38

 

The moment Niccoluccio’s eyes closed, the lights flickered.

It happened so suddenly that Habidah nearly thought she’d blacked out. The pressure sealing her feet to the deck released, but only briefly. The lights returned exactly as they had: focusing on Niccoluccio, who slept.

Osia and her comrades floated lifelessly, their arms splaying out. Only their feet held them anchored to the deck.

A flood of data crashed into Habidah. Voices overlapped each other. So much of it was an unintelligible tangle, coded messages. The rest were cries for help, urgent requests for information, demands to stay calm. Voices from all over the planarship surged through her, too loud to drown out. She couldn’t think. She instinctively blocked signals from more than a hundred meters away.

She stepped past Osia and the others, approached Niccoluccio’s table. Steady breathing, gentle pulse. She tried to convince herself that she didn’t know what had happened, but she couldn’t manage it. The battle had taken place in a flash of milliseconds, before she realized it had started. The amalgamate had cut power to this chamber, an emergency attempt to stem the tide of data flowing out of Niccoluccio’s mind.

Then the power had returned. Either Ways and Means had restored it, or something else had.

Before Habidah could get any closer, a jet-black hand grabbed her wrist.

Habidah gave a gasp of surprise. Osia stood next to her, recovered from her fugue. Her grip tightened, painfully. “What did you do?”

She blinked, pretending – without having to try hard – to be at a loss for words. The strength of Osia’s fingers couldn’t hide their tremble. Habidah hadn’t realized anything could threaten her control. But she and her companions had never left her. They’d gone limp only while trying to figure out what was happening, putting their physical selves behind them.

Osia said, “Ways and Means isn’t answering me. Or anyone aboard.” She looked to Niccoluccio. “It happened a few milliseconds after the memory root began. There was some kind of virus inside him. And you brought it aboard.”

Osia watched her closely. Her face was expressionless. It was like staring into the dead eyes of a statue. She had to be scanning Habidah in multiple spectra, studying her reactions, the things she couldn’t help but give away.

She must have found what she was looking for, because her second hand snapped up and seized Habidah by the neck. Habidah choked from the surprise, but Osia wasn’t squeezing hard enough to restrict her airflow. Yet. Habidah tried to step backward, wheeled her free arm in a futile instinct to keep her balance. After a moment, she spat into the air because she couldn’t swallow and would have choked otherwise.

Habidah said, “And now you’ll have to kill me just to be certain I’m not part of it.”

“I’m already certain.”

One of the other crewmembers stepped to Niccoluccio, arm raised like a club. The crewmember moved in a blur, too fast to be human. Habidah didn’t want to see what happened next, but didn’t have the composure to look away

At once a sheet of lightning crashed down from the ceiling, intersected the crewmember’s arm. The crewmember took a few steps backward, knuckles glowing cherry-hot.

“Field-protected,” the crewmember transmitted, not bothering to encrypt the signal. A masculine voice. Had he been human, his skin would have been seared off his hand.

Osia answered, “He must still be important to whatever’s attacking.”

The third crewmember transmitted, “It must be in complete control of this chamber. It could kill us all with hardly any effort.” Also masculine.

Habidah tried to fight Osia’s hand off, but it was like hitting polished marble. Habidah couldn’t keep from scrabbling at Osia’s wrist. For several long seconds, she was sure that this would be the last thing she ever saw. But Osia’s grip held steady.

The deck lurched. Osia remained rooted to the deck, but Habidah’s legs wheeled through the air. Even Osia tilted sideways with Habidah’s momentum.

A second later, though, Osia recovered enough to plant Habidah onto the deck. The first crewman reported, “Dorsal deck crews report thrusters firing.”

Without Ways and Means’ communications systems, its crew had formed an impromptu relay chain to help important messages break through the chatter. Anyone in a position to observe something swiftly reported their news to their neighbors, who sent it on. Habidah tentatively widened the distance from which she allowed her demiorganics to receive transmissions.

Ways and Means’ stealth fields had shut off. All of its antimatter generators were spinning to life. Its aft drive was waking. And power was being shunted to its gateway generator.

All of which meant the planarship was making ready to slip between the waves of the multiverse.

A force the likes of which had taken out Ways and Means could probably have taken out its crew as well. Yet it had left them alive. It saw Ways and Means’ crew as beneath its attention. The crew had figured this out. Still, the paramount order among them was to cut off contact with the planarship’s mind. Any virus that disabled the amalgamate so quickly would transmit easily among them.

