15

FOR SEVERAL LONG SECONDS, NOEMI CAN’T MOVE. SHE keeps staring at the closed door, as if she could will it to pinwheel open again. This time she would see the scene from minutes ago, back when there was still a chance to save Ludwig and Fon. She wouldn’t break the towline. She would get it right. She’d save everyone.

Instead, she’s standing in near darkness, motionless, listening to Virginia sob.

Noemi can say nothing other than “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? You’re sorry?” Virginia slaps her open hand against the wall; the thud reverberates through the entire bay. “You let Ludwig and Fon get captured, which means they’re going to go to prison for years if not for the rest of their lives, and you’re sorry?”

Eyes blurring with tears, Noemi drops her head in shame.

Virginia paces the length of the bay, hands fisted in her long, red-streaked hair, so tense it seems she could shatter with any step. “Back when we first met seven months ago, you guys showed up on Cray and needed our help. We gave it to you. You needed me to help break Robot Boy out of prison, which could’ve put me in prison, too, or even gotten me killed. I did it anyway. Helped Abel hack into Mansfield Cybernetics corporate secrets, even though I had bad dreams about freakin’ warrior mechs crashing into my bedroom at night for solid months after that. Went all the way through an unknown Gate to a mystery world. Went to Genesis to help you guys win a war—a war against the planet I was born on! I did all of this, rescued you two over and over and over, and I never asked for anything until now, and instead you ruined my friends’ lives.”

There’s no way to counter this, because every word is true. Without Virginia Redbird, Noemi knows she and Abel wouldn’t have gotten very far. “I screwed it up. All of it. Not just the towline—from the very beginning—”

Virginia snaps, “Stop with the self-pity. It’s not going to make me less angry with you.”

That stings. Noemi didn’t say any of that to somehow get herself off the hook; she knows how badly she’s messed up. But that’s not what Virginia needs to hear. “I just meant—if I could do it differently, I would. And I know you would, too.”

Virginia stops pacing, sighs deeply, and slumps against the nearby Smasher as though it were a wall. “No, I wouldn’t. Wish I could say that was because I’d never leave people in trouble behind. The truth is… all this running around, breaking the law, it made me feel important. Special. On a planet where everyone’s a genius, ‘special’ is kind of hard to come by. But working with the famous Model One A? Going on secret missions with a soldier from Genesis? That proved I was smarter than anyone. I wanted to be forever captain.” She closes her eyes, like she doesn’t even want to see anymore. “And I’m jerk enough to do all that over again, just like before. Except this time I wouldn’t bring my friends into it. I’d keep them safe. Nobody’s neck would be on the line but mine.”

What would I do over? Noemi wonders. She couldn’t not volunteer for the Masada Run. Couldn’t let Esther die without trying to rescue her, couldn’t leave Abel trapped and alone in his ship. All along, she’s done her absolute best. Fought as hard as she knew how. So many terrible things have happened that it seems like there ought to be some action she’d change, something she’d do or wouldn’t do—but she can’t think of it. The past seven months of her life, she thought she was choosing her own course. Instead, she was locked into an autopilot that has steered her to this.

The ship shudders, and she remembers that they still have to escape from Cray. More correctly, Abel is trying to escape, taking them with him, and she draws comfort from that. Her military instincts tell her to go to the bridge, but what could she do? Either Abel and the engines can handle it or they’ll all die.

Virginia sniffles, and her voice is hoarse as she says, “Oh. By the way—”

Noemi steels herself for the next accusation. Probably she deserves this one, too. “Yeah?”

“Congrats on not being dead.” This time, when their eyes meet, Virginia manages a watery smile. “So they did it, huh? Figured out how to put mech systems in a human body? You’re going to be in every cybernetics course from now on, you know.”

“Great,” Noemi says wearily. “Just great.”

“I need to congratulate Abel, too. When last I looked in on our heroes, you were in cryosleep and Abel was headed to Haven to strike a really terrible bargain, if he couldn’t find any other way out of it.” Virginia shudders at the thought of another friend in danger. “But it looks like he managed to get away again.”

“Actually, I’m the one who got us out of there. I wasn’t going to leave him behind.” Noemi gestures toward her close-shorn hair; the pale white edges of some incisions are still slightly visible at her hairline. “But yeah. They figured out how to make me… well, half mech.”

Apparently the only thing that can distract Virginia from grief is brand-new technology, like the stuff woven through Noemi’s blood and bone. She sounds slightly less miserable as she asks, “You’re a hybrid now, right? Part mech, part human? Because that is mega, super, colossal badass.”

“It doesn’t feel that way,” Noemi admits. “Not always. Sometimes it feels like my own body doesn’t belong to me anymore. Like my brain is split in two and I don’t know which half to listen to. I know I’ll get the hang of it—I can even see how it’s going to be great—but I can’t take back what just happened. I’m stronger than I was, not mech strong but, still, more, and I didn’t realize how hard I’d yanked the towline until it broke, and—” And Ludwig and Fon were lost.

Silence stretches between them again, long enough for Noemi to figure that Abel must’ve gotten the ship out of trouble. Otherwise they’d be dead by now.

“Listen,” Virginia says. “I get that being part mech has to be the weirdest weird in Weirdtown. It’s weirdness I hope to study in depth as soon as we’re not running for our lives. But you’re here and you’re alive, and I’m not in the mood to be sorry that at least some of my friends are still here with me. Okay?” Despite what is clearly her best effort, her eyes well with tears, and Virginia begins to cry.

“Okay.” Noemi gathers Virginia into a tight hug. That’s all she can do.

Virginia turns out to have stayed up most of the previous forty hours, worrying about whether she and her friends would get caught.

