Exodus, page 9
“I appreciate you are feeling liberated right now,” the empress said coldly, “but the presence of the Mara Yama, even five light-years away, is not something we can take lightly. And I don’t appreciate them visiting Capo Frois to refuel, even if it is only for a couple of centuries before they leave again. We might call them a dominion, but they don’t play the Great Game as the rest of us do.”
“Au contraire,” Luus-Marcela said cheerfully. “They are master-class players. That’s why the dominions fear them so.”
“Worst-case scenario,” Inessa-Pierina said, “our navies can defeat them.”
“Our navies can destroy most of their citadel ships if we attack their fleet,” Helena-Chione countered. “But we don’t even know how many Mara Yama fleets there are in the Centauri Cluster. I, for one, don’t want to spend the next twenty thousand years fighting them all off. Our dominion, which was forged at great cost”—her finger tapped on the table’s surface and their vanquished foe beneath—“exists to provide stability for its citizens because of our unique mindlines. War is not a stable condition.”
“The Caralax Dominion,” Carolien-Amaia said firmly. “The Uthra Dominion. The Jodian Dominion. They all have one thing in common.”
“Which is?”
“They are all closer to the Mara Yama fleet than us. They are more concerned than us.”
“Situations could be created,” Inessa-Pierina said approvingly. “Unfamiliar ships have been known to appear in inconvenient places. There would be incidents. If there was evidence of Mara Yama involvement, the atrocities they are known to commit…”
“We are allied with the Uthra,” Ramona-Ursule said sharply. “We don’t want to let the Gollaren Dominion expand their influence there.”
The empress shrugged. “Inessa makes a valid point. Out of the two, who would you prefer as hostile neighbors?”
Helena-Chione’s attention began to drift. She already knew what the outcome would be. They all did. It was just the details that had to be agreed on. And those would change soon enough, when the Crown Dominion archons began their quiet manipulations. The situation was fluid; new tactics would have to be refined and played. This problem would probably take two or three thousand years to nullify in its entirety—one of dozens of strategies the Crown Dominion was enabling outside its immediate borders. Borders that would inevitably change, expanding.
I might yet get to travel to new star systems as we engulf them. She frowned, perplexed by the atypical thought. Where is this dissatisfaction coming from? Somewhere in her mind an errant feeling slithered around, the remnants of Count Bekket’s self-perceptual greeting. That sensation of youthful freedom was such a bright counterpoint to her own personality: the serious, stern ruler, laboring under thousands of years of responsibility for the Crown Dominion. And yet—she was the one that made all his possibilities exist. Possibilities she could never know.
What must it be like to be him? To be any new life?
“So we’re agreed then?” Carolien-Amaia said. “Helena?”
“Yes?”
“The increase in military budget.”
“Oh. Yes. I approve.”
Carolien-Amaia gave her a baffled glance. “Very well, then. The next item is an expansion of the HeSea mining quotas.”
For five hours Helena-Chione sat through the tedious council as they worked through the items that Carolien-Amaia would have to enact, the policies she’d pursue, the strategic maneuvering she’d orchestrate on behalf of the dominion for the next sixty years.
When it was over, Helena-Chione walked out to her waiting entourage.
“How was it, ma’am?” Lord Valdier-Mímir asked.
“Traditional,” she said, spoken as if it were the most obscene curse she knew.
“I’m glad.”
“Irrelevant. I want you to extend Count Bekket an invitation to our court; he seems like an adventurous sort who’s keen to travel. He can start with Wynid.”
Lord Valdier-Mímir’s face remained perfectly impassive. “Yes, ma’am.”
She admired her father’s poise. The young count was hardly her usual type. Wynid’s court and Grand Families might be scandalized, but bringing some fresh blood into her biological heritage was healthy and sensible.
A wild card. What a rebel I am.
She smiled in satisfaction.
