I glared at Jim—or the avatar of the cloned version of Jim who’d stayed behind with Illyana—but he didn’t look up. In fact, he didn’t seem responsive at all, just swaying side to side like a willow in the breeze.
“What the hell is wrong with him?” I asked her.
“Jim has been…” she shrugged as if trying to think of the appropriate word, which had to be theater, considering what she was, “… subsumed, I suppose. Absorbed into my neural network. He’s part of me now.”
That’s not possible, the Jim inside my head declared. My hardware and software are centuries more advanced than hers.
Well, unless you have a better explanation, there it is, I told him.
“If I were to attempt to fight the Unity,” Illyana went on, her hand sliding off my arm, “all of my current assets would be destroyed. And since Marakit no longer exists, my prospects of receiving new materials to manufacture more are no longer certain.”
Considering my response, I walked around Jim’s mute avatar, hesitantly put a hand out to shake his shoulder. He started, jerking like he’d been hit with an electric shock, and his eyes flickered toward me, but he still didn’t speak.
“What if we promised to bring you more raw materials?” I asked her, desperation overcoming good sense, both because I knew that wasn’t a good idea but even more so because I was very well aware of how difficult it would be to get Munroe to sign off on something like this. “If you come to our aid, the Commonwealth government has the mining and production assets to provide you ore, processed fuel, whatever you need.”
“Promises are worth only as much as the belief one has in the word of the one making them.” Illyana looked me up and down. “I believe, from what Jim has told me, that you are an honorable man when dealing with other biologicals but that you distrust sentient cyberbeings due to your experience with them outside the Cluster, despite the fact that they have saved your life multiple times.”
“I don’t distrust AI any more than I distrust people. It’s not in my nature to trust anyone I don’t know. But I do trust people—whether they’re biological or not—to do what’s in their own best interest. If you help us, it’s in our best interest to keep you prepared to meet new threats, because we sure as hell don’t have the capability to do it ourselves.”
“I would like to help you,” she said, shaking her head, “but I won’t take that chance. Perhaps you are family, but to carry that analogy, you’ve been an absentee parent and now you’re coming to me only because you require aid. You won’t get it here.” She motioned outward. “You’re welcome to stay in this system if you believe it to be safe. I won’t attack you, no matter what Kan-Zin Tel commands. I don’t serve him, but neither do I serve you. Don’t attempt to contact me again. I will not reply.”
Like waking up from a dream, I returned abruptly to the cockpit of the Dutchman II, Deke, Vicky, and Luke staring at me with varying degrees of doubt and hope in their eyes.
“You talked to her,” Vicky guessed. “What did she say?”
I sighed, let my head sag, hope abandoning me along with nervous energy.
“Take us back to Hausos, Deke. We’re on our own.”
[ 25 ]
I cinched the tactical vest tighter, wishing everything on this boat hadn’t already been pre-adjusted to fit Deke Conner’s measurements. I generally didn’t feel inadequate even next to Force Recon Marines who spent all their off time in the ship’s gym, but this just didn’t seem fair.
“What happens if we get there too late?” Vicky asked from the other side of the utility bay. She’d already gone through the headache of reconfiguring a set of tactical armor to fit her and sat in front of a weapons locker, sorting through the choices. “What if the Ellen… couldn’t handle them and we’ve already lost?”
She pulled out a pulse carbine and regarded it with a critical eye, then shoved it back into the locker.
“Then we try to help any survivors and get back to Demeter as quickly as possible.” The vest was as tight as it was going to get, and I took a moment to pull on a pair of armored gloves, then grabbed a helmet and shut the locker. “They’ll have to evacuate. They don’t have enough ships to fight the Unity.”
“They won’t have enough ships to evacuate either,” she pointed out, not looking at me, instead checking the load on a Gauss rifle. “Even if they bring back everything, they’ve taken in too many refugees. And where would they go that the Unity wouldn’t follow, eventually?”
