“Would have been a good arrangement twenty-five years ago,” Vicky opined.
“We’re stopping off at Hudson Bay,” Deke said. “If that satisfies your fucking curiosity.”
“Great,” I sighed. “As long as we don’t run into any of Pol-Kai’s friends and family.”
“You guys are really going to have to tell me what happened out there,” Vicky said. “This was supposed to just be a scouting mission. How did you wind up in the middle of a coup?”
“Just lucky, I guess,” Deke replied, showing no interest in a debrief. “And by the way, Alvarez, when the hell are you going to tell me why we left there without data on where Project Rho is located or at least some kind of guarantee that what’s left of the Confluence can’t use it? Because I seem to recall, that was our fucking job.”
“I penetrated the encryption in the imprinter module,” I told him. “No one’s using the system without my say-so.”
Which wasn’t exactly true, but lying was preferable to admitting I had an alien AI inside my head. Deke eyed me sidelong, giving the main part of his attention to flying the ship.
“And how the hell did you do that? My headcomp has the latest penetration modules from before the Commonwealth fell apart, and I wasn’t able to get anywhere near cracking that encryption.”
“Marakit helped me.” I’d thought up this story en route, figuring he’d want to know. “She had a couple seconds after she got shot, and she partially decoded the encryption before she died.”
I might have felt worse about lying to Deke if he wasn’t such a douchebag. But unfortunately, he was a very smart douchebag.
“Wait a second here,” he said, frowning, bothered enough that he looked away from the controls. “She was about a meter and a half from Pol-Kai when he shot her. Why the hell would she start to deactivate the encryption when he could have won, when his people could have taken it over?”
I’d thought of this part too, but I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to that because the deeper I got into the lie, the more complicated it would become and the more likely I’d fuck it up.
“I was able to contact her via my neurolink and let her know I’d take care of it. That I’d make sure Pol-Kai didn’t get his hands on it.”
Deke still didn’t seem convinced, but I wasn’t going to give him the time to press it further. I yawned theatrically, stretching out my arms, mouth wide.
“Oh man, I’m exhausted. I don’t think I had a single good night’s sleep during the trip to that gas giant.” I chuckled. “I was afraid the Evolutionists would bust in and try to steal my organs or something.” I unstrapped, even though we were still under thrust, and made my way, handhold after handhold, out of the cockpit. “I’m gonna go strap myself into my bunk and try to catch a nap. Someone wake me up when it’s lunchtime. Or dinner time, or whatever meal is next.”
I didn’t look back, worried that Deke’s expression would be as incredulous as my story had been incredible. And pretty sure that I wouldn’t be doing much sleeping.
I was wrong. I didn’t fall asleep until we’d reached Transition Space and had artificial gravity to make things feel more normal, but I dropped off and didn’t wake up until Vicky shook my shoulder.
I blinked and yawned, about to ask how long I’d slept when Jim told me.
Ten hours.
“Jesus, I can’t believe I slept that long,” I blurted, and Vicky’s eyes narrowed.
“Isn’t that my line?” she wondered, looking around like she was trying to figure out if the compartment had an LED clock display she hadn’t noticed. Then comprehension lit up behind her eyes. “Oh. Your hitchhiker.”
“Yeah.” I rubbed at my eyes, then grabbed my shirt off the hook beside the bunk. “Which is also how I managed to secure the drone system. He sort of… cloned himself onto it.”
“Oh, wonderful,” Vicky said, rolling her eyes. “We were worried about a drone system being controlled by an autonomous AI, so you put it under the control of an alien autonomous AI. Good thinking there, Alvarez.” She pushed at my shoulder as I pulled on the shirt. “I could have sworn I married you for your brains.”
“I resent that,” I told her. “I’ve always preferred to believe you married me for my body.” Finding my boots took a moment because I’d kicked them under the bunk. “There wasn’t any other choice,” I went on, speaking up to be heard with my head beneath the cot as I searched for them. “Kan-Zin Tel wasn’t going to let me use the imprinter to set up my own control for the system, and Illyana, as agreeable and pleasant as she was, had no interest in assisted suicide. She’s sentient, not just a run-of-the-mill AI program, and she’s very attached to her continued existence. The only option was to leave Jim there to keep an eye on her.”
“Three hundred ships though, Cam.” Vicky held her head in her hands. “That’s enough to take out the entire fleet of the Provisional Commonwealth. Enough to take out the Ellen, if it came to that.”
“It’s not ideal, but it’s certainly not the least ideal compromise I’ve had to make since this whole thing started.” Pausing in fastening my boot straps, I ran a hand across the back of my head. I’d finally gotten a haircut, and it felt strange to have a buzz again after years of pushing past regulation. “I swore to myself that I would never be a colonel, Vicky. Every colonel I’ve met has been a complete dick.”
“We keep saying it,” she reminded me, “but things are different now. This isn’t like the old military, where every colonel had been in the Corps for the last thirty years waiting for a position to open up and now they were determined to get revenge for all the shit they’d eaten over that time by bullying everyone beneath them. Look at that Keller Savage guy they made a general. He was a captain in Fleet Intelligence and ran a mercenary company on the Periphery. Hell, their president or whatever they want to call him never held any rank higher than an E5!”
“Yeah, there is that.” How long until Transition? I asked Jim.
Ten minutes, thirty-three seconds. Next time, just look it up yourself.
I grunted. Not enough time for a shower, not unless I wanted to wind up bouncing up and down inside a swirling haze of water globules when the gravity cut off. You could get clean that way, but drying off was a pain in the ass. I popped a ‘fresher tab, wiped my face on the towel hanging by the hatch, and called it good for now.
“I’m gonna grab some breakfast before we lose gravity.”
I hated eating in free fall and I hated the fact that Deke Conner didn’t keep anything in the Dutchman II’s galley that I considered edible, but I settled on a protein bar and a squeeze-bulb of fruit juice from the locker above the fold-down galley table.
“Hand me one of those,” Vicky said, then tore into her ration bar like it didn’t have the taste of processed cardboard.
I offered mine more attention, not because I enjoyed the experience and wanted to prolong it but more because I didn’t want to risk choking.
“You finally up, Alvarez?” Deke asked, coming out of the shower, a towel wrapped around him at the waist. “I thought you were gonna sleep straight through the Transition.”
“Some of us don’t have nanites and pharmacy organs and all the other shit to keep us fresh, Conner,” I told him around a mouthful of cardboard. And to give us a build like a professional athlete, though I wasn’t about to point that out. I did notice Vicky eyeing him appreciatively, which I wasn’t crazy about, even though I knew it was just a superficial appraisal.
“Clear conscience, Alvarez,” he said over his shoulder as he disappeared into his compartment. “I sleep like a baby.”
“A baby what?” I murmured at his closed hatch.
“Don’t be jealous,” Vicky told me, leaning over to kiss me on the cheek. “You know I’m not the type of girl who gets all turned around by six-pack abs and a pretty face.”
