The Apocalypse Ocean (14 page)

Tiago followed as Pepper limped his way through the spaceship, using his hands to guide him along the corridor walls.

Piper appeared, a sudden digital ghost flowing through the corridor with them. “Those League ships aren’t taking off; they’re just coasting towards us on the ocean’s surface.”

“Messages?” he asked.

“They’re not talking. Probably worried about me or Nashara infecting their ships,” Piper replied.

“As they should be.” Pepper paused at the entrance to the cockpit and nodded his chin back at Tiago. “The boy?”

“Tiago. Street kid. Nashara picked him up on Placa del Fuego while looking for you. He’s been helpful. He knows the island.”

Pepper remained in place, a salty, degraded statue of machine and man. “Someone on the island put that alien with a wormhole for a mouth, the Doaq, on my tail …”

“Kay,” Tiago said, finally speaking up. “That was Kay.”

Pepper nodded. “You’re scared of her.”

“She’s dangerous,” Tiago said. “And obsessed with the Doaq.”

“I’ll want to talk more about that with you,” Pepper said, and then stepped into the cockpit. “Piper, any word from Parliament?”

“Our request for any hostile engagement with The League has been denied. We face censure from them if we engage. They will denounce us to The League.”

Pepper sat down heavily on one of the large chairs. It began to wrap itself around him, which Tiago found somewhat creepy. Cushions and metal moving as if alive. “What resources do we have?”

Gina tapped Tiago on the shoulder. “Get in one of the chairs. Everyone is going combat ready ship-wide. You need snugged in.”

Yuki followed her in, and then Ian, and finally Goz. Tiago realized that one of the chairs had already wrapped itself fully around Nashara, who’d gone ahead of them.

“We have two ships,” Piper reported. “The
Jericho
and the
Selby
.”

“Bustamante’s still running
Jericho
?” Pepper asked.

“Yes.”

“Who’s for
Selby
?” he demanded. The chair had covered up his torso and legs now, only his arms were free. Tiago got into his own couch. He leaned back.

“That’s Matty Mallette,” Piper said. “Those two League ships aren’t sure what’s going on, but I’m sure they’ve identified us, and they know who would normally be on this ship. You and Nashara aren’t shy about broadcasting your preferred flagships.”

Tiago was trying to pay attention, as well as look around for buttons or anything to push that would turn his chair on and get it to wrap around him. He couldn’t find anything.

“They’re not going to try and attack us in neutral territory. But they will start dogging us when we fly into League space,” Pepper said. “Maybe we can use that to muddy things at the Trumball wormhole.”

Piper paused a moment, then cocked her head. “So you still want to go ahead with this?”

“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t serious. We need to get through that wormhole. And we need to do it now.”

The hologram of the mind that floated through the spaceship appeared to take a deep breath. “Listen, we follow you. We’ve stood by you. But we go through that wormhole, the League will gleefully unleash unholy hell on us with everything they can lay their hands on. And we don’t know what’s on the other side of that wormhole. The League’s a totalitarian dark zone. So, it’s only fair that the crew know what’s going on.”

Pepper looked around, as if looking at the entire crew on the bridge. “The League is getting ready to shut down the Trumball wormhole and cut themselves off from all the other worlds. They’re going to go even darker.”

Tiago waved his hand at Yuki, the closest to him and paying just as much attention to Pepper, and pointed at the chair.

She realized his confusion and said, “Lean your head back against the top and think the words ‘immersion’ and ‘activate.’”

He did so, and the chair leaned itself back and shifted underneath him. Tiago yelped slightly as soft metal climbed up from below, handcuffed his ankles and wrists, then hugged his torso.

It felt firm and soft, like solid foam, as it slid all around him.

When it began to move around his head, like a helmet, Tiago struggled and the chair moved with him.

“Don’t fight it,” Piper said, her voice suddenly right next to him even though he could see her shimmering in the center of the cockpit. “Relax.”

“Oh, okay,” Tiago said. He took a deep breath and the foam moved with him.

