Spear of Light (25 page)

The announcer driveled on about space warfare.

Another three Next ships flew in, while the first three made a slow lazy circle, turning as tightly as plausible. One of the new attackers went up in a flash, indicating a Revolution hit, but at the same time one of their own ships also flashed out of existence, and another stopped in its tracks and drifted. An attacking vessel slammed into it with explosive weapons, blowing holes in its skin.

Half of the fleet.

It took an excruciating hour for the fight to play out, sixty minutes of being frozen and wanting to look away but being unable to. Her hand clutched Vadim's the whole time.

She knew two of the pilots. She wouldn't ever see them again. They'd just lost a dozen pilots and hundreds of crew. It was . . . unthinkable. They had lost ships before, of course, one and two at a time. But never so many at once, and never without doing at least some damage to their targets.

This had happened before they engaged. An ambush.

She closed her eyes, thinking of each human life lost. She let go of Vadim's hand, and her own fists clenched so hard that her nails dug into her palm.

Vadim had gone silent and hard. She looked up at his face, which had tightened into a terrible anger.

Maureen's hands trembled as she closed her slate. She stepped away from the table and fumbled the slate into her satchel, as if hiding the player would make the story go away.

The look in Maureen's eyes prompted Nayli to ask, “Are you okay?”

“My uncle was on the
Sun's Red Ray
. I . . . I saw it go.” She stopped, fumbled some more with her satchel, looked anywhere but at Nayli. She mumbled, “I was so proud of him.”

“I'm sorry,” Nayli whispered, her voice cracking.

“You should go.” Maureen's eyes were glassy with tears. “Get away from here.”

“Will you be okay?”

“No.” Maureen had returned to holding her head up, the shocked look in her eyes switching into resolve. “I will die if the Next attack the station. But that's not news.” She hesitated, chewed on her lower lip, looked at them with wide eyes. “We need
you
to be safe. Go make yourselves a smaller target.”

Nayli glanced at Vadim, asking an unspoken question. He nodded quickly and almost imperceptibly. “How fast can you call your people together?”

Maureen blinked, looking confused. A tear slid down her cheek. In all of the years they had known each other, Nayli had only seen her cry once before.

Nayli folded her in her arms, amazed again at how tiny she was. “Would you like to come with us?”

Maureen stood very still for a long moment before she pushed away. “I can't leave my people.”

“Bring them,” Vadim said. He touched Maureen's shoulder, his face tender and still shocked. “We can take twenty. Is that enough?”

Nayli grabbed her arm. “I'll come with you. I know how to do this. We've evacuated people before.”

Maureen looked deep in thought. “I can do it.”

“Be quick,” Nayli said. “No more than an hour.”

“Thanks.” Maureen finished her drink and set the glass down. “I'll see you soon. I promise.”

“Don't be in such a hurry that you get caught,” Vadim cautioned.

“Okay.”

“We'll pay the bill.”

Maureen left quickly without looking back.

While they waited on the
Shining Danger
, Nayli worked on Stupid, getting it ready for imminent departure. She ran the timing through in her head. The Next must not have known that their flagship was threatened, or they would have stopped it. There hadn't been enough time between the destruction of the
Edge of Existence
and the fleet they'd just lost for the two events to be related. But they must have known that the twelve ships they blew up were targeting a Next ship. Or maybe not. But they did have to know they were Shining Revolution ships. “Do you think they decoyed us?” she asked Vadim.

His answer was clipped, anger evident right under the surface of his words. “I don't know.”

She couldn't remember so big a loss in any engagement. They'd argued with Brea and Darnal, suggested a faster and smaller fleet, and lost. She hadn't wanted to be right.

An hour later, Maureen showed up with twelve people in tow, including two teenagers. Their crew led all of the refugees to empty rooms they had prepared for them.

Nayli had turned Stupid into a cartoonish co-pilot, which was one of its more capable looks. Vadim made the call to the dispatch center. “
Lady of the Stars
, ready to leave.”

Only after they had pulled away with no problems whatsoever did Nayli breathe in a long sigh of relief. It would be days before they could be sure Lilith's Station was safe. But without them there, it was safer. And if the Next did attack Lilith's, the Shining Revolution wouldn't lose Maureen.

It was a horrible setback. She felt absurdly grateful they'd have a few days to wait before Brea and Darnal would think it safe to re-initiate communication.

She slid next to Vadim and whispered, “Are you on duty?”

He slid his hand down her back, a caress of comfort. “I can be.”

“Good.” She poured herself a single glass of wine and lifted it three times. Once for each of the two captains that she knew had been lost and once for Maureen's uncle. Then she did what she had to do, which was head to their quarters and prepare to sleep so she could take command again in the morning and keep right on going.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

SATYANA

Satyana picked at the buttons and lace on the suit she'd had made for the meeting. The lace was stiffer than she'd wanted; it tickled her neck.

Gunnar bulked next to her in the small shuttle. Hiram sat directly opposite, his long legs sticking liberally into her space. The Futurist, of course, had dressed all in black, with the exception of gold earrings and a gold hair tie that caught his glossy black hair in a ponytail. She had never seen him in another color, except for the occasional white shirt under a black coat. She let her stray thoughts slip free of her mouth. “I don't know why we don't just meet them naked. They never wear clothes.”

“I'm game,” Gunnar replied. “But you would hate it.” He had dressed for show in a bright blue silky robe that contrasted with his dark skin and slimmed his vast bulk down. He wore soft green boots and a green sash. Her own outfit has been designed to complement his; her blue lace matched his blue exactly, although she layered her lace and buttons over a pale mauve. Neil, of course, was dressed in a simple tan suit that looked as unassuming as possible.

