27.0

Boz had messaged Ravi, asking him to come to the Fiji bolt-hole, but Ravi had refused. His time with Sofia over, everything arced crosswise in his head: Sofia, the girl, the transponder problem—everything. The ship, the fleet—his entire world—felt like it was closing in on him. He couldn’t think straight. He couldn’t see a way out. He couldn’t breathe. The last thing he needed was to be stuck in a confined space with Boz and her bescumbered cigarettes. He needed to get away from it all. If only for a little while.

Meet me in Australia, he’d messaged back. Haiphong Circular. Twelve o’clock spoke. Don’t be late.

Arriving before his cousin, he waited as patiently as he could, leaning against a Fourth Gen mural of dubious merit and enduring curious glances from well-watered passersby. Boz, perhaps sensing from afar that her cousin was on the ragged edge, jumped off the spoke-twelve paternoster more or less on time.

“We need to talk,” she said, without pausing for pleasantries. “But not here. Somewhere less . . . public.”

“Later. We’re going to the movies.”

Boz let loose a sigh of disapproval.

“The movies? We have more important things to do. Much more important.”

“Nothing that can’t wait a couple of hours,” Ravi insisted. And then, when it looked like Boz was going to fight him: “I need this.”

“This is your old man’s fault,” Boz grumbled. “He should never have gotten you hooked on these things.”

“He did love ’em,” Ravi agreed. “Some of the best times I ever had with him were right here, watching movies.” Ravi paused, suddenly unable to go on. He could feel a tear pricking at the corner of his eye.

“Okay,” Boz said, pretending not to notice. “What are we going to see?”

Ravi took a deep breath. Righted himself.

“The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Humphrey Bogart, nineteen forty-eight.”

“Nineteen forty-eight? Are you sure? Weren’t they still, like, riding horses and shooting muskets and stuff?”

“I’m sure. You know movies started in the late nineteenth century, right?”

“If you say so.” Boz’s eyes glazed over as she accessed the hive. When they focused again, they were accompanied by a serving of disapproval. “This is one of those Homeworld things I just don’t get,” she complained. “It’s, like, totally sarded up.”

“Why?” Ravi started off along the circular, heading for the Roxy, the only “authentic” movie theater in the entire ship.

“Because the whole film’s about a bunch of guys hunting for gold. I mean, who does that? It’s gold!” Her left hand ran down the fingers of her right, ticking off objections. “You can’t drink it, you can’t breathe it, you can’t eat it, and you can’t really wear it. And on top of that, it’s heavy. The amount of fuel you’d have to burn just moving it around is insane. The stuff is worthless! And yet, for some sarding bizarre reason no one has ever explained to me, these people keep thinking it’s worth killing for.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Like I said: sarded up.”

“Maybe they liked it because it’s shiny,” Ravi joked. The Roxy was just ahead of them, an old-style revolving door underneath an equally old-style awning that announced the movies “now showing” in solid letters that had to be placed there by drone. A small trickle of stylishly dressed people was headed to the entrance. Couples mostly. And mostly Sixth Gen . . .

Ravi slowed to a halt. Boz almost ran into the back of him.

“What’s up?” she asked.

Ravi didn’t answer. He was too busy staring at Jaden Strauss-Cohen. And the woman-who-wasn’t-Sofia nestling against him and nibbling at his ear. Shorter than Sofia and with more curves, she looked both beautiful and vaguely familiar. The name crept to the tip of his tongue and stayed there, refusing to go any farther.

“That’s Ksenia Graham,” Boz whispered in his ear. “Quite the thing in hydroponics, I’m told.” Her voice vibrated with mischief. “I wonder what she could possibly be doing with your navigator’s boyfriend!”

Ravi remembered now: a junior botanist maybe two years older than he was. He’d seen her briefly in the Tank nightclub, just after Vasconcelos had busted their hack of the personnel files. Sofia, he recalled, had been glaring at her. With good reason, it appeared. Jaden was a gullgroper. And a two-timing one at that.

“How do you know her?” he asked Boz, still staring at the two of them.

Boz chuckled.

“I know a lot of botanists. Who do you think supplies me with tobacco?”

