“That would be my problem,” Kan-Zin Tel told Deke, “not yours, human. I no longer work for the Commonwealth, and even if I did, that entity no longer exists.”
The two of them were as taut as a guitar string, ready to snap, and it wouldn’t be a good time for Kan-Zin Tel. And then it would be a very bad time for us as well. Behind them, though, something had changed. The holographic projection above the quantum core had turned from its complex geometric patterns into a solid, featureless green glow. Neither of them had noticed.
“Deke,” I said, raising a quelling hand. He glanced over at me, annoyance writ across his too-perfect features. “It’s enough. We’ve done all we can.”
What the fuck, dude? Deke asked privately.
Trust me. I would have made it an order if I thought he respected my rank. Or anything. Deke sighed and turned away from Kan-Zin Tel.
“All right, Colonel. Whatever you say.”
“If we could trouble you for a ride back to Hausos,” I told Kan-Zin Tel, “we’d be most grateful.”
“Of course,” the Tahni said, offering a stiff bow. “I will have you flown to the freighter… as soon as we make arrangements for the dead.”
Jim, I said, not sure whether he’d respond. Are you there?
I thought he might have left me behind, and while I couldn’t have blamed him given the temptation of Illyana, the thought was daunting.
Oh, don’t fret, Cameron. I would never abandon you.
I thought you went with Illyana, I admitted.
That’s the wonderful thing about being an AI program. There’s so much of me to go around.
“Kara is not gonna be fucking happy,” Deke grumbled, staring out the viewport at the moon beneath us.
“Kan-Zin Tel promised he’d send a delegation to negotiate with Munroe,” I reminded him, tucked into a corner of the shuttle’s passenger compartment. “Which is more than we had when we left Hausos. Don’t be greedy.”
He glanced up at the cockpit, the Tahni pilot and Cultist copilot speaking in low tones to each other and pretty much ignoring us. No Evolutionists around. I wondered how many of them had survived. Kan-Zin Tel hadn’t volunteered to show us around the place, and I hadn’t been willing to push it, ready to just get the hell out of the place. But on the way out I’d seen so many corpses, some still sprawled in doorways or corridors, others in the process of being dragged away. Many Tahni, but so many more Skingangers, most of them shot in the back.
I’d like to say it had made me sick, had horrified me, because that would have made feel better about myself as a person, but the truth was, I’d seen so much worse that it barely registered.
Are you going to tell me what the fuck happened back there? Deke asked, conveying sullenness through the neurolink transmission.
No. Mostly because I didn’t feel like explaining to him that I had a Predecessor AI in my head, but I knew I had to tell him something. I was able to penetrate the encryption on the Imprinter. I can guarantee that Kan-Zin Tel won’t be able to use Project Rho to attack us.
Maybe. I was fairly certain Illyana wouldn’t attack us as long as Jim’s alter ego had a soft spot for us humans. I had no idea how long those feelings would last without me sharing a headspace with him.
What? Jim asked, petulant. You think I’m that mercurial? That I might change my allegiances from just a short separation? What kind of fickle child do you take me for?
The kind that took off with a really hot naked chick, I told him. Now shush. It’s hard enough carrying on one conversation inside my head, much less two.
“I feel bad about Marikit,” I said aloud, needing a way to both differentiate my exchange with Deke from the one with Jim and to change the subject. “I wonder if this would have happened if we hadn’t been there.”
“Of course it would have,” he said with a dismissive shrug, the motion only possible because we were under thrust, breaking orbit. “She was asking a proud, ambitious warrior to be content hiding under a rock while she held onto the most powerful military force in the entire Cluster. The only miracle is that it didn’t happen before.”
“She was in Search and Rescue,” I said, unconvinced by his reassurances. “She gave everything she had trying to go after guys like you and me. I feel like we owed her something.”
