Scardown-Jenny Casey-2 (38 page)

Marquet shrugged, squeezed, dropped his hand back to his side. “He could have died scared,” he said. “He didn't die scared, Doc. You did everything you could.” He turned away, leaving Elspeth blinking after him. She dropped into a jumpseat as the chopper rose into a toiling sky.

0600 Hours
Friday 22 December, 2062
HMCSS
Montreal
Earth orbit

Gabe paces me, a shadow over my shoulder as I come along the long, curving corridor toward the
Montreal
's bridge. My feet fall by their own volition. Richard and his Chinese pilot friend have hatched a plan that's only a little less sane than my last one, and it tumbles over and over in my head, spinning with the velocity of the damned asteroid we
almost
caught.

Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, Jenny.

And H-bombs, I hear a long-forgotten drill instructor say.

I let my mouth run along with my feet, trying to keep Gabe with me, keep him focused. “Richard says Leah is safe on
Calgary
.” He grunts, so I keep talking. “Wainwright is EVA with a repair crew, patching the solar sail. I broke the vane. Richard says if we can patch it the right way, nanosurgeons will do the rest.”

“That was pretty nice flying, Jen.”

I check my stride to force him to catch me, slide my steel arm around his waist. “Elles pourraient être vivantes.”

He just looks at me, lips thin, that bruised look still splotching his face. “Ne pas me mentir, Geni.”

“Jamais. Shhh. No, Gabriel—” I dig in my heels.

He keeps walking, not speeding up but not stopping either.

“Gabriel!”

“Quoi?” He stops. He turns, filling the narrow corridor.

“Gabe, if you left people for dead just because it looked bad for them, I wouldn't be here having this argument with you.”

“Oh.” He looks down at his hands. I cover the few meters between us and take those hands in my own, running my steel thumb over the discolorations on his skin. Bad burns, bone-deep. There were some on his arms and chest, too, but not like those. Those were as bad as mine, though not as extensive. There aren't many people in this world who will crawl through fire for somebody.

His eyes are just as blue as they ever were when I look back up. “I want it over with, Jenny. I don't want to sit and wait for the pain, and know what the answer will be before I ask the question.”

“They're dead or they're not dead,” I answer, looking hard for the words before I say them. “Nothing we can do will change that. But we have things we have to do right now, and I need you with me.”

“What did you just say?”

“I said I need you with me—”

“Jenny.” He's big and warm and he pulls me close for a second, and then sets me at arm's length. “You never needed anybody in your life.”

I look up at him, and shake my head.
How can anybody as smart as he is be so goddamned wrong?
“Just keep thinking that, Castaign,” I mutter, and elbow him in the ribs as I go by. At least he's laughing. It sounds like he might strangle on it, but he's laughing. So help me God.

I pause by the locked bridge hatchway and rap on it with my metal hand, hard.
Richard, tell Patty it's us, please
.

A few moments pass, the AI's voice tickling my inner ear. “We've found the problem with Min-xue's idea.”

What's that?

“I think we can get the
Huang Di
down with its core elements intact. The Benefactors managed it on Mars, and there's more atmosphere to work with in Earth.”

So what's the problem?
Patty undogs the hatch and we step inside. She looks exhausted, her eyes bruised and black. One of the sublight pilots is in his chair, and two security guards just like the last two stand in the back corners of the bridge, as unobtrusive as anybody in body armor and bearing weapons can be. Their sidearms make my flesh crawl, and I scrub my right hand over the holster of my own to make sure the strap's snapped down. “Hello, Patty.”

“Master Warrant,” she says. “Are you my relief?”

“Go get some sleep, kid. I'll have you rousted in twelve hours or so, okay?”

Richard gestures with his arms, a motion like a circle hung in space. His hands fall and tumble before his chest. “The crew won't survive it.”