“First they tried to dig into our Razer data,” she says as Noemi leads her through the Persephone’s spiral corridor. “We’d set up a fake layer of info for them to tap into, so we dodged that bullet, but we knew the authorities weren’t going to stop there. Everyone on Cray was totally paranoid—like, they thought Earth was invincible, that we made Earth invincible, and then the Battle of Genesis proved otherwise. Some people thought Earth would punish us, and other people were sure it could only be sabotage, and overnight we went from this whole planet of happy nerds to a place where nobody trusted anybody anymore.”

Fascinating as this is, Noemi can hardly take it in. She’s too worried about Virginia. “You need to sleep.”

“How am I supposed to sleep?”

“With a sedative.”

Virginia sighs. “Yeah, that oughta do it.”

The sedatives in the ship’s stores are applied via patch. Noemi peels one and sticks it on the inside of Virginia’s wrist, where blood vessels are close to the skin, so it will take effect faster. Even as they leave sick bay, Virginia is already swaying on her feet, and Noemi has to steady her. This task can’t distract her from the slightly odd vibration she feels through the floor. Maybe a human would miss it, but her mech senses won’t let her tune it out.

The Persephone can’t put off repairs much longer, or they’ll wind up dead in space.

Maybe Abel thinks that’s a viable option, Noemi muses as she watches Virginia groggily stumble into her bunk. He spent thirty years waiting to get picked up last time. He was bored and lonely, but not in danger. Not even uncomfortable. Does he think she ought to be able to handle that, now that she’s half mech?

It’s impossible, she thinks, walking back down the corridor. Even if my body can take it, my mind can’t. There would be nothing to see, nothing to do. Abel would be my whole world.

Noemi pauses, putting her hand to her mouth as she remembers their first kiss. They had been in the pod where he’d been marooned, floating in zero-G just like he had for those thirty years. Then she thinks of the hours they recently spent curled up in a bunk together, kissing so many times she lost count, until she felt giddy and happy and spent.

Having Abel as her whole world might not be all bad.…

Still, she’d rather choose on her own terms when she and Abel tune out the rest of the galaxy. If the Persephone breaks down, there’s no telling when they’d be found, or by whom.

Will they ever get a chance to learn what they could be to each other? Or will they always be hunted, in constant danger, on the run?

Sometimes Noemi feels like she’s been running forever.

When they reach the Cray Gate several hours later, Noemi’s at navigation and Abel’s at ops when the doors slide open. Virginia wanders in, wearing a pair of pajamas—bright blue, with tiny pineapples patterned across the fabric.

In reply to their questioning looks, Virginia says, “I found them in one of the abandoned crew lockers. Don’t give me that look, okay? I need all the comfort I can get right now.”

The joke is too raw; Virginia’s pain is too new. Noemi tries to play along, though, holding up her hands in surrender. “No argument here.”

“Personally, I think they’re pretty sexy stuff.” Virginia turns, modeling the oversize, gaudy things as though they were high fashion. “Maybe I’ll set a trend.”

“Pineapple pajamas will sweep the whole galaxy,” Noemi agrees. Abel seems at a loss as to how to play along, so she gives him a more pragmatic topic of conversation. “How many hours until we reach Kismet?”

Before Abel can answer, sensors begin beeping. Virginia peers down at the ops console and says, “Oh, yay, another war fleet! Today is turning out so well.”

“Damocles ships?” Noemi looks down at her controls in alarm—but the Earth patrols are centered around one particular area of the system, fairly far away.

“No Damocles. This war fleet is ours,” Abel says.

The viewscreen zeroes in on the distant signals to reveal Vagabond vessels—and among them is the Katara. Noemi breathes out in relief. “They made it.”

“Who made it?” Virginia squints. “Wait, that’s the Krall Consortium flagship, right? What is this, some kind of space party?”

“We’ll explain shortly.” Abel opens communications. “This is the free ship Persephone, to the Vagabond fleet, calling any officer authorized to make contact.”

In only seconds, the viewscreen changes from a starfield to the face of Dagmar Krall, one eyebrow raised. “I do recognize you and your ship, you know. It’s only been a few hours! Besides, I don’t meet with fully sentient mechs every day.”

“Now you get two for the price of one,” Virginia mutters, too low for anyone but Noemi to overhear.

“I would imagine you meet with sentient mechs about as often as I meet with the leader of the largest Vagabond trading group in the galaxy. Which is to say, exactly as much, as we are the only two individuals who fully meet those descriptions,” Abel replies.

Noemi smiles. Abel’s not great at banter yet, but apparently he’s trying.

He continues, “We’re very glad to see you. Although we intend to help you as discussed, our engines have reached a critical state of disrepair. We need parts we don’t have—”

“But we probably do.” Krall is already nodding. “Send the specs over, and we’ll set up a transfer immediately.”

“Thank you,” Abel says. He’s visibly relieved—a rarity for him. He must’ve been even more worried than Noemi had realized.

Krall replies, “No thanks necessary. Genesis is the Consortium’s single most important ally. You’re working to help Genesis win the war. That means we need to repair your ship as much as we’d need to repair our own.”

As soon as comms go silent, Virginia says, “Anybody else wondering if this makes us pirates, too?”

“Like she said, it’s for Genesis,” Noemi says. Already she feels encouraged again. Dagmar Krall is a ruthless woman, and her Consortium is as likely to be involved in piracy as it is in free trading. But Krall takes her allegiance to Genesis seriously, and has already fought a fierce battle for their freedom. She’s playing a key role in the Bellum Sanctum strategy, and the best help and protection they could’ve found.

The Persephone is once again a ship on a mission, and Noemi is once again a soldier with purpose.