Deke sighed. I stayed silent, skeptical. This guy Mitchell sounded larger than life, his story some kind of legend.
“He couldn’t stay after that,” Deke went on. “Too many bad memories for him and his family. But they found a nice colony world and settled down and everything was fine. Up until the Changed came along and slaughtered most of the population there. Cal got infected too, but he managed to beat it. The only one who did. And once he’d helped hunt down all the Changed who’d been driven insane by the Ghosts, he took most of the rest, the ones who’d been salvageable and were willing to go with him, and left the Cluster. And you know, not a couple months later, the ones who’d stayed behind told us they’d lost their connection to the network, lost their abilities. And I can’t help but think he had something to do with that. Somehow. That he gave up being basically a god because he knew it would be better for the rest of us.”
I frowned. That would explain why I didn’t feel the connection to the Unity anymore.
“Anyway, I don’t want to hear about sacrifice from you or anyone else,” Deke sneered. “You didn’t give anything up… you had it taken from you. You didn’t have any choice in the matter. And until you’ve sacrificed half of what Cal Mitchell gave up, you don’t know the meaning of the word.”
[ 22 ]
“What took you so long?” Vicky demanded, her anger only half-feigned as she grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me into a kiss.
I shielded our eyes from the debris thrown up by the shuttle’s belly jets as the lander climbed back into the darkening sky, leaving Deke and me behind.
“What, no kiss for me?” Deke cracked, squinting against the angry, red glare of the setting sun, looking the Dutchman II up and down as if making sure Vicky hadn’t damaged the ship while he was gone.
With the shuttle gone and the Confluence freighter preparing to leave orbit and head home, Hausos and Gamma Junction were about to be abandoned and deserted again, untouched by outsiders. A crowd had gathered to greet our return and bid us goodbye, larger than the one that had met us when we first arrived, hundreds of people, and I saw in their eyes that they recognized the significance of their solitude. Grace and Harold were there, along with the rest of the leaders of the colony, hanging back as if in respect of Vicky and my reunion.
“Things were more complicated than we thought,” I told Vicky, pulling away from the kiss. “I’ll explain it when we’re one our way.” I looked upward. “Any communications with the Ellen?”
“No, not since you left,” she admitted. “They headed back to Demeter, and I don’t know if they’re intending to come back until they get our recall message.” Vicky nodded toward Grace and Harold, speaking softly. “I stayed with the Kims while you were gone, which was a hell of a lot more pleasant than the accommodations we’ve enjoyed the last few years, but I think I’ve reached the limits of their hospitality.”
“Thanks for taking care of Vicky while we were gone,” I told them, offering a hand to Grace and then Harold. “I appreciate everything you’ve done for us.”
“Nonsense, it was our pleasure,” Grace insisted, though I thought I could see relief in Harold’s face that we were going. “I hope you were able to find what you were looking for.”
“We were. And I think we kind of reached an accommodation.”
“You haven’t messed things up for us, have you?” Bob asked, looking more worried about their status than our survival. “We can’t make it without help from the Confluence, you know that.”
“They’re not abandoning you,” I assured him. “They’ll be back.” I hesitated, not sure how much I should tell Bob and the others. “There’s been a change of governance though. Marakit and the Evolutionists are… out of power. The Confluence is now being run by an alliance of the Tahi and the Cultists, with a Tahni named Kan-Zin Tel in charge.”
“The Tahni!” Bob exclaimed, alarm and despair in his eyes, his hands flailing like he’d been hit with an electric shock. “Jesus Christ! Do you know how close we are to Tahn-Skyyiah? Why wouldn’t they just run home and give all those raw materials to their own people?”
His panic spread out like a wave, the rest of the gathered crowd taking up the lament, one voice stepping on another until I couldn’t separate one from another and they began to push inward toward us.
You’re an idiot, Alvarez, I told myself. Or maybe Jim told me—either way, it was the truth.
“Hold on!” I bellowed, raising my arms in the air. “Hold the fuck on, right now!”
But they were too loud and no one was listening, just crowding in on us, their clamor getting louder. I could only pick a word out of it here and there, though the feeling and the attitude sure came through clearly. They were pissed and frightened, and while I doubted any of them wanted to get violent with us, all it would take was one taking a swing and this would get really ugly really fast. Vicky and I stood shoulder to shoulder and tried to push our way back toward the ship, but the crowd closed in on that side of us, couples yelling questions and accusations at us so loud I couldn’t hear myself think and knew no one else would hear my protestations either.
