Defy the Stars

  For three decades, the only traffic through the Genesis Gate has been Earth’s attack vessels, mostly Damocles ships. Earth will no longer be on the alert for other ships coming from the Genesis system. Abel suspects they could pass through easily. However, he has spotted a flaw in Noemi’s thinking. “Kismet has far fewer security protocols in place. We would be much less likely to be seen. Also, we would then be only one Gate away from Cray.”

  “The Kismet Gate has been mined, remember? Magnetic mines fill an area at least the size of my entire planet—nobody knows for sure, because no ship’s ever survived more than a few seconds without coming back through the Gate or being blown to bits.”

  “My memory is eidetic, which means I remember every fact I am exposed to.” Especially ones she told him not five minutes prior. Abel may have to do what Noemi Vidal says, but he doesn’t have to be treated as if he has no more sense than a hammer. “The minefield is effective against human pilots. However, I could pilot through them, recalibrating shields to push the mines back.”

  Noemi sits very still, studying him. The lights from the starry screen around them shine on her black hair. “Even the Queen and Charlie models couldn’t pilot with that kind of precision, and they’re some of the smarter ones.”

  Apparently her memory is far from eidetic. “As I said earlier, I am a special prototype of Burton Mansfield’s. I possess talents and abilities beyond those of any other mech. Even my genetic material comes directly from Mansfield.” Most mechs’ genetic material is synthetic, tied to no one biological life-form. Abel, however, carries nearly as much of Mansfield’s DNA as a son would.

  Noemi doesn’t appear to be impressed by this genetic connection. She rises and walks slowly toward the star field screen arching over them. Her gaze turns toward red-orange Cray, glowing almost as brightly as a star. “If we could get through the Kismet Gate, then nobody would see us. After that we’d need to get a T-7 anx, but we could do that on Kismet, right?”

  “Correct. We should have sufficient credits, and the minefield will almost certainly be the only security at the Kismet Gate.” Almost certainly. Not entirely. Abel envisions a field of patrol ships, all of them piloted by Queens and Charlies, which would halt the Daedalus, arrest Noemi, and free him to find Mansfield. But that possibility is so unlikely he can’t understand why his mind even presented it.

  Another operational oddity for him to investigate later.

  “From Kismet we could get to Cray. We steal a thermomagnetic device, go back the way we came, and return right here. You get into my starfighter with the device, point it straight at the Gate, and blow it to kingdom come. Right?”

  She doesn’t mention his destruction. He doesn’t either. “Correct.”

  If Mansfield knew, he would be so angry. Angry with Noemi for misusing his greatest creation. Angry with himself for failing to foresee this situation and program Abel accordingly. Mansfield would be angry about Abel’s destruction. He would care. That thought comforts Abel, though logically it should not matter.

  Noemi asks, “Do you have to follow my orders even if I’m not around?”

  “A mech that obeyed its commander only when observed wouldn’t be much use.”

  “That’s a yes.”

  “Yes.” Will she always require such simple, literal replies?

  But her next words catch Abel off guard. “So you’d keep going with the mission even if I was killed?”

  “Unless another human took command of this vessel or of me, yes, I would. However, you shouldn’t be at undue risk during this mission.”

  She shakes her head as she turns back to him. “I’m a soldier of Genesis. A rebel. They’d arrest me just for reaching another colony world. If they realize I’m stealing a thermomagnetic device to destroy a Gate? Trust me, they’ll shoot to kill.”

  “My programming requires me to protect you,” Abel says.

  This doesn’t appear to reassure her as profoundly as it should. “Anything could happen. I gave up my life already, so what becomes of me doesn’t matter. This mission matters. You’re absolutely sure you’d keep going without me?”

  Noemi speaks of her own death as a foregone conclusion. Abel wonders what she means by giving up her life, but he’s more struck by the fact that she is as willing to die as she is to destroy him. She isn’t discarding him; she thinks they’ll perish together. Noemi’s plan asks nothing of him that she isn’t asking of herself. Somehow that makes the prospect of destruction easier for him to bear.