Ravi muttered something inarticulate in response. He was hoping the illicit couple were going to see a different movie. Of one thing he was sure: he didn’t want to be sharing a night-cycle out with them.

Perhaps, in his annoyance, he’d dropped some loose code into the hive. He’d certainly started a recording without even thinking about it, but that was internal and shouldn’t have leaked. Nonetheless, something made Jaden glance up and see him. He looked briefly displeased before smoothing his features into a welcoming smile. He peeled Ksenia off his shoulder and walked across to them.

“Good evening, MacLeods,” he said languidly. “What brings you two here? A bit out of your, ah, usual orbit, aren’t you?”

Boz was standing in Ravi’s blind spot, but he needed neither eyes nor coding to feel her bristle.

“We’re here for a movie,” his cousin said icily. “And nothing more. Unlike you and your . . . friend.”

Jaden winced as the shot hit home. But his smile returned almost immediately. He leaned in toward them, wrapping his arms about both their shoulders.

“Look: about that,” he murmured. “Sofia’s great and all, but she’s a bit . . . clingy. Know what I mean? There’s no need for any of this to get back to her, is there?” His tone hardened, just a little. “After all, Roberta, I’m guessing you’ll be needing legal services at some point in the future, yes? And I’m certain you want to stay as far away from the recycler as possible.” His smile widened into a grin, wolfish and unfriendly. “We wouldn’t want some, er, error to turn you into compost, would we?” He turned his attention to Ravi then, breathing into his ear. “And remember: Sofia wasn’t the only one who covered for you in the Tank. I did too. You do not want me going back to the Inspector with a sudden change of recollection.” He paused, as if struck by a sudden thought. “And if you’re not worried about yourself, think about what it would do to Sofia. She’d be an accessory to whatever it was you were up to. I doubt she’d thank you for getting her thrown off the program.”

He stepped back. Glancing from one MacLeod to the other.

“Good talk,” he said, satisfied by what he saw there. He turned on his heel and marched back toward Ksenia, arms wide and welcoming. Ksenia rushed into them just as quickly as she could get there.

Ravi tried to stop the bile from rising in his throat.

“Sard the movie. I’m not in the mood anymore.”

“Roger that.” Boz grabbed him by the hand. “Like I said, we need to talk.” She dragged him farther down the circular, pushing people out of her way as she did so. They were approaching the Tank nightclub. Off to one side, the walls suddenly disappeared, deliberately revealing the struts and piping of the ship’s innards. A sparse waist-level rail was the only thing stopping them from plunging a couple of dozen meters into the wheel rim, which, given the wheel was making turns for a full g, would be a seriously bad thing.

The indistinct sound of dance music could already be heard in the distance. Boz dragged him onto the catwalk leading to the Tank without breaking stride. Until, that is, Ravi pulled away.

“I’m not going in there. What makes you think I want to dance at a time like this?”

Boz spared him a pitying look.

“No one’s going dancing. And no one’s going to the Tank. Though you could do with living a little.”

And with that, she vaulted the catwalk rail and disappeared from sight. Ravi yelped in alarm.

“I’m down here, idiot.”

Ravi leaned over the rail. Boz was standing on a wide pipe a couple of meters below him.

Trying not to think about what would happen if either of them slipped, Ravi dropped down to join her. Boz skipped along the pipe back toward the circular. The pipe was meant to disappear seamlessly into the bulkhead and continue under the deck above, but one of the bulkhead panels had come away and no one had bothered to repair it. Boz dropped onto her stomach and wriggled into the unlit cranny beyond.

With a certain amount of queasiness, Ravi followed. He was bigger than Boz, so he scraped his back getting in, but he managed it. Once through, the space on the other side was big enough to sit up in and possibly stand. Ravi couldn’t be sure because it was almost pitch-black. The only light available was whatever managed to creep in through the same gap they had. Besides, standing in the dark just increased the chances of sliding off the pipe and into Archie knew what. He satisfied himself with sitting. His cousin’s vague outline loomed in the shadows beside him.

“How in hungary did you know this place was here?” he asked, impressed despite himself.

“I noticed it when we came here to hack the personnel files. And then I came back later to check it out.” She let loose a dry chuckle. “You can never have too many bolt-holes.”

