She left a thoughtful pause long enough to let me think she was going to let me have the last word for once and I could finally get some shut-eye. “So what about you?”
“Hm?”
“If it’s pop psychology we’re doing, have you considered that your problem is that you find it impossible to move on from your past glory days?”
“All right, you’ve got me there. I do think the Golden Age of star piloting was more agreeable than whatever the hell color of age you’d call this one.”
“But that’s why you’ve been so eager to trust, lately. Why you refuse to accept that Robert Blaze betrayed you. Why you will so readily accept the situation on this planet. The chance of going back to your old fantasy life is being dangled over your nose, and you roll over like a dog.”
I sat up again. It’d been a while since I’d done this many sit-ups in one session. “Well, at least there has been one thing in my life I took pleasure from! At least I’m not dead inside! And if rejecting your paranoid moon-landing-conspiracy evidence makes me a stupid doggie on a leash, then call me Mr. Woofy. Frankly.”
“I never said I had hard evidence,” said Warden, remaining infuriatingly composed as always. “Only a few nagging doubts.”
“Emphasis on the nagging. Well, I’ll tell you what. You come with me and Alice to recon the Ruggel village tomorrow morning, and if we see a massive soundstage with buildings painted onto canvas sheets, then I’ll admit you were right all along.”
“Fine!”
“Er, why don’t you two, you know, get a room,” said Jemima, approaching our sleeping area.
Warden and I gave her matching grimaces at the notion, and she smiled, embarrassed, before taking a seat on the last remaining bedroll. She seemed flushed and out of breath, but she hummed happily as she made to remove her big, fashionable shoes.
“And where were you?” I asked.
“Oh, I just . . . joined in with the dancing for a bit,” admitted Jemima, still taking deep breaths to bring her heart rate down. “Phew. They’re just so cute, aren’t they.”
“Yes, Warden was just saying how cute they are,” I said, arms folded sulkily, realising that the specter of a decent night’s sleep was drifting further away with every passing second.
Jemima beamed. “You know something? I really like it here.” Her face turned serious. “We’re going to help them, aren’t we? Against the cyber things? You’ve fought them before.”
“Yes,” said Warden disapprovingly. “That seems to be the sole point on which we are all agreed.”
Jemima gave a little snort, downgrading it to a nervous smile before it could break out into a full laugh. “Wait, both of you agree? How did that happen?”
“Alice has a ship,” I reported. “It’s back in the Ruggel village. We help them retake it, we get a way off this planet.”
Jemima’s upbeat mood visibly went down the drain. Her hair’s vibrant pink tint seemed to spontaneously darken a few shades. “Oh. But . . . we don’t have to leave straightaway, do we? They might need more help. You know. Settling back in.”
“I rather think we do,” I said, becoming annoyed. “Because your mum’s thugs are going to be showing up at Salvation Station pretty soon, and if you’re not there, there’s gonna be a lot of face stomping that could otherwise have been avoi—”
“My mum isn’t sending thugs!” cried Jemima, flailing her hands for a moment before composing herself. “She probably hasn’t even noticed I’m gone! Stop thinking you understand what my mum is like! And anyway, the people at Salvation Station cut your chip out! Stole all your money! You don’t owe them anything!”
“Jemima . . .” I began, but that sentence went nowhere.
“And you,” she said, turning her pointed finger to Warden. “Where else do you have to be? Your plan was to join the pirates, wasn’t it? And then the pirates turned you out and left you on this planet. You don’t belong there. And you can’t go back to Earth, either.”
Spent, she slumped back down, thrusting her face into the space between her knees. Over the mass of quivering pink hair, Warden caught my gaze meaningfully.
“It’s just . . .” continued Jemima, uprighting herself with second wind acquired. “Everywhere up in space it’s just been people trying to kill you and use you and neither of you have anywhere to live and nobody else cares! Why is it such a stupid idea to just, you know, stay here a bit longer? Here there’s just . . .”
“. . . killer cyborgs,” I said.
“Jemima,” said Warden, with what amounted to warmth for her. “Just because you want to rebel against your mother . . .”
“I’m not trying to rebel against my mother!” said Jemima, swatting Warden ineffectually on her padded shoulder. “I’m just saying you’re totally overreacting!”
“Jemima, your mother probably already believes that you have been kidnapped,” said Warden, brushing her swatted shoulder with quick, severe strokes. “