upper
level. Inspectors inspecting, travelers traveling, the occasional random
explorer. Khalida’s scans had allowed for this. What they had not considered
was an explorer of apparent alien origin who happened to be a mask for—on quick
count—fifteen all but perfectly shielded human bodies.

They moved slowly, but their trajectory was not difficult to
see. They were aiming toward the shuttle hatch, which was well down along the
docking bay.

If the ship had been a simple mechanical object, they would
have had a reasonable chance of breaking in and doing whatever they had in
mind. The
Ra-Harakhte
was neither
simple nor mechanical.

Khalida paused in alerting the ship. There would be no hatch
anywhere on its hull, if she warned it to keep the intruders out. If they tried
to burn their way in, the ship would react appropriately. There might be
something left of them: a drift of ash, a coil of smoke.

She sent an alert, but not the one that first came to mind.
The second message she sent was directed toward Zhao and, after a slight pause,
the prisoner in the brig.

~~~

Khalida went armed. So, under duress, did Zhao.
MariAntonia went in shackles, without a word or a glance. No protests, either,
which Khalida took note of.

Two and a hostage against fifteen was poor odds, but the two
of them had the
Ra-Harakhte
at their
backs. Once they were in the bay, the entrance smoothed behind them, growing
back into the body of the ship.

Ship’s web showed her the vaguely amorphous alien shape
oozing toward the hatch. It was an interesting construct: evidently alive, and
almost perfectly concealing the humans inside. Someone had been experimenting,
or gengineering.

The latter, she hoped, but considering what MI and the Corps
had tried to do to the
Ra-Harakhte
,
she would not have bet on it.

The hatch opened as the intruder approached. It paused: suspicious,
she supposed. The interior was lit like the rest of the ship: bright enough for
human eyes, and therefore welcoming.

She was not visible; a jut of wall just happened to cast a
shadow across her and her companions. They were still, Zhao by choice,
MariAntonia because the ship had wrapped a pseudopod around her mouth and neck.
It could, it made clear, cover her nose if she moved.

Her eyes were flat, and unafraid. Khalida knew that look.
She had nothing to lose.

That made her even more dangerous. Khalida smiled with
honest warmth, and dipped her head: acknowledgment; amusement.

The ship played its part well, seeming to resist, and
forcing the intruders to work to get in. It had shifted pain receptors
elsewhere, and hardened the hull, but not to impermeability. This was a trap,
after all. Not a fortification.

The glow of a beam grew slowly near the edge of the usual
hatch. Khalida found she had shifted to fighting stance. She drew a breath and
settled back to relaxed, casual, but ready to leap.

It took the beam a good while to cut through, and then the
invaders had to pry an opening large enough to admit a human body. Even knowing
that the ship allowed this, and felt little more than pressure, as if
anesthetized, Khalida grimaced.

The first intruder thrust her way in with beam rifle at the
ready. Her armor seemed to be of generic make without insignia, but there was
no effective way to hide the profile. MI. As were the rest who followed her and
fanned across the bay, scanning the apparently empty space with helmet cams and
rifle barrels.

The last one in had his rifle slung behind him and a control
console in his hand. Khalida recognized the make and shape. Larger versions had
been wired into the
Ra-Harakhte
’s
nervous system.

Size, at this level of technology, was never particularly
relevant. She felt the ship shudder underfoot. It recognized the thing, too.

Khalida recognized the man who held it. It was like a beam
in the vitals.

She held still. Not yet. Not yet.

She watched the invaders realize they were in a blind pouch,
with nothing in it but patches of light and shadow. They circled back to their
commander.

His fingers flicked across the console. A filament shot out
of it, aiming toward the ceiling.

The ceiling pulsed upward. The filament fell short, but
snapped up again, stretching higher.

Khalida shot it down.

Fifteen beam rifles swung toward her. She stepped into the
light. A handful of barrels flickered, charging to fire.

“I wouldn’t do that,” she said.

“Captain Nasir,” the commander said, as coldly calm as she
was trying to seem.

“Colonel Aviram,” she answered. “You travel fast.”

“As do you.”

“I know how I got here. You? More experiments, like the
thing you hid behind to get in here?”

“That would be classified information,” he said.

While they spoke, she was sharply aware of the two still in
shadow. Zhao breathed shallowly, tensely. She could not hear MariAntonia at
all, or sense her. But the ship knew she was there.

The ship inhabited a different zone of consciousness than
the humans inside it. Khalida had known that. She had not, until just now,
understood it.

It was important. She had no time to think about it. Aviram
and his unit were positioning themselves, with exquisite slowness, to dispose
of her and finish slaving the ship all over again—more effectively this time.
More completely. Though not with any less pain.

That was important, too, in a way that churned her stomach.
The Corps had always been ugly at the core. MI, not much less. But the pattern
here went beyond institutional awfulness. Experimentation on living
creatures—humans; sentient aliens. There had been laws against that since
before the first spacecraft left Earth’s surface.

The ship could dispose of these, and the mole who had
brought them in. All Khalida had to do was drag Zhao with her through the wall
