Gliding between worlds on an unchangeable trajectory toward an encounter that would decide the fate of the Nine Thousand, Diamond finally confessed to her mother, Violetta, a long-suspected truth: “I always wanted to be the bad guy . . . but I thought it would be more fun than this.”
Wrapped in the ethereal silence of their two-person bullet pod, Violetta had succumbed to brooding over the ruin of her life. But at Diamond’s words, she roused. She reminded herself the situation was not hopeless. Chaos need not win. The Nine Thousand might still go on.
And Diamond might yet learn right from wrong?
It was possible. She was only twelve, after all.
Faithful to the duties of motherhood, Violetta chided her delinquent daughter: “I hope you choose differently, Diamond, if you ever find yourself tempted again.”
The interior of the bullet pod was close and cramped. It contained two crash couches, nothing more, with no room to move around. Violetta’s couch was behind Diamond’s, so she couldn’t see her daughter’s face until Diamond twisted around, peering past the gap between seatback and hull, one bright black eye showing beneath a scowling brow.
She said, “Sorry I got you in trouble.”
Violetta glanced at the countdown running in her retinal screen. Seven minutes to go until they reached Nexus. “I won’t lie to you, love. This is a bad situation. The Professional Revolutionaries have really gone too far this time.”
Diamond’s scowl deepened. “Dad says if chaos wins, we all lose. But, Mom? I don’t want to lose.”
* * * *
Just three hours earlier, when Violetta Gamiao had spotted an agent of the Professional Revolutionaries stepping from a transit bullet to the platform at Tranquility, she had anticipated swift victory.
The agent did not, of course, announce his affiliation. He wore no badge, no uniform, and there was nothing extraordinary about his appearance. He stood shorter than most in a mixed crowd of tourists and business travelers, but not so much shorter as to draw notice. His gleaming red culottes and gold vest of many pockets were respectable attire—almost conservative—compared to the riotous colors and fantastic embellishments worn by the one hundred twenty-nine other travelers who had arrived on the same long bullet. And he carried only a plain black valise.
But evil had a distinctive swagger.
“Look what we’ve got coming,” Violetta said, speaking to Ash Crafton, her rookie partner. The two hunters shared a table at a balcony café overlooking the platform, a post that let them see everyone who arrived in Tranquility and all those who were leaving.
Ash leaned forward to take another look, scowling as he reassessed the new arrivals. Then he grunted, and asked, “That one?” His index finger traced a little circle in the air in front of him, a gesture that highlighted the revolutionary with an equivalent circle drawn on Violetta’s retinal screen. The circle framed a flat brown face, fierce confidence projected by heavy black eyebrows and a wolfish half-smile.
Violetta nodded her approval. “You’re getting good, Ash.”
“It’s not the way they look,” he said, repeating the dictum she’d drilled into him from day one. “It’s the attitude.”
They arose together from the table, both wearing the shadow-shifting uniform of chartered hunters, operating under the authority of Machina Overlord. It was their duty to oversee the good order and safe operation of the Bullet Transit System within District 24 of the Nine Thousand Worlds, and to ensure the system was not used to spread mayhem.
Given the number of philosophical gangs whose sole purpose was to create mayhem, it was a challenging occupation—with the Professional Revolutionaries a particular nemesis.
Violetta turned, pulling her stunner from a hip holster, her other hand on the balcony railing. “Ready?” she asked Ash.
“Right behind you,” he assured her, stunner in hand.
But the revolutionary had sensed the motion above him. He glanced up, saw the threat.
And as they vaulted over the railing, he bolted for the arched entrance of the transit station and the bright plaza beyond it, lit by sunlight from an artificial sky.
Violetta dropped to the concourse, startling the tourists as she landed among them with a soft thump. Ash dropped down two meters away. They both raised their weapons. The tourists yelled at one another to get down, get out of the line of fire, and within three seconds, an alley opened in the crowd with the revolutionary at the far end, silhouetted against the morning glare.
“I’ve got it,” Violetta told Ash. Rarely was it this easy to find her prey and bring it down.
She pulled the trigger—but the revolutionary anticipated her. He turned and dropped to one knee. The pellet she’d shot burst open in an electrified net that swirled past him, over his head and into the plaza beyond.
Her retinal screen adjusted her vision, dimming the light from the plaza so she could see his face. He was looking right at her, showing no fear, no concern. Smiling.
She adjusted her aim. Pulled the trigger just as he moved again: standing up, stepping forward, swinging the valise up in a long arc. The stunner net smacked him in the chest just as the bag left his fingers. It shot straight up toward the transit station’s high ceiling while he wilted to the floor.