* * *
—
The dramatic Derochford symphony ended when a hurricane blasted its way through the Santa Rosa Municipal Opera House, every instrument screeching in deranged discord as they twirled away. The fuzzy blanket of soothing lights snapped into sharp-focused graphics.
“What?” Finn moaned in dismay.
“Stimulant administered. External auditory sensors are detecting noise.”
“What? What fucking noise?” He stared at the time display. He’d been entombed for eighty-three minutes. Just seeing the figure made him very aware of how hot he was. A heat that made it hard to breathe—and when he did draw down a breath it was painful, scorching his flesh from within, conspiring with the all-around burning sensation that was slowly crushing him.
“Direct feed,” the suit manager said.
Finn heard it then: a high-pitched sound, growing louder. The kind of whining that might be—“A drill,” he shouted frantically. “It’s a drill.” Even his excitement seemed to hurt. “Hey, hey. I’m here! Help. Help me, please. Please!”
The drilling sound grew louder, then ended in a firm clunk that Finn heard without the sensors. The drill had struck the suit.
“Yes!” It was near his shoulder. “Can you expel the suit heat through that hole?”
“Negative.”
“Okay, they’ll do it. They know I’m here. Come on!”
The drill whirred softly as it withdrew, then the sound grew again. This time it knocked against the back of his neck. The shell sensors were picking up more sounds—buzzing. Vibrations began to wash against the armor from all over. The drill moved again, hitting the base of his neck.
“That’s gotta be good,” he said. “They’re trying to find the heat radiators, right?”
“Unknown.”
This time the drill didn’t stop, and the noise it made as it kept spinning seemed to shake Finn’s teeth. He yelled wildly, as if to battle the onslaught.
“Assault alert. Attempted armor penetration above main processor unit.”
“What? It’s where?”
He could feel a fast shuddering sensation between his shoulder blades, and the volume was like a blade piercing his eardrums. “Stop, no stop!”
“Outer armor layer compromised.”
“Don’t—” The display vanished, plunging Finn into utter darkness. The terrible drilling sound whirred down to nothing. “No. No, don’t.”
All he could hear now was his own ragged breathing. The heat was becoming unbearable. Then he actually felt something knocking against his left calf. He tried to move his leg, but the armor didn’t respond.
“Stop. You’ve killed the processor. My suit systems will go offline. I need air. The suit was giving me air.”
A mechanical snapping sound reverberated along his suit. He felt his whole body being shaken. The weapons modules. They’re stripping them off. He was terrified they were going to crush the armor with whatever they were using to liberate him; that or some of his munitions would detonate when they were mishandled away.
“What are you doing?”
That was when the hammering started. It was actually louder than the drill. He yelled in wordless fury and couldn’t even hear it.
There was a long, horrifying crunch, and cool air washed against the base of his spine. He knew there was a big oval segment of armor shell there, just below the heat radiators. Whatever mechanics they were using had torn it off the actuator skeleton.
“Hey! Hey, can you hear me?”
He could feel—an actual physical sensation coursing along his own nerves—the undersuit being pulled off his skin just above his buttocks. Then they hit him in the spine with a fifty-thousand-volt charge.
* * *
—
Pain jolted Finn back to full consciousness as they pulled the helmet off, tugging and twisting like it really didn’t matter if his head came off with it. A final wrench, mashing his nose back hard, and blood came dripping out of his nostrils as white light blazed around him. He couldn’t make out a thing. The hands gripping his shoulders let go, and he collapsed onto the floor, gasping and sobbing wretchedly. The undersuit that had been practically scalding his skin while he was trapped now felt icy and damp. Muscles were spasming feebly.
“Hello, farm boy.”
Finn squinted up, blinking into the glare, trying to make sense of what he could see. He was sprawled on the floor of the wrecked reception room, at the foot of the elaborate curving stairs. Behind him, a rugged cliff of xeefoam filled the space between floor and ceiling. A big cavity had been carved out—an activity that had scattered chunks of foam everywhere, along with the wreckage of his armor suit. Two people in industrial engineering exoskeletons were standing on either side of him, dangerous-looking maintenance tools folding back into their forearm slots. Four security guards in light armor stood between them, staring down contemptuously. And right in front of him—
“They got you, too,” he exclaimed desolately.