His dad, he admitted reluctantly, had taught her well. Of course, if he’d taught her less well, she probably wouldn’t be on first-name terms with all the ship’s barristers and half the officers in ShipSec.

“So,” he asked, “what’s so important that you literally have to find a hole in the wall to talk about it?”

There was a small, startling flash as Boz lit up a cigarette.

“It’s about your last dream,” she said. “About the ‘weapons’ part of transponders and weapons.”

“I was going to tell you,” Ravi jumped in, anticipating what she was going to say next. “There’s a mass driver on the ship’s spine. Vlad and I saw Chen Lai inspecting it during the work shift.”

Dark as it was, he couldn’t see Boz’s expression.

“Mass drivers aren’t the half of it,” his cousin replied. The red glow of her cigarette flared brighter as she took a quick puff. He could tell by the way it moved that her hands were shaking. “I’ve figured out what they’re doing at Manchester Passage.”

“Which is what?”

“That probe they’re building? It’s not a probe at all.” Even hidden away in the dark, her voice had dropped to a whisper. “It’s a sarding torpedo.”

Ravi could feel the blood draining away from his face.

“I knew it was too big for a probe,” Boz muttered. “I knew it. Way too much fuel capacity; Mark Nine thrusters. And the software . . .” Now her voice was shaking in time with her hands. One of them struck out through the gloom and grabbed him by the wrist. The grip was cold and unsteady. “All that programming they asked me to do? The stuff that was too secret to talk about? Even with you?” Her fingernails were digging into his wrist. “They let me build them a killer, Ravi. Standard autonav takes you from point A to point B in the most fuel-efficient way possible. I built this thing so it could hunt and evade. It’s not a LOKI like your little present, but it’s not far off. I thought it was to track down small moons and avoid collisions. But it’s not. It’s to track down and kill the Newton!” To Ravi’s horror, Boz had started to cry. “I knew the parameters were too high-end, too demanding. But I didn’t care. I was too blinded by the fun of it to think about what I was doing. And now I’ve built them a killing machine.” She stopped to draw a long, ragged breath. “I might be many things, Rav, but I’m not an executioner.” Her voice was so low, Ravi could barely hear it. “There must be thousands of people on that ship. Thousands.” Another wretched sob. “Niko Ibori has turned me into an Archie-damned, sarding murderer.”

Ravi was quiet for a long time, unsure of what to say.

“How’d you find out?” he asked in the end, cursing himself for a fool even as he did so. Why couldn’t he say something nice? Something sympathetic? His cousin was crying, for Archie’s sake.

Strangely, though, the question, matter-of-fact as it was, seemed to calm Boz down.

“It was those sarding compartments,” she said, sniffling. “Stupidest place to build anything ever. It’s not just that they shouldn’t be there; it’s that most of ’em can only be accessed from space. So, I snuck outside at the end of a shift when no one was watching and took a look around. The hatches are pretty much invisible, even when you’re standing next to them. But if you’re hiding behind a vacuum tarp when the Chief Engineer and a bunch of his senior officers come out of the same airlock you just did, and you see them open them up by pushing a bunch of buttons—buttons, if you can believe that—then everything becomes pretty sarding obvious.” She took a long drag on her cigarette, the tip glowing brightly enough to light up her face. She looked drained, almost weary. “The compartments are full of combat stuff: stealth armor, proximity fuses . . . nuclear warheads.”

Ravi felt suddenly dizzy. He remembered the radiation alarm when he and Boz had dropped under the deck at Manchester Passage. How not all of the radiation had been coming from outside. He tightened his grip on Boz’s hand, worried he might fall off the pipe.

“They’re running double shifts,” Boz continued. “The first one thinks it’s building a probe. The second one, the one after everyone else has knocked off, is weaponizing the hungary out of it.” A humorless chuckle. “I was almost out of air before I was able to sneak back in.”

“Can we disable it?”

“I think so. I just need to figure out how—and soon. They’re almost . . .”

The pipe beneath them jerked to the sudden sound of an explosion. The two of them were thrown to one side. Ravi tried to hold on, but the pipe was too round, too smooth for his fingers.

He fell.