“Oh, shit,” Ash said.
Violetta shouted at the crowd. “Get down! Everyone down!”
Chaos erupted. Tourists screamed, fled, dropped to the ground, tripped over one another, while Ash and Violetta fell back, crouching against the wall, taking what shelter they could against the expected explosion.
But to Violetta’s surprise, the valise did not blow up.
She heard a loud click instead.
She looked up in time to see a device spin out of the falling valise: a little winged drone, powered by buzzing tiltrotors. With its four insect-like legs, it gripped a black cylinder. Painted on the underside of its wings was a caricature face: slanting eyes and a devil’s leering grin glowing in fiery colors. Madness in cartoon form. The symbol of the Professional Revolutionaries.
This time, Ash was ahead of her. As the now-empty valise hit the floor, he stepped away from the wall, targeting the drone as it executed a tight half-circle, coming around on a flight path that would let it exit to the plaza. The revolutionary remained on the floor, trembling from the effects of the stunner, still unable to control his large muscle groups, but he could see what Ash was doing and he had enough volition to shriek a warning: “No! Don’t set it off in here!”
His warning came too late.
Ash had pulled the trigger.
* * * *
“The Nine Thousand” was the name given to the swarm of artificial worlds in orbit around the sun—not that there were actually nine thousand worlds. Not yet. But there were many, and “Nine Thousand” rolled easily off the tongue, a good round number and full of possibility, so the name had stuck. Linking the worlds together was the Bullet Transit System—kilometers-long magnetic tracks used to launch and decelerate bullet pods along complex paths calculated by the artificial intelligence known as Machina Overlord.
The AI’s computational strata were housed in the artificial world of Nexus—a tiny, ring-shaped habitat where no one lived and few were allowed to visit, but because it was the home of Machina Overlord, Nexus was the nucleus of the Nine Thousand.
From Nexus, the AI controlled all aspects of navigation. It adjusted each world’s orbital path to ensure an ideal distribution around the Sun. It supervised an automated mining operation among the moons of Jupiter. It oversaw the assembly of artificial comets from the resources harvested there, and it determined the paths those comets followed when they were lobbed toward the sun.
The Nine Thousand could exist only because of Machina Overlord’s dedication to navigational harmony. But the AI had a quirk. In its unfathomable calculations, it had come to a determination that harmony was not a fit goal for human society. Modeling the future had convinced it that an excess of peace and prosperity was slow poison. That if the Nine Thousand was allowed to settle naturally into utopia, the result must be stagnation and decline.
So, long before, it had issued letters of marque, authorizing philosophical gangs to carry out randomly assigned acts of vandalism and terror. The Professional Revolutionaries were the most notorious of these gangs, claiming more than four million voluntary members. Though they had to operate under complex rules, Machina Overlord had granted them a powerful privilege: They were masters of identity.
Among the Nine Thousand, a citizen’s electronic identity was almost as important as their physical existence. Identity acted as an electronic pass, allowing a citizen to breathe and eat and go about their world, to contact loved ones, access finances and personal history, and to interact with the swarms of lesser AIs—the noncons—which were everywhere in the worlds.
The Professional Revolutionaries were armed with manufactured identities, allowing them to change who they were so they could wander the Nine Thousand at will. But the heart of their game was more frightening. They could steal away the identity of any citizen, hold it hostage, and leave their victim no choice but to enlist in their ranks, if only temporarily—frightened recruits coerced to carry out some arcane task if they ever hoped to have their true life back again. And they could get their life back if they succeeded. That was the amnesty rule.
It was a game of sorts, but a serious and dangerous game, one designed on purpose to unsettle worlds, destabilize orbits, crack vacuum seals, crash economies, instigate wars, ignite religious pogroms. To sow chaos.
Violetta had always feared it was a game that must inevitably run out of control.
* * * *
The tiltrotor took evasive action. Dodging the stunner net Ash had fired, it darted toward the open plaza.
“Ash, hold your fire!” Violetta ordered. “We don’t know what that thing’s carrying.”
“But it’s getting away!”
“So go after it! Keep it in sight, but don’t damage it. I’m going to find out what the payload is.”
Ash raced away in pursuit, while she dropped to her knees beside the fallen revolutionary. He lay on his back, shivering, eyes half-closed, but he was aware of her. She knew that when his lips turned in a strained smile.
“What will happen now?” she demanded.
He said, “I always find it . . . gratifying . . . when chaos . . . ensues.” His eyes opened wider, fixed on her. “Tag,” he added. “You’re it.”
“I’m it?”
Panic prickled her skin. Her heart raced.
“What do you mean, I’m it?”
But she got no answer as his eyes closed and he faded into unconsciousness.