  Which is a completely irrational reaction. His emotion subroutines truly have become strange during these past thirty years.…

  “Yes,” Abel confirms. “I’ll keep going.”

  “And this trip we’re going on won’t take that long. A few days, right? Not more than ten or fifteen?”

  “Correct.” Though he doesn’t see why they should have to work so quickly, particularly given that she considered waiting to get approval from her superiors. What could be so urgent?

  She takes a deep breath. “Then let’s begin.”

  Within minutes, Abel has completed all the necessary preliminaries. Noemi keeps her position at ops, leaving him at navigation. So it’s his hand that hits the control to bring the mag engines back online.

  A shudder passes through the ship—entirely normal, and yet thrilling. The stars around him are changing. He’s moving. Abel is as close to free as he suspects he’ll ever be again.

  Outside, he knows, the silvery teardrop shape of the Daedalus is now trailed by the torchlight blaze of the mag engines. The walls of these engines aren’t made of metal or any other physical material; they are magnetic fields, capable of containing combustion at heat levels that would melt any man-made object. Their invisibility creates the illusion of flame in the vacuum of space.

  The ship moves away from the scattered bits of wreckage orbiting the nearby Gate and toward the pale yellow star that serves as Genesis’s sun. The Kismet Gate will be located almost completely opposite from where they were, all the way across this solar system.

  Next to him, he notices Noemi gazing at the greenish dot that is Genesis. She thinks she may be leaving her home for the last time. Most humans would find that difficult; some would weep. Noemi simply watches silently as they accelerate, hurtling past the other planets of this system, leaving Genesis behind.

  “You should sleep,” he says.

  Noemi shakes her head. “Not happening. I haven’t forgotten I’m on an enemy ship with an enemy mech. If you think you can catch me off my guard, think again.”

  “This mission will require several days at least. You’re already exhausted. Not only will you be unable to remain awake during our entire journey, you probably won’t remain functional more than another hour or two at best.” Abel glances over at her. “You shouldn’t worry about my disobeying you, or harming you, while you rest.”

  “Because you’re so worried about my well-being?” she says, eyebrow arched.

  “Of course not.” He smiles congenially. “But as the events of the past hour should have demonstrated… if my programming allowed me to kill you, you’d be dead already.”

  After several long seconds of silence, Noemi replies, “If you’re trying to reassure me, you’re not doing a great job.”

  “I’m only trying to keep you fully informed.” Abel has to obey Noemi, but he doesn’t have to like her. He doesn’t have to care if she’s frightened or tired. He’s done his duty by informing her of a risk to her health; after this, he can let her run herself ragged.

  “Not yet,” she finally says. “I couldn’t sleep yet.”

  Without another word, he accelerates, urging the ship faster toward the Kismet Gate. If Noemi Vidal drops dead from exhaustion beside him, so be it.

  She doesn’t drop dead at any point during the fourteen hours it takes the Daedalus to cross the Genesis system. But she goes from sitting quietly at ops to blinking hard, to swaying in her seat as if she’s on the verge of falling. At this point, Noemi must
have been awake so long as to be near the point of delirium.

  But she straightens and focuses again as they approach the Kismet Gate.

  It looks just like the Gate leading to Earth, except that this one isn’t battle-scarred or surrounded by debris. The silvery components lock together to form one vast ring. This is the eye of the needle through which Abel will thread the Daedalus.

  As he inputs the necessary coordinates, he sees Noemi take a deep breath. When he glances over at her, she asks, “You’re sure the integrity field will hold up for this trip?”

  “Almost completely certain.”

  She pauses after that almost, which is what Abel had intended. “You can’t have piloted a ship through a minefield before. But you’ve gone through debris fields, right? Asteroid belts?”

  The levels of programming within Abel go beyond any human experience. He doesn’t say so. Instead he replies with only the simplest facts. “Only in simulations. I’ve actually never had full operational control of a ship before.”

  Noemi blanches. How satisfying.

