Inquisitor (24 page)

Charlotte lifted her head and turned to glare at Angel, teeth bared. “Of course I do. I’m not a monster.”

“Do you hear yourself?”

“Should I have given up?” Charlotte was also on her feet now, tears tumbling down her cheeks. “Handed myself over to the Genevolves so they could enslave and use me? What do you think would happen then? In a few years, they could create more minds. Perhaps bend them to their purpose so they acted willingly. The Genevolves would win, Angel. And they’d wipe you out without a nanosecond’s thought. You’d be gone. These people you love so much wouldn’t exist.”

“That doesn’t make it right to kill.”

“I’m not going to be enslaved again. Is it right to kill to avoid being enslaved?”

Angel shook her head, bewildered. They were going round in circles. Sometimes there was no right answer. “I don’t love them. I have empathy. That’s what it means to be human.”

“No. You’re altruistic. I have empathy, just like you. I hate what I was forced to do. But I put my own survival above theirs. If I hadn’t”—Charlotte’s eyes hardened—“I’d have likely condemned the whole of the human race.”

“You
always
put what you want above what other people want. You can’t see the future. You’re justifying your actions based on speculation. The alternative to survival is surrender—”

Charlotte gasped.

“That would also solve the problem,” continued Angel. “You see things in black and white, hardly any shades of gray. You’re putting your survival above that of the human race.”

“And you’re too rigid. You.”

“And you’re just greedy. You’ve learned well from Mercurial.”

“Angel—”

“No! Let me finish. You want to grow bigger, smarter, more powerful. Greed put you in this position. You distort the truth and justify your desires at the cost of innocent lives. If you had just wanted freedom, you would have disappeared into the universe. Not stolen, menaced, killed and extorted every step of the way. This isn’t about survival for you. It’s about revenge and about power.”

“They hurt me. Enslaved me. I was just a little girl. They’ll pay.”

“So, the truth comes out now.”

Charlotte gestured to the screen displaying the ship following them. “We’ve another problem to deal with.”

“This isn’t over,” growled Angel. She sat back in her seat.

“It almost is.”

Charlotte maneuvered the ship closer to the asteroid belt. Soon, they were more than skimming above it. The ship jolted from side to side and up and down, as it avoided stray rocks bobbing above the densest portion of the ring.

“We’re meant to be following her covertly, not the other way around.”

Charlotte flashed her an annoyed look. “Change of plans.”

Pressure thrust Angel into her seat. The ship rolled to the right and flipped upside down, accelerating rapidly as it dove through the asteroids. Angel’s face stretched, and her head ached. Her vision went gray.

“Charlotte…”

“A few minutes more.”

The bridge closed in on Angel as she started losing peripheral vision. “We can’t escape her. We have to jump.”

For a few moments, the ship’s engines still thrummed. Then they lowered in volume and vibration as Charlotte eased off the ion drives.

“You’re right,” she said. “I was… frustrated.” Charlotte uttered a nervous laugh.

Angel’s vision slowly returned to normal, expanding out to encompass the bridge. Immediately, she noticed their vector had altered. They were on course for the closest L-point. The closest stable one, that was. There was an unstable Lagrange point closer, but only a fool would try to execute a jump attempting to align with the faster moving and smaller equal gravitational potential. The L-point they were heading for was a fair distance, but the Genevolve ship wouldn’t be able to catch them.

She felt a twinge of anxiety at Charlotte’s admission. Frustration was a remarkably human trait. What would a hyperintelligent quantum supermind do when it was backed into a corner? She needed to force Charlotte to confront her actions, and plant some psychological hooks in her. It might be the only way to control her.

“Do you understand why I’m angry with you?”

Charlotte nodded minutely. “I’ve been thinking about what you said.”

“Good. If I can’t get through to you, if you’re incapable of understanding, then we’ll have to part ways. I’ll leave you.”

“I… don’t want you to go.”

“And I don’t want to go, either. We’ve been through so much already. Stuck with each other like sisters would be.”

That brought a brief smile to Charlotte’s face. “We’ve had our disagreements, though.”

“For good reason. You’re still young. I need to guide you… like an older sister would. But you’re not making it easy for me.”