You’re it.
Had he recruited her? Taken away her identity?
No, that was impossible. He hadn’t touched her. To change who she was, he had to touch her.
She turned her hands over anyway, examined her palms, looked for the black spot of erasure that she’d seen too many times before on the palms of forced recruits.
The black spot wasn’t there.
But the Professional Revolutionaries did not make empty threats. Their creed did not allow it. She had to assume that she’d really been recruited. But how? What had they taken from her? What were they planning to take? She considered possibilities—and a terrible suspicion flowered in her mind.
She cued her retinal screen. “Ash, you still with me?”
His breathless voice came back over her earbuds. “Affirmative. I think it’s trying for the commuter stairs.”
Her heartbeat skipped. “Up or down?”
“Can’t tell yet.”
Up would take the drone to Tranquility’s industrial levels—critical infrastructure, but mostly robotic, with few citizens present. Down, though—that was the direction of the world’s bucolic neighborhoods. Violetta’s home and family were there.
She popped a lozenge from one of the many loops on her heavy service belt. Then she snapped it open over her unconscious captive, releasing a stream of data dust that fell in a fine gray powder across his face and chest. The dust marked him as a target of interest for Tranquility’s fleet of guardian drones. One swooped in immediately: a spinning ring ten centimeters across that emitted a foreboding electrical hum. It hovered over the fallen revolutionary, fencing him in with a translucent cage of pink and purple light. Anyone attempting to breach that cage—whether from inside or outside—before the municipal police arrived would find themselves hit with a nasty dart of no-go.
“Ash,” Violetta asked again, “up or down?”
“Down,” Ash groaned.
Down toward Violetta’s home and family.
She sprang to her feet, but she did not follow Ash to the commuter stairs. Instead, she bounded across the concourse, weaving through the loitering crowd to the red door of an emergency chute. On the way, she whispered, “Link to the house.”
Her earbuds picked up the command and executed it.
The house responded in its sweet, nurturing voice—“Aloha, Violetta”—as Violetta waved a finger at the biometric scanner that controlled access to the emergency chute. “Drop me to level seven.”
“Level seven drop affirmed,” the chute’s noncon answered as the red door sluiced open. The house responded too, in a confused murmur, “That is not in my instruction set.”
Violetta ignored it. She stepped through the door and fell, dropping past a series of gel nets, each one holding her for a fraction of a second, stretching as it slowed her descent, until a gel net on the seventh level caught her and shoved her out past another red door.
She emerged not far from her own neighborhood in a village square where citizens were at breakfast in neat cafés. Shade trees spread their branches above a central fountain. Morning light tempered by rain-cloud filters glinted through their leaves.
Violetta’s sudden appearance caused heads to turn. Worried frowns greeted her. The red door was used only for emergencies. Several people called her name. They asked, “What’s gone wrong?”
She ignored them, addressing the house instead: “House, get me Diamond! Make her answer.”
“One moment, Violetta.”
She did not wait. Only Diamond was at home. Ismo was away on the other side of the sun; he’d taken their toddler twins to visit his parents, but Diamond had not wanted to go. I have plans, she’d said. Violetta ran hard, hoping to beat the drone.
Diamond was only twelve, but she’d always been a revolutionary at heart.
The house said, “Diamond is not answering.”
“Seal your doors and windows! Don’t let her out. Don’t let anything in.”
Ash broke in, sounding confused. “Vi, I’ve got you on level seven. What are you doing down there? What’s going on?”
Violetta abandoned her earlier caution. “Ash,” she said, gasping as she ran. “Forget . . . what I said . . . before. I need you . . . to take out the drone . . . now.”
“Vi, I can’t. I couldn’t keep up with it. I don’t know where it’s gone.”
Tag, the revolutionary had warned. You’re it.
Violetta looked up to see the tiltrotor coming toward her along the street. At first, it was half-hidden in tree shadows. Then its rotors flashed in a blade of sunlight as it turned onto her cul-de-sac. Violetta knew then that her suspicions were true: Diamond was the target of this scheme. It was not a fact she was willing to share with Ash. “Ash, no one here has seen the drone. Check the other levels.”
The lie came so easily, it shocked her.
“On it,” Ash said.
The confession of the house brought another shock. She heard the deep concern in its tone when it informed her, “Diamond has gone outside. She refuses to come back in.”
Violetta pursued the drone into the cul-de-sac, arriving just as Diamond jumped down the porch steps and trotted into the little courtyard that was shared by a semicircle of houses. Evil had a distinctive swagger, and Violetta saw it in her daughter’s stride as she went to meet the drone.