More scattered reports said that all the internal gateways and transport platforms had shut down. The crew was stuck where they were. Their assailant cared that much, at least.

Osia told Habidah, “You knew this would happen.”

Habidah said, “Better to say that I didn’t try to stop it.”

Another signal broke through all the others. It was a voice, a woman’s, amplified by the relays. Someone was at last trying to organize. She ordered everyone near a power conduit or generator to destroy it, to sabotage the planarship from the inside.

The crewman to Osia’s left sent, “There’s a power junction two hundred forty-three meters down the corridor. We’re the only ones mid-deck. We’ll need cutting tools and all of us working to get through the bulkheads in time.”

“I know,” Osia said, tightly.

Osia carried Habidah ahead, still holding her by the neck. Habidah choked, beat on Osia’s hand. She was deprived of air for only a moment, though, before Osia deposited her on one of the acceleration couches.

The moment her arm touched the cushion, it snapped there, held in place by invisible bands. The fields had a little give, just enough to keep from breaking her bones, but she couldn’t even bend her elbow.

She shot Osia a look of burning contempt. Osia gave no sign of registering it. She and her companions left via the chamber’s only exit portal.

Habidah looked to the center of the chamber.

Niccoluccio lay unmoving but for the steady rhythm of breathing. The burst of acceleration had splayed his hair sideways. His tonsure shone wan under the lights. “Niccoluccio,” she said.

For once, she figured they weren’t being listened to. Without Ways and Means functioning, she doubted Osia could spy through the chamber’s cameras. “Niccoluccio,” she tried again.

Still no change. She leaned as far as the restraining field allowed, which wasn’t much. Niccoluccio’s chest rose and sank every two seconds, as a person in deep sleep. His cheeks had lost their color. His eyelids flickered nervously, too fast for dreaming.

He wasn’t so much unconscious as somewhere else.

“Wake up,” she hissed.

She tested her restraints again. She knew of no weaknesses to exploit, no way to tell if the fields were working properly, no way to even make this more comfortable. The fields dug into her skin. It was impossible to restrain her reflex to fight to escape. More out of fury than hope, she wrenched her wrist against the fields.

The fourth time she slammed against the field, her hand yanked free.

The bands all over her body released at once. Her arm flew up, struck the cushion. The lights flickered and then went out.

The deck no longer gripped her soles. In infrared, she’d already risen a quarter meter above the heat shadow she’d left on the couch.

Osia and her cohort had gone to mess with the power systems, but she doubted they’d expected this. Something had gone wrong. Whatever was in charge of the planarship might have rerouted power to adjust.

The fields protecting Niccoluccio had dissipated, left infrared a fuzzy mess. Habidah could hardly see. Niccoluccio’s platform was a hot blur in the center of the chamber.

She half-twisted in midair, lashed her foot against the bulkhead to propel herself. Too late. Before she’d gotten a meter away, the lights restored. This time, the air surrounding Niccoluccio didn’t change in any spectrum she could perceive, but something popped and sizzled.

If Niccoluccio’s protective field had turned the crewman’s hands bright red, it would burn the flesh of Habidah’s face. Habidah drove her hands into the deck to arrest her momentum. The deck gripped her hands, slowing her.

Too late, her demiorganics trilled a warning about how her maneuver would end. Her legs flew over her. She flipped end over end. Momentum tore her hands away from the deck. She tumbled past Niccoluccio’s table, far overhead, and crashed knee first against the far bulkhead. The domed surface clung to her like the faux-gravity of the deck.

Crew reported power flickers all over the ship. Not every power conduit or generator was easily accessible, though. The planarship’s hijacker had been able to reroute most of those disabled. It had not even bothered to defend the remaining junctions, so little had it been affected so far.

Habidah was acting on dumb impulse, she knew. She couldn’t free Niccoluccio from the fields holding him. She couldn’t navigate the planarship. Even if she could, she had no way to get her shuttle out of its hangar. She had no plan, only a goal. There was no way to have planned for this.

She’d had no idea she’d possessed so strong a will to live. She’d boarded the shuttle expecting, sometime soon, to be killed. She’d imagined she would simply accept her end when it came to her. But this wasn’t how she wanted to die. Not, at least, while Niccoluccio was here as well.

