Scardown-Jenny Casey-2 (34 page)

“Oh,” Patty said. She read the note over, folded it back around the data slip, and put it all back into the envelope, which she zipped into her breast pocket. She leaned back against the headrest and closed her eyes.

That was good-bye.

I'm not going to see him again.

It was a peculiar feeling, light. As though the juice had been wrung from her and she were a husk, a squeezed-out rind with features painted on the surface.

Leah had told her about the AIs, although she hadn't spoken with them. They hadn't spoken with her.
Why?
she wondered.
Do they not trust me because they don't trust Papa?

They wouldn't let Leah or Casey hurt themselves. They're worried about the nanotech. They're worried about Papa Fred. They're worried about all sorts of things they're not telling us, too, I bet.

Patty glanced along the aisle and saw Casey's and Leah's shadows still cast out on the floor beside the galley. Shadows leaning close: whispering or embracing.

“Richard,” Patty said softly, covering her lips with her hand. “Alan? Can you hear me?”

“We hear you, Patty,” a neutral voice answered, sounding like it came from
inside
her ears. “You don't need to talk out loud. How can I help you?”

“Why—”
Why didn't you ever talk to me before? Can I call you Richard?

“Call me anything you like. And because I didn't want to worry you. And the fewer people who knew of our existence, the better.”

What about now?

“The secret's out.” She had a sense of an oblique smile, hands drumming on brown-trousered thighs. “So what can I tell you, Pilot? We'll be working very closely soon, you know.”

I'm tired of secrets.
Patty unbuckled her lap belt and stood, pacing the aisle. She stopped and peered from a window. Sunlight gleamed on choppy indigo, far below. The tightness was in her gut again, the old midnight tension.
Get good grades
.
Don't fool around with boys. Succeed. Understand. Excel.

Richard, tell me everything.

“Everything about what?”

Everything you know.

2100 Hours
Thursday 21 December, 2062
PPCASS
Huang Di
Under way

“Second Pilot, you are relieved.”

Min-xue looked up from his panels, noticing the drawn expression on the face of the first pilot as he floated behind Captain Wu. “Captain, my duty shift has just begun. The first pilot has just completed a shift—”

“Second Pilot.” Captain Wu lowered his voice and leaned forward. Alcohol tainted his breath, half covered by the scent of ginger candy. “I have received new orders. Pursuant to our earlier conversation, if you recall it.”

Min-xue's hands, moving automatically to release his webbing, trembled. “Yes, sir.”

“There has been an attempt on the
Montreal
. Sabotage. The results were—incomplete.”

Why is he telling me this?
Min-xue's eyes went to the first pilot's face, but it was stony and his vision trained far away.
Richard, is this true?

“It's true.”

The captain was still speaking, just above a whisper—a tone for Min-xue's ear alone. “Now, while the
Montreal
is crippled, we are commanded to incapacitate the corporate leadership of the Westerners. It is the first pilot's duty. You will relinquish your chair.”

“Yes—” Min-xue stammered. “Yes, sir.”

Richard?

A moment's silence, and the AI's level voice. “Min-xue, I think we need to see what exactly is in your forward cargo bay.”

It's just as well that I don't need much light,
Min-xue thought, slithering through a narrow service panel and kicking himself loose to drift on the other side. He caught a tether left-handed before his spin turned into a tumble, and checked himself silently against the webbing and the wall. It was colder here, cold enough to sting his ears and the tip of his nose, cold enough to dry the palm he pressed to the unadorned steel wall.
Richard?

“Here.”

Which way? Is the Canadian shuttle at the
Montreal
yet?

An emergency light flickered greenly near Min's slippered foot, just once, and beyond it another, highlighting the number
5
on the door.

“Two pilots are present on the
Montreal
. Two are headed for the
Calgary
. It's cold in the cargo hold, Min-xue. You need to hurry.”

Min-xue raised his hand and triggered the irising hatchway. He slipped through it, sliding on a rush of more pressurized air into a stale-smelling chamber. Brief dim light trickled around Min-xue's shadow and illuminated the space in which he floated. His breath clouded on the air, froze, and drifted in flakes.
Richard, I need lights. Can you do that?

