CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

1664

YEAR OF THE CRUX

The Risen Wave

Orbiting Jeve

Jun has spent years imagining a final showdown with Esek Nightfoot. Even in her fantasies, she knew she probably wouldn’t survive it, so she always pictured unexpected disruptions, interventions, surprises, that gave her the upper hand.

Now, standing in this train car and watching—them?—crouch next to a probably dying Cleric Chono, she thinks the surprise must be a hoax. There’s no way she misheard what this… person has said to Chono, and there’s no way Chono is faking the look of blank shock on her blood-drained face. Which means either it’s true, or Esek Nightfoot is fucking with both of them. Something Esek Nightfoot is quite capable of doing.

Apparently, Jun isn’t the only one to consider this.

“You’re lying,” Chono says. Her voice is a harsh whisper, and Jun wouldn’t even be able to hear it except, to her own surprise, she’s stepped up close to them, disarmed by her own confusion and shock, lured to their small knot of confidence like an insect seeking light. Chono says again, “You’re lying,” and this time she sounds raw, strained, caught on the cusp of a sob.

“You know I am not,” says this—this not Esek. “I believe you may even have suspected this for some time.”

They don’t sound anything like Esek, Jun suddenly realizes. In fact, they sound like—

“You,” Jun whispers.

For the first time since their confession, they look around at her. It’s hard not to flinch at the blaze of those eyes, the exquisite symmetry of that bone structure, the mouth with its natural, cruel curve. They look nothing like the stranger from the safe house.

“You may call me Six,” they tell her.

“Six,” whispers Chono, her eyes wide and white-rimmed.

When Six turns to look at her again, Chono looks back with a mixture of longing and horror that makes Jun’s stomach clench, sure she is witnessing something that does not belong to her. But then the cleric starts breathing harder than she was before, a new, sweaty pallor on her face. On instinct Jun casts out toward the medical kit, pulling up the array of her vitals. She’s losing blood, and yet her heart rate has skyrocketed—a deadly combination. Jun locates a swarm of suture bots in her chest, which are struggling with a tear in her major artery.

“You need to sedate her,” Jun says.

“This kit is practically empty. I have already given her the strongest drug.”

“She’s built like a freighter; give her more.”

Six growls, “There is no more.”

Jun holsters Great Gra’s gun, pulling her satchel out of her inner pocket and crouching beside the two clerics (no… the one cleric). She unrolls the satchel and finds a syrette of morpho, twice the dose of what Liis gave her on The Gunner. She holds the syrette out to Six, who looks at it for a moment, and then looks her in the eye.

“If this hurts her, I will kill you.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Jun mutters, and jams the syrette into Chono’s shoulder.

The cleric passes out instantly, eyes rolling back. Esek—Six—catches her lolling head gently, and Jun sees the tourniquet around their elbow. Up close, there’s a sheen of sweat on Six’s body; they look slightly pale, even weak. Did they really survive a fight to the death with Esek Nightfoot, only to exsanguinate themself trying to save this woman?

Of course they did, murmurs a voice in Jun’s head. Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t Liis?

“You should sit down,” says Jun flatly, standing up again and walking a few steps away. The thought of Liis drains the life out of her. She checks her various casting projects. “We should reach the next station in… less than five minutes. Let’s see if the Jeveni believe your story, or shoot you first.”

“I can handle the Jeveni,” says Six in a cold voice.

“All right, well. Like I said. Five minutes.”

Then, as if to mock her, the train comes to a sudden, screeching halt.

It throws her across the car—the nearest seat rams into her torso so hard it takes the wind out of her. She manages to get herself upright again, throwing out a dozen different lines, casting for an explanation to how she lost her grip on the train.

“Jun?” a voice crackles over the train’s intercom. Jun’s head snaps up, staring into the nearest speaker. “Jun, can you hear me?”

She establishes a comm link with the flick of her wrist. “Masar?”

“Oh, thank gods. We thought you were dead!”

“How the fuck did you take control of my train?”

“That’s why I thought you were dead! Or at least—I don’t know—distracted?”

Fair.

“Where’s Liis?”

“I don’t know. My people got to Ketch Market but—it was a bloodbath. We think we’ve routed most of the cloaksaan, but we can’t be sure. The Wheel only managed to get control of the train when—”

“Why?” snaps Jun, her whole body vibrating with equal parts hope and despair. If he hasn’t seen Liis’s body, then maybe…“ Why did they take the train? I’m five minutes from the military station and I—”

“Jun, Esek Nightfoot is on the train! We saw her and that other cleric boarding!”