Diamond had dressed for this day. She was a short and stocky girl, a little late on the road to adolescence, with rumpled brown hair and a dangerous confidence. Today she wore boots and a black coverall that Violetta had never seen before.
The drone hovered above her, the black cylinder it carried still clutched in spindly insect legs. One of those legs released its burden to reach for Diamond. She extended her hand to meet it. A bored, precocious child, playing out a romantic fantasy.
“Diamond, no!”
Diamond snatched her hand back in shocked surprise, but it was too late. Violetta reached her just as the black spot of erasure bloomed in her palm. Over her earbuds, she heard the house’s startled report: “I am unable to locate Diamond. She has disappeared from the world.”
The nonconscious entity that was the house could no longer identify her, because Diamond had been recruited.
Grief and horror welled in Violetta’s heart—and it only got worse when she caught sight of the leering logo of the Professional Revolutionaries on the breast of Diamond’s new coverall. “You volunteered! Diamond—”
“I was called to serve!”
She darted to one side, trying to cut past Violetta and make a swift escape—as if there was anywhere to run or to hide. Violetta grabbed her arm. Diamond tried to twist away. “No, no! Don’t arrest me. Let me go.”
“You’re not going anywhere. I am locking you up for the rest of your life!”
“No, Mom, listen. I’m your daughter. The Revolutionaries erased my identity but I’m still your daughter. Don’t arrest me! Don’t send me away! Mom! Tell me you remember who I am.”
Stillness overcame them both as Violetta looked into her daughter’s eyes. She saw fear as Diamond began to understand the enormity of what had happened.
Violetta pulled her close, embraced her, and growled, “Of course I remember you, you idiot. It’s your identity that’s gone, not my memory. And you are in so much trouble. How long have you been communicating with the Professional Revolutionaries? When did they start working on you?”
“I’m not supposed to say. And anyway, it doesn’t matter. They gave me a task.”
“They always do.” Violetta glanced at her retinal screen, checking on Ash’s location. He was still on the commuter stairs, lingering near level five. It was a hunter’s duty to arrest all known Revolutionaries. Twelve-year-olds had been recruited before. If Ash discovered what had happened, he would have no choice but to take Diamond into custody, and she would be sent away—unless she carried out her task and won her identity back under the amnesty rule.
“What task did they give you?” Violetta asked, hoping it would be something easy, suitable to a child.
Diamond pouted. “They said it would be fun. That I’d only get in a little trouble.”
“What task?” Violetta insisted, as fear’s cold fingers touched her heart.
Diamond looked up to the hovering drone. She raised her left hand, exposing the black spot in her palm, a circle so dark it was like a hole to nowhere. The drone dropped the cylinder it carried and she caught it. “I’m supposed to smuggle this to Nexus, where it will be used to destroy Machina Overlord.”
Violetta cocked her head, trying desperately to see this as a joke. “Really?”
“Let me see that.”
Diamond handed over the cylinder. Violetta didn’t trust such easy cooperation, but she said nothing just yet. Using one hand to keep a firm grip on Diamond, she examined the object, finding it strangely light in mass—too light to be a bomb—and slippery in her hand. She realized it was not black. Instead, it was made of a transparent shell at least a centimeter thick. The darkness was contained within. One end of the cylinder was rounded. The other was sealed with a brushed chrome cap that displayed a digital countdown: 3:13:27.
3:13:26
3:13:25
“It’s called a world breaker,” Diamond said quietly.
Violetta bit her lip. She’d heard that name before. A world breaker was not an object. It was a theoretical intrusion of another, incompatible, universe. One predicted behavior of such an anomaly was that photons would be unable to react with it, and so they would glide around it in paths that bent along its surface. But that was theory. Speculation. It wasn’t real.
And yet, as Violetta gazed at the cylinder, the face she saw reflected in it was not hers. It was her daughter’s . . . as if Diamond’s image had slid around the darkness contained within the glass.
Ash spoke over her earbuds. “No one on the higher levels saw the drone leave the stairs. I’m coming down.”
“No, I’m coming up. I’ll meet you on six.”
She muted the link and turned back to Diamond, who insisted, “They said it would be easy.”
“It’s not easy.”
“The Revolutionaries don’t lie!”
“Well, this time they did, because special authorization is required to visit Nexus. The Bullet Transit System would never allow you to—”
Shock rocked her as she grasped the Revolutionaries’ scheme. They had not erased her identity, because it was her identity that made her valuable. As a senior hunter, she was one of only a handful of citizens with standing authorization to visit Nexus. If they took her identity, she would lose that authority. So they’d recruited her daughter instead.