“Oh, they caught up with me a long time ago,” Liliana said cheerfully. “I warned you: if you aim for the empress, you have to make fucking sure you don’t miss. But see, the empress knows people are always going to try and claim the throne for themselves. Which is why she employs people like me: to sniff out all the pathetic little conspiracies by arseholes like the syndicate. Whose leaders, incidentally, we are currently paying a visit to.”
“We? You’re…?”
“Quinitai security. And bloody good at my job, if I say so myself.”
“But…last night—” Even as he said it, he could hear how pitiful it sounded.
She pursed her lips. “Oh, Asteria’s tits, you’re so utterly fucking useless it’s embarrassing, just like your entire thicker-than-shit, parasitic, over-entitled family. I enjoyed last night. It was funny. You tried so hard.”
Finn was mortified he might start crying again, the humiliation burned so hot. She’d known he was a Jalgori-Tobu the whole time. He turned to look at the morass of xeefoam. “What about the others?”
“You mean the building waste we generated when we remodeled the reception room? It’ll be dumped at sea, same as all the city’s trash.”
“They might still be alive!”
“I doubt it. Not now. Your suit was surprisingly good. I wasn’t really expecting you to survive.”
“So, what—what now?” He took a breath, telling himself not to plead, to do nothing this devil bitch could sneer at.
Liliana squatted down and put her hand under his chin, tipping his head back so he had to stare at her. The utter lack of emotion on her face scared him. He finally realized he’d only ever been playing at being a tough guy for hire. He would never have risen to her heights no matter how many jobs he took, how much experience he gained. His failure was absolute.
“You’re a problem for me, farm boy, and that’s annoying. Your mummy still has some clout with the Imperial Celestials; Santa Rosa is important to them. Almost as much as Zaita City. And at some point she’s going to want to know what happened to her fuckwit little boy-child. So…what’s going to happen is this: We’re going to choose some quiet spot where no one will ever find you.” She smiled. “And drop you off.”
Chapter Three
Finn woke up to a multitude of aches. When he tried to move, each of them turned to a sharp pain—especially from his ribs. He let out a small yelp.
Josias chuckled. “Ah, the sleeper finally awakens.”
Finn winced and managed to sit up. All his injuries were throbbing away intently, but he actually didn’t feel cold. He held up his fingers, inspecting them for signs of frostbite. They seemed okay beneath the layers of dirt and blood.
“How are you doing?” Ellie asked.
“Uh, okay, I think. Thank you for finding me last night. I don’t…I wasn’t going to make it.” Finn glanced around the inside of the refuge he’d sculpted. A blanket had been fixed over the opening, with daylight shining in around the edges. He had no idea how long he’d been asleep.
Ellie knelt beside him and held out a flask. “Here, it’s coffee. I can cook some procarb rashers on the fire if you’d like.”
“Sure.” He took a sip. It was warm, and tasted absolutely nothing like coffee—more like a thin mushroom soup. “Nice.” He realized how hungry he was and started gulping it down.
She gave him a half smile. “I got you some clothes. They’re sort of close to your size. We didn’t have a lot to choose from; just what’s in the spaceplane’s survival locker.”
“These are fine, thanks,” he told her as she proffered some gray overalls of synthetic fabric. “That spaceplane outside, where did it come from? You’re Travelers, aren’t you?” Even as he said it, he knew he was wrong. They were so different from any Traveler he’d ever met.
“We certainly traveled a long way to get here,” Josias said heartily. “We set off from Eunomia.”
Finn gave him a polite smile. The man looked maybe ten years older than Ellie, but she’d called him Grandpa. Still, it was common enough to have distorted age differences among Traveler families. Relativistic time dilation played havoc with chronology; he’d even heard of cases when children became biologically older than their parents. “I don’t know Eunomia. Which dominion is that in?”