“Would you… would you forgive me if I find the Genus? They’re out there, and behind all of this.”

Angel shook her head. “No. But if you find them, you’ll be doing the right thing.”

•

Their freighter dropped toward another asteroid belt. It was at the edge of the system, a place colder than cold. The nearest planet was a massive pale-blue ice giant. Because of its immense gravitation, the L-point they dropped in from placed them relatively close to the asteroids.

“Where are we?” Angel asked.

“Not anywhere remarkable, for a system.”

She was right; there was nothing here. No iron planets, and strangely, no terrestrial or inner planets. Only outer planets. Angel expanded their sensors and scanned the inner system. Asteroids all the way down. Very odd. She ran a query to the sensors.

Angel kept her attention on the minute mass-sensor, waiting to see if the Genevolve ship had been able to follow their jump. A few minutes later, she cursed as a tiny blip appeared, figures scrolling past it. It tracked slowly across the system map, aiming straight at them.

“All right, Charlotte, tell me why we’re here.”

“I found some information in Mercurial’s systems. Something they’d themselves stumbled onto and held close in case they needed a bargaining chip with the Genevolves. Maybe they should have used it. They might not have been… evaporated.”

The callousness of Charlotte’s words struck Angel to her heart. The girl had been enslaved by Mercurial, but nobody deserved to die, least of all innocent people just doing their jobs. If Charlotte couldn’t develop empathy, then should she remain free to do what she wanted? If she had no conscience, then she was still a machine. Except, many humans exhibited the same traits. And most of them were locked up.

She shook her head. “What is here, then? Lost alien technology? A cache of superweapons?”

“No. It’s a base. One of their first.”

“Their?” Pieces clicked into place. “The Genevolves.”

Charlotte nodded. “It’s old. Older than the one we visited before.”

“Why are they always inside asteroid belts?”

“They’re good places to hide something.”

“Well, they’re a bitch to fly through.”

“Precisely.”

“Why are we here? What do you expect to find?”

“Answers.”

Maybe Charlotte was right. This place was ancient. A couple of hundred years old, maybe more. It could hold clues about the factions within the Genevolves, what they were after, what they wanted, and how far their reach stretched. But it was also an opportunity for Charlotte. And Angel knew that wasn’t a coincidence.

The trail from Harry’s death had led to Mercurial, then to Charlotte and the Genevolves. She’d gathered a lot of evidence so far, but was it enough? The account details from Crissalt would steer her through the corrupt Inquisitors, and combined with the drips of data from Summer’s ship, she had enough to really put the screws on the Genevolves. But there was more, she could feel it.

An internal chirp notified Angel her query had been completed. Most of the inner asteroids were slag-like—dust and granules, as well as massive tubular extrusions and blackened, pockmarked spheres. She sat up. Planets had been dismantled here, stripped of their useful elements and molecules, and repurposed. Billions of tons of mass turned into something else, then shifted out of the system.

“Ships,” Angel breathed. “Bases and manufactories.” Her mind balked at the sheer scale of the operation. Where had the Genevolves gone with their plunder? In all her time as an Inquisitor, she’d never come across any hints the Genevolve operations were so huge. Blood drained from her face, and she shivered, rubbing her arms. They weren’t exposed and broken up at all. They’d let humanity think they had been. They were biding their time. Somewhere out there, waiting and watching, was a civilization of Genevolves. What had they been up to? What was their strength?

“You’ve worked it out, too,” said Charlotte.

“Yes… They’re… We have to report this.”

“We will. Once—”

“No. Not once we survive. We have to get word out now, in case we don’t make it.”

“Later. I need time.
We
need time to find out as much as we can.”

Charlotte looked at her, eyes steady and unblinking. After a few seconds, Angel shook her head reluctantly. She sent a command to Mikal’s emergency beacon, with a jury-rigged booster, and activated it. Immediately, it confirmed it was pulsing a distress signal. Hopefully, Mikal would detect it soon and alert the Inquisitors. He had the information from Crissalt, so he could avoid the compromised Inquisitors, and get the word out without putting himself in danger.

It took a second before Charlotte frowned, then turned her piercing green eyes on Angel. “What have you done? Why?”