She scrambled sideways, on her hands and knees, across the dome. She had nearly reached the deck when the lights failed again. The bulkhead lost its grip on her. She sailed helplessly, and crashed shoulder first into the deck.

The moment the lights returned, a figure pushed through the portal. Habidah’s crash had given her a lazy trajectory through the chamber. Her hands slipped loose of the deck. She was already out of arms’ reach of any surface. She steeled herself to confront Osia, but the person who’d stepped through was human.

Meloku.

She was still in native costume, minus the headgear. Her lips hung slack in mute horror. Her eyes darkened when she saw Habidah. She held onto the portal’s edge to push herself through, and planted her shoes on the deck.

Habidah twisted in midair. She couldn’t do anything to avoid Meloku. She started to ask, “What the fuck are–?”

Meloku braced against the deck, drew back her fist, and slammed it into the bridge of Habidah’s nose.

By the time Habidah realized what had happened, she was pinwheeling backward. The back of her tongue tasted of copper. She couldn’t breathe. Her demiorganics informed her they were blocking a tidal flood of pain signals. They struggled to regain control of her breathing.

She didn’t have the time to wait. The next time the deck spun past, she reached for it. The faux-gravity seized her palms, and brought the rest of her crashing onto her back. She swung her feet around to face Meloku. The other woman was already advancing.

Habidah’s demiorganics weren’t combat-rated, but she had a minimal self-defense program. Amid the flood of other urgent signals, she didn’t have time to listen to its suggestions. She lashed her foot ahead, aiming to catch Meloku by the ankle. Meloku sidestepped. She grabbed Habidah’s leg and slammed her elbow into it, just below the knee.

This time, her demiorganics couldn’t block the pain in time. Habidah’s world blurred black and red. Her demiorganics informed her Meloku had narrowly avoided breaking her leg. Her shin was fractured. Almost as an afterthought, they added that her nose was broken. As if the blood warming her upper lip wasn’t proof enough.

Habidah was almost glad the pain had gotten through. It jogged her focus.

Meloku shoved Habidah’s injured leg aside and stepped closer to get a better shot at her face. Habidah jabbed both feet against Meloku’s ankles. Meloku stumbled free from the deck plating, flailed through the air.

With demiorganics like hers, she shouldn’t have fumbled like that. Habidah wasted no time thinking about it. As Meloku passed overhead, Habidah drove the heel of her palm into Meloku’s stomach. Meloku whoofed.

Habidah stayed planted on the deck plating, sucking air through her teeth. Her demiorganics fought for her attention with increasingly shrill warnings. Her vision tinged red and black.

Meloku wheeled across the chamber. As soon as her feet made contact with the far bulkhead, the lights went out again. Again, the chamber vanished in an infrared fog of dissipating fields.

When it returned, Meloku had launched back, already halfway across the chamber, her face contorted with rage. In a flash of panic, Habidah spotted an ivory-handled knife in her hand. If she’d meant to hurt before, now she aimed to kill.

Habidah had just enough time to roll to her side before Meloku’s boot slammed into the deck where Habidah’s stomach had been. Habidah couldn’t roll fast enough. The deck plating grabbed at her, slowed her.

Meloku stepped closer and landed her boot in Habidah’s ribs. Meloku’s next kick found Habidah’s stomach, and then her chin. Her vision blurred dark again. She raised her arm as a shield. For whatever reason, though, Meloku hesitated to use the knife. Her next kick glanced off Habidah’s elbow.

Habidah seized Meloku’s leg while it was still in the air, and wrenched Meloku off the deck. The half-second that followed gave Habidah a chance to finally listen to her demiorganics’ self-defense programs. They had her yank Meloku forward, lock her knees with a raised leg, and then try to slam her head into the deck.

Meloku’s combat programs should have had plenty of time to react. Habidah was shocked when she completed her maneuver uninterrupted. Meloku reached to slow herself, but with merely human reaction speed. Habidah brought her crashing headfirst into the deck. She yelped and bounced away, pinwheeling into the air.

Habidah rolled onto her stomach to try to right herself, and the lights vanished again. Her head spun with her new sense of weight. The deck bashed into her chest and held her there tightly. Somewhere in the infrared haze, Meloku crashed to the deck. The knife clattered far away.

