When I fell back into the data to find more Islan ships, Caro waited for me. Let me try to go further by myself, I told her. Maybe I could keep her a tiny bit safer.
I will make you as strong as I can.
Good girl. Once more, I had to push guilt aside and let necessity ride the moment and take me to battle. Caro’s presence had helped me control my anger and turn away from killing. I had managed to be the good uncle.
Could I do that to the whole damned fleet? Be the good uncle?
I checked the landscape of the battle. Three ships were close enough that I had to hurry. Behind them five more. Behind those, ships were turning away from their original trajectories, as if they thought it might take all of the combined might of the back half of the Islan fleet to defeat the Thorn.
Caro?
I see them. They’re all coming for us.
She always spoke her truths. If this gets too hard, Caro, save yourself. I’ll find a way.
I saw the way you spoke to the Islan ships. I can do it now, too. I can help you.
You could become a target. Just help me be strong.
If you are strong enough.
I will be. I had to be.
Strength meant to be like a paw-cat. To stalk my prey and disable them quickly. Perhaps like a family of cats. I would have to be in more than one ship at once. If I hesitated, if I doubted my own strengths for even a moment, I might lose my courage.
The closest ship had new algorithms. I pushed at them, hard, and it felt like stretching into a strong piece of rubber. I couldn’t get through. But in three tries, I could. Every time I came out here, I was bigger and faster and better. More capable.
Caro was a battery.
It took seconds for the first ship to fall to me. Too long. But now I knew how they were laid out. It just took moments to sink into the patterns of this ship, and even as I began to give its weapons systems orders, I started to breach the next ship. I finished with the first ship before I reached for the third, again leaving a message about the Doctrine. This time, I left behind a few of Chelo’s basic tenets. No sentient being deserves to be owned. No Maker should make a thinking being without designing its freedom into its creation plan.
When I was done with the first three ships, I had time to survey the system.
Thinking about paw-cats made me wonder about Romi. I found the Lily Star easily, plunging into her far more familiar systems.
Shock, then joy: Alicia lived! My elation thrummed through all the bits of me spread through every ship. Caro vibrated with happiness.
Alicia lived! Something dark and heavy lifted, the light of excitement and hope filling in behind it. From hope, power. I began to feel the edges of what I had felt on Fremont all those years ago. It began to take me, transform me. The interconnectedness of all life. Before I lost myself, I needed to get Alicia a message. Caro could do it.
Caro! Tell Alicia to go to the Peacemaker. She isn’t safe out here, not in that little ship, not unless I prevail. Send the whole Lily Star. Tell them to go quickly.
Okay.
There was more. I had seen myself flying the Peacemaker. I had to be there, too. Caro? Ask the captain to send my body there, and you. Send us all. You will have to go to be my anchor. I needed Caro to understand how much this mattered. We need to be together, and we need to be on the Peacemaker.
Why?
Because I dreamed it.
I surrendered to the pull of unity, of oneness. I felt the ships coming for us, felt the Unicorn and the Black Star and the ships beyond that.
In the spaces between, I felt the drones.
They were. All. One.
Go Caro. Go with my body. Take it to the Peacemaker.
I will.
I love you.
If everything connected, if it all became one beating heart of data, would I be able to separate myself enough to keep the parts from destroying each other?
Would I even see destruction as wrong?