34

ABEL SUSPECTS NOEMI WOULD’VE PREFERRED TO HAVE been told that he intends to fly into battle, too. If she objects later, he’ll point out that he did mention the possibility of the Persephone going into combat….

That won’t be the full truth, so he rejects that option. Noemi is more than his friend now; he wishes for her to be the other half of his life. Dishonesty between them is inadvisable on every level. She’ll rage at him, but ultimately she’ll understand. He could no more leave Noemi to go into battle unprotected than she could fail to defend her world.

He takes off immediately, setting course for the Gate. The scene that unfolds on the vast domed viewscreen reveals a battle of such staggering size as Abel has never seen. Earth has sent through twelve Damocles ships, which he reckons to be more than half the Damocles ships in their entire fleet. The rebellious planets of Kismet and Stronghold will soon realize they’re unguarded. This can only be Earth’s final invasion assault.

But Genesis is ready for them.

The Vagabond fleet is assembling itself—haphazardly, in the way of a group of ships never asked to work together before. Still, they’re flying into action, every burst of blaster fire proof of the colony worlds’ pent-up fury at Earth. He sees the Katara in the heart of the action, all weapons firing, Dagmar Krall proving herself again as a leader. A few medical vessels, courtesy of Remedy, hover nearby to treat the wounded—of which there will be many.

Genesis has sent its ships up, too, though they are less impressive. The age of the vessels is dispiriting, as is their relative state of disrepair. But then one of the older ships fires, hitting a Damocles and rupturing a solid fourth of its hull. Abel reminds himself, Old is not the same as weak.

Amid green streaks of blaster bolts and the large lumbering ships, he sees his fellow mechs in their star-shaped exosuits emerging from the Damocles ships to attack everyone fighting for Genesis. Queens and Charlies one and all, the mechs fling themselves into the best tactical positions, even if it means they’ll be blown to shards within seconds. They risk themselves without fear. They can kill without guilt and be killed without guilt.

But Abel thinks there might be another way to use them.

There was no time for him to teach Simon Shearer what he needed to know; however, Simon may have been able to teach Abel something.

He brings the Persephone in closer to the battle, until the starfighters and mechs are crisscrossing the space around him in every direction. No Queen or Charlie will pay much attention to an unarmed civilian vessel unless it makes overly hostile moves. Remaining motionless is dangerous mostly because stray weapons fire could hit him. The shields are at full power, which will have to be sufficient protection. Abel’s going to need all his concentration for what he does next.

Simon told Abel that he controlled other mechs by being more machine than human. This is strange to Abel, who’s worked so hard to explore his human side. Letting himself be wholly a machine—it would be the equivalent of telling humans to jump off a cliff, trusting that a force field would catch them. All their faith in the force field wouldn’t make that jump easy. He doesn’t want to surrender his human self, even for an hour.

His memories of Haven crystallize, and he sees the broken, battered mechs attacking him in concert, as if they were the limbs of a single organism. Simon learned how to control them as if they were an extension of his mind. The opportunity before Abel is immense.

So is the danger, but he considers it irrelevant. Compared to the risk to Noemi, what he’s attempting is nothing.

He sits at ops and opens one of the interfaces. Then he withdraws an emergency repair edger and slashes across his wrist, reopening the wound he gave himself on Haven. The injury doesn’t bleed as much as it would for a human, but red drops spatter onto the console. As long as it doesn’t ooze into the wiring, this represents no significant problem.

The metal within Abel has been exposed. Simon hadn’t found such hardwiring necessary; that was one of the few advantages he had. While next generations of Inheritors may have the advantages of greater organic content, Abel thinks with satisfaction, they’ll lack the ability to interface directly with older computer systems, like the one that governs his ship.

He withdraws one long, slender rod and pushes the end into a small port. The effect is instantaneous and overwhelming; the full flood of Persephone’s data rushes around and into him, too much for even his brain to process. But he retains enough self-control to block out one core function area, then another, until he’s eliminated enough to think clearly. That lets him focus on communications.

