Two dozen of the Emperor’s Guard line the main concourse leading toward the dock. It’s a busy thoroughfare, filled with food kiosks, and vendors selling incense and other offerings for the deities worshipped here.
The Guard move slowly, armed with waver carbines, standard-issue sidearms, and plasma grenades at their waists. The air above them shimmers with the movement of drones. Religious laws forbid perpetual surveillance on Joon-ho—another reason I chose this place—but there’s nothing stopping the Guard from bringing their own. They flip over tables and tear down stalls, searching any nook where a person could be hiding. Civilians flee, clutching children to their chests, chased by facial recognition drones. Storekeepers haul their wares away, escaping the imminent wave of imperial havoc.
I pull Pale back into the doorway and press him flat to the wall. He squints like he’s calculating an attack, so I squeeze his hand to get his attention. “Leave them to me, alright?” I grab Ocho around the belly, and she swipes at me half-heartedly as I pass her to Pale. “Look after Ocho.”
He nods solemnly. “Okay,” he says, holding her tight to his chest.
“Stay behind me, and don’t watch what I do.”
He doesn’t answer. I know he thinks he can help, but he’s too unstable. If he gets too angry, or too scared, he’ll lash out and have another seizure. I can’t deal with that now, not with elite troops bearing down and a couple hundred meters of open hallway between us and the ship.
I turn my back to Pale and say, “Hold onto my cloak.” He grabs a handful of fabric and I step out of the alcove, walking straight toward the soldiers. Distracted by throwing old people roughly to the ground and separating kids from their parents, the Guard don’t notice me until I’m close enough to see myself in the reflective visors of their helmets.
One soldier turns to face me, raising a hand and barking, “Stop!”
I lift him off the ground, feel him as a small dense mote tugging at my mind. He yells when I toss him aside, limbs flailing as he glides through the air and slams into another three troopers.
The rest of the platoon responds instantly, twenty soldiers rounding on me with wavers aimed at my chest, drones gathering above me with camera eyes focusing. My throat spasms in a strangled laugh. It would be so easy to kill every one of them before they moved their fingers off their trigger guards. But then they’d be right about me: Mars Xi, terrorist, mass murderer, heartless creator of mourners and orphans.
I ignore their overlapping orders and start to growl quietly as I gather my thoughts. It’s harder to be gentle. First, I crush the drones—the crumpled steel balls sparking as they plummet. Next, I lift the soldiers off the ground, holding each by the throat, squeezing as they squirm and gasp. I drop them one by one as I feel their bodies go limp, weapons clattering to the floor. Hundreds of people along the length of the corridor stare, mouths slack or muttering as they realize who I am.
I never wanted to be famous. Infamous. Whatever.
I pull my hood up and take Pale by the hand. “Hurry now.”
Pale beams at the onlookers as we step over the scattered bodies of the Guard. I don’t pay them any mind though; I’ve seen that mix of awe and fear enough times in my life.
We reach the dock and the Rua—our Blackcoat-class corvette—sits waiting with its air lock door open. I push Pale toward it.
“Get settled and wait for me.” He scratches the back of Ocho’s neck and carries her into the ship.
I find the Guard’s vessel at the far end of the dock—a Byrne-class destroyer bristling with heavy weapons and stamped with the emperor’s two-headed Janos beetle sigil. I grab the ship in both hands and twist. Dull pressure in my head. Piercing screech as the destroyer splits down the middle, reinforced steel plates shredded apart. I drop the two halves to the ground with twin thuds and a clank of debris.
* * *
“I bought us some time,” I tell Waren as I drop into the Rua’s pilot seat.
“I noticed,” the AI says over the quiet hum of ship engines lifting us from the deck.
The cockpit is purely utilitarian compared to the high-tech trappings that Squid installed in the Nova. Wide, scratched viewport, stick controls, hundreds of buttons and lights, and the meaty smell of old sweat drifting up from the two seats.
Waren takes us through the station dock, lined with beat-up corvettes and tourist frigates. The engine rumble builds. We punch into the void and my gut drops the instant we leave Joon-ho’s artificial gravity.
“Fuck.” The word falls from my lips. Three more destroyers wait for us, distant shapes vivid against the backdrop of stars. They’re spaced wide, prows tracking us as Waren pushes the throttle and steers away.
“Hold on,” Waren says. We turn sharp and my stomach churns again, acceleration twisting gravity as we dive beneath Joon-ho’s structure, trying to put the temple-station between us and the pursuing warships.
I swallow a mouthful of hot saliva, resisting the urge to spit or vomit. “Where are Pale and Ocho?”
“They’re in Pale’s living quarters, already strapped in.”
I don’t bother replying, I just nod and lean my head back in the seat, fingers digging into the armrest, gripped tight. I key a rear-view onto the main screen and see the cubed structure pointed with shimmering gold minarets growing smaller behind us. The destroyers sink below it like diving birds of prey, sleek hulls shining in starlight.
Lasfire streaks through the void, thud and shudder as the ship rattles, armor plating vaporized, clouds of molten steel visible in the rear-view.
“We need to go now, Waren,” I say through gritted teeth, watching calculations flash across the nav computer.
Another barrage of laser cuts across the darkness, then blinks out of existence before it can strike—the ships, the space station, the stars disappearing as we fold into worm-space.
“I had the situation well in hand,” Waren says with a hint of disdain.
“Sorry,” I say. My hands ache and I realize I’m still holding white-knuckle to the armrest. I let go and flex my fingers. “Where are you taking us?”
“I selected a random point in a distant system. If we make multiple arbitrary trips through worm-space it should make us harder to track. I still won’t get to pick our destination, will I?” Waren asks.
I unclasp my harness and lean forward, resting my head in my hands, greasy hair falling through my fingers. I can’t remember the last time I bothered to wash it. “Not yet, Waren. But we’re doing this for Pale,” I say.
“We’re going to find your father.”
I shake my head. “How did you know?”
“I’m an unnaturally intelligent entity who’s read enough of the MEPHISTO documentation to realize that Pale needs specialist treatment.”
“Were you listening in on my conversation with Ahlam?” I ask.
“I overheard some of it while checking on Pale,” Waren says. “You must have known we were never going to find help at Joon-ho.”
“I hoped,” I say, but even I can hear my lack of conviction. “Do you have his last known coordinates?”
“Of course,” Waren says. “After the series of random jumps, I’ll set that as our final destination. Why don’t you wish to see him?”
I stand and walk to the cockpit door, pausing in the opening. “Do you like what you are, Waren? Do you like how you were made?”
There’s a long pause, practically an eternity in terms of AI processor cycles. “It’s not something I can change, so I haven’t dedicated much time to considering it.”
“You AI are smarter than any human, but most of us treat you like servants or slaves. Any one of us could unplug your core and do whatever we liked with it. But what if you’d been given an autonomous body?”
“That would be illegal.”
“But not impossible. So imagine: what if you had a body? What if people treated you like a human? What if you were normal?” Pain festers in that word and a shiver wracks my body.
Waren remains silent, and I can’t tell if he’s thinking, or waiting for me to finish.
“Teo made me what I am,” I say, “but I could have been normal.”
“You’re better than normal,” Waren says, but I can’t tell if that’s an AI’s calculation, or a friend’s reassurance.
“There’s no such thing as ‘better,’ there’s only ‘different,’ and people hate what they don’t understand,” I say, leaving the cockpit behind to wander down the corridor.
And I don’t even understand myself.