Jun stops. Her eyes roll heavenward. She breathes in slowly and lets it out, and turns to look at Six. They watch her with still features, eyes fathomlessly deep, offering nothing.

“I know,” she says at last.

A pause. “What do you mean you know? Have you seen them?”

“Masar, listen—”

“The rest of the Wheel are on this ship. They’re at the military station, Jun. You can’t bring Esek Nightfoot anywhere near them, not after what happened to Nikkelo. They have to be protected, no matter what, and you—”

His voice cuts off abruptly, the connections severed. Jun is already reaching to restore it when a new voice fills the car. Jun recognizes it from Kindom bulletins. Six’s face shows a different recognition. Jun turns away, casting for a signal location, reaching simultaneously for the controls of the train, as words flood her ears.

“Spokes of the Wheel. This is the First Cleric Aver Paiye, leader of the Righteous Hand, representative of the Kindom, steward of the Godfire and of the Treble entire. We are aware you are hiding amid your Jeveni loyalists under the pretense of Remembrance Day. We know you have instructed all your people, assimilationists and separatists alike, to converge in this place. Your intentions, whatever they may be, are irrelevant, as your formation of a government clearly violates the Anti-Patriation Act. We must therefore consider all Jeveni in orbit as criminal offenders, subject to Kindom justice. We will show leniency to your people if and when you surrender yourselves to the nearest cloaksaan. If you do not surrender, we will have to consider your actions a statement of rebellion. This will give us no choice but to respond with speed and force, and unavoidable loss of life. I am giving you thirty minutes to surrender in the hopes we can avoid such a tragedy on this day of all days. But that will be entirely up to you.”

There is a pause, but it’s not an end. Aver Paiye continues, and the formality of his voice relaxes an inch, replaced by something familiar and caustic.

“And to Esek Nightfoot, wherever you are hiding. You have betrayed the Kindom. You have attacked our cloaksaan. You have abandoned all honor and righteousness in service to your own selfish aims, and you will not be forgiven. If those who surround you hesitate to turn you over to us, to give us your body—living or dead—then I remind them that over eighty percent of the Jeveni have yet to dock with The Risen Wave. Fail to meet our demands, and we will begin the summary destruction of all ships orbiting Jeve.”

A beat of silence, as Paiye lets his message land.

“Peace, under the Kindom. Unity, in the Treble. You have half an hour.”

This time, the silence is a statement in itself. Jun looks at Six again, half expecting to see Esek Nightfoot’s cruel smirk, or hear some sneering jab (Do you think they’d mind that she’s already dead?) but there’s no such humor on their face. They look grim and shaken and that is what drives home the force of the Kindom’s threat.

Jun throws a holographic view into the space between her and Six, a star map with The Risen Wave at its center, and hundreds of satellite ships surrounding it. The number of Kindom vessels has doubled since The Happy Jaunt docked in Bay 7. It is more than enough to obliterate the Jeveni ships, to say nothing of what the Kindom will do once it has full control of those on the generation ship.

“They wouldn’t,” says Jun. “We’re talking about tens of thousands of people. It… it would be another genocide. They—they wouldn’t do it.”

Saying the words throws her back fourteen years, to the safe house in Riin Kala. But that’s wrong! she’d cried, and when Six looked at her without emotion—what shame she’d felt at her own naivety.

Six says, “Aver Paiye sent Chono and me on a mission to find a memory coin. He believes the coin implicates the Kindom in the Jeveni Genocide, and he believes the Wheel of the Jeveni has that coin now. What won’t the Kindom do, to protect itself from exposure?”

Jun shakes her head in confusion. Her memory coin damns the Nightfoots, but it doesn’t do anything to implicate the Kindom. She’s about to argue as much when Masar’s voice sings out through the comm—

“Jun? Are you there?!”

Jun swallows. “Yes, I’m here.”

This time he pauses, like someone who knows they might be about to step on a mine. “Are you alone?”

She looks at Six, helpless to think of a response. In the end, Six answers instead, “Masar Hawks. I know you know my voice. And I know you and your leaders must agree with the Kindom that I am on this ship seeking my own interests. You have no reason to trust me, but it is imperative I speak to the Wheel as soon as possible.”

Masar makes a sound halfway between disgusted choke and incredulous laugh.

“Yeah, that’s not happening. And if you’ve hurt Jun, I swear to the fucking fertility god you worship I’ll—”

“Masar, stop!” Jun cries. “You don’t understand, we—”

“Jun, what the hell is going on?”

“You have to listen to me,” Six barks, eyes flitting toward the unconscious Chono.

“You shut up,” Masar retorts. “Jun, are you—”

“Quiet, everyone.”