An ear-splitting blast cut through the dusk, and the people around us jumped and spun and shrieked… as Grace Kim stepped into the center, an antique-pattern shotgun held across her chest, smoke pouring from the barrel. I hadn’t seen it before, and I assumed she’d retrieved it from her vehicle when she’d noticed we were in trouble.
“For God’s sake,” she yelled into the silence after the screaming had ceased, “what the hell is wrong with all of you? Do you think you’re going to get answers by ripping them apart? Back off and shut up!”
Half the people seemed ashamed of their actions while the other half were still angry, except that anger had changed focus from me to Grace. I didn’t give a shit as long as they moved away and gave us room to breathe… and retreat.
“Listen up!” I yelled at the crowd. “I got a personal guarantee from Kan-Zin Tel before I left that he would keep up the supply runs to this colony as well as the others. But if he doesn’t,” I went on quickly, talking over the outraged questions that started to well up again, “then we will. We, the Provisional Commonwealth, will make sure you get the help you need, one way or another. I swear to you on the graves of my parents that you won’t be forgotten.” Sighing, I let my arms fall down at my sides. “If that’s not good enough, then I don’t know what else to tell you.”
A mumble went through the crowd as my words were passed along to those in the back who hadn’t been close enough to hear me, and the crowd finally quieted down of its own accord.
“We have to go report to Demeter,” Vicky announced into the silence, “but we’re not leaving forever. We’ll come back and check on you, make sure that the Confluence is keeping its promises.” She pushed through the crowd and took Grace Kim’s hand, looking the other woman in the eye. “We haven’t forgotten about our friends, and we aren’t going to start now.”
Deke popped out of the belly ramp of the Dutchman II and waved at us to get aboard, scowling at the crowd.
“A lot of help you were,” I told him once we were close enough. “You should have been the one pulling our asses out of the fire instead of Grace.”
“Yeah, right,” Deke scoffed, slapping the control to close the ramp before Vicky was even halfway up. “That’d be perfect, me running in there and knocking a few heads in. That’d calm them down.”
I wanted to argue the point, but I could tell it wouldn’t do any good with this guy. I suppose I shouldn’t have expected anything different from someone who’d spent most of their life being the baddest man in the room. I tried to imagine what that would have been like and remembered what he’d said about sacrificing his humanity. Maybe I was better off not imagining it.
“Where are we going?” I asked Deke, hurrying to the cockpit as the rumble of the engines vibrated through the deck. I grabbed the copilot’s seat while Vicky sat between us. Deke rolled his eyes at me.
“Vicky here just told everyone we were going back to Demeter, and God knows I’d hate to make you a liar to all your old friends.”
“Hey, asshole,” I snapped, forgetting for the moment that he could kill me at his leisure, “how about you just answer my fucking question instead of exercising your sarcasm? We’re not wasting weeks in T-space, so I assume you’re headed for the nearest jumpgate so we can get a message through and have the Ellen pick us up. Right?”
The nearest system with a wormhole jumpgate and an InStell ComSat is the Tahni home system, Jim provided, plumbing the depths of his knowledge.
“And that’s Tahn-Skyyiah, isn’t it?” I went on as if Jim hadn’t interrupted me. He’d told me before I could access the information without asking him, that I should be able to come up with it like I was remembering it naturally, but I didn’t know if I’d ever get there. “So, are heading to Tahn-Skyyiah?”
“No, we’re not,” he admitted, the corner of his mouth turning up as if he’d enjoyed me giving him shit. And maybe he did. “We have a…” he shrugged, “… standing agreement with the Tahni not to trespass in their system.”
“Since when?” I blurted. “Didn’t we fight a war to make sure we were in the position of power in that particular political relationship?”
Deke didn’t answer immediately because it would have been drowned out by the roar of the belly jets lifting us into the deepening blue sky, pushing me straight down into my seat. The feeling only lasted a few seconds before the main atmospheric jets took over, the shriek of the turbines dying down as we ascended. The Dutchman II was high into the upper atmosphere before Deke turned to me and answered the question as if I’d just asked it two seconds ago.
“Things have changed. We don’t have the military force to contain the Tahni, but they’re also not that interested in imperial expansion anymore, so we reached an agreement. We don’t bother them, don’t even come to their system uninvited, and they stay home and don’t try to mess with anyone else. I think it’s a good arrangement.”