Ways and Means was moving again, faster and more violently. This was no thruster burst. The main engines were firing, sustaining a half-g of acceleration.

Ways and Means was breaking out of orbit before opening its gateway. Momentum held constant between planes. Habidah’s mind raced. Assuming it was transporting to a solar system like this one, it wanted to emerge at a high velocity. Used as a kinetic impactor, a ship this size could smash a world apart.

The lights returned. On the other side of the chamber, Meloku had fallen to her knees. She stood on shaky legs. Blood welled from torn skin over her left eyebrow. She was just as bruised as Habidah felt. She demanded, “Where are you taking us?”

Maybe that was why she’d held off from using the knife. Couldn’t ask a dead woman questions. “Do I look like I know what’s happening here?”

Meloku half-staggered across the chamber, toward Habidah. Habidah’s ribs flared in agony as she stood. She rested her weight on her good leg. Against an opponent with superior demiorganics, she was in no shape to win. But something was very obviously wrong with Meloku. She wobbled in the half-gravity.

Habidah slipped into a parrying stance, alert for any sign Meloku was faking her distress. Meloku feinted a blow to Habidah’s left, and then jabbed a fist toward her stomach. Habidah blocked it, and countered with a hard punch to Meloku’s chin.

Meloku stumbled back, visibly stunned. Habidah could hardly believe it. She took several steps back while Meloku recovered.

Meloku’s face screwed up with pain. She glanced sideways, to Niccoluccio. Habidah realized too late that Meloku was now closer to Niccoluccio than her.

Meloku stepped toward Niccoluccio. Habidah blurted, “Stop!”

Meloku looked to her.

Habidah nodded to the table. “There’s a protective field. It’ll burn your skin off.”

Meloku hesitated. Habidah said, “Test it if you don’t believe me.”

Meloku kept a careful eye on Habidah. Habidah stayed still. Meloku reached under her sleeve and tore off a sweaty, soiled piece of the lacy fabric underneath. She balled it up and tossed it toward Niccoluccio.

A flash of light wrapped around Niccoluccio’s table. Afterward, there was nothing left but a mushroom of rapidly dissipating smoke.

Meloku looked to Habidah. “Why would you tell me?”

Habidah said, “I don’t want to hurt anyone I don’t have to.” Just an excuse, a post-hoc rationalization. The truth was she’d blurted the warning without thinking.

Meloku wiped her lips. The back of her hand came back bloody. “I’d kill you if I could.”

“There’d be no point. I can’t control anything anymore.”

Osia and one of her companions stepped through the portal. There was no sign of the third. Osia halted. With a face like hers, it was impossible to read any measure of surprise. “I figured you’d get free when the power failed,” she said, nodding to Habidah, “but you I didn’t expect.”

“I came to try to stop this,” Meloku said.

Osia said, “You’re with her. You arrived together somehow.”

Meloku waved her hand at Habidah’s bloodied nose. “Do we look like we’re working together?”

Habidah barked a laugh. Of all the absurdities of the past few days, the one that stung the most was the fact that everyone still assumed she had some measure of control. Maybe she’d had some when she’d brought Niccoluccio here. But if Ways and Means hadn’t fallen to the virus in Niccoluccio’s mind, it would have been conquered in some other way.

She spun, and held out her arms. “It’s true. We worked together. We planned everything for years. Why don’t you just memory-root us and find out?”

Osia’s expression didn’t – couldn’t – change, but that didn’t keep her eyes from boring into Habidah.

Meloku told Osia, “You need to interrogate and neutralize her right now. She’s responsible for this, and she’ll do worse if she has any chance.”

Habidah waved offhandedly, like she might brush away a mosquito. “It’s hard to imagine this getting much worse from your perspective.”

Meloku told Osia, “My demiorganics have been knocked out for days. I had to open an emergency gateway to come here. Any signals you’ve received from me recently have been frauds.”

Osia kept that impenetrable gaze on Habidah. “This has all been orchestrated.”

The deck shifted. Habidah grabbed one of the seats to keep her balance. Pain shot through her ribs. A wave of panicked calls blotted out her demiorganics’ ability to receive them. This didn’t feel like an ordinary engine burst. Something had shaken the hull.

Meloku looked straight at Habidah. Demiorganics or not, Meloku had recognized that jolt. “We just jumped planes.”