The new voice startles them all into silence. Jun, who’s got casting lines hooked in about twenty different projects, feels like she’s adding another wire to a sketchy bomb as she tracks this latest comm thread to somewhere in the military station. The voice is young, but stern.

“I realize this is a moment of heightened emotion, but there’s no time for it. Sa Ironway, if we survive, I look forward to meeting you properly. For now, I am going to ignore you. Esek Nightfoot, I am the Star, the Fifth Spoke of the Wheel. Please confirm you can hear me.”

Six glances at Jun. Jun (like she doesn’t have enough to fucking handle right now) starts tossing up more holographic views, mapping the positions of the Jeveni ships orbiting The Risen Wave. She’s not taking any of this shit lying down.

Six says to the air, “Yes, I can hear you, Sa Crost.”

A brief silence, full of assessment, before the person continues in a voice that sounds like someone narrowing their eyes, “Yes, my name is Effegen ten Crost. So, the Kindom knows all our names. I see. What about Cleric Chono? Where is she?”

Six and Jun both look at Chono, whose med kit shows sluggish progress. Jun hacks a Kindom medical feed and patches its AI to the suture bots, hoping they’ll be of some use to each other. Simultaneously, she runs an estimate of how long it would take her to hack all the Kindom ships and crash their weapons systems. First outlook is not good. She’s only got one fucking brain, hasn’t she?

Six says, “Cleric Chono was shot in Ketch Market. I believe she will survive if your medics—”

“We can address that concern momentarily,” interrupts the young voice, and Six’s face stiffens. “For now, it’s important you answer my questions quickly and honestly. Did you and your kin intend to execute the River when you boarded this ship?”

“I cannot speak for anyone’s intentions but my own. I believe Cloak Medisogo intended to arrest and interrogate him as a way to reach the Wheel. I do not know if they intend to kill you all. I was not made privy to these plans and was myself a target of the shooting in Bay 7.”

Effegen ten Crost asks, “Are your kin in earnest about destroying our ships?”

“Sa, as I say, I was not involved in plans to attack your people, and I—”

“Whether you were or not means nothing to me; there are seventy-six thousand Jeveni out there and I need to know if your kin are going to kill them.”

Six hesitates. “I believe they are capable of it, and—”

The Star interrupts, “I am a descendant of the refugees who fled Jeve, Sa Nightfoot, I know perfectly well what the Kindom is capable of. I’m asking you if this was their intention in coming here.”

Six falls silent, biting off a curse. Jun looks at them, wanting to help, but she’s got her own schemes going right now and no room for extras. Still, she never thought she’d look at that face and feel pity. They look genuinely lost; they look enraged, unable to say what they clearly want to say. They stare at Chono for two, three seconds, thoughts racing in their eyes.

Then, like a flipped switch, a calm drapes over them. When they speak again, gone is the stranger from the safe house at Riin Kala. It is Esek Nightfoot who chuckles aloud.

“What are their intentions in coming here? What the fuck do you think? They think you’re fomenting a damn rebellion. They think you have evidence that implicates them in the Jeveni Genocide, which of course you do. They’d rather wipe you out in one go than let you have power over them.”

Effegen ten Crost asks, “It would be better for them to openly perpetrate a genocide?”

Six sucks air through their teeth. “The Treble hates you, Sa. More than usual. The Kindom made sure of that when it shut down the gates and then gave you permission to jump to Jeve. They’ve propped you up over the common saan and spread rumors about your union leaders. They’ve created an environment where all they have to do is say you are rebels, and the systems will dance on your fucking graves. So, yes, you’d be wise to assume they’ll act on their threat. The question is what will you do? This ship is stacked with artillery. The Kindom probably disarmed it before they turned the ship over, right? But if you’re the survivors I know you are, then I’ll bet my life you’ve found a way around that disarmament. So you better get ready to shoot their fucking warbirds out of the Black. Because otherwise they’ll kill every last one of you.”

Jun’s head reels at the never-ending barrage of fucked-up shit she’s learned today, but the Star is conspicuously silent. There must be other conversations happening beyond the reach of Jun’s bouquet of casting lines, but she hasn’t got the time to track them down. She’s managed to hack the weapons system of three warhawks, but there’s too much going on around her. She can’t slip into it, not really, and even if she can program those ships to shoot each other, the Jeveni will still be fucked.

Effegen ten Crost returns.

“Thank you for your honesty, Sa Nightfoot. I can certainly imagine you taking such action, given the Kindom has declared your life is forfeit. Unfortunately, we’re not willing to put our people in the middle of a firefight. Tell me what will happen if we demonstrate that we are not rebels. If we turn ourselves over to them, and bring you with us, what will they do?”

