He started laughing, ecstatic with the realization. “Kapow!” he exclaimed. “I’m on Mars!”
“Argh, Tom, no!” Vik cried, his hands flying up to cup the globe of his helmet.
“What, man?”
Vik scuffled around, kicking up a sheen of red sand, exasperation on his face in the crimson light. “‘One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.’ Remember those words? First thing Neil Armstrong said when he stepped on the moon. First words matter. They are huge and historically significant. Momentous! And we are currently the first human beings on a planet that is not Earth. Our first words are . . .”
“‘Kapow, I’m on Mars,’” Tom realized, aghast.
Vik nodded sadly.
“Can we take it back?” Tom whispered.
“This is being broadcast live all over Earth. I don’t think we get take backs.”
“Sorry,” Tom told Vik. Then, suddenly aware of their invisible audience, he called, “Sorry, Earth! Over!”
“While we’re being unprofessional,” Vik said, turning toward the camera fixed to their rover and gave it a thumbs-up. “Love you, Sveta!”
Tom laughed, thinking of Vik’s newest girlfriend and their fellow Galactic Legion member, Svetlana Moriakova. She’d pretend to be embarrassed, but she’d be pleased by the gesture.
They set about their business, taking some soil samples. Vik planted a small Indian flag amid the hard red rocks. “I annex this planet for India.”
Tom knew he was doing it to annoy him, but he still objected, “You can’t do that. I’m American. My country get a share.”
“That’s not how it works here in India, Tom.”
“Fifty-fifty or we fight it out.”
“Do we really want to start this brand-new chapter in India’s history with Mars’s first world war?”
Tom wanted to playfully nudge him, but they couldn’t do that in space suits.
Vik flashed him a huge, crazy-eyed grin. “Hey, Doctor.”
“What, Doctor?”
“We’re on Mars.”
“We are on Mars.”
They couldn’t stop grinning at each other.
THE CELEBRATIONS WERE in full swing when they returned to Earth, though the Mars mission had primarily been a test run for new landing technology before the major mission later this year. Wyatt’s secret project had come to fruition: an interstellar engine that folded space in front of a ship and expanded it behind to allow faster-than-light travel. She’d been the team member to devise the final equation that led to the functional device. Finally, she was getting a chance to follow through on the goal she’d pledged right before Cruithne hit: she was helping to spread human life beyond Earth.
Naturally, the best of the young astronauts had been selected to fly the first mission, a trip to the Alpha Centauri star system, one believed to have habitable planets. The Mars mission had been Tom and Vik’s; the interstellar mission would be Yaolan and Yuri’s.
They all gathered together a few days before the interstellar mission, reading some of the news stories covering Tom and Vik’s mission to Mars. Tom was a bit embarrassed by the scathing critique of his conduct titled “‘Kapow, I’m on Mars’: The case against teenage astronauts,” but his friends all found it hilarious so it soon amused Tom, too.
“I had to promise General Marsh I’d come up with better first words than yours,” Yaolan said, settling next to Tom, and he felt the usual flicker of surprise whenever he saw her lately. One of the post-singularity stem cell breakthroughs had enabled her skin to regenerate with just a misting spray, applied a few times a week. Yaolan had reluctantly sought the treatment, knowing a PR-friendly appearance would only strengthen her case for getting a spot on the interstellar mission.
Tom had admitted only to Olivia Ossare that he was worried she’d have nothing to do with him once the scarring was gone. He felt like a jerk even admitting that, but he’d been so sure once other guys started noticing Yaolan, that she’d split and find someone better.
“That’s not about Yaolan, it’s about your view of yourself, Tom,” Olivia had told him. “You need to give her the benefit of the doubt and trust in her feelings for you.”
And she’d been right. Tom’s fears had been unfounded. Nothing had changed, even if Yaolan now turned heads for a different reason than before.
“So, Yaolan,” Vik said from across the table, raising a glass, “getting nervous yet?”
“Never,” she vowed.
“I am feeling very apprehensive,” Yuri assured Vik, not looking the least bit apprehensive at the knowledge his big mission was next.
Vik told Yaolan, “You’ve got to promise that if you meet some handsome alien out there, you’re going to at least send Tom a message before running off with him.”
“If I have time,” Yaolan teased. “I’ll obviously be busy figuring out how to make sweet love with this new alien life-form.”
“Maybe there will something in the neural processor about this,” Yuri suggested.
“You’ve updated your processor lately, haven’t you?” Wyatt said abruptly, so intent, she was leaning half over the table. “Every time I talk to Tom, he’s slacking off on his updates.”
“I’ve got auto update for the software, but as soon as I update the hardware, it’s obsolete again,” Tom objected.
Wyatt shook her head. “It’s called exponential technological progress for a reason. Get with the singularity, Tom.”
Yaolan’s eyes twinkled. “Wyatt, I wouldn’t dream of leaving the solar system with obsolete hardware.” She elbowed Tom lightly, because he’d do that. He smiled. “And Yuri would never do it, either.”
“Of course Yuri wouldn’t,” Wyatt said, smiling at him.
Yuri chuckled, marveling at it. “Another solar system.” His face was dazzled. “We will open our eyes and see all the stars from another point in the galaxy.” He cast his gaze upward, and Tom found his heart fluttering as he looked up, thinking suddenly of how far away that was truly going to be.
He grew aware of the time in his neural processor, and said, “Hey, while we’re all here, did you guys want to see the new memorial?”
Vik frowned a little, but Wyatt nodded readily, and Yuri gave a hesitant nod. Tom looked at Yaolan, and even though she’d never had any personal attachment herself, she knew he did. Her hand stole into his. “Let’s go.”