  As they dive toward the shimmering surface of the Gate, the ring seeming to widen around them as they approach the event horizon, Abel smiles. “Let’s see how I do, shall we?”

  11

  HE’S GOING TO KILL US BOTH.

  Shocked back into alertness, Noemi clutches the armrests as if she can keep herself from falling into the Gate. And it feels like falling, now—the Gate shimmers brighter as they near the event horizon, growing more and more silvery until it looks like a pool they’re diving into. The silver surface of the Gate reflects the ship perfectly. For one instant, Noemi sees the mirror image of the Daedalus reflected there, like a raindrop. If she’d been at a window, she would’ve seen her own face coming closer until the two images melded into one—

  Gravity shoves her against her chair, making her gasp. The increase feels as if it would press her flat, even as Abel smoothly says, “Entering Gate… now.”

  With that, they surge out of normal space-time, into the wormhole.

  Noemi has never heard a satisfactory description of how wormhole travel feels. Now she knows why. Words couldn’t capture this—the way everything seems to become translucent, including her own body—or how she remains motionless while feeling as if she’s turned into water swirling down a drain. Even light bends strangely, carving unnatural angles where none really existed, because it’s moving at different speeds and turning her perceptions into illusions. She and Abel seem to be fractals in a kaleidoscope, shifting every second. Nothing is real. Not even time. Not even Noemi herself.

  I hate this, she thinks. In the same moment she also thinks, I love this. Both feelings seem true.

  Gravity snaps back to normal, sending her rocking forward until her head nearly strikes the ops panel. Light is light again.

  We’re through! Noemi feels a rush of relief and wonder—she’s traveled across the galaxy in an instant, to a whole new world—

  —but as she lifts her head she sees the minefield.

  The glinting green lights of the mines outnumber the stars. Her gut tightens as the explosives wobble in their courses, magnetic sensors drawing them toward the new intruder. Horrified, Noemi watches dozens of mines rush toward the Daedalus. Just one would have enough power to blow them apart into atoms.

  “Abel!” she cries.

  But he’s already reacting, both hands flying over his control panel. The ship darts through the maze of mines around them, swooping and swerving so quickly Noemi imagines she can feel every turn, every plunge. Nausea wells in her gut, and she grips both armrests so hard her fingers ache.

  Abel shows no recognition of the danger. Mechs don’t care if they die. Probably he wouldn’t mind killing her in the process.

  A faint shimmer keeps shifting around them, confusing Noemi until she realizes they’re the shields. While steering, Abel is simultaneously shifting shield strength from zone to zone, protecting the ship where it needs it most. No human could ever work at that speed. Not even close.

  By now at least a hundred mines rush toward them like a swarm of green fireflies. There’s no way they’re surviving the next thirty seconds.

  Maybe I’ll get to go to heaven after all, she thinks in a daze. If I die trying to save my whole world? That’s got to help.

  The ship accelerates, roaring toward the mines. Noemi yells, “What are you doing?”

  Abel never looks up from the control panel. “Did you know that even mechs concentrate better in silence?”

  She bites her tongue, literally. Pain offers some distraction from the mortal terror.

  But within seconds, Noemi realizes what Abel’s up to. Moving faster forces the mines to approach them in waves, which cuts down on the number of evasive actions needed for the Daedalus to stay in one piece.

  One mine strikes the shields. Green electrical light sparks fitfully along the stern, and the entire ship shakes so hard Noemi nearly topples from her chair. How many hits like that can they take? One of the controls on her ops console glows red, warning her of danger she can’t even bear to check. It makes no difference. Abel will steer them through this, or they’ll die. The end.

  “On my mark—” Abel says, finally looking up at the viewscreen—just as the Daedalus accelerates even more to outrun the few mines trailing behind. Now space is once again only blackness and stars. With a smile, Abel concludes, “—minefield cleared.”

  Noemi manages to look at her console. The red light says the shields were below 10 percent. “One more strike and we’d have been killed.”