Niccoluccio said, “To Providence Core.”

Habidah spun. Niccoluccio’s eyes were open, staring into the bulkheads.

Some frightened crewwoman was transmitting her view of the outside universe. She and several others had been on the outer hull before the attack. She had recorded an image of the instant the planarship had emerged: a flat black expanse, devoid of stars. Niccoluccio was right, at least in that they’d gone to a Core World. All of the Core Worlds were in vast interstellar dust clouds, hiding the light from other stars.

A swirled blue-white disk fell behind Ways and Means. The continents were in different configurations from how they were on Niccoluccio’s Earth. Ahead, a cloud of lights shone in far orbit – farther than the moon’s orbit, half a million kilometers away. Not stars, but stations, planarships.

But that instant’s view had been the only one. Everything had disappeared half a heartbeat after Ways and Means had arrived. The Earth distorted, curved, and appeared a hundred times on the other side of the sky. It was as if it had been reflected by a field of convex mirrors. Ways and Means’ defensive fields had sprung into place, twisting and distorting all the light reaching it.

There was no sign of the band of atmosphere that had once encircled the planarship. Not even a wisp of gas. Ways and Means’ menagerie must not have survived the acceleration or the jump.

For a moment, Habidah feared the planarship was aimed toward Providence Core, that it meant to crack that world open. But its engines faced away. It was headed directly toward the thickest portion of the artificial starry nebula. The weight pressing Habidah against the deck grew steadily stronger.

Osia stepped closer to Niccoluccio’s table, and stopped seemingly half a hair’s breadth from the protective field. She asked, “Are you speaking for the virus that’s hijacked our planarship?”

“It’s not a virus,” Niccoluccio said, still staring. He hadn’t blinked since he’d opened his eyes. “It’s a mind.”

“Answer my question.”

After a pause, Niccoluccio said, “I can speak to it. Not for it.”

Osia’s companion blurted, “Is Ways and Means safe? What did you do with its mind?”

“Ways and Means is dormant.”

Habidah’s knees buckled as the planarship’s engines increased thrust. It went from half gravity, to full gravity, and half that again. She kept her weight on her good leg, and still her demiorganics had to numb the pain.

The crewwoman outside continued to transmit. Flashes of light sparkled among the defensive fields. Providence Core’s defenses had not taken kindly to a planarship arriving without notification. Pulsed lasers struck Ways and Means, but dissipated harmlessly amongst the angled defensive fields. From the crewwoman’s perspective, the sky scintillated kaleidoscopic colors as the laser light bounced from field to field, scattering and dissipating.

Providence Core would have launched missiles and combat drones as well, but too late. Ways and Means had emerged at too high a velocity for them to catch up. Not before it reached its target.

The crew was puzzling out what that target was. The last any of them had heard, three amalgamates were visiting Providence Core: Foreign Operations, Risk Management, and Trade and Finance. They were somewhere ahead in the seashell-spiraled nebula of lights.

Osia said, “Let me speak to Ways and Means.”

Niccoluccio said, “It’s not in a state to talk directly.”

The other crewman said, “You mean it’s dead.”

“Dismembered.”

Osia’s fingers curled into a fist, but it was either a pointless gesture or a purely emotional reaction. It was the first time Habidah could remember any of the crew showing either.

Habidah said, “Niccoluccio, I don’t know how much you can remember, or use your judgment, but this is Habidah. Tell me what you’re seeing.”

“I don’t see. I’m a part of it. It’s using me. My capacity to process information. I’m a part of its network now, one synapse in a brain. It’s protecting me because of that, but it could do without me.” Niccoluccio’s vocabulary had changed since he’d returned from the gateway, but he hadn’t sounded like this before. His affect was that of a dead man, but she could still taste the sorrow in his voice: “I had no idea I would lose so much.”

Habidah swallowed past the heat in her throat. She asked, “Do you know everything it knows?”

His eyes were red for lack of blinking. “Most things.”

The deck rumbled as the engines accelerated harder. Habidah felt twice as heavy as usual. A drop of blood fell from her nose, struck the deck with a heavy splash. Her vision fringed red as more pain made it through her nerve blocks. Every part of her hurt. Her demiorganics tightened her blood vessels to keep her from fainting. She hobbled to one of the acceleration couches, holding its side.