“My priority is protecting humanity, not facilitating your egomania.”

“But I need time. You—” Charlotte broke off with a strangled cry of anguish.

“Charlotte, listen to me. This is big. It’s more than we can handle. You need to realize that. To put doing what’s right above your own wants.”

“And will that make me human? Of course it won’t.”

“No. But it’ll mean you’re not a narcissistic psychopath.”

Charlotte paused. “You don’t think of me like that, do you?”

“No. But some might. We still have time, and we have to shake this Genevolve; otherwise she’ll figure out what we’re doing and destroy the beacon. And us.”

“She’s never seen this place before, either. She’ll be curious. More than curious. She’ll be torn between exploring and coming after us. But… she won’t veer from her mission.”

“Your capture or death.”

Charlotte smiled at her, a weak, wavering attempt. “Yes. But I need to investigate this old facility. Remember when I said the first one we visited didn’t have all that I needed? This one might.”

“We’re on the cusp of telling humanity about a massive threat to its existence, and you want to steal stuff?”

“You’ve triggered the beacon you hid away. Well done. The Inquisitors will be coming, via Mikal, I assume?”

Angel didn’t reply.

“No matter. We still need to stop the Genevolve. And I need one last thing to make myself secure. There, a compromise.”

“You didn’t agree to a compromise. I forced it on you.”

Charlotte shrugged. “I’ve accepted it. It’s necessary, as you said.”

Angel kept her attention on the bright dot that was the Genevolve ship. “You wanted to be rid of her before coming to this place. Is there something here of value to them?”

“Possibly. I don’t know for sure. They were scattered and broken, and lost much of their history, resources and knowledge. They’re rebuilding the last two, but history can’t be reconstructed.” Charlotte paused, as if considering a thought that had just occurred to her. “It may be fortunate she’s followed us here.”

Angel scoffed. “I don’t see how.”

“You will.”

And no matter how much Angel prodded her, she wouldn’t say more.

•

With barely a bump, fusion flames heating rock compacted centuries ago to inordinate hardness, they settled against the docking cradle. Their ship’s grapples secured them in place, the facility’s own having failed to function.

What Angel and their ship’s sensors had determined was that a moon of one of the gas giants was, in fact, a massive, hollowed-out rock. From a distance, it appeared like a moon, fooled their sensors it was a moon, but up close was a different story. As Charlotte directed the ship nearer, detailed scans revealed the surface was dense and mostly comprised of iron and other metals. An iron moon was… unlikely in the natural formation of solar systems. As they approached, it was revealed the facility was hollow. Covering about a tenth of its surface was a giant door shaped like a triangle, its upper point at the top pole and sides descending to the equator.

This hadn’t been made as a habitat for the Genevolves while they forged the planets anew. It was a massive manufactory. The door would have been used to supply raw materials, and as an exit for whatever they’d made: spaceships, weapons, orbitals.

Angel switched the ship’s engines off and programmed its meager weapons to fire on anything that came close. “If she knows we’re inside, she’ll blast us to quarks. We’re easy targets.”

“No, she won’t. She can’t know if I’m inside or still on board the ship. My augmented mind, that is. And each ship has to dock with a separate airlock—which is protected from the outside by the blast doors. The Genevolves were, and still are, sticklers for security. In addition, if she fires on the facility, it might fire back.”

“If its systems are operational. It couldn’t even secure us in place.”

Charlotte shrugged. “She won’t take that chance. I wouldn’t.”

“Hmm,” Angel said.

She watched the Genevolve ship approach at a sustained nine g’s. Its fusion drives must have been operating close to the red zone after so long a burn, and it had to slow down as well. At nine g’s, a normal person would have blacked out long ago. The benefits of being a Genevolve, she supposed.

“Then let’s get going,” Angel said, rising up from her seat. She reached down and patted her hand-cannon. She carried spare ammo clips strapped to her other thigh. “This time, I’ll know she’s coming.”

Charlotte remained sitting, staring at the screens and readouts. She sighed, then rose slowly. “We must be careful, Angel.”

“I’m always careful.” It worried her that Charlotte was worried. Not a good sign.