The Killing of Worlds (31 page)

“Thank you, Hobbes.”

“For what, sir?”

“For never doubting me,” Laurent said softly. “Through all this madness.”

“Never, sir.”

Never again.

The prisoner offered no resistance as she was led onto the
Lynx
.

She emerged from the airlock with alien grace, her step like a courtesan’s from a storydream back on Private Bassiritz’s home world. But the marine realized after a moment that her tiny steps were not a sign of humility, but the result of shackles. The woman’s ankles were bound with two interwoven sheaths of hypercarbon fiber. Her hands were concealed by a garment that stretched around her like a straightjacket, as if she were hugging herself to keep out the cold. A stun collar was clasped around her neck. The Legis Militia guard who escorted her carried the collar’s remote outstretched before him, a totem to ward off evil.

The prisoner had been through some sort of terrible firefight, Bassiritz could see. Her head was mostly bald, and her red, dimpled skin and lack of eyebrows suggested she’d lost her hair to fire. Her face was hatched with cuts and scars.

But the woman met Bassiritz’s stare with a steady gaze, her stunning violet eyes bright with curiosity.

He swallowed. He had never seen a Rixwoman without a helmet on. Since the battle in the palace, Bassiritz had read many books about the members of the Cult, the first people he’d ever seen who moved as fast as he, who reacted as quickly. They seemed to share the accelerated time frame that had until now been Bassiritz’s private domain.

But that didn’t make them friends, he reminded himself. This woman had killed dozens of Imperial soldiers, even a few
Lynx
marines, maybe even Sam and Astra. Wrapped in unbreakable bonds or not, she was dangerous enough to warrant three guards. Still, she fascinated him.

The militiaman handed over the stun collar’s remote, and the three dirtsiders disappeared back into the airlock with evident relief. The marine sergeant stayed a few meters from the prisoner at all times, gesturing for Privates Bassiritz and Ana Wellcome to take hold of her arms.

Bassiritz could feel the corded strength of the Rixwoman’s muscles even through the straightjacket’s metallic fibers. She crossed the deck as smoothly as cargo on a gee-balanced lifting surface, her tiny footsteps utterly silent. Her head darted about like a small bird’s, taking in the passageways of the ship in a way that made Bassiritz nervous. Her movements had the sudden menace of a predator, her eyes the acquisitive gleam.

The cell they brought her to was new, specially configured for the Rixwoman. It was constructed of six bare surfaces of hypercarbon. The substance was not as strong as hullalloy, Bassiritz knew, but it was less susceptible to metal-eating viruses and other tricks. It was hard, simple, massive.

They had to take her through the cell’s door, which was a meter square. Bassiritz watched her calculating the angles, and saw the danger here. Even with her arms immobilized, the Rixwoman could use the door frame to leverage her powerful leg muscles. A simple bend at the knees, and she could push off like a rocket in any direction, butting her head against one of the guards with devastating force.

Private Wellcome stepped through and held out his hand for the prisoner.

Bassiritz hesitated.

“Sergeant?” he said.

“What is it, Bassiritz?”

He struggled to form his instincts into words.

“She has the advantage here, sir,” he said haltingly. “The small door helps her.”

The marine sergeant scowled. He looked the woman up and down, then turned to Bassiritz.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, sir.”

The sergeant held up the shock collar remote.

A jolt ran through the Rixwoman’s body, every muscle stiffening. Her violet eyes went wide, and a stifled cry came through teeth that were suddenly clenched like a hunting dog’s. Bassiritz was frozen for a moment by her horrible expression.

“Well, get her in!” the sergeant barked.

He lifted her stiff and vibrating body through—she was much heavier than he’d thought—and placed her gently on the floor. At another gesture from the sergeant, she sagged limply in Bassiritz’s arms. Spittle ran down one of the Rixwoman’s cheeks.

They left her there, and sealed the door.

The outside wall of the cell was covered with a hardscreen that showed what happened inside, as if the wall were glass.

Bassiritz was ordered to remain on watch here.