Six pauses. To the Wheel it must read as Esek scrambling for a way to stay alive. But Jun, who’s on to plan B (mapping a comm link to every Jeveni ship in orbit), thinks Six’s sudden pallor is down to something completely different.

“You can’t turn yourselves over,” they say woodenly. “You’ll all be killed.”

“We are willing to die to save our people. Another Wheel will replace us.”

“Your people will be put in prison colonies. The ones that aren’t executed outright. It’ll be the end of the Jeveni.”

“The Jeveni have survived massacre before.”

“You won’t survive this.”

“We survived before by fleeing. Tell me what will happen if our ships flee?”

Six makes a strangled sound. “You’ve got to be—the Kindom will shoot them.”

“If we create a diversion?”

“There’s no diversion that’ll get fewer of your people killed than if you shoot the Kindom full of holes. Use your godsdamned guns and fight! You can’t run!”

Like plugging a cable into its power source, Jun feels the surge of realization go through her. Her whole body stills for an instant. Great Gra’s voice whispers in her ear, When I tell you to run, run.

And Liis’s voice whispers in her other ear, A con knows when to cut and run.

And before the thought, the name, the face of that ferocious woman can choke a sob from her, she calls out, “Sa Crost, please listen to me. I have an idea.”

Six looks at her narrowly. After a moment of weighty silence, the Star says, “Yes?”

“I think you should run.”

“They’ll be butchered,” Six snarls.

And Masar cries, “They’ll pick us off like target practice!”

“Not if they can’t see you!”

An immediate, startled silence. Six looks at her doubtfully. Masar makes a disbelieving sound. It’s Effegen ten Crost who says, “You’re speaking of your Hood program.”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe you—”

All at once her voice cuts off. First Cleric Aver Paiye returns. “It has now been ten minutes with no response to our ultimatum. We can only assume you have not yet surrendered because you think we are bluffing, or you are executing a plan to fight back. I have ordered the destruction of one of your ships. You have twenty minutes.”

He’s gone as soon as he came, and a moment later one of Jun’s views of the Black explodes like a star. She cries out. Six curses vilely. It only takes Jun seconds to identify the destroyed ship, a transport vessel out of Kator. The manifest lists over five hundred.

“How long will it take you?” Sa Crost’s voice slams back into the room.

“We’re talking about hundreds of ships, Jun,” Masar interrupts. “You can’t Hood hundreds of ships at the same time in less than twenty minutes.”

“Oh yes I fucking can.”

“How?” ten Crost snaps.

Jun throws her hands up, pulls in her lines, starts weaving and building furiously. “I’m already sending something out to your ships. To them it’s going to look like kill ware. Tell them to accept the code and let me in. I’m going to link them together and slingshot this shit from one end of the fleet to the other. Once they’re Hooded, they’ve got to run. Tell them where to run.”

Run, whispers Great Gra. Run!

And already the dreamscape is pulling her under. She’s never been able to resist—as vulnerable as a junkie, as powerful as a god. It rises like water over her head, pulling her in. Distantly she hears ten Crost telling her, “Do it!” and Masar saying, “Where are you? We’re coming to get you,” and Six, peculiar Six, slipping between Jun’s programs long enough to anchor her to their own exquisitely built neural link, a bomb in the head of a pin, a wealth of access and power she doesn’t even have time to thank them for. She reaches out; the Jeveni ships are like stars, like lanterns perched upon hillocks. Like birds calling each other’s names. She starts to build—a telephone pole. Yes! Yes, like in the old stories Great Gra told her. Wire and cable and radio waves. Miracle of early technology, the voice traveling continents in no time at all. Her Hood will travel at the speed of light. All over the hillocks, little birds open their mouths for her, swallow her kill ware, let her into their bellies, and she hooks them, each to each. Don’t worry, little birds, I won’t hurt you, I won’t hurt you.

I won’t hurt you, Liis swore to her.

But oh, gods, there are so many of them. There are so many. The telephone poles stretch for miles and miles but they’re not even halfway there. And her Hood! Her little threadbare Hood that she wove to throw over her own shoulders, to shroud her ship—it was never meant to stretch this far. It’s unraveling at the edges. It’s weaker with every duplication. Fuck fuck fuck she has to do this. You have to stretch, little Hood, the monsters have come to our station. The monsters are in our shop. They’re going to kill us and we have to run!

The sound of a door banging open cracks the shell of her fugue, brings her out of it long enough to look across the train car. And fuck if this isn’t the last thing she needs right now.

Vas Sivas Medisogo is standing in the doorway.