32.0

The dragons will come for you.” Of all the girl’s words, these were the ones that stuck. He remembered dreaming her dream. The Newton, stark against the blue-dusted stars. The sinuous, shimmering creatures that shadowed her across space. The cool glint of the dragon’s eyes, close-up and merciless. The inferno of its breath.

But above all, he remembered the girl. The way she had readied herself for the creature’s onslaught. Her barely controlled terror.

“The dragons will come for you.”

He hopped off the paternoster on deck twenty-one, circled around to the “up” side, and hopped on again. A passing crewman gave him a curious look but said nothing. He dropped a cloaked message into the hive and watched it disappear into the data stream. His cousin’s guardware was doing its job. As far as he could tell, there were no tracers attached.

Boz, its Ravi. Sarding Big Deal. Drop what you’re doing and meet me in the usual place, ASAP.

He signaled in sick, explaining to admin that his arm was playing up and he needed to see the medics. Then, as the arthritic clatter of the paternoster pulled him back up toward the hubs, he concentrated everything he had on the cracked plastic of the rungs. His hands were shaking. He didn’t want to fall.

The abandoned control room was empty when he got there, but not for long. Boz arrived less than five minutes later, perspiring and out of breath. BozBall rolled along at her side. She flashed him a reckless grin.

“So,” she asked excitedly. “What the hungary is going on?”

Ravi told her. Boz’s grin vanished.

“For real?”

“For real.” He tossed over the vector the girl had left him with. Boz’s eyes glazed over as she caught and read it.

“We’re going to have to steal a lifeboat,” Ravi said gravely.

“Yeah, right. Even if we could steal one, they’d hack the autopilot or shoot us down with one of those fancy new mass drivers. And even if we somehow made it to Newton, I doubt they’d treat us any better.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“Of course I do. Have you even looked at this vector?”

“Well, duh. Off the ship to Newton. Hence the need for a lifeboat.” Even as he said it, however, the twinkle in Boz’s eye gave him the distinct feeling he was making a fool of himself. His cousin’s ever-widening grin did nothing to lessen the sensation.

“How far away do you think Newton is?” she asked. “Two hundred thousand klicks? Three?”

“Something like.” The one thing they knew for sure about Newton’s position was that she was somewhere out beyond the Bohr. And Bohr was never much closer than a hundred thousand kilometers. Best guess, she was at least that far again from the Bohr; otherwise, she’d be too easy to spot. If Ravi was a betting man, he’d guess closer to three hundred thousand rather than two.

“And we have less than thirty-six hours to get there, yeah?”

Ravi nodded, convinced more than ever that he must be missing something.

Boz bounced his own vector back at him, an embarrassing detail highlighted in throbbing red. The velocity.

“How long,” she asked sweetly, “would it take to get there at fifty meters a second?”

Ravi felt like a fool. Trainee engineer that he was, however, he couldn’t stop himself from dragging the answer out of his chipset.

“At least forty-six sols and change,” he mumbled.

Boz cupped a melodramatic hand to one of her ears.

“I didn’t catch that. How long?”

Ravi couldn’t help but laugh at his own stupidity.

“Forty-six sols,” he grinned at her. “If all we have to do is boost ourselves to fifty meters a second, we can do that in EMUs.”

Boz, though, didn’t smile back.

“This sarding vector of yours can mean one of only two things,” she said. “Either your dyed-blonde friend has a ride waiting to pick us up, or—”

“We’re going to die out there.” Ravi pushed the thought to one side, afraid to look it in the eye. “We need suits. An extra supply of air, water, and suit rations. EMUs, of course.” He paused, chewing the bottom of his lip. “Anything else?”

“About a million liters’ worth of luck,” Boz said. “If you can scrounge up the rations, I’m pretty sarding sure I can get us access to the rest.” She paused a moment, thinking. “I’m not sure about the EMUs, though. I mean, I can, but the security protocols are, like, vile. It could take a really long—”

“Leave the EMUs to me.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.” He hoped to Archie he was right.

“Well . . . great!” Boz flashed him a reckless grin. “Are we going to do this, or what?” Without checking to see if he was following, she exited the control room, bouncing with every step.

Ansimov practically dragged him through the diner kitchens and into the storage unit, worried, no doubt, that they might be overheard.

“You want me to what?”

“Lend me those racing EMUs—and three sols’ worth of the diner’s suit rations,” Ravi said again. He was surprised at how low-key he managed to sound—as if asking for suit rations was the hard part.

Ansimov leaned his back against a freezer. Perhaps he needed the support.

“Did you crack your motherboard or something? No sarding way!”

“C’mon, Vlad. It’s not like your guys’ll be needing them anytime soon, is it? Formula EMU is over—maybe forever. They’re not going to miss a couple of useless vehicles. Not for a while, anyway.”

“And if I ‘lend’ you these EMUs”—Ansimov curled his fingers into air quotes—“when will I get ’em back?”