VIK WAS UNIMPRESSED. “He looks like a mad dictator.”
All five of them stared up at the statue of James Blackburn, the ghost in the machine, planted amid the other memorials to various late presidents in Washington, DC.
The title of ‘Ghost in the Machine’ no longer belonged to Tom, the ghost who’d blown up the skyboards, nor to Joseph Vengerov, the ghost who’d used the agent of chaos to destroy any opposition to his nanomachines in the halls of power—but to the real one who’d struck the first substantial blows against the oligarchs who used to own the world, the real catalyst who’d changed history, changed the world.
“I do not believe he would approve,” Yuri mused. “He would find this ostentatious.”
“I like it,” Wyatt said. She and Tom exchanged a significant glance.
“What do you think he’d say if we showed him the world now?” Tom wondered, glancing around, seeing the distant ships soaring through the air—actual ships with people inside, not merely drones surveilling them.
Now that the age of oligarchs was over, all the possibilities of the universe lay ahead of them. Sure, there’d be future villains, but the enemies of the singularity age were certain to be nothing like those from the world of old.
“I think he wouldn’t believe it,” Yaolan ventured. “I wouldn’t have believed everything could change so much in so little time.”
Tom looked up at the statue again. Blackburn had called himself a monster. He’d lost his family, and from then on, the only meaning he could see in his life was found in the destruction of his adversary.
But you were wrong, Tom thought
to that person who would never answer on the other end of the neural link. This all happened because of you. Blackburn’s existence had mattered more than he ever could’ve known. Not only to Tom and Wyatt but to all of humanity.
Tom just wished he could’ve realized it.
THE NIGHT BEFORE she was due to transfer to her interstellar ship, Tom and Yaolan took the new space elevator into orbit. There they boarded a starship and soared together around Earth, putting off the moment he dropped her off for her big launch. Soon she’d have new planets to see, a new solar system to explore, but for now they were content to watch as sunlight cast auroras across the vivid blue atmosphere of their planet.
“Tell me something,” she said.
They’d turned off the gravity so they could drift together, gazing out the window. Her head rested on his chest, and his fingers splayed through her dark hair. “What is it?”
“Why did you let Vik step on Mars before you? You gamble over everything. I thought you’d have some contest to see who won the first steps, but you simply gave them to him.”
“He wanted it more,” Tom said with a grin. “Hey, I can live with being Buzz Aldrin.”
“But I know you were also in the running as the test pilot for the interstellar launch,” she persisted. “You requested the Mars mission instead. You knew the interstellar launch would be the major project. You seemed as excited about it as I was.”
“Maybe I was being realistic, taking myself out of the running. Long, isolated mission in space? They’d be crazier than I am to pick me for that.”
“But you didn’t even try. That’s not like you.” She raised her eyes to his. “You told me once you’d love to save the world. You’d brag about it forever. But you did save the world and you haven’t been bragging.”
He stroked her cheek. “Are you worried about me?”
“I’m going to be gone for a long time. I want to know you’re okay, Tom.”
“Yaolan, I’m not depressed.” He gazed down at Earth, his heart full. “When I was younger, I’d have jumped all over the chance to make history and be the first to leave the solar system. I wanted to be somebody. To be important. But that was never really what I wanted. I guess in my mind, that was the thing I had to do to get a place in the world. I mean, I had nothing as a kid and I didn’t belong anywhere. If I just did something spectacular, something nobody could ignore, that would all change and I’d finally belong. All along, what I was really aiming for was this.”
“A chance to fly a starship?” Yaolan teased.
He laughed. “That’s pretty awesome, I’ll give you that. But, no. This. You. Vik. Wyatt. Yuri. People who belong to me. People I belong to. A chance to fit in somewhere, to be a part of something instead of an outcast. Don’t you see? I am happy. I have so much now that some days I can’t even believe it’s all real.” His eyes caught hers. “You know I love you, right? I mean that. I meant it the first time, I mean it now.”
“I love you, too, Tom.”
It was the first time she’d ever spoken the words to him, and Tom was thrilled.
Then she leaned forward and kissed him. Her black hair floated in a silky veil above them. A golden haze began to light up the curvature of Earth outside the window. Tom’s heart pulsed with the sense that everything had fallen exactly into place.
Tom and his friends—no, his family—had forged their way through some of humanity’s darkest hours. They’d been born into a world rolling downhill into an unprecedented age of technological tyranny.
Yet there’d been a reason for hope all along. Just down the road, there’d been another path, a difficult one, but it had always been there, waiting for those with the courage to stand against the last of the oligarchs. The darkness of their era had given them the opportunity to change history and usher in a new golden age.
Tom was at peace. That restless kid he’d once been had grown up into a man with a place of his own in the universe. People of his own. And a person he loved above all else.
“You know,” he whispered in Yaolan’s ear, “if you really do run off with some handsome alien, I’m going to follow you across the galaxy and start Earth’s first intergalactic war just to win you back.”
She laughed. “You better.”
Tom drew Yaolan into his arms as their ship soared on through space, the sun rising out from behind their planet, an infinite number of possibilities just over the horizon.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
S. J. KINCAID is the author of the Insignia series. She lives in California. You can visit her online at sjkincaid.com or follow her on Twitter @sjkincaidbooks.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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ALSO BY S. J. KINCAID
Insignia
Vortex
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
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COPYRIGHT
Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
CATALYST. Copyright © 2014 by S. J. Kincaid. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
ISBN 978-0-06-209305-9
EPub Edition April 2014 ISBN 9780062341228
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14 15 16 17 18 XX/XXXX 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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S. J. Kincaid, Catalyst
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