We at least had owed her some sort of memorial, but instead we’d left her for Kan-Zin Tel to deal with. Deke sniffed, not quite a laugh but cynical and dismissive.
“You wanna talk about giving up everything,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve read your file, Cam. What the hell did you ever give up? Retirement? That farm on Hausos? Because every other move you’ve made in the military seems like a step up to me.”
Only the fact that I knew Deke Conner was a barely human, killing machine kept me from punching him out, and even that was a narrow thing. Plan B was luring him into a false sense of security and then shooting him in the face.
“If you have a point you’d like to make, Major Conner,” I said, ice running through my veins the way it always did when someone seriously pissed me off, “go ahead and make it. Or shut the fuck up.”
He did laugh now.
“I had a family. Not a great family, you understand, but a mom and a dad, even if they hated each other. When the ten of us cadets on the Margaret Thatcher officially went missing during the Battle for Mars, when Colonel Murdock recruited us for the Glory Boys, I didn’t miss them too much. I’d gone into the Academy to get away from them and their constant bickering. But you want to talk about giving up everything, let me tell you about my friend Caleb Mitchell.”
I’d heard the name before, of course, usually spoken with fear and reverence. The one man who’d been able to resist the Ghosts, the one who’d beaten them with the power of his will. But no real details, as if people were afraid to talk about him.
“Cal,” Deke told me, “came from Canaan.”
I’d heard that name before too. Back during the war. I hadn’t been there for the liberation of the place, but the rumor mill had said the local militia had done most of the work… in conjunction with special intelligence assets.
“Besides being a hellhole with nights that last weeks and gravity three quarters heavier than Earth, it was also the home of a bunch of religious fanatics who called themselves the New Society of Friends. Neo-Quakers. Technological simplists, pacifists, isolationists. They didn’t have any time for the wars we outsiders fought, and when Cal decided to go to the Academy, his church excommunicated him, his girlfriend broke up with him, and his family disowned him. Everything and everyone he knew turned their backs on him. All he had was the prospect of a military career, and then the Thatcher happened. No career, no medals, no glory. Instead, we were officially KIA, taken to a secret lab on Hermes, ripped apart and put back together.”
His voice grew more strident with each word and he leaned out of his seat, face ever closer to mine.
“They jammed everything into us they could think of. Each of us cost more than a fucking cruiser.” His grin stretched into a rictus. “I could have been convicted of treason and sentenced to summary execution just for talking about this with you, back during the war and maybe even afterward. You know that byomer shit they use for the musculature on your battlesuits?” He ran a finger down the length of his arm. “It’s in here. Running alongside my own muscles like a hitchhiker. Hooked up with superconductive nerve fibers into a headcomp that’s still cutting edge almost twenty years later. Infrared and thermal filters in my eyes, chemscanners in my nasal cavities, a pharmacy organ that’ll inject me with whatever drugs I might need at the time.” He shrugged. “Nothing recreational, unfortunately. And that’s just the half of it. Byomer armor runs under my skin, making sure that nothing ever penetrates too far. And that headcomp, it’s not like yours… when I go into combat, it reacts faster than I ever could. It turns me, turned all of us into a machine. A killing machine.”
Deke sat back, relaxing, as if the ire had drained out of him along the energy to express it.
“That’s what we all gave up. Being human. And Cal gave up so much more than that. When the Tahni took Canaan, the high command was going to let them have it. It wasn’t worth trying to take back, not after what happened on Demeter. After the nightmare guerilla war that Munroe had to go through. But that wasn’t good enough for Cal. He deserted, stole a ship and a cargo full of weapons and crashed it on Canaan. Found out his parents and sisters were dead. Lost his older brother during the fight to free the planet. After the war, he got out, worked as a constable on the planet. But there ain’t no happily-ever-after in real life. The Corporate Council coopted his world, started strip-mining it, killing everything around, poisoning the place. And Cal, that stubborn son of a bitch, he brought the fucking Corporate Council down.”