Diamond explained it, her voice bitter because she did not believe the scheme could ever work. “You’re supposed to help me. That’s what it says in the mission plan. They’re so stupid they thought you’d help me. But I’m a revolutionary. You’re a hunter.” Her pout deepened, got lopsided. “That makes us enemies.”
“The Revolutionaries aren’t stupid, love. Now hurry. We need to get that thing out of Tranquility, and we need to get past Ash. If he finds us, he’ll arrest you. He’ll arrest me. He has no choice.”
Diamond’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Wait. You’re going to help me? But we’re not on the same side.”
“Diamond, the only way you get your life back is if the task gets done. So I haven’t got a choice.”
* * * *
Every world was fitted with emergency escape pods, but those could only be fired into the void at random; they weren’t useful for going anywhere. The only effective way out of Tranquility was through the Bullet Transit System. So Violetta told Ash she was coming up the commuter stairs, and then she took Diamond to the emergency chute instead. Ash tracked her position and protested. She didn’t answer. “You’re compromised, aren’t you?” he asked as they stepped through the red door. She bit her lip and kept quiet as the gel curled around them and lofted them to the transit station.
They found police in the concourse, securing the revolutionary, who grinned at Violetta as she swept past. One of the officers called out to her, “Violetta—”
“Sorry! Can’t talk. Ash is right behind me, though. He’ll help you sort things out!”
Diamond needed no encouragement. What she lacked in judgment, she made up in boldness, darting through the concourse toward the platform. “Mom! You need to get us to the front of the queue.”
Violetta was already working on that, muttering to the platform noncon, directing it to summon an emergency bullet.
The noncon argued over the request: “Hunter Gamiao, there is no authorization for an emergency bullet.”
She answered as she ran: “I am issuing my own authorization.”
Her authority extended that far, though an order out of headquarters could override her.
Ash had reached the plaza. He sounded winded and desperate and furious when he demanded to know, “What are you doing? Where are you going? Why do you need an emergency bullet?”
“I’ve got this, Ash. You’ve got to trust me.”
Ahead of them, electronic doors observed their approach and opened, admitting them to the transit platform. It was crowded with more than a hundred citizens milling around, waiting for the next long pod.
Violetta gripped Diamond’s shoulder. With her other hand she drew her stunner, holding it high where it could be easily seen. And then in an authoritarian voice she said, “Stand aside. There is an emergency in progress. Everyone, move back.”
Maybe it was her take-no-prisoners tone, or maybe it was the stunner, but they shrugged and shuffled out of the way. Diamond led; Violetta followed her. A tiny, two-person bullet glided in to meet them at the edge of the platform. The hatch slid open—but across the platform, the electronic doors opened too, admitting Ash. He saw her and shouted, “The revolutionary told me what you’re doing! You need to stop. Don’t take this any further.”
“Get in,” Violetta said grimly, gesturing to her daughter. And then she called to Ash, “It’s on me! I’m going to make this work.”
He wasn’t buying it. He raised his stunner, aiming across the crowd. “Everyone down!”
No one went down. Instead, they looked at one another with confused expressions. Wasn’t this just a dust-up between hunters? No one wanted to be the first to go down and risk looking like a fool.
Violetta used the moment to follow Diamond through the hatch. She dropped into the rear crash couch. Diamond was strapping in up front.
The hatch slid shut.
“Destination?” the bullet’s cheerful noncon asked.
“Nexus!” Diamond yelled.
“That is a restricted destination,” the noncon said. “Please stand by while I confirm your authority.”
“It’s on my authority,” Violetta snapped. A series of thuds resounded against the hull. Ash, she presumed, expressing his frustration. “Launch us to Nexus now.”
“Open. This. Hatch!” Ash shouted through her earbuds, each word accompanied by another hard thud.
The assault on its hull did not dampen the bullet’s perky tone. “Right away, Hunter Gamiao. Your destination is Nexus. Cleared to launch.”
There was a faint vibration, a hint of motion. The hull went quiet as they moved away from the platform. In the sudden silence, Violetta’s thoughts turned to Ismo and the twins—and she felt the weight of what she’d just done; she dreaded the consequences. But she’d had no choice. Diamond had been recruited, and Violetta was the only one who could make that right.
Diamond did not share her melancholy. “I can’t believe it!” she crowed. “They let us go! Mom, you did it!”
The bullet pod continued to glide, though from within the windowless hull, their motion was hardly perceivable—and it was not fast enough. Ash would be opening a link to headquarters, begging for an order to stop the launch. But the lightspeed delay would slow his communications.
“Realignment underway,” the bullet announced.