“I don’t know.”

“Will I get ’em back?”

“I hope so.”

“You ‘hope?’ You sarding hope?”

Ravi nodded, his expression miserable. A real MacLeod, he knew, would have lied his ass off, but he couldn’t do it. Ansimov was his friend. His stomach knotted at the thought of what his dad would be saying right now. Whaddya mean, you told him the truth? What kind of bescumbered idiot are you? You’re not a MacLeod, boy; you’re a sarding loser! He’d have been belted, for sure.

For sure.

Ansimov was looking at him shrewdly.

“How much trouble you in, amiko?”

Ravi’s breath exploded into the room. A psychic release.

“A lot.” Just admitting it out loud made him weak at the knees. He held on to a rack of dried soy, just in case.

“Officers out to get you?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

Ansimov grunted noncommittally. He levered himself off the freezer and made his way down a tightly packed produce aisle to his own, food-free corner of the unit. Team Spike’s racing EMUs, fully serviced, wiped down, and gleaming, were still where Ravi had last seen them, sitting majestically atop the delivery bot’s trailer. Ansimov clambered into one and sat down, a medieval king to Ravi’s wretched peasant.

“Assuming, just assuming I’m insane enough to go along with this, I don’t want my implants anywhere near it, understood? Can you do that, at least?”

Ravi nodded.

“I just need you to give me the delivery bot’s device ID. I’ll pass that on to . . . someone, and someone will hack the bot and use it to make an unsanctioned delivery. All you’d need to do is make yourself scarce for a couple of hours, preferably somewhere where people can see you. Afterward, just report the theft to ShipSec, and that’ll be an end to it.”

Ansimov pursed his lips.

“And if ShipSec traces all this to you?”

Ravi allowed himself a wry smile.

“I’m a MacLeod, remember? They won’t be looking any further.”

Ansimov chuckled.

“I don’t know what you’ve got yourself into, Ravi, but you’ve got yourself a deal.” He held out his hand, the grip warm and insistent. “You’re my best friend, amiko; you know that, right? Stick it to the bastards, okay? And come back safe.”

“I’ll do my best, Vlad; count on it.” Tears pricked at Ravi’s eyes. He made to go but turned back, his business unfinished. “And the three days’ of suit rations?”

“I’ll stick it in the EMUs.” Ansimov laughed at him outright. “No one tracks suit rations, Rav. They’re disgusting. Who would be dumb enough to steal ’em?”

Ravi was staring at the trojan. The one he had collected from the outside of the lifeboat. At least, he thought it was that one. The one that had somehow made the other three. Two of which were stashed away in lifeboats en route to the rest of the fleet, while the other was Archie knew where—hanging about Main Navigation, probably, waiting for its chance to wreck the transponder controls.

This one was lying on top of the clothes in his space chest: a boring black ball that could have passed for some childhood leftover, part of a game long since sent to the recycler.

Ravi knew better, though. The boring black ball was a LOKI. Small though it was, it had some level of intelligence. Maybe a lot.

Something that clever might be very useful where they were headed, he thought. Otherwise, he was packed and ready to go. Boz was on her way. All he had to think about right now was the trojan. He reached out, not for the first time, to add it to his toolkit.

And, not for the first time, he pulled his hand back.

He was looking at a LOKI. A LOKI. He rolled the word around in his head. It orbited the inside of his skull in uneasy circles. A LOKI. The thing First Crew had boarded ship to get away from. The creation that had almost devastated a planet and turned the bulk of humanity into obedient, risk-averse drones. LOKIs had proven themselves to be fearsome enemies—and even worse friends. And as for this one, who knew where its loyalties really lay? It was a creation of the Newton, the unseen shadow that was trying to kill them. What would happen if he returned it to its home? Would it turn on him? Find some way to betray him? Were he and Boz just pawns in some devious LOKI plan to replicate Homeworld on Earth 2.0?

And then he thought about the girl. About her crooked smile, and strange accent, and wickedly sharp tongue. About cake and peace meetings. About S-band transmissions. He trusted the girl. And the girl, in earning that trust, had put herself in some sort of danger. The girl was brave and trying to do something bigger than herself, bigger than her ship. The girl was trying to save them all.

And the girl had sent him the trojan.

He reached into his space chest, picked the LOKI up, and put it in his toolkit. He’d barely closed it up when the buzzer to his quarters sounded. He unlocked the door without even looking, checking the clock as he did so.

“Come on in, Boz. It’s not like you to be early.”

“Probably because I’m not Boz.”

Ravi stiffened. Vasconcelos. He was standing in the threshold, hand resting lightly on the doorjamb. The boxy hulk of a security drone lurked in the corridor outside.

Ravi swallowed hard.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” He’d wanted to sound unconcerned but failed miserably. His voice came out high and strained.