“If it gets really dangerous, the foam will climb down inside of your throat to protect your airway,” Piper said. “In that event, don’t panic, the chair itself is a fully contained life support system. It can’t do surgery on you like the medbay, but it can just about everything else needed to keep you alive. You are in the safest spot in the entire ship, here.”

Tiago was still breathing a bit hard, a little nervous. “Okay,” he said again.

“If you’re feeling nervous, you can ask for a sedative,” Piper said.

“That might be a good idea in general,” Yuki said. Tiago turned to look at her, and saw nothing. The chair had covered his head, there was nothing to see.

“You’re hearing our voices over a private side channel,” Piper explained gently. “I know this is all new to you. The chair isn’t showing you any information, but I can peel off a small part of my personality to remain here and introduce you to what information you would like to see.”

Tiago felt a wave of calm seep over him. Something rumbled in the distance. Engines powering up, machines coming to life. “Is that … good for you? We’re going to be in a fight, right?”

“It’s fine, and …” Piper chuckled slightly. “We’re more or less already in a fight.”

“What?”

“We’re in the air and boosting. Would you like to see?”

“Yes,” Tiago said.

And the world around faded away. He flew over the ocean. To his left Placa del Fuego lit up, highlighted in a mild green glow.

Red arrows pointed behind him. Tiago looked back to see two red blips, pulsing and surrounded by odd shapes and constantly shifting lines that reached out at him.

“I’ll patch you into the common channel. You’ll hear everyone, but they won’t hear you. If you need anything, just ask me,” Piper said in his ear.

Pepper’s voice faded in. Tiago knew this because a small nametag appeared over his view of the world outside the spaceship. It pulsed in time to Pepper’s voice. “Placa del Fuego isn’t the only area with a dead zone. The League has seen two appearances. I got into League territory to find out what they were freaking out about, trying to build up my own intelligence networks on the other side. The zones expanded, so The League decided to act. They have a wormhole killer. It’s built into a refitted ship called the
Saguenay
.”

“We’ve heard rumors,” Nashara said.

“They’re true. They’ve isolated two worlds and destroyed their wormholes to prevent contamination. They’ve gotten aggressive. They view this one as a threat and they’re moving
Saguenay
into place to shut down the Trumball wormhole. If we don’t stop them, all those worlds will be cut off from us.” 

Goz cleared his throat. “That don’t sound too bad. No more nervous standoffs, spies, and small wars every time some new world comes over to us.”

“We’ll lose access to half the human race that’s on the other side. We’d never be able to look into getting back to Earth,” Pepper said. “They can’t just rip that all away from us.”

Tiago’s view of the whole world grayed out for a second as something heavy sat down on him. The water blurred underneath. They had sped up abruptly.

“We’re in Trumball airspace, we’re being challenged,” Piper murmured.

“Here we go,” Nashara said.

Up ahead, Tiago saw the floating city of Trumball light up in warnings, glyphs, and hundreds of aggressive spotlights locking onto them.

“… incoming …”

The world exploded in chaff and thumps. The chair squeezed tight around Tiago. Something slimy wormed its way down his throat and into his chest as the entire world pinwheeled, jerked randomly, and blurred around him as they stuttered their way through the air toward the black disc of the wormhole ensconced at the heart of the gray, blocky city.

Kay yanked at the shackles and chains securing her to a simple, and very uncomfortable, metal chair that was bolted to the concrete floor in a windowless room at the top of the gray, featureless building they’d been hustled to. She wasn’t getting free of them. But it helped to pull at them. It made her feel like she was testing things. Doing something.

Avris, on the other hand, had slipped deeply into fear. Her ashen face drooped. Thinking about torture; being a League prisoner.

Kay thought about talking her out of it. Guiding her into a stronger headspace.

But she wanted a nervous foil to keep whoever came in that shielded door occupied. Avris was more useful to Kay scared right now.

The door creaked open.