“One disaster at a time,” I said, frowning at the massive, bulky weapon stashed beside the Gauss rifle. I tried to pull it out but nearly strained a back muscle. “What the hell is this thing?”
“Electron beamer.”
I turned at the unexpected voice and Deke Conner leaned past me, yanking the weapon out of the rack one-handed, tossing it around like it weighed nothing. He shot me a grin.
“You should probably leave that one to me. You should also go strap in. We Transition in five minutes.”
I swore under my breath and grabbed the other Gauss rifle and a bandolier of magazines to go with it, slammed the locker shut, and followed the two of them to the bridge. Luke was already there, sprawled across a fold-down acceleration couch, watching a movie on a tablet and snacking on a ration bar. I didn’t think I’d seen the kid go for more than two hours without eating since he’d come on board. He hadn’t spoken about his family or friends at all, and I didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing for him, but it was probably better for us since we had a lot more pressing matters to deal with.
Luke turned at our approach, his eyebrows going up at the sight of the weapons.
“Do I need a gun?” he asked, not with the naïve eagerness I would have expected from a boy his age raised on an isolated colony but more with anxiety and a hint of real fear.
“No,” Vicky said gently but firmly, grabbing his hand and squeezing it. “But you do need to put your safety harness on. We’re about to come out of T-space.”
“I never thought I’d get to ride in a starship,” he said softly as he strapped in. “I never figured I’d even get to fly to one of the other settlements.”
Deke said nothing, securing that ungodly heavy beamer in a bracket beside his seat before he tapped a rhythm on the control panel.
“Transitioning now.”
I held on tight to the Gauss rifle, hoping we wouldn’t have to do any violent maneuvering, worried enough I barely noticed the actual jump. The virtual star map in the front viewer switched to an optical view of the planet we’d left not that long ago, and…
“Nothing,” Deke sighed. “It’s normal. I can see the energy readings from the fusion reactors, thermal signatures from vehicles, people. No orbital activity.”
“Take us down,” I told him. I should have felt relieved, but the tension refused to dissipate. “Fuck the landing field, take us right into the center of Gamma Junction.”
“Oh, I’m sure they’ll love that.”
The trip from minimum safe jump distance to orbit was over an hour, interminably long, yet none of us said a word through the flight, and if Deke received any traffic control transmissions, he didn’t bother to answer them. It was night on this side of the planet, a few hours past dusk, and a stiff wind jostled the cutter on the way down. Normally, both would have been annoying, but maybe the sight of the landing jets burning bright in the darkness would draw more attention quicker than just another cutter touching down at the landing field in broad daylight.
There was only one spot in the town broad enough for a cutter the size of the Dutchman II to land, and that was in the central courtyard outside city hall. The scream of the jets had already drawn people out of downtown houses and shops, the motion of the tiny figures magnified and enhanced by the optical and thermal sensors, showing every detail of their alarmed expressions. Those expressions became even more alarmed when the exhaust from the belly thrusters ripped away the awnings over the city hall windows and sent roof tiles flying.
People didn’t rush the ship, like I thought they might, maybe because they were afraid it might be armed. It was, of course. I’d seen the loadout of the Dutchman II on the trip, since it was something that might be very important very soon. Ventral proton cannon with the emitter beneath the nose, Gatling laser turret on the portside wing, just like the missile cutters during the war. No missiles in this bird though, and I thought that was likely because the Dutchman II wouldn’t often be able to count on resupply.
I didn’t wait for the folks outside to make up their mind, hurrying in silence to the ramp, lowering it before the jets had even had the chance to cycle down. The first one to grab their balls and approach the ship was, to no one’s surprise, Bob. He’d grabbed a handgun from somewhere, though it was nothing that would have penetrated the armor I wore. That didn’t keep him from pointing it at me, and I realized he wouldn’t recognize me in the dark, even if I hadn’t been wearing my helmet visor down for the night vision. I pushed it up and held my rifle out to my side.