The signals the ship would normally send aren’t on the same frequencies that tether mechs to their Damocles controls. They are, however, extremely close, and now that Abel’s connected with his ship, he thinks he can push that frequency to exactly the right level. Shutting his eyes, he concentrates. The effort feels like static electricity crackling around his brain—

WE ARE HERE.

Abel’s eyes open wide as he connects to every mech fighting for Earth. At first it’s the same overload as when he initially connected to the Persephone, plus nearly five thousand. (4862, to be exact—the combined Vagabond and Genesis forces have already destroyed 138 of the invasion force mechs. He can feel their absence from the whole the way a human might feel the gap of a lost tooth.)

He bears down. Bit by bit, he streamlines the connection until far more information flows out to them than in to him.

Your grandson was able to do this with a human mind, he says to the Mansfield that dwells within his heart, the shadow-father he’ll never stop defending himself against. If he could, that means I can. I’ll wield a kind of control you never even dreamed of.

—I am more than you—

Energy pulses from him, through the circuits of the Persephone, out into space. Every one of his muscles is tensed to the point of spasm, but his physical body has never felt farther away. Abel’s mind is a part of these signals, the ones surging into every single fighter mech and redefining their new targets: one another.

4717. 4321. 3800. The mech signals wink out like snuffed candles. He feels every single death—physically feels it, a dim reflection of the momentary pain he’s discovered even mechs experience at the end. But as their numbers decrease, the level of control he has to exert lowers. He can bear this. He must. Every mech destroyed is another one that can’t hurt Noemi.

2020. 1686. 1037. 548. 215. 99. 47. 10.

Zero.

Abel severs the connection. The concepts in his mind soften, deepen, becoming thoughts instead of data. As he leans back, his muscles quiver as they try to relax from the tension. The immense heaviness he feels at first seems like a malfunction, before he realizes it’s exhaustion, even greater than that he experienced on Haven. He hadn’t given himself sufficient regeneration time, perhaps. A faint sheen of moisture along his facial skin must be sweat. He has never perspired before.

Then he realizes the moisture on his upper lip is in fact blood. Abel puts his hand to his face, pulls it away to see red stains on his fingers. He gave himself a nosebleed, a new experience he swiftly decides he doesn’t like.

He resolves not to try multi-mech control again until he has conducted extensive further study. Even his strength has limits.

While he carefully reassembles his arm and reseals the skin, he watches the domed viewscreen. The few human-commanded ships that accompanied the mechs to this side of the Genesis Gate are already trying to return, with a few ships of the Vagabond fleet in pursuit. Those Earth ships could put up a good fight on their own, but he suspects the people have forgotten how to undertake their own battles. Without the mechs, they’re lost.

Meanwhile, the other Vagabond and Genesis ships swoop and swirl in crazy victory spirals. He wonders which one of the tiny darting lights on that screen is the corsair. Normally he’d focus in tighter to locate it, but he finds he doesn’t yet want to.

He’s… hurting. Not physically, except for the bright line of pain where he cut his arm open. What he feels is more like the absence of something so essential he takes it for granted, maybe similar to what humans experience when they get dizzy or are temporarily deafened by trauma. When he tries to take stock of his condition, he realizes there’s a sort of numb place in his brain—an area he can’t currently probe.

He decides to ignore this for the time being. His organic repair systems may heal it, and if not, he can have Virginia Redbird mend any damage. Currently Abel has higher priorities, such as finding Noemi amid the post-battle chaos, and dealing with the small ship that’s now approaching the Persephone.

A transit pod, he realizes. These aren’t fighters; they’re hardly even ships at all, with very little steering and propulsion. They exist purely to allow humans to move between ships in space when neither vessel can dock with the other. The green-and-white marks on its side reveal that this one was launched from one of the larger, older troop ships of the Genesis fleet.

Abel rises from his chair, surprised to feel his legs shaky beneath him. But he can walk through the corridor without stumbling. Weary as he is, he’s still able to function.