“Unfortunately, no. There's probably a switch near the door, however.” Min-xue found it. Actinic light rippled across the harsh metal walls, and Min-xue stopped with one wrist wound through a black, webbed strap.

The cargo in the center of the hold did, in fact, resemble several hundred tons of meteoric nickel-iron. What Min-xue didn't understand was the strange apparatus surrounding it: a mess of cables and heavy-duty springs that seemed intended to protect fragile equipment from powerful shocks. Min-xue untangled the grab-tight and kicked off the wall, cruising toward the rock.

It's an asteroid, Richard. Why do these look like quick-release clips?

“Because they are,” Richard said quietly. “Excuse me, Min-xue. I have an evacuation to arrange.”

2230 Hours
Thursday 21 December, 2062
HMCSS
Montreal
Earth orbit

Leah and Trevor are already en route to the
Calgary
to bring her on-line, and Gabe's half a step ahead of me, right on Wainwright's tail, moving fast down the curving corridors of the
Montreal
. The ship feels colder than I remembered, maybe because she's locked down, crew confined to quarters, most systems at minimum capability to make it easier for Richard/Alan to spot a usage spike—until Wainwright is sure systems are clean.

Wainwright has a strong stride for a little woman; I hustle to keep up, and Patty is three feet behind me. We're all but running for the bridge, where Gabe is supposed to help Richard clean any lingering traces of Ramirez's sabotage out of the ship. “How bad is it, Captain?”

“We've got Ramirez in custody. Koske and Richard tracked him down in one of the biospheres. I make at least one coconspirator, but he claims he acted alone.”

I bite my lip. “What have you done to get him to talk?”
Richard
—

“That's an exceptionally distasteful suggestion, Jenny.”

If it comes down to it, if we infected him, would you handle an interrogation?

Richard doesn't answer, but I feel him chewing it over. I won't suggest it to Wainwright until he decides if it suits his moral compass. Given his power, I half hope he'll say no.

Wainwright clears her throat. “You know perfectly well that torture is ineffective unless you've already decided what confession you want to force. Meanwhile, we're doing a room-by-room search for transmission devices. They have to have some way to talk to the Chinese—assuming it is the Chinese—to coordinate these attacks. We haven't picked up any transmissions.”

“Ansibles,” Richard says in my head.

I repeat his word to Wainwright. “Richard hypothesizes that they've found a way to use the Benefactor tech to communicate.”

She doesn't look back. “Tell me what you know about controlling the AIs, Master Warrant.”

Oh.
“Captain—”

“Yes?”

“You can't.”

“Casey.” Voice cool, but I can hear the strain in it. “That is not an acceptable answer.”

“You can't,” I repeat, making it level and professional. “Captain, what are you going to threaten him with? Do to him? Try on him? What can you offer him?” Richard stirs in the back of my head; I sense his pressure and presence. “You're talking about a consciousness that spans half the Milky Way, Captain. What can you possibly offer him?”

Wainwright stops so short that Gabe clips her heel. I'm ready for it and set myself in a smooth-faced parade rest when she comes around, blazing. “I—”

“Jenny.”

Richard. Shhh.

“No. Now.”

Not even time to make it polite. “Captain.” My voice cuts hers like a cleaver through bone. Richard's words tumble out of my mouth. I wonder why he didn't use the ship speaker, realize it's so Wainwright will hear the news in my voice and not his. “Captain, Richard says the
Huang Di
is closing on us at speed. She appears to have triggered her stardrive, then dumped velocity to sublight, but she's still moving at a very good clip.”

“Is she armed?”

“Not for ship-to-ship combat, ma'am.” Gabe stares at me. I see him from the corner of my eye. “Richard says she's carrying a ten-hundred-ton nickel-iron asteroid.”

“Oh,” she says, and sags against the bulkhead, holding herself up with one flat palm. Richard won't need to explain what it means. I won't, anyway. He's already filling my head with velocities and trajectories and a phrase that clogs my mind until I cannot breathe, cannot think.

Impact event.

“What are our options, Master Warrant?” The polished flicker of her eyes tells me the woman's gone and the officer has returned, but the lines beside her nose and mouth are strained. “Where will they attack?”