Outside, the defensive fields pulsed iridescent, but dimmer and dimmer as the planarship put more distance between it and the planetary defenses. Habidah inhaled deeply. Providence Core was well defended, but the amalgamates ahead were far more so. It was hard to imagine Ways and Means besting three planarships.

But the virus’s plans wouldn’t necessarily include surviving.

Several crewmembers were trying to sabotage the planarship’s weapons. The voice of Osia’s missing companion was the nearest link in the relay reporting on their efforts. They were jamming drone bay doors shut, disabling missile engines. More crawled inside the hull plating to destroy field emitters and dismantle combat drones in their nests.

“Niccoluccio,” Habidah asked, fearing the answer, “how much of you is still you?”

Niccoluccio’s mouth opened and closed, but he didn’t respond.

Habidah heard an echo of her own voice. Osia was broadcasting this conversation. More and more crewmembers were listening.

Osia asked, “Is the same creature that sent you controlling our ship?”

For a moment, Habidah didn’t understand why Osia had asked. But Osia was astute. Niccoluccio surprised Habidah when he said, “No. It planted a seed in my memories. When you interrogated me, that seed spread its roots through your planarship. It’s like a branch of a plant that broke off and was replanted. The mind that’s in control of your ship is its own being.”

Meloku asked, “Did its creator also poison the Unity with the onierophage?”

After another long pause, Niccoluccio said, “Yes. Now it’s aiming higher.”

All over the planarship, crewmembers were trying to contact the other amalgamates. They had transmitters in their bodies powerful enough to reach the distant planarships. Their signals returned jumbled, layered atop each other, turned to shrieks and screams. Ways and Means bounced their microwave pulses between the same fields it had used to dissipate Providence Core’s lasers. Any signals sent their way must have been jammed in the same manner.

Osia said, “Your master can’t hope to destroy all of the amalgamates.”

Niccoluccio inhaled sharply through his noise. When he spoke, his voice was a rasp. Whatever demands the ship’s new mind had placed on him were amplifying. “Not destroy. Plant a seed. Like what happened here.”

If Osia could have lost a shade from her cheeks, Habidah suspected she would have. It took her a long time to answer. “I see.”

Meloku said, “I don’t. We’re not talking about gardening.”

Osia said, “We’re talking about spreading a virus. The virus must need close contact to spread. If it could infect the other amalgamates by broadcast, it would have done so by now. It could have infected us just by transmitting itself from the anthropologists’ field base. It went through the trouble of smuggling itself to us in this man.”

Meloku picked up her thought: “If the virus had come in a few bits at a time, Ways and Means could have figured out what was happening and destroyed it before it became complex enough to take over. The memory-root was different.” Like drinking from a geyser, Habidah figured. “Too much of the virus shunted into its mind to stop.”

Osia said, “It doesn’t need to win a battle. It just needs to fight. If it gets close enough to the other amalgamates, it will have myriad ways to infiltrate them. Infected drones latching onto their hulls and boring directly into a memory core. Or infected crewmembers brought for interrogation. Even if we’re blasted apart, we’ll leave behind bodies, escaped shuttles, memory cores, something that the other amalgamates will bring aboard to investigate.”

The crewman beside Osia said, “Most of our lower classes are already disabled by the onierophage. With the amalgamates gone and their planarships taken, there will be nothing left of the Unity.”

Osia raised a webbed hand and brushed gingerly against the edge of the field protecting Niccoluccio. Sparks spat from her fingertips. Niccoluccio didn’t even flinch. Habidah had seen the same eyes on the dead of Messina, Venice, Genoa.

Habidah asked, “Can you control your body? Are you suffering?”

Niccoluccio said, “It’s as if everything I’ve known was in a single thought, and I’ve become a mind.” For the first time, he closed his eyes, and then gasped and reopened them, as if something had just struck him. Habidah would have sold a great deal of herself to find out what was happening inside his head. “I hate it. I can’t see anywhere but there. I can’t move, can barely think.”

Habidah said, “I did this to you.”

“I went along,” Niccoluccio said. “I knew I would lose myself.”

Osia said, “The virus is using you. If I can get through this field and kill you, I may not stop it, but I can harm it. It will end your suffering.”

Habidah said, “You kill Niccoluccio, you destroy your only means of communicating with the monster.”