“Don’t take your eyes off her, Private,” commanded the sergeant as he handed over the remote. Bassiritz held the device gingerly. The woman still lay on her back, breathing sharp, pained lungfuls of air.

“I’m sorry, Rixwoman,” he said softly to himself.

After half an hour or so, the prisoner had recovered enough to sit up. A few moments later she stood, her motion graceful even within the restraints, and began to pace the dimensions of her cell. She moved with measured deliberation, bringing her eyes strangely close to each of the walls.

Finally, she turned to face Bassiritz.

And smiled, as if she could see him back through the wall.

Bassiritz swallowed. She must be angry after the shock from her stun collar, but her aquiline face showed no rancor. The Rixwoman seemed attentive, as keen as a hungry bird even in that featureless chamber, but no human emotions crossed her visage.

She sat down in the corner across from him and stared, keeping a watchful eye on the door.

Bassiritz watched her carefully for another two hours before he was relieved, never quite able to shake the feeling that she could see him.

In all that time, her only movement was to turn her head every ten minutes or so, and press her ear flush against the metal of the cell wall. Her eyes would close then, and a strangely placid expression would overtake her sharp, predatory features for a moment. It was almost as if she were asleep for those few seconds, blissfully absent from her prison.

Or maybe, Bassiritz thought, the Rixwoman was listening for some small sound that she hoped would reach her from a great distance.

The
Lynx
was coming back.

Alexander saw the frigate’s reaction drive come alight again, a spark in high orbit above Legis XV. The ship arced away from the planet, describing a nautilus curl outward from gravity’s bonds. Soon, the
Lynx
‘s hull eclipsed the fires of her drive: The vessel was headed directly toward Alexander.

The compound mind looked at Legis across the massive distance, still fascinated with the world that had given it birth. The radiosensitive elements in Alexander’s belly listened intently to the wash of chatter from the planet. The mind refocused the huge, superreflective lens which it had made of its new body, and its gaze turned from the
Lynx
to penetrate the clear night skies of Legis. At this range, the lens could image the running lights of individual aircars, the infrared patterns of greenhouse farming in the arctic, the glowing archipelago of squid-fishing robots in the southern sea. All seemed well on the cradle world, almost returned to normal after the insults of war.

Alexander was glad to see that Legis had not been terribly damaged by its departure. Imperial efforts to dislodge the mind over the last few days had reduced the planet’s dependencies on its infostructure; only a few thousands had died as a result of the move, noise compared to the daily births and deaths of millions.

But the cradle was still a melancholy sight. The familiar traffic patterns and newsfeed chatter brought a nostalgic pull of recognition. The mind had already passed apogee with its nascent world, and now its marvelous new body was departing the Legis system, still plummeting toward the heart of the Risen Empire.

New worlds to conquer.

While the frigate’s sensors were still distant, Alexander flexed its muscles, sending coruscating elemental patterns through its limbs. Control of this new body was so direct, so palpable after Alexander’s mediated existence on Legis. The mind was no longer an epiphenomenon, no mere set of recursive loops lurking within the interactions of others.

Once a ghost in the machine, Alexander had become utterly material, its own creature now.

The mind was able to manipulate the quantum-well electrons of this new body like a computer addressing the registers of memory; Alexander could create with these pseudo-atoms any substance it could imagine. It had gone from the most ephemeral of presences to the most solid, every detail of its composition self-defined. The heady power of this new existence alternately thrilled and frightened the mind. It felt like some bootstrapping god of ancient myth, one of those beings who had created themselves.

But like those old gods, Alexander was mortal now. No longer protected by massively redundant distribution across an entire planet, it had become focused and vulnerable, and alone in the void of space.

Alexander quieted these thoughts as it watched the
Lynx
come closer.

The frigate had spent almost a hundred days in Legis orbit. From what Alexander had gleaned from listening to radio traffic and watching the ascents of cargo shuttles, the ship had been massively repaired, her lost crew replaced by locals who’d been quickly trained. As she made her way toward Alexander, the
Lynx
was accompanied by several tugs that had been crash-built. The hasty construction of these starships and the extensive repair of the frigate had probably done more damage to the Legis economy than any other event in this short war. Refitting the warship in such a hurry had required stripping several small, new cities of their infrastructure, looting fiber and processors from the ground, scrapping whole bridges for their metal.