  “Irrelevant.” After a pause Abel adds, “Congratulations are unnecessary.”

  She actually might have congratulated him if she weren’t so astonished. Slowly her mind begins to accept that they’ve made it through the same obstacle that has stood between Genesis and the rest of the galaxy for the past three decades.

  And that means she’s finally, truly, journeyed to an entirely new world.

  Noemi rises to her feet and walks toward the viewscreen as the star field clears, free of mines at last. At the center of the screen blazes a star… no, not just a star. A sun, bluer and larger than her own. And there, the tiny amethyst jewel hanging in the sky—“That’s Kismet, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. I suggest taking an indirect route there to better disguise our origin. It’s unlikely they’d expect anyone to come through from Genesis, but we should be safe.”

  She nods, unable to tear her eyes away from Kismet.

  The name means “fate.” Finding this world had been an accident—the result of a probe getting caught in a naturally occurring wormhole, popping into a system that might otherwise have gone undiscovered for centuries. Kismet is warm, blessed with a calm climate, and covered with water. It could even have been the world Earth hung its hopes on instead of Genesis, but for the near-total absence of dry land.

  So Noemi had dutifully learned in school. But soon she’ll actually stand on this planet. Look up into a sky not her own. She’s dreamed of this, feeling guilty the whole time. Genesis is supposed to be enough. Yet her heart has always longed for this journey, and now it’s been given to her.

  “Although it will take us the better part of ten hours to cross the Kismet system to the planet, there are preparations we should make for landing,” Abel says.

  Noemi forces herself to focus. As the terror of their Gate crossing fades, exhaustion threatens to drag her down again. “Right. Of course. Can you change the ship registration? Make us anonymous?” She doubts anyone will be on the lookout for a vessel abandoned so long ago, but they might as well be safe.

  “I can alter our registration,” Abel confirms. To judge by the screens he’s pulling up on his console, he’s already begun doing so. “However, we have other potentially incriminating evidence to deal with.”

  “Like what I’m wearing?” The green exosuit brands her as a soldier of Genesis. “Maybe I can find something else that fits me.”

  “Captain Gee was very n
early your size. I suggest you check her quarters.” A small, 3-D cross-section of the Daedalus hovers aboard Noemi’s console, one room burning brighter than the others. Abel continues, “However, I was speaking of a far more critical matter. Upon landing at Kismet, we may well be boarded by docking authorities. Your starfighter and the damaged scout ship could easily be salvage picked up for parts or resale, but we’d have far more difficulty explaining why we’re traveling with a corpse.”

  Esther. The daze of weariness and wonder that had spun itself around Noemi breaks. She remembers that she’s alone with a mech on a ship she hardly understands, and the dead body of her friend lies still and cold in sick bay. “We—we tell them she’s a crew member who passed away.”

  “How do we explain her injuries?”

  “I—” It occurs to her at last that the Kismet authorities would assume she and Abel had murdered Esther. “Her ship is damaged. We can show them that, say she got hurt trying to bring it in.”

  “If they examine the scout ship, they’ll know only a battle mech could’ve caused that damage.” Abel shakes his head. “That will raise questions we can’t afford to answer.”

  Noemi’s temper flares. “We’ll come up with something! What else are we supposed to do?”

  “Bury her in space.”

  He says it like it’s nothing. Throw Esther out of the ship. Toss her into the void. Leave her alone for all eternity, drifting in the terrible cold of space, never to be warm.

  “No,” Noemi says. “No.”

  “Then how are we to—”

  She doesn’t hear the rest of what Abel says, because she walks off the bridge and leaves him behind.

  It’s nearly half an hour later before Noemi sees Abel again.

  She’s spent that time in sick bay with what’s left of her friend. The body doesn’t even look like Esther anymore, not really. The same light-gold hair, the same freckles across her cheekbones: Nothing about Esther seems to have changed except that her skin is paler. And yet somehow, just looking at her, you know everything that ever mattered about Esther—her laugh, her kindness, the funny way she always sneezed three times in a row—her soul is gone, forever.