Prior to every launch the BTS track had to be realigned and reaimed, its trajectory calculated by a fragment of the mind of Machina Overlord. A minute passed as the machinery reoriented. “I just can’t believe it,” Diamond said again in quiet excitement. But Violetta listened to the pounding of her heart and wondered, What have I done?
“Prepare for launch,” the bullet warned.
The launch of a bullet pod was always accompanied by a standard special effect. The transit authority claimed the purpose was to orient the passengers, but everyone knew its real purpose was to make the launch more exciting.
First, the bullet’s curved white walls went black. Though Diamond had seen the show before, she gasped at the sudden darkness. Many seconds sifted past and then, as they began to accelerate, a point of white light flared at the front of the pod. The white point expanded into a ring that passed slowly through the darkened walls. Another ring followed it, and another, at ever shorter intervals as their acceleration ramped up, pressing them deep into their seats.
Too late now for anyone to stop them.
The light began to strobe, while Violetta grew so heavy she could not draw a breath. Hard seconds passed under that suffocating pressure—and then it was over. They cleared the track and the pressure was gone.
Zero gravity.
The special effect finished with a burst of slowly swirling colors, an imaginary vision of the mythical realm of hyperspace.
The pod announced, “Glide phase will last two hours, forty-eight minutes, and thirty-two seconds. Deceleration to follow.”
Violetta watched the colors fade and the walls return to everyday white. No changing course now. Their path was fixed. No one could interfere. In two hours and forty-eight minutes they would reach Nexus. Ten minutes after that, the countdown running on the world breaker would reach zero.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
“You know what’s crazy about all this?” And then she immediately answered her own question, perhaps fearing what Violetta would say. “I don’t think we’ve ever been on the same side before.”
Violetta squeezed her eyes shut and wondered, Is that what this is about?
“Mom?”
Violetta looked again, to see Diamond peering at her past the gap beside the seatback.
“Are we on the same side?”
“Do you understand what will happen if Machina Overlord is destroyed?”
Only one eye was visible, but that eye narrowed. “It’ll be bad.”
“Let’s talk about the world breaker.”
“What about it?” Diamond asked suspiciously. “Because I don’t know anything about it. I don’t know how it works.”
“I’m not asking for the physics of how it works. I just want to know what the mission plan says. How do you use it? How do you set it off?”
“I don’t know. The plan says I just need to get it there. Then I get back in the bullet and leave.”
“Leave?”
“Yes. Leave. Mom, you didn’t want to hang around while Nexus blows up?”
“I don’t think Nexus is going to blow up. I think it’s going to collapse into a parallel universe and pull any surrounding matter with it.”
“You mean pull Nexus—and Machina Overlord—with it.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to be there when that happens.”
“We can’t let it happen!” Violetta’s temper flared. “What I don’t understand is how the Professional Revolutionaries made this thing. They’re vandals, troublemakers. They don’t have the knowledge to manipulate spacetime.”
Diamond’s answer came in a subdued voice. “Machina Overlord must have made it. Who else?”
Of course. No one else could have.
The Professional Revolutionaries were obligated to carry out the acts of chaos assigned to them. Violetta had just never guessed the AI might target itself. But it was a machine, after all. No reason to think it would fear death as people did. No reason to think it would try to protect itself. Why should it? Contending against the Professional Revolutionaries was a hunter’s job.
* * * *
It was not Diamond’s nature to waste time on guilt. She had made her apology. Now, peering past the seatback, with only minutes left in the transit to Nexus, she reaffirmed her new resolve, insisting again, “I don’t want to lose. And I want to make it right. I don’t want to be the bad guy anymore.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Violetta said.
“So, we need to make a plan.”
“I have a plan.”
“You do?”
“Yes. When we reach Nexus, your task will be done. I’ll take the world breaker. You stay in the bullet pod. As soon as we’re sure your black spot has reset, you leave.”
“Without you? That’s not a plan! I don’t want you to die.”
“I’m not going to die. I’m going to get rid of the world breaker.”
“How?”
“Push it out an airlock.”
Diamond’s one visible eye shifted to take in the bullet pod’s hatch.
“Won’t work,” Violetta told her. “We can’t open the hatch, and even if we could, you don’t get your life back until you deliver the world breaker to Nexus.”
“But you don’t know what will happen. Just because the world breaker is outside the world, that doesn’t mean it won’t be dangerous when it goes off. It could still suck the station into a spacetime hole.”
“You’re right,” Violetta conceded, “and that’s why I need to make sure it’s far away from Nexus when it goes off. So I’m going to drop down the emergency chute, find an escape pod, put the world breaker inside it, and use the centripetal force on the rim of the world to fling it far away.”
“You think that’ll work? You think you’ll have time?”