The
Lynx
had been badly bloodied by her travails; she had survived extraordinary odds. Her captain would make a formidable enemy.

Or perhaps a valued ally.

Alexander understood Imperial culture like a native (arguably, it was just that), and understood the enmity between Laurent Zai and his sovereign. The mind was sensitive to the subtle clues in Imperial military traffic. It knew better than Laurent Zai of the ships massing to meet the
Lynx
.

This split between Alexander’s captor and the Emperor could be exploited. Certainly, the Emperor’s Secret would be a powerful tool.

The compound mind had one other advantage in this situation. It had listened carefully as the last shuttle rose to meet the
Lynx
just before she left orbit, and knew the names of those final passengers. The seemingly indestructible h_rd had not outlived her usefulness.

Alexander sent out invisible limbs, field effects that were only tens of angstroms across, just powerful enough to hold quantum wells and their silicon substrate in place, barely wide enough to allow information to pass back and forth. Certainly, they were too minuscule for the
Lynx
to see. Alexander stretched these tendrils into a web across space, ready to catch the faint emanations of the Imperial ship’s machinery and the chatter of her internal communications.

The mind watched carefully, comparing observational data to its vast knowledge of Imperial starship design, mapping the configuration of the vessel. It searched for purchase, for some slender pathway into the ship.

As the
Lynx
grew closer, possibilities gradually became clear.

Gunnery mess was an embittered quarter.

Sub-Rating Anton Enman still didn’t know the names of his crew-mates. The
Lynx
was seven days out of Legis XV, and he had been training aboard her for a month before departure, but the gunners were religiously closemouthed around replacement crew. Enman made friends easily, and had developed camaraderie with a few senior crew in other departments, but none in gunnery.

The mess had sounded lively from a few meters away—loud with the japes of old friends, the casual ethnic slanders of a multiplanetary crew—but the conversation dropped off when he entered, the gunners’ voices silenced as quickly as conspirators’. Perhaps this simile was not far from the truth, Enman thought. From what he had heard through his other connections, the
Lynx
mutiny had probably been hatched here in this room. Four gunners had been implicated in the plot to kill Laurent Zai.

Enman took his place at the single, round mess table. Recessed in its centerwell were three stewpots, their contents just under a boil, perpetually filled with self-renewing dishes that were unexpectedly fresh, varied, and satisfying. The sub-rating knew that all Navy fare was composed of the same eleven species of mold, kelp, and soy, but the food still tasted good to him. When Enman admitted his pleasure to his senior crewmates, they assured him that his tolerance of the diet was temporary. After a few months, they warned, an adjustment period would strike. For those few days, the stews in the bubbling pots would be inedible, the meaty textures nightmarish, the faintest whiff of the Navy’s common spices revolting. Then, after this feverish interlude, the body would capitulate to the food with desultory acceptance, as if Enman’s taste buds were some bacterial invader domesticated by the
Lynx
‘s immune system.

But at the moment, the food was quite tasty.

He reached across the silent table and liberated a segmented bowl from the locked-down stack at its center. The metal eating sticks and spoon, which sported two sharp tines like canines, were magnetically attached to the bowl. The pots were covered, of course. Everything in the mess was zero-gee ready at all times. Even the bowls would slam themselves shut if their internal sensors detected a non-one-gee condition. If hurled into the air, he’d been told, the bowls would seal before falling, unbreakable, to the deck. This last sounded to Enman like the sort of rumor foisted off on junior crew. He figured that those who tested this feature would wind up on their knees, scrubbing.

He pushed down on each of the pot’s center spouts, plodging (this was the Navy’s onomatopoetic verb for it) a portion of stew into each segment of the bowl. There was a new feature in the spicy green stew: small red dumplings with a hard carapace that suggested they’d been fried in oil under low atmospheric pressure.