Josias and Ellie shared a glance.
“The asteroid,” Josias said expectantly.
“Sorry?”
“Seriously, my boy? You’ve never heard of Eunomia?”
Finn shrugged apologetically as he pushed his legs into the gray overalls. “The Centauri Cluster has over a million settled worlds, so no, I haven’t.”
“A million?” Ellie said in astonishment.
“Well, we don’t know, do we? Nobody does, except for maybe the Elohim. They made them, after all.”
“Who are the Elohim?”
“Huh?”
“My boy,” Josias said calmly, “Eunomia is an asteroid in the Sol system. One of the most successful offworld societies we ever built. We arrived here on an arkship, the Diligent, which my company built in Eunomia’s shipyards.”
Finn looked from Josias to Ellie. Neither of them looked like they were laughing at him. “Asteria’s arse! You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Well, yes.” Josias sounded hurt.
“Hell, the last time an arkship arrived in the Crown Dominion was about three or four hundred years ago. When did you get here?”
“Six months ago,” Ellie said. “The Diligent is in a high orbit around a gas giant a couple of AUs out. We’ve been trying to make sense of the signals we’ve picked up from all the habitable worlds, but they use a really weird encryption.”
“So Ellie and I risked everything to come here on a scouting mission in one of our interplanetary shuttles,” Josias said. “We wanted to see for ourselves one of the Green Worlds the signal promised, and make sure we’d be welcome before committing Diligent to fly here. But when we decelerated into orbit, our ship started glitching. Severely glitching. I’ve never known so many systems to fail; it’s theoretically impossible. We had to bail in the spaceplane.”
“The Crown Dominion has planetary defenses, even for their human worlds,” Finn said. “If you were coming into orbit without notifying Anoosha’s flight control, the defense network would have tagged you. It sounds like you got hit by a deep burn virus. You were lucky. If that hadn’t glitched you, they’d probably have moved up to something physical.”
“Even the spaceplane started to fail,” Ellie said bitterly. “It was a miracle I got us down intact.”
“Don’t listen to her, Finn, she’s being modest. Ellie is the best pilot we have. No one else could have got us down.”
“Thanks, Grandpa.” She smiled shyly. “Actually, I did okay for someone who has never even seen a planet before, let alone landed on one.”
“This is your first time on a planet?” Finn asked incredulously.
“Yeah.”
“Not mine,” Josias said. “I was born on Eunomia, but I visited Earth before we left.”
“No! You’ve walked on Old Earth? The Earth? The actual Old Earth?”
“Sure. No big deal, my boy. But I will admit it was pretty awful by then.”
“Wait. How long have you been traveling?”
“We left Sol in 2280 AD. I think we were about the last arkship to leave. Vesta didn’t have many people left to build more. Most of the other settled asteroids had been abandoned.”
“In 2280? No fucking way! This is 42,350. How can you still be alive?”
“Ah, that’s down to a seriously bad choice of direction. We flew in the opposite direction from the Centauri Cluster when we left Sol. So it took a long time for the Green Worlds signal to catch up with us. Then we had to turn around and fly all the way here. Even with relativistic time dilation, it took a while.”
“That, plus Grandpa was in suspension for the flight.”
“Certainly was. I paid for the Diligent. I’m entitled to see some results on the investment. Gotta admit, I wasn’t expecting anything like this.” He gestured around the refuge. “For a start, how the hell did you bend rock with your mind?”
“This is a livestone outcrop,” Finn said. “It’s a kind of bioware, but silicate based. And I’m a uranic human, capable of neural induction. So I thought up the shape I wanted and ordered it to grow into that.”
“And how do you neurally induct?”
Finn showed them the pad on his palm. “Place any two pads together physically—biological or electronic pads—and the neural signals pass between them, mind to mind or mind to network.”
