part0017

Milani turned over again, her hair worrying the back of her neck. Her joints ached. There seemed to be no such thing as comfortable anymore. No such thing as relaxing. She did her best to embrace the merciful darkness of her cabin, to wrap herself up in it while it lasted. Milani had prayed for the dark almost as often as she’d prayed for freedom. Along with silence and the sterile, recycled air of the starship and a comfortable temperature—welcome islands of relief among the constant illumination, the thrash music, the stink of rotting meat, the extreme heat.

She’d almost come to believe her liberation was true, not merely her mind’s strategy to help her survive. Any second, she expected the lights to flare and Helena Telemachus to barge into her cabin and begin the whole process over again.

“You thought you were free?” she’d say. “You’ll never be free.”

The door chime rang.

Milani’s eyes snapped open.

Telemachus had never bothered with the courtesy of requesting entry.

She sat up in her bed. “Lights.” The room brightened, Milani shying away instinctively. This cabin wasn’t the adapted quarters-cum-prison cell they’d caged her in before. Her eyes began to adjust, finding the 3D motion portrait of her parents. They smiled and waved from the small table at the foot of her bed. Milani released a breath she didn’t known she was holding and found herself grounded again.

“Come,” she said.

The door slid aside.

“Mind if I come in?” Kwazi asked.

Milani’s feet touched the floor. Something inside her heart ached, though it wasn’t a physical sensation. Odd, that. “Thanks for asking.”

He stood in the doorway with a questioning look, framed by light from the corridor.

“Sorry,” she said. “Come in.”

The door slid shut behind him.

“They sent me to fetch you,” Kwazi said. “For the announcement.”

Milani made room for him on the bunk, and he sat down next to her.

“The ship. Telemachus’s trial. You know … you. Your deliverance from SynCorp custody.”

Milani stared at her parents, smiling and waving in the moving portrait. They stood in one of the carved channels of the Antoniadi Crater on Mars, where she’d spent most of her childhood being bored to death while they studied the mineral formations in ancient riverbeds. Touching on the memory accented the ache behind her breastbone. It made her miss them.

“I appreciate all you and … your friends … have done for me,” she said. “I really do. But, Kwazi, I don’t want to be a part of this. I never wanted to be a part of it. I just want my life back. I want to go back to helping people at Wallace Med.”

He put his arm around her. Not so long ago it would have made her heart flutter. Now all she felt was a slow, burning tension forming between her shoulder blades.

“I know,” he said. It sounded compulsory, not understanding. “But things are different now. This is something greater than ourselves, Milani. This is our chance to kill the Company.” He gestured around them at the walls, the deck. “This is how we win.”

She looked at him and saw a bright blindness in his eyes. A willful devotion to a version of reality she still couldn’t understand and wasn’t sure she wanted to. The look reminded her of how she’d found Kwazi in the engine room when this ship had been called the Pax Corporatum , almost lifeless and nested in his own filth—divorced from the real world, lost in a deadly dream.

“How is the…” She was afraid to finish it. Afraid of him getting angry with her for asking, maybe? Or afraid of the answer. Maybe both.

“What?” he prompted.

“Dreamscape.” Milani held her breath.

Kwazi released his own. “It’s fine,” he said tightly. “I realize—I mean, I have Amy there, and we talk and we … I have Amy there. But there’s something else I can do to honor her, and that’s what I’m doing now, Milani. That’s what we’re doing.”

The way he emphasized we’re gave her pause. Did he mean the two of them, or did he mean him and Amy?

“We’re changing things,” he continued. “For the better.”

“Rebranding Tony Taulke’s starship something hopeful doesn’t change things,” she said. “Not really.”

Kwazi squeezed her shoulder. He was trying hard. Trying hard for her, she realized.

“But it’s a start,” he said. “The ship’s a symbol of freedom now, literally. Of liberation.”

She nodded, accepting his acceptance of that belief. Kwazi smiled. Was he assuming she agreed with him?

“Rabh’s regency is on its last legs now,” he said, encouraged. “Valhalla Station is boiling, ready to blow the lid off.”

“What do you mean?” Milani asked. “What’s happening?”

“You don’t know?”