If I close my eyes and tilt my head just right, I swear I can smell the burning.
But it will work? It's the only thing that might still work? You said there were other ways, before
—

“That was before the impact event. We're talking catastrophic damage now, rather than slow decay. We're out of conservative options.” Which is as close as he would ever come to saying
I don't see a choice anymore, Jen.

Then forgive me if I don't give a fuck who survives the landing, Dick.

“The other problem is that the
Huang Di
's computers don't have the processing power to make up the difference. It would take Benefactor-style processors from at least two ships of her size to handle the load. Firewalls and controls; I think I've learned enough about the differences between the Benefactor programming, our protocols, and those of the Chinese. Maybe if we could somehow move the core of the ship tree from Mars to Earth—”

But that's not realistic, is it?

“No.”

Patty nods before she turns for the door. Gabe is already moving toward an interface terminal, affect flat except for the lines at the corners of his mouth.
Oh.

Richard, what does this hulk have for lifeboats?
I know the answer, more or less. The
Montreal
's specs are identical to those of the
Indefatigable,
and I've learned those cold.

“Not enough for what you're thinking.”

I cross to my chair, curl my legs up on it, and watch the white-suited figures crawl over the
Montreal
's vast golden solar sail.
But is her computer core big enough?

“Yes,” he says reluctantly. “It is. I think Min-xue's determined to try it anyway. If we can get her down close to the impact zone, we can make a difference. Mitigate. Which is the best we could do under ideal circumstances. This is not the sort of damage that can ever be—healed. The scars will always be there.”

I press my steel hand to my cheek, taking comfort in the coolness of the metal.
I know what you mean.

“Meanwhile,” he continues, “we're still trying to hack into the controls. But it's only a matter of time until security finds him. The
Huang Di
's not infinite.”

I can't pick out which spacesuit is Wainwright. I wonder if one of the others is one of the saboteurs.
Richard, am I safe to go on-line with the
Montreal
?

“Your nanosurgeons seem to be becoming rather adept at fixing up the neural damage the interface does, but it's awfully soon. And you ripped yourself up pretty good with that last trick. I wouldn't recommend trying that again. You should eat something and take your supplements. And—wait. Jenny. I have news from Riel.”

A reflexive glance at Gabe. He catches it, starts toward me. I wonder if Richard's giving me a second to brace, or if Riel is slow relaying what she has to say.
What?

“Genie and Elspeth are alive.”

“Yes!”
I'm out of the chair as if catapulted—easier in the light gravity of the habitation wheel than it would be on Earth, and I hit Gabe chest-high and wrap my arms around him, squeaking like a girl a third my age.

Undignified.

Who gives a shit?

“They're okay, they're okay, they're okay—”

Breathless, wordless, he squeezes me tight.

“Jenny.” Richard, still serious.

Ah, shit. Qu'est-ce que le fuck ici maintenant?

“She's sending this via me so you'll know it's legit. She has a job for you and Captain Wainwright.”

Richard—

“Yes.”

Beijing?
He doesn't have to answer. He's already answered it all.
Revenge. Tell her we'll take out the
Huang Di—
that's not a lie. Remove the threat. We can—shit. Richard, what if you release the physics behind the stardrive worldwide? That should shake some things up. Maybe a few more people will make it off world before the end
.

“I'd be the first AI to win a second Nobel Prize. I can do it. It will—you're right, if everybody has the stardrive tech, it removes some of the excuse for China and Canada to batter each other back into the stone age. Complicates the equation.” His dry tone hides worry. I can see it in the gull-wing arch of his brow, the way his long fingers move like a bird's feathers grasping the wind. For no reason at all, I remember the eagle at the rehab center and the chrome steel binding her wing together. Gone, too, now, where all good things go.

Is this extortion, Richard? Riel is holding Genie and Ellie hostage so I'll kill a few million Chinese civilians for her?

A long silence, while Gabe holds me tight enough to cramp my breath in my lungs, his chin resting on the top of my head. I draw strength and warmth out of him as if they come up through a straw.