Vasconcelos didn’t answer, at least not directly. He stepped into the cramped space that served as Ravi’s quarters and looked around, as if seeing them for the first time. He reached out and touched the bottom of Ravi’s bunk, which was folded into the wall.

“It doesn’t look very comfortable,” he said. There was no sympathy in his voice. “I don’t imagine you sleep very well.”

“I sleep just fine.”

“Maybe you haven’t been sleeping as well as you think.” He poked inquisitively at the mattress. “Maybe you’ve been sleepwalking.”

Ravi’s heart started to thump. Where the hungary was Vasconcelos going with this?

“Do you remember where you were on the morning of Sol forty-eight, three three two?” the inspector inquired languidly. “Around zero two hundred?”

“Should I?” Ravi stalled. He was pretty sure he knew the answer. He hoped against hope he was wrong.

The inspector tossed a data packet at him.

“At zero two oh seven on Sol forty-eight, three three two, when you should have been fast asleep in that awful bunk of yours, records indicate that someone opened up the number seven boat elevator. At zero two forty-one, that same elevator stopped at the thirty-five-hundred-meter docking pylons and requested admittance to ISV-one-LB-zero-three Spirit of St. Petersburg. Admittance was granted because the request was made on behalf of Midshipman six dash eight five five two MacLeod, Ravinder T., whose access rights had not yet expired. At zero two fifty-three, someone activated a model seventeen extravehicular inspection drone—serial number in the record—using the access rights of—you guessed it—Midshipman six dash eight five five two MacLeod, Ravinder T.” The Inspector’s hard glare pinned Ravi against the bulkhead. “Unluckily for you, son, the drone’s log wasn’t wiped. It’s full of video. Interesting video.”

Ravi watched in horror as the downloaded log kicked off in his head, replaying the little machine’s drift across the lifeboat’s hull. He saw once again how it paused underneath the flight-deck window, reoriented itself, slid across the paneling, and located the unyielding black sphere of the trojan. Trojan in pincered grasp, the inspection drone jetted rapidly across the flight-deck window on its way to the nearest wide-open airlock, where it gently deposited its cargo before returning to its storage hatch. The video ended.

“Funny thing about video. It’s not like the human eye at all. The human eye, the un-engineered one, anyway, is kinda lazy. It sees only what it needs to see to get by from one moment to the next. Something could be right under your nose—it could be your nose, come to think of it—but if your eye doesn’t think you need to see it, the Archie-damned thing might as well not be there.

“Video, on the other hand . . .” Vasconcelos shot Ravi a pitying smile. “Video . . . is different. It sees everything there is to see, whether it needs to or not.”

Vasconcelos tossed over the tiniest chunk of data, a freeze-frame from the drone’s camera-feed.

“That drone of yours was jetting full-bore for the upper starboard airlock. It knew where it was going, and it wasn’t interested in the flight-deck window, not even a little bit. But the window was in the camera frame for just a fraction of a second. And that was enough, wasn’t it?”

Ravi felt sick. The image of the flight deck through the thick glass was blurry, and a lot of it was washed out by the reflected light of the Destination Star. But it was clear enough to catch Midshipman 6-8552 MacLeod, Ravinder T., sitting in the pilot’s seat.

Vasconcelos was looking at him with something bordering on hatred.

“You brought an unauthorized device aboard this ship, son. Sols later, you’re picked up meters away from a terrorist attack, with some circuit-broken story about inspecting a bulkhead.” The inspector’s eyes narrowed. “What were you really doing down there, I wonder? Planting another bomb?”

Ravi was shaking.

“You’ve got this all wrong,” he stammered. Not that Vasconcelos getting it right would have been any better.

Vasconcelos was unimpressed.

“Tell it to the ombudsman,” he said flatly. He leaned forward until he was only centimeters from Ravi’s face. Ravi could feel the heat of the man’s breath. “You’re going to the recycler for this. And no one here will shed a tear for you. Your family has always been Dead Weight, MacLeod. But even for them, this is a whole new low.”

He turned his attention to the security drone.

“Take this pile of unrecycled excrement to the brig and book him,” he ordered. And to Ravi: “Put your hands behind your back.”

Ravi did as he was told. Tears of shame burned at his eyes.

The security drone lumbered forward, the stubby barrel of its dart gun pointed straight at his chest. A pair of handcuffs was suddenly dangling from one of its appendages.

The drone came to an abrupt halt, swaying slightly. The barrel of the dart gun swung swiftly away from Ravi.

And fired.

“What the . . .”

Vasconcelos stared in bemusement at his chest. The red-tufted feathers of a dart were protruding from between the buttons of his uniform.

He collapsed to the deck in a heap, snoring softly.

Boz’s head, complete with reckless grin, appeared in the doorway.

“I always wanted to hack a security drone,” she said.

Ravi, for his part, was still standing with his hands behind his back, staring stupidly at the crumpled form of the ShipSec commander. Boz thumped him on the shoulder.

“Wake up, idiot. We need to get the hungary out of here.”