Their interrogator, a middle-aged bureaucrat with tired eyes, sat at a small metal table across from the both of them. Kay watched him closely as he blinked, reading information that only he could see laid over his eyeballs.

“The Xenowealth pilot, a spy, we understand that,” he said. “But the child from Placa del Fuego? What is your role here?”

Kay leaned forward and projected calm and confidence despite the fact that the handcuffs and chains stopped her from reaching the table. “What is your name?”

That annoyed him. Her presumptive calm. But then, Kay had always found that unaffected calm intriguing when she’d been on the other side of a table in interrogations of her own.

“My name is Danielle,” the man said. And pointedly didn’t add his last name.

“On Placa del Fuego that’s usually a girl’s name,” Kay said conversationally while leaning back. “Avris, is that a girl’s name throughout the Xenowealth? Don’t they usually go with Daniel?”

Avris looked vaguely horrified.

“My mother named me after a hero of the Revolution,” Danielle said. Despite Kay’s attempt to needle him, he didn’t seem that bothered.

So she put her hands on her lap. “Well, Danielle, it’s a shame you’re the one in here talking to us when you’re not anyone with any sort of power here. I’m looking to defect, and you’re just one of the local suits in Trumball, hoping to get something out of us to curry favor with the real heavy hitters on their way from the League.”

Danielle’s lips twitched in anger. He turned to look at Avris. “You came to Trumball under false identification. You are a Xenowealth spy. You know what that means. But we want to work with you, and talk to you about why you are here. I can get you a lawyer, and work with you to maybe send you back to your side. If you’ll talk to us.” He crudely, Kay thought, tried to project sympathy.

Kay leaned forward again. “You’re talking to the wrong one.”

Danielle looked confused.

“I’m the defector. Avris was here to help me. A guide to this world, if you will. She doesn’t know anything.”

“Do you really expect me to believe
a girl
smuggled a dirty bomb into my city and the Xenowealth pilot is …” Danielle trailed off as he saw the shocked expression on Avris’s face as she mouthed the words ‘dirty bomb’ to herself.

Danielle swiveled back to Kay, then shook his head slightly.

Kay smiled brightly back at him.

“Who the fuck are you?” he asked.

“I’m Kay,” she said, burrowing deep behind his eyes. “Dust the bomb for prints. You’ll find mine. You won’t find hers. It’s
my
bomb. I got it. I’m the one who wanted to use it.”

Now Danielle started to look vaguely uneasy. He was losing control of the interrogation. “What were you going to do with it?” he asked, squinting at her.

“It’s Xenowealth made,” Kay said. “And I was going to find a nice population center further upstream and detonate it to hopefully begin a war. The trail would lead back, if I did it right, to Placa del Fuego. At the same time, I’ve left a number of breadcrumbs for people in the Xenowealth to urgently look into happenings on Placa del Fuego.”

Danielle looked sick. He fumbled for words.

“What I’m looking for,” Kay explained slowly, “is for both parties to descend on Placa del Fuego. In the dead zone. With a great deal of firepower.”

“But … why?” Danielle asked.

“That’s something I’d like to talk to your superiors about,” Kay said, and folded her arms.

Danielle cocked his head, listening to something in the distance. His superiors. “What do you know about the dead zones?” he asked.

Now she had something, Kay thought. They were on the hook. They wanted to know more about dead zones. Whoever was listening in over Danielle’s interrogation, using the man like a puppet, was interested.

This is how she could start to lead them to the Doaq.

It was still a long play, she thought. She’d never tried to manipulate or steer something this big.

But it was worth a try, wasn’t it?

What were the consequences? She’d already been caught with a radioactive bomb trying to smuggle herself into the League. There was nothing to lose here.

And really, somewhere deep inside her, she had to admit, she’d put high odds on getting caught with the bomb before she could use it anyway.

“I’ll tell you what I know about the dead zone,” Kay said. “And the creature I think is responsible.”

“The thing calling itself Thinkerer?” Danielle suggested.

“What?” For a moment Kay was confused as well, which annoyed her. “No. Why would you say that?”