She shook her head. The first thing Helena had done was to disconnect her sceye to make sure the only reality Milani knew was the world Helena created for her. A world of isolation and pain and persuasion.

“Earth is in turmoil. Mars is a Company fortress, but it’ll be broken soon. The outer colonies like Valhalla Station—their lifeline to food has been cut off.” He raised his hands. “The hydroponics and grain stores here will sustain the station for a while, but they’re not enough. You should see the vid protests on The Real Story . There aren’t enough SynCorp soldiers or marshals to contain it. This is what happens when the people rise up, Milani. This is how tyranny dies.”

The stars were in Kwazi’s eyes again. The fervent fire of a believer who’s absolutely sure he knows what heaven looks like.

“Here,” he said, excited, “let me show you.”

Kwazi pulled up CorpNet. The Real Story presented, in rapid succession, short videos from around the system. Five- and ten-second snapcasts showed the faces of men and women who mined Jupiter’s atmosphere despite the dangers. The miners on Callisto fancied themselves the modern descendants of Vikings, rugged and fearless, but the people in the snapcasts seemed anything but. Men, women, the occasional child—they looked frightened. Headlines praising the SSR scrolled across the bottom of the screen. A breaking news banner claimed the hydroponics dome on Callisto had been seized, followed by Cassandra’s promises that food distribution would begin soon. Was that doubt she saw in the eyes of the Callistans who’d heard?

“See? This is happening all over the system,” Kwazi said.

“They look scared, Kwazi. The people in the vids.”

“Well,” he said, gesturing at the screen, “they probably are. I mean, I don’t blame them. A lot has happened in a short time.”

A mother’s face, dirty and stretched by fear, flashed on the screen. A little girl, her daughter maybe, had her arms around the woman’s waist. There was no audio, but a spokesman interpreted the woman’s moving mouth as thanking Cassandra and the SSR for her deliverance. The woman was so happy she was crying, he noted.

“People are scared,” Milani said again. “Afraid their children won’t eat tomorrow.”

Kwazi sighed beside her. “Why do you only see the negative?”

“Change is hard,” he said, his tone that of a placating parent. “There’s always turmoil. There’s always strife. But tomorrow will be better.” It sounded like a prepared speech.

The woman’s face had vanished, replaced by a man in a white tunic. Milani recognized him, one of the doctors in the station’s infirmary. He looked exhausted. The clinic behind him was jammed with patients. A headline ran at the bottom, praising the professionals of Valhalla Station for their dedication to duty.

“Okay,” Milani said, accepting for now at least that Kwazi would see what he wanted to see. “Okay.”

“Come on, we have to go.” Kwazi stood up and held out a hand. The smile on his face seemed forced. “We have our own vid to make.”

Feeling she had little choice, Milani followed him out of her quarters. A last glance at the image of her parents standing in the ancient Martian riverbed felt like saying goodbye to a previous life.

When the doors opened onto the bridge of the Freedom’s Herald , the busy noise of people talking over one another spilled out. SSR-uniformed personnel stood over the starship’s corporate crew, drawn weapons enforcing orders. The white-hot light of spot welders flashed near the forward viewscreen. A large man, his face cast in a perpetual scowl, turned in the captain’s chair to look her over critically. Then he glanced to Kwazi.

“Well, she’s in better shape than the last time I saw her,” he said.

“Yes,” Kwazi said, urging Milani forward to the center of the bridge. She could smell the sweat on the man in the captain’s chair. “Dr. Stuart’s much better today. I think she’s ready.”

“She better be.”

On the forward screen, Callisto’s orbital ring stretched over the corona of the pockmarked moon. There was no activity, no docking shuttles full of tired miners coming off shift or gashaulers full of hypercompressed helium-3 or deuterium departing for the inner system. All commercial activity from Callisto had ceased.

No wonder those people are so frightened , Milani thought. It’s not just the food. It’s the not having something to do. It’s the idle minds turning to fear to keep themselves occupied .

Milani understood that need for diversion. She felt that absence in herself even now, that hole where purpose had been before. She was a doctor. She should be helping people. Not watching them descend into … whatever this was.