I think that flutter of color in my head is Alan's equivalent of a sigh. You never quite get to talk to just
Richard
anymore. “She's looking out for the future in her own way. You convinced her we need to get where they're going. And I think the last twenty-four hours nicely demonstrate why.”

Why do we need to go take somebody else's planet if we can fix our own?

“They'll take it anyway, Jenny. And we don't
know
there's anybody out there.”

This removes the moral high ground. Remember when you asked me how much I trusted you, Dick?

“Yes.”

The Benefactors don't have AIs, you said. You've been keeping an eye on them. Do you think you have better control over this tech on a program level than they do?

“Yes again.” He's almost gone—visually, I mean. Just a voice in my head that might almost be the voice of my conscience, or the voice of my will.

I trust you a hell of a lot,
I say. Richard's smart enough to keep his mouth shut—if you can call it that—while I disentangle myself from Gabe, give him an extra squeeze, and walk across the bridge to sit down in my chair.
Let me know when Wainwright and the others are inside
.

There's no right choice, is there?
There never was. Not with Peacock. Not with Nell. Not now. Sometimes there's no choice at all.

“What are you going to do?”

What I have to. Richard, see that that data gets out?

“I will.”

Hey, Richard
—The chair molds to me like an old friend. I don't call Gabe over to help with the interfaces yet. I want to just sit here quietly and watch him work for as long as I can. There's an eagle feather in my pocket and resolution like a fist clenching in my chest, and on some soul-deep level I'm dead happy I don't know what comes next.
Does Wainwright know our orders yet?

“She does.”

When they first met with the Europeans, my ancestors wove a treaty with them, written in the symbols on a wampum belt. Two rows of violet beads side by side on a river of white: two canoes moving parallel down a stream, canoes whose courses were not to affect each other. Whose paths were not to intersect.

It never works out that way.

How soon will the Benefactors arrive?

A dry suggestion of a shrug. “It's hard to tell when you can't read their star charts.”

A picture is a picture, isn't it?

“You would think so. But it doesn't appear to work that way.”

We should probably have the war over with when they get here, don't you think?

Watching Gabe work, watching the wounded Earth spin on the view screen over his shoulder, I settle back in my chair to wait. A warrior kind of finality fills me with an emotion I almost don't recognize.
Take care of Genie for me, Elspeth.

Peace.

I am at peace.

“Jenny,” Richard whispers. “We're in. Min-xue is in control, Pilot. The
Huang Di
is under way.”

0615 Hours
Friday 22 December, 2062
HMCSS
Calgary
Earth orbit

“Leah.” Richard's voice roused her from something half-like sleep, but mostly like staring out the
Calgary
's bridge view ports. “Elspeth and Genie are okay.”

“What?” She said it out loud, jerking forward in her chair. The skeleton bridge crew glanced at her—three scared-looking junior grade officers and airmen, the oldest probably only four years older than she was. “Sorry,” she said, and waved them away. “Just thinking out loud.”
They're all right? They're alive?

“And kicking,” he answered. “Genie has two broken ribs. How are you?”

Scared. Genie's really okay?
Leah picked at the edge of her chair. She wondered where Koske was, and casually reached out to Richard for the information. He showed her a map, Koske in his new, Spartan quarters. Down the hall from Leah's room. Where Leah couldn't stand to be.

“She'll live, but things are bad down there, Leah. And going to get worse.”

I know.
She stood and paced to the direct-view window, laying both hands flat on ice-cold glass. There were layers and layers of crystal between herself and the outside. Beyond it, she saw Clarke, the occasional flashes of light as its meteor defenses picked off a bit of space junk or debris.
It's the end of the world.

“Not quite.” Something colored his voice. He resolved fully in her imaginary vision, a rangy man whose shoulders lifted and fell in a shrug she would have called exhaustion in a human. “The
Huang Di
will be moving soon. I need you to get jacked in to the ship and let it go by, even if you hear something different from ground control or the captain. Can you do that for me?”

Leah nodded.
What's it going to do?