and leave them to it.

That would have been the rational thing to do. She faced
down those fifteen gently flickering barrels and inquired, “Don’t you have
orders to vacate this system with all personnel and equipment?”

Aviram’s stare was perfectly flat. “Who manufactured those?
You?”

“I’m flattered,” she said, “but I don’t have anything like
that level of skill. Not to mention the ability to convince several thousand
trained troops and staff that those orders are valid.”

“I didn’t think so,” Aviram said. “You realize that—whatever
he, or it, is—is a threat to everything United Planets stands for.”

There was no point in pretending to misunderstand. “There is
no threat. He doesn’t care what we are or what we represent. All he wants is to
get free of us and go on about his business.”

“Pity he’s wanted for high crimes and misdemeanors,
hijacking, hacking, grand theft, abuse and misuse of psi, unregulated psi…”

“He doesn’t care,” Khalida said again. “Neither do I. I’d
wonder how you managed to escape the compulsion to get out. More experiments, I
suppose. It doesn’t matter. You can leave now, or I’ll leave you here and let
the ship dispose of you.”

“That would be murder,” Aviram said. His eyes flickered,
maybe. The light was not terribly bright, and Khalida was not terribly
interested.

“I have a quarter of million lives on my conscience,” she
said. “What’s a few more?”

There, she thought. That was the key. Not to care. He might
order her shot; that was the tightness between her shoulders, though the ship
was watching.

One rifle did pulse, but the beam dissipated in midair. The
ship swallowed it—not delighted with the taste, but glad enough of the
nourishment.

“Stand down!” Aviram snapped. “Barrels up. Disengage.”

MariAntonia darted past Khalida. Zhao plunged in pursuit.
Khalida caught him. Crossed beams caught MariAntonia.

Khalida gagged on the savory scent of roasted flesh. Zhao
doubled up with dry heaves.

“Take that with you when you go,” Khalida said.

She sounded cold even to herself. Colder by far than she
felt.

Aviram caught the shooters’ glances. They moved in just
slowly enough to register reluctance, lifted the charred carcass and carried it
through the hatch that had, obligingly, opened in front of them.

None of them spoke. Not even Aviram.

He was last to go. When he looked ready to pause, the hatch
curved around him and thrust him firmly out.

Screens showed him in the bay, staring at a smooth and
unmarred hull. He wore no expression at all.

“She chose that,” Zhao said, still gagging. Tears streamed
down his face. “She killed herself.”

“She had nowhere else to go.” Khalida directed the ship to
clear the air; when she took another breath, there was only a hint of roasted
flesh left. With the next inhalation, that was gone.

“We’re not done with Aviram,” Zhao said, “or with U.P. They
want us too badly to ever let us go.”

“Are you planning to stay here?” she asked.

He frowned. “No. No, I’m not staying. Why would I—”

“Where we’re going, U.P. has no jurisdiction. It might try
to claim us, because we used to belong to it. It won’t be able to hold us. Not
without more backup than it could afford, that far out—and with its bases here
gutted and its personnel gone, its lines of supply have thinned to vanishing.
We’re not safe, Lieutenant, but we’re not in danger, either. We’re as free as
we can hope to be.”

He did not believe her. He was a child of the inner worlds:
he had only known the full power of the systems he used to serve.

He would learn. Or he would die. They all might die, out
there, before Rama found what he was hunting.

Khalida was looking forward to it.

Aisha could not stop twitching. The performance was today,
and then they would all go back to the ship. Everyone was ready—Aisha as much
as anyone. There was no reason to fidget and fuss.

She was still wearing her black robe because it was all she
had. The veils and swords were still on Rama’s floor, for all she knew. Which
left her without a weapon, except the one inside her head.

She thought about requisitioning something. She got as far as
opening a web connection, but then she stopped. She didn’t know why.

She asked for something else instead. Clothes—sensible
things, and nothing in black. She didn’t know that she’d ever want to wear
black again.

When the Pay Now screen came up, it flashed once and
disappeared. She dived after it, and ran into Alexandra’s shimmering, floating
icon.

“My dear,” the rich voice said, “it’s our pleasure.”

“I can’t,” Aisha said.

“But you will,” said Alexandra. “It’s not a bribe, if that
worries you. You need these. It’s our gift.”

“Why?”

Alexandra wasn’t human. She didn’t blink at Aisha’s straight
thrust. “You need them. We can give them.”

“And?”

“Maybe we wish you well,” Alexandra said. “Maybe we want you
to be properly outfitted, wherever you are going.”

“We don’t know where we’re going.”

“Yet.” Alexandra’s smile wrapped around her like a warm
woolen hug. “Someday we’ll all know. And that will be wonderful.”

“Or terrible.”

“Terrible has wonder in it, too,” said Alexandra.

She slipped out of the link. Aisha felt unexpectedly cold
and a little lonely. She shouldn’t trust anybody, especially out here; she knew
that. But she really wanted to trust this alien.

Go with your gut.
That was one of Mother’s sayings. It didn’t always work, but Aisha thought it
might, this time. She hoped.

~~~

After all that preparation, the performance came up
startlingly fast. One minute they were all running around finishing up the
last-minute crises. Then everybody crowded into the concert hall in the center
of Central, perched on a promontory above Alexandra’s lake.