The doors behind her opened again. Soldiers dragged Helena Telemachus onto the bridge, her arms secured at her sides. Her hair was tangled, her eyelids heavy. Helena had been having a hard time of it.

Payback’s a bitch, bitch .

“And now, our guest of honor,” the man in the captain’s chair said. He stood formally. “Helena Telemachus, welcome to the bridge of the Freedom’s Herald . I’m Captain Braxton.”

Telemachus jerked her arms, trying to free them. At a nod from Braxton, the guards on either side released her. Helena drew herself up, and her green eyes blazed. Her elfin ears, an affectation of body morphing from her youth, recalled a sad memory of the pride of self-worth they’d once represented.

“On behalf of the Syndicate Corporation, I’m willing to offer you clemency,” Helena said. “But only if you release me and surrender to Company authorities. Immediately .”

Milani could hear the SynCorp spokesperson behind the words, a ghost of the irrefutable power her pronouncements had once carried. Now the sound was hollow, a flaccid echo of its past authority.

“I’ll have to decline,” Braxton said, nodding at the comms station. The image of Callisto’s docking ring disappeared, replaced by the rigid expression of Adriana Rabh. “Regent. So glad you could make the time.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Rabh said. The background behind her was plain and unadorned. “Surrender that starship and yourself to corporate authorities. I give you my word—your summary execution will only hurt for a second or two.”

The personnel on the bridge, whether they be Company prisoner or SSR trooper, stopped what they were doing. Rabh’s reaction, the steel in it, had surprised everyone. Its solid, palpable strength was a stark contrast to Helena’s earlier, empty threat.

Braxton laughed and turned to Telemachus.

“It’s like you have a script, you two,” he said. Then, to the screen, “Adriana Rabh, you are judged an enemy of the people. For too long, you and your fellow faction leaders have built your empire of riches on the backs of the citizen-workers of Sol. Retribution is at hand. Deliverance of justice is at hand. The end of the Syndicate Corporation is at hand.”

“Pretty speech,” Rabh said without hesitation. “Type it up, print it out, roll it tight, and shove it up your rebel ass.”

Braxton opened his hands, as if he’d done all he could do. “We’ll begin with Ms. Telemachus’s trial. Very public. Very lethal. It won’t take long. Then we’re coming for you, you old bitch. Victory is assured.”

Adriana Rabh lifted a carefully sculpted eyebrow. “Assured? Is that why you’re hiding in orbit on the far side of Callisto in Tony Taulke’s silver space yacht? If your victory is so assured, why are Callistans rising up against you?”

Braxton effected a look of confusion. “Perhaps you didn’t notice the object of their anger—they’re rising up against you , Regent.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” Rabh said. Her eyes tracked beyond Braxton. “Helena, this is an unfortunate situation. And that’s a goddamned understatement.”

Helena swallowed. “We swear our loyalty,” Telemachus said. Her throat had sounded wounded and raw. Milani noticed Helena’s hands trembling at her sides. Was it possible she was starting to feel sympathy for the woman who’d tortured her without mercy? Who’d murdered Kwazi’s loved ones for the sake of a lie? “We do our duty.”

Braxton’s gaze swung between the two women. “Corporate catchphrases at the hour of your death? Now that’s true dedication.”

“Last chance,” Rabh said, regaining his attention. “Surrender now or—”

Braxton made a slicing motion with his thumb. The forward screen went dark.

“Take her back to the brig,” he said.

“Wait!” Kwazi said. “There was to be a trial. She’s to be executed!” He sounded childlike in his frustration.

Braxton stepped down from the center of the bridge and into Kwazi’s space. “We have a new priority. That bitch in the station. That attitude gets out over the ’net, and our lives get harder. We can kill Telemachus anytime.”

“But you said—”

“Jabari! That’s enough!” The captain turned to the guards: “Back to the brig!”

They moved, jerking Helena along with them. The door closed behind them. Braxton leaned over Kwazi and Milani again.

“Never … ever … question me publicly again. Or, by Cassandra, I’ll end you.”

Kwazi said nothing, but his eyes held Braxton’s.

Milani felt the air rush from her lungs as the captain resumed his seat. And all around her, from Soldier and SynCorp loyalist alike, she heard the same.