“It has been spotted around two previous dead zones,” Danielle said.

Kay sat straight, intrigued. Now this was new information. “There are other dead zones?”

Danielle bit his lip. “There are other dead zones,” he confirmed.

The thick, metal door creaked. As if something on the other side had pushed at it hard enough to make the frame crack. Danielle turned around. “Who’s coming up?” he asked the air. Then in disbelief, “
What
?”

The door exploded inward, folding in half from the force of whatever struck it from the other side.

Alarms whooped as Thinkerer shoved the door aside. Floor tile shattered as the broken door fell to the ground. They all turned and stared. He (and Kay still of thought of Thinkerer as a “he” despite the golden ribs under horribly burned skin and the dead eyes) stepped inside the room as if it were a boring, normal everyday thing to do.

“But you’re dead,” Danielle said, voice breaking. “Locked down in the morgue. Security!”

“The two outside the door who fired at me are now incapacitated,” Thinkerer said. “The rest will not make it up the stairs in time. I destroyed the elevator cables.”

Thinkerer walked over to Kay and yanked at the chains holding her. They snapped and broke under his fingers. He pried the handcuffs off, breaking them like cheap toys.

“I have an offer to make,” Thinkerer said to Kay.

“I’m listening.”

Danielle backed up against the wall, staring at them, ignored as Kay focused on Thinkerer. Kay had no clue what was coming next. It was … slightly exhilarating, she thought. And terrifying.

“I offer you escape,” Thinkerer said.

“In exchange for?”

Thinkerer moved around her toward the wall at the back of the interrogation room. “I need someone who knows Placa del Fuego. I need a guide.”

“I’m not going back there, right now,” Kay said levelly. “I’m going deeper into the League. I don’t need your assistance.”

Avris interrupted the conversation to grab her by the shoulder. “You’re in a League interrogation room, Kay. You were caught with a
bomb
. You’re out of control, you need …”

Kay grabbed her arm and shoved Avris back. “You go with Thinkerer. Get out. You’ve done your penance. You’re absolved from any responsibility you might feel about me. We’re even.”

 “It’s not just about even. You can’t stay here. They’ll rip you apart.” Avris looked at Danielle as she said that. “Don’t you understand how serious this is?”

“I have plans, Avris.”

“You’re obsessed,” she said.

Kay thought back to the Doaq’s words and gritted her teeth. “I have plans.”

Thinkerer interrupted. “If those plans include killing the Doaq, you and I have a common cause.”

Kay turned. “How?” was all she calmly asked.

Thinkerer tapped one of the exposed ribs under his ripped shirt. “It was what I was built for,” he said. “I’ve been designed to exist in a dead zone. From the nanoscale on up, I’m built of hardened analog computing environs. Gears and wheels, steam and nuclear power. Biological interfaces with the mechanical. I am capable of surviving the dead zone with full operational capacity. And I’m quite capable of surviving the Doaq.”

“And killing it?” Kay asked.

“Yes. But there’s something we have to do first, before the Doaq,” Thinkerer said.

“What’s that?” Kay asked.

“The League has a ship, capable of destroying wormholes. It’s called the
Saguenay
. I need to hijack it.” Thinkerer turned around and punched the wall. Daylight streamed inside from the hole. He punched again, and then tore at it until a five-foot tall chunk of wall was gone. Kay could see distant streets and rooftops. “Once I have control of the
Saguenay
, we can turn our attention to killing the Doaq. My fleet is already moving in for an attack.”

His fleet. Kay liked the sound of that.

A vehicle with tilting, howling turbines for wings wobbled down out of the sky. It dropped down to hover in place below them. The top of the vehicle was flat, wide, and had an open hatch.

“It’s a bit of a jump,” shouted Thinkerer over the noise of the turbines. “But I could use your talent on the ground on Placa del Fuego.”

Kay thought about it a moment.

“Why not.” She walked past Danielle, Avris, nodded at Thinkerer, and leapt out of the hole in the wall into the air.