“I think so, but I want you launched and out of there, just in case.”
* * * *
They fell into the maw of Nexus’s bullet catcher right on schedule. The gee forces of deceleration were as severe as at launch, but once their momentum was synchronized to Nexus, their pod glided smoothly to the platform. Violetta released her harness. Diamond did too. “Stay in the pod,” Violetta warned as the hatch unlocked.
“But you might need my help.”
“I won’t need your help.”
A mechanical tentacle darted in as the hatch slid open. Diamond shrieked in fury as it encircled the world breaker and snatched it from her grip.
The tentacle was attached to the disc-shaped carapace of a maintenance robot that had been waiting on the platform—a compromised robot, infiltrated somehow by the Professional Revolutionaries. Only knee-high, it scuttled away with astonishing speed on its six mechanical spider legs. It kept a second tentacle folded against its carapace as it made for the platform’s glass doors.
“Stay in the pod!” Violetta shouted, jumping out after it. It was too fast for her to catch. So she pulled her stunner from its holster and shot it just as the doors opened to allow its escape.
The stunner’s net smacked its carapace, delivering a jolt that caused its legs and both its tentacles to spasm. It collapsed, losing its grip on the world breaker, which bounced away into the darkness beyond the doors.
“No!” Diamond shrieked. “We have to find it.”
“I’ll find it,” Violetta told her as she ran across the platform. “You go. Launch the pod.”
She jumped over the sprawled robot—and one of its tentacles darted up, wrapping around her ankle. She went down hard on her shoulder, her head bounced against the floor, and she lost her grip on the stunner. Shock drove out pain as she scrambled for the weapon, but the robot dragged her back and she came up short.
“Grab its other tentacle!” Diamond shouted.
Violetta was vexed to see Diamond on the platform, dancing from one foot to another in her eagerness to help.
Diamond said, “If you grab the tentacle, I can get past it and get the stunner.”
“No, you’re supposed to launch! Time is running out.”
“I’m not leaving you, Mom. So cooperate and grab the tentacle.”
Fear and frustration fought for dominance, but they were useless emotions. There was only one viable option, and that was to do exactly what Diamond had said.
Violetta twisted around and dove for the second appendage. She caught it halfway along its two-meter length. It flailed and wrapped around her arm. She shoved a boot against it—and Diamond was able to jump over the robot unhindered. She scooped up the stunner, turned around, and fired.
Nothing happened.
“It has a biometric lock,” Violetta said through gritted teeth. She had one tentacle wrapped around her ankle, one around an arm. But she still had a hand free. “Pass it to me.”
The seconds were ticking past, but Violetta needed to know. “Show me your hand.”
“Mom, just shoot it!”
“Show me.”
Diamond glanced at her palm, then held it up for Violetta to see. The black spot had gone white. “That means I finished the task, right? I’m clear.”
Violetta nodded. “That’s what it means.” By the amnesty rule, Diamond would get her life back—assuming she lived. “Okay. I need to finish my task.”
“We’re doing this together.”
“I think we have to. It’s already too late for you to launch. Diamond, I’m going to need your help.”
She grinned in delight. “Anything.”
Ignoring the robot’s scrabbling legs, Violetta aimed for its core. “This jolt is going to hit me, too. If I pass out, you need to make sure I wake up before this thing does.”
She fired.
She didn’t pass out. Not quite. But it was two long, agonizing minutes before she could move again. Diamond used the time to find an off switch on the compromised robot, to pry its tentacles off Violetta, and to recover the world breaker from the shadow where it had rolled, on the edge of the inner ring of Machina Overlord’s computational strata.
By the time Violetta made it to her feet, the countdown had reached 2:59. She briefly considered putting the world breaker into the bullet and launching it to anywhere—but a launch took time, and there wasn’t any.
“Let’s get out to the rim and get rid of that thing.”
Diamond narrowed her eyes, and nodded. “I already found the red door. Follow me.”
* * * *
They emerged on the rim, in a curving corridor with a narrow, illuminated path down its center. To the right and left, crowding the path on both sides and looming close overhead, was the chaotic black brickwork of Machina Overlord’s computational strata. Directly across the corridor was the hatch to an emergency escape pod—only a step away. All that prevented them from reaching it was the maintenance robot—twin to the first—that crouched in front of it.
“How did the Revolutionaries compromise these robots?” Violetta demanded in frustration as she shoved Diamond behind her.
“How should I know! That was someone else’s task.”
“I meant it as a rhetorical question.” She pulled her stunner and fired.
Nothing happened.
“Out of ammo.” She dropped the weapon as a tentacle grabbed her by the wrist.
“Mom!”