Richard, crisp and brittle, traces of Alan creeping into his voice. “The logical choice is the capital, Jenny.”

“Toronto,” I translate. And close my eyes.
Elspeth. Genie
. Over my shoulder, Patty moans low in her throat. “We could try to catch the rock with the
Montreal,
ma'am. But she's not very maneuverable sublight. She's a sailboat.”

“I know. What else?”

“A shuttle,” Patty says.

Leah.
She's on the
Leonard Cohen
. Unless it's reached the
Calgary
already. Could it have? I don't know. Gabe's looking at me, lips tight. Tasting bile, I close my eyes. “A shuttle might work.”

Richard
.

“I already told her, Jen.”

Thank you.
I couldn't have given the order.
Could I? Merci à Dieu
. I will never have to know. “Leah and Trevor are going after the
Huang Di,
” I tell Wainwright. “They'll try to intercept the rock.”

I'm not quite fast enough to stop Gabe going to his knees.

The captain grabs his other shoulder and yanks him up while I'm still torn between comfort and
On your feet
. “Come on, soldier,” she orders. “You need to fix my starship, Castaign. And we need to get a message to Riel. Casey.”

“Yes.”

“With me.”

We run. I unholster my sidearm with its ship-safe plastic bullets and clutch it in my meat hand; Wainwright glances at it but doesn't comment. Even light body armor will make a joke of those rounds, but she's wearing one, too. I age ten years in the seven minutes it takes us to reach the bridge. “How many people on this bucket can we trust?”

She shakes her head and palms a hatchway lock that wasn't there before. I notice its freshly soldered shine. Gabe and I exchange a hard, covert look; I wince at the way his face pinches around the eyes.

“Four,” she says.

“Five, Jenny.”

I nod to the voice in my head. “Richard's in.” Wainwright skates a cold glance across me. I tilt my head, a nod to the alpha set of her shoulders, and step through quickly when she undogs the hatch and pushes it wide.

“I've had the crew confined to quarters for three days, Casey,” Wainwright says. “Except security and a few I more or less trust.”

I raise my hand to shield my eyes. The fluorescents are up to full, and the whole room shimmers in their strobing.
Ow. Richard.

“Sorry. Tell Wainwright that Riel has the evacuation under way.”

Genie? Elspeth?
Razorface, Indigo, Melissa, the VR tech, the cute boy at the front desk of the Marriott, Boris the fucking cat.

“We're doing everything we can,” he answers. Five words, I know from very personal experience, that you never want to hear a doctor or a paramedic say.

Without being told, Gabe and Patty fan out across the bridge, heading for panels, bringing locked-down systems on-line. The lights dim abruptly as Richard takes pity on me, and Wainwright shoots me a look. “The AI was supposed to be firewalled out of the ship's systems.”

“He was. He's learned things.”
Richard
— “Captain.” My outside voice.
Can you access the drive? How locked down is the crew?
I have some wild idea we can beat Leah to the Rock, which just grew a capital letter in my head. “The Chinese just jumped in-system. Can we get Charlie Forster working on hacking their nanotech back? Considering all the fun they've had with ours?”

“He already is,” she says. “He's on Clarke. Master Warrant, I can't ask you to try to fly this ship when I don't know what's lurking in her brain.”

“I'm still working on the drive,” Richard interjects. “There are physical interlocks I am going to have to bridge. Our little friends are building them now.”

I shake my head. “I'll take her.” I can't in good conscience put the
Montreal
and her three hundred crew in between the Hammer of God and my family on the ground. Not when Leah can get there first. But I've got some strangeness in me that says go.

Be near.

Hold her hand when she dies.

Leah's about the same age my little sister was when my older sister killed her.
Je vous salue, Marie, pleine de grâce
. I was in Montreal. Nell gave me that eagle feather when I graduated basic training.
Jenny, you're a warrior now.

Le Seigneur est avec vous
. I came home for the funeral. Earth rained on the brushed-copper coffin like the beating of my heart in my ears.
Vous êtes bénie entre toutes les femmes et Jésus le fruit de vos entrailles est béni.