The voices from the back of her demiorganics doubled in an instant. All over the planarship, crew reported power shifts, hull segments going dark. Combat drones were launching. The crew had so far only sabotaged a fraction of their nest cradles. A handful of missing weapons seemed to amount to nothing at all.

That must have been the most agonizing part for an elite crew like this. They hadn’t been killed only because they weren’t worth the effort. They were too small. Maybe now they understood how Habidah had felt.

Osia observed, “It apparently doesn’t feel the need to negotiate.”
Habidah said, “Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but it answered your questions.”

Osia said, “Brother Caracciola answered them.”

Habidah’s legs ached from holding herself up against the hard acceleration, but she stayed upright. “Brother Caracciola isn’t here anymore.” If he ever had been. “He’s been made a processor. But think about that. Its thoughts are going in and out of him. That means they’re leaving changed. Even when the virus was in his memory, it must have been compressed and reshaped to fit him. You can’t convince me that didn’t affect it. Niccoluccio may be part virus, but the virus is part him.”

Osia said, “Whatever little bit of him might have been left before now was a tool, nothing more. The puppet of a parasite.”

Meloku, at least, seemed to give Niccoluccio a more considered appraisal. She asked Osia, “The ship’s processors and memory cores are more capable than an unaided human mind, aren’t they?”

“In most respects,” Osia admitted.

Habidah said, “Then there’s no reason it should continue to process information through Niccoluccio if it has a better alternative.”

Osia said, “Brother Caracciola’s brain may be able to do something that our shipboard processors can’t. Or it may be using him out of convenience.”

The other crewman said, “Or there may be something about him the virus can’t function without. A part of it might not be able to leave him. In which case, we’d be better served by killing him.”

“If we can,” Osia said.

Habidah said, “It might have also remained here to communicate with you.”

Osia stared at her. Tapping into the feed Osia was sending to the rest of the crew, Habidah saw a ghost image of herself: shaky legs, bruised cheeks, and bloodshot eyes. The voices from all over the ship quieted. For the first time, she felt the weight of their eyes. And of history. If and when the Unity fell to Niccoluccio’s master, she would be an arch-traitor to anyone left to remember her, a destroyer of myth. A monster like she’d never imagined.

That shouldn’t have bothered her. Not right now. But the eyes on her forced her to again ask herself if she might have missed something important. The way she’d imagined this going, the creature Niccoluccio carried wouldn’t have bothered speaking at all.

She said, “Now you know what you’re up against. There’s a force that’s marshaled against you in secret, poisoned the Unity with a plague you can’t even identify, and concealed a virus capable of toppling one of your almighty amalgamates inside this man’s memories. You have to know that you can’t defeat it. Certainly not now. It has no reason to either fear or respect you. And yet it’s left you this one method of communication.”

Osia turned her gaze back to Niccoluccio – the first sign that anything Habidah had said had had an effect. Habidah said, “You want to communicate. Communicate.”

Niccoluccio remained silent, staring, mouth half-open.

Nothing changed in the chamber, but the timbre of the crew’s voices jumped. Power spiked to the rear of the ship, to the beam point defenses. A crewwoman outside rushed to the edge of the hull and looked over. A tiny cloud of superheated vapor was falling into the planarship’s engine exhaust plume. Its spectrographic signature matched the crew’s artificial bodies.

Someone had “jumped” overboard, probably to get clear of the communications jamming. They would have died anyway when they’d reached the engine exhaust, but not before getting free of the defensive fields. They’d tried to sacrifice themselves. For the first time, the planarship’s new mind had stirred itself to recognize the crew’s presence.

Osia said, “It’s very diplomatic.”

Habidah shook her head. Something in the past few minutes had shocked the despair out of her. Maybe it was the blood rushing to her feet, or maybe Niccoluccio’s mind being torn apart as she watched. She had to get them to understand. She’d never felt so small, but never more like her words might make a difference.

“It, or Niccoluccio, or some combination, is giving us a chance. I doubt it feels the need to give us terms. It can get what it wants without troubling itself to negotiate. It’s asking whether we can give it what it wants. On our own.”

Osia stepped to the other side of Niccoluccio’s table, to allow the other crewman space. Meloku moved to her right. All of them watched Niccoluccio.

Niccoluccio’s breath increasingly came in gasps. He lolled his eyes about until he focused on an invisible, impossible distance.

As they watched, his chest stilled.