By the time he gets to the launching bay, the air lock is already cycling. Maybe he should’ve demanded communication from the pod before allowing it to dock; maybe he should’ve set the door not to automatically open. Normally he would have done these things, but in his current daze, they’re occurring to him too late. Everything is too fuzzy, too slow. This must be what having a human brain feels like.

The air lock cycle ends. Abel immediately steps inside the bay. He can’t keep this individual from coming on board, but if there’s going to be a confrontation, he intends to get it over with quickly. When the transit pod slides open, however, the visitor appears to be… if not a friend, at least an ally.

“Darius Akide,” he says. “I thought you were a noncombatant.”

Akide nods. “I went into battle to bear witness, and to chronicle this stage of the war for the survivors, if there were any.”

“As you see, survivors are numerous.” Abel waits for praise or gratitude that doesn’t come. The humans may not yet have realized what he did for them. However, other questions are far more important. “Did you see Noemi’s ship? She was flying a red corsair.”

Surprise flickers on Akide’s face as he steps from the pod, his long white robes striking an oddly formal note. “She went into battle? I thought she was required to resign.”

“Nothing could keep her from defending Genesis.” Abel will need to send out a signal to her directly. What if she was one of the few Genesis pilots lost in the early, bloody stage of the fight?

Have faith, he reminds himself. Even if he can’t believe in a deity, he can believe in her.

“What is the purpose of your visit, Dr. Akide?” Abel asks. “You could have simply reached out to me via comms, which suggests you have a message that is delicate and requires extra security. Or you may wish to conduct a confidential conversation.” Could Akide have realized what Abel did to the other mechs? It would be a considerable mental leap, but his cybernetics background with Mansfield makes the connection possible. This would naturally be something Akide would have wished to investigate immediately.

“Yes, I have a message.” Akide has a strange expression on his face. “Do what you were made for.”

He straightens to his full height and withdraws a small device from his robe, larger than a comm link but smaller than a spanner. Before Abel can ask what it is, Akide hits a switch and—

The floor tilts and sways. Visual input shuts down entirely; touch and smell go to minimum. Abel staggers sideways and would fall except that Professor Akide catches him in his arms. Only sound remains to him, that and the panic of his own thoughts.

Akide helped design me, Abel thinks in a daze. He knows how to shut me down.

Whatever signal was sent doesn’t render Abel completely unconscious, the way Mansfield’s old fail-safe did; he retains some mental function and full auditory input. “Why?” he manages to say. If he’s judging the sounds correctly, Akide is dragging him along the Persephone corridor. “What are you—”

“I’m sorry, Abel. I’m genuinely sorry about this. But I have to secure you.” Professor Akide’s footsteps stagger in irregular thumps; Abel’s considerable weight is no doubt difficult for the older man to manage. “Make sure your consciousness is bound good and tight. Then I can take you back to the one cybernetics lab we have on Genesis. There, I can get some work done.”

“What—do you—”

“This battle doesn’t change anything.” Akide sounds resigned, as fatalistic as Noemi described him. “Our victory today will only make Earth more desperate. They’ll send human troops next, and they’ll land on Genesis. They’ll kill our children, burn our homes. We can’t let that happen.”

“But—Haven—”

“There’s no guarantee Earth’s people will accept Haven as a new home for humanity. They have to survive a life-threatening disease to even think about it! Even if they do, every person on every single colony world is going to feel betrayed by Earth. Haven can’t be their home for a long time to come, if ever. So to avoid a mass uprising, Earth must conquer Genesis, immediately. The battle today proved that. That means this is our last chance to stop them.” Akide takes a deep breath. “Long ago I learned to question the work I did with Burton Mansfield. I thought I’d left it behind me. Now I see God’s true purpose in it. He led me to Mansfield, because Mansfield would lead me to you.”

They want to destroy the Genesis Gate. The only way to do that is to send Abel through in a ship with a thermomagnetic device—Noemi’s original plan, all those months ago. In the resulting detonation, Abel would be utterly destroyed, possibly vaporized.

And Akide has the programming knowledge to force Abel to do it.

Noemi wouldn’t allow Abel to choose the path of destroying himself to destroy the Gate. Instead it seems that destruction has chosen him.