The shuttle door opened and two gleaming silver robots with no pretense at all to human form ushered them through the door and led them across a spotless landing bay, down a long and brightly colored corridor with exposed pipes painted with primary colors, and into a meeting room where four empty chairs waited for them. Beside each chair, she noted a small table with a glass of water on it. A fifth chair wasn't; the Colorima Kelm had folded part of her gleaming body into a chair shape and left the rest looking like a beautiful human woman who might have been sculpted of silvery water. “Thank you for coming,” the Colorima said, in the distinctly feminine voice that the Colorimas always used.

As the senior member of their party, Hiram said, “Thank you for inviting us.”

“We wish to be clear with you on a few items, and then we plan to grant your wish.” The Colorima nodded at Gunnar, who smiled back. He looked pleased and not nearly as penitent as he probably should. Sometimes she wasn't certain whether or not he understood how much had changed.

The Colorima continued. “First, please recall what we said before we asked for your support. We will remind the larger group as well. It is very important to us that you understand it.”

She looked from one to the other. When Satyana returned her gaze directly, she felt . . . touched. The Colorima's gaze held the ineffable, the infinity of all the ways the brilliant being could compute anything, but also a depth of feeling that surprised her. Something deeper than she had seen in Chrystal, deeper perhaps than she had ever seen in any human. It left her blinking rather stupidly as the Colorima looked away and spoke. “We are pleased that you chose to assist us. We told Nona Hall that we will not hesitate to remove any threats to our operations on Lym. It is up to humans to police other humans.”

If that was so, then Satyana wondered why the Shining Revolution hadn't been blown out of every corner of the Glittering yet.

As if she heard Satyana's thoughts, Colorima said, “We just destroyed Lilith's Station for harboring people
who had carried out
an attack on us. We will do the same to anyone caught in the act of attacking us or who we can verify are
about
to attack us. If we begin down the path of slaughtering everyone who
thinks
of harming us, we will have to ruin every station in the Glittering.”

Hiram, who was always rather fearless, asked, “Why don't you do that? Wouldn't it be easier to murder us all? Have us out of the way? Then you wouldn't need to keep a single promise.”

The Colorima went still for just a moment, and although it didn't exactly show on her face, Satyana sensed a deep and banked anger. “In the long ago when your kind banished my kind, you killed some of us, but you let the rest of us go. The people who made those choices are your ancestors, and they gifted you with your lives today. It would be dishonorable.”

“How important is honor to you?” Neil asked. “And how do you know what it is?”

His question made the Colorima smile. “You would not always recognize our honor. It is not the same as yours in all ways. But in the large ways? We have our own pride. There will be no guilt if we defend ourselves, but a preemptive cleansing would change who we are, and we might become . . . less good. Less trustworthy. At our core, we remain moral beings.”

Neil smiled thinly. “I do have what might be a moral question.”

“You may ask it.”

“Why are you encouraging so many humans to join you?”

“They are choosing to do so. We learned that lesson after the High Sweet Home.”

“I know you aren't compelling the change. But you are already many, and obviously you can multiply. You are not the only Colorima alive today, but there was only one original Colorima, right?”

“Yes.”

“So why turn more? Why not just make an infinite number of Colorimas?”

“Do you understand the concept of genetic diversity?”

“You're not flesh.”

“There is also a diversity of ideas. You cannot create a complex society with a hundred seeds. More seeds—more souls if you will—create richer possibilities. We wish to grow as a people.”

Neil looked thoughtful and scribbled a few notes on his slate.

“Why?” Satyana asked. “Why do you need more of you? Growing is understandable, but you're bringing in hundreds, maybe thousands of possible new Next. Even if half die, you will gain many. You seem to be in a rush.”

“We will answer that question in time. But let's move on. I mentioned that it was up to humans to police other humans. We will go into a far larger meeting soon, and when we are there we will give you something that will help you.”

Gunnar straightened. “The navigation?”

“You already know how to get to Lym, and that is what matters to us. We know that you dispatched a few ships to our skies. We approve.”

Satyana didn't know why. Gunnar would likely muck it up. He might be the best trader in the system, but he was no diplomat. As if to prove it, he asked a straight up question again. “So what will you give us?” he asked.

“Everyone who is here today will learn it at once.”

If Satyana had wanted to know, she would have asked more subtle questions or offered some piece of information in trade. She leaned forward. “How many accepted your invitation?”

“Two hundred and seventy-seven.”

So few. “That includes the hundred and seven who had already formally joined us?”

“It does.”

She had hoped for so many more. “How many refused?”

“Six hundred and ninety-three. The others had all already gone rogue or joined the fight against us.”

Her number had been different. Higher on the undecided side. But the Next were more likely to be right than she was; they had ships near most of the major stations. “Very well. We're ready to go meet them.”

“But we are not. Not yet. Another thing you need to know is that we have no patience for duplicity. I want the agreement of everyone in this circle that you will harbor no hidden agendas.”

Neil and Satyana shared a look. She spoke for them. “I'm sure there is no intent to hide anything.”

The Colorima regarded Gunnar, who looked down at his hands. After a while, he spread his hands apart, and met her gaze. “My agendas are never hidden. Just ask.”

“You must not offer anything to anyone in the Shining Revolution,” the Colorima said.

To her surprise, it was Hiram instead of Gunnar who said, “I will offer sanctuary to whomever I deem worthy.”

The Colorima made a great show of raising an eyebrow. “If you offer sanctuary to members of the Shining Revolution, you must destroy their ships.”

Hiram glanced up at her, his dark eyes full of a quiet anger under his dark eyelashes. The line of his jaw was hard and tight. “We agreed to help you, but we did not agree to be your slaves, or your enforcers.”

The Colorima had no comment.