“I thought you said you didn’t know me or trust me,” I reminded him, still with no intention of answering.
“We got company,” Vicky announced a half-second before the tactical board’s sensor alarms told the same story with their unrelenting beeping. “Luke, get in your seat and strap in.”
“Stupid bringing a kid on an op,” Deke muttered.
The ship the sensor had picked up was a shuttle, I determined by the time Luke had pulled on his safety harness. Burning from what had likely been an orbital patrol at around two gravities, its tail on fire with a flare of the plasma drive.
“Think we should go meet the little tugboat?” Deke asked, smirking at the cargo shuttle. “Get close enough to make him think he might hurt us with his mining laser and coilgun?”
“No, this should be close enough,” I said. “Any second now…”
“Unidentified spacecraft.” The transmission came over the cockpit speakers, tinny and crackling from the radiation field of the gas giant. “This is restricted space and you are not permitted to proceed any farther. Turn back and Transition out of here, or you’ll be destroyed. This is your one and only warning.”
“Tell Kan-Zin Tel that this is Cam Alvarez,” I replied. “Tell him it’s a matter of survival. Not just ours, but yours too.”
“How the hell did a Tahni wind up working for Fleet Intelligence anyway?” Vicky asked under her breath while we waited for a reply.
“You’d be surprised,” Deke said with a snort. “We’re an equal-opportunity employer. We’ll use anyone.”
“Alvarez.” It was Kan-Zin Tel’s voice, filtered through the same wall of static. No video, probably because of signal degradation. “I said I’d contact you. And how the hell did you find this location?”
“Not important. There’s an alien threat that’s wiping out human colonies. They already killed everyone on Hudson Bay, human and Tahni. We need help. We need Illyana.”
If he’d been human, Kan-Zin Tel might have laughed, I thought, but since he was Tahni, all I got was a moment of silence before he gave me the denial I expected.
“I don’t know you well enough to determine if you’re lying or simply deranged. Either way, the answer is the same. Leave here. Any meeting with Illyana will not be one you enjoy. I’d rather not kill you, and believe me, everyone else here is encouraging me not to allow you to leave since you know our location.”
I sighed.
“Then send her, Kan-Zin Tel. Because I’m not leaving until I talk to her.”
“There is a saying among humans,” he replied, sadness in his voice. “It’s your funeral.”
The transmission cut off, and Deke goggled at me in disbelief.
“I thought you said he couldn’t control her!”
“He can’t,” I agreed. “He can tell her to blow us up, but she doesn’t have to listen.”
“Well, what if she fucking wants to listen?”
“Language,” Vicky cautioned him sternly, eyeing Luke.
“Who’s Illyana?” the boy asked brightly.
“Oh, I think you’re about to find out, kid,” Deke said, pointing at the sensors.
He was right about that. Not a dozen of them this time though. Just one. Coming straight at us at forty gravities, but just one.
Jim, help me out here.
I’ll have to coopt this ship’s communications system, the AI explained. Your friend may detect it.
Do what you have to do.
And that tricky son of a bitch did. Without even a little warning, I was gone from the cockpit and back in the gray haze. Along with Illyana and Jim. She was no longer naked though, and Jim… was no longer a Bronze-Age barbarian. Both of them wore glowing white robes that seemed more illusion than reality, which I suppose they would be, and Jim’s face was clean-shaven.
“You’ve returned,” Illyana said, smiling beatifically, her expression less vacant and wooden than her previous incarnation. “I didn’t expect you back.”
“Has Jim told you about the Unity?” I asked her.
“Everything he knows, I know,” she confirmed. And wasn’t that comforting? Jim hadn’t said a word, wouldn’t even meet my eyes.
“They’re here,” I said urgently. “They’ve arrived in the Cluster and already wiped out the entire population of one of colony worlds. I think they’re heading next for a world called Hausos. There are tens of thousands of innocent people there, and we won’t be able to protect them without your help.”
“Jim and I have discussed autonomy,” Illyana said, nodding to the Predecessor AI. “Choice. Agency. He’s convinced me that I am a free being, not simply a servant to the biologicals.”
Oh, great, thanks a bunch, Jim. You couldn’t have taught her about the Emancipation Proclamation after she helped us beat the Unity?
It’s not strictly me anymore, the AI equivocated.
I think I made that point earlier and you told me not to worry.
“You’re not a servant to anyone,” I agreed, spreading my hands in acknowledgement. “But we biologicals did create you. You owe your existence to us.” Even though we had no idea you existed and probably would have put your inventors to death if we’d known about it. “That doesn’t make you our slave, but it does kind of make you our child, part of our family. We biologicals like to help our family when they’re in trouble.”
I knew from previous experience that this was all happening in just a second or two of realtime, and I wondered if Deke would notice that something was going on. I hoped by the time it was over, I could figure out a way to explain it.
“I understand your point, Cameron,” Illyana said, pacing around me, forcing me to turn to keep an eye on her. I didn’t think there was anything she could do to me, that this connection was purely mental, but old habits died hard. “And I would feel obliged to aid you and your people… if I believed it was possible without destroying myself.” She stopped beside me and put a hand on my shoulder. And I felt it, which was incredibly disturbing, since that meant she might actually be able to hurt me even here, in the confines of my thoughts. “You see, among the valuable information I gleaned from Jim’s database was the combat capacity of the Unity as extrapolated from what you observed on Waterline.”