“Don’t worry.” Violetta held out her other hand and the robot responded, seizing that wrist with its second tentacle. As soon as it had latched on, she yanked hard and backed away up the corridor, dragging the robot with her. Its spider feet screeched against the glowing path, but she was able to move it half a meter.
“Okay, Diamond. It’s up to you. Get the world breaker into the escape pod and then jettison it.”
Violetta braced her shoulder against a protruding cluster of black bricks, a tiny part of the brain matter that was Machina Overlord, and she pulled again. But the robot changed its strategy. It released her wrists, leaving her to lunge for its tentacles. She caught them and held on, while Diamond skirted the spider legs and reached the hatch. She worked a red lever and the hatch slid open. On the other side was the round sphere of the escape pod.
“Put the world breaker inside.”
Diamond knelt, setting the device gently on the floor. Then she stepped back and closed the hatch.
“Trigger it,” Violetta ordered, feeling her heart flutter as the time counted down in her retinal overlay.
00:59
00:58
Diamond opened the translucent box that covered the red trigger switch. She toggled it.
Nothing happened.
She turned mystified eyes on Violetta. “Why isn’t it working?” For the first time, she sounded afraid. “Did they compromise the escape pods, too?”
00:52
00:51
Violetta let go of the robot, kicked it hard, and then stepped on it. “You probably don’t have the right authorization.” The robot tried for her wrists again, but before it could stop her, she jammed two fingers against the toggle.
The machinery responded. Soft electronic motors whirred; the inner hatch closed with a clunk. A hiss and a pop followed—and the robot gave up the fight. It released Violetta and walked away, presumably returning to its regular programming.
“Is the world breaker gone?” Diamond asked.
“I think so.”
A monitor was mounted in the hatch, set up to display the feed from an outside camera. Violetta switched it on. It showed them a circle of bright white lights—already distant—that outlined the perimeter of the pod as it receded rapidly into darkness.
They lost sight of it as Nexus rotated. Violetta turned to Diamond. They embraced each other while time wound down—ten, nine, eight—not knowing what would happen at zero. She thought again of Ismo and the twins, wanting them to be her last thought if the world breaker was still close enough to pull them in.
Together she and Diamond watched the monitor—and when zero came, the blackness outside awoke. A diaphanous network laddered into their field of view, rainbow-hued, flickering like distant lightning. It raced toward them, and hit. And then it was inside, all around them, flickering threads of color against the black bricks, color in Diamond’s face, in her eyes, in Violetta’s hands—and she felt as if she was being both crushed and cut apart by those lines.
Then the lines of color retreated. The sensation fled. It was as if time reversed.
Nexus completed a rotation so that on the monitor they could watch as the last glimmerings shrank to a bright point and vanished in the dark.
“Are we still here?” Diamond whispered. “Or are we somewhere else?”
Violetta directed Diamond to look again at the monitor. “Do you see it?”
A tiny object caught and reflected the light of the sun. It was a distant world, one of the Nine Thousand, and as Nexus turned, they spotted another and another, giving Violetta the confidence to say, “Let’s go home.”
* * * *
There was a hearing to evaluate Violetta’s response to the crisis. Several physicists testified on her behalf, describing to the judicial committee in lurid detail the fatal disaster that would have ensued if Violetta had not promptly removed the world breaker from the vicinity of Tranquility. The revolutionary she’d arrested agreed with their assessment.
Perhaps she had not chosen the most efficient means to rid the Nine Thousand of the world breaker, but the committee agreed that the task had been accomplished without the delay of debate and with no real loss. It was decided that a year’s suspension would settle the issue.
Diamond was happy. “We can follow Dad. Travel all together for a year.”
“Maybe we will,” Violetta conceded as they walked home together.
Diamond looked up at her with a coy gaze. “By the way, the Revolutionaries have been talking to me again. They have new assignments.”
This brought Violetta to an abrupt stop. She put her hands on her hips. “Did you know that the amnesty rule only works once? Diamond, I swear, if you—”
“Mom! Take it easy. I told them I resigned. I think now I might want to be a hunter.”
Violetta scowled and started again for home. Only after a few steps did she grudgingly admit, “I think you might be a good one.”
LINDA NAGATA has won both the Nebula and Locus Awards. Her most recent work is the Red trilogy, a series of near-future military thrillers published by Saga Press. The first book in the trilogy, The Red: First Light, was a nominee for the Nebula Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and was named a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2015. Book 3, Going Dark, was runner-up for the Campbell Award. Linda has lived most of her life in Hawaii, where she’s been a writer, a mom, and a programmer of database-driven websites.
She lives with her husband in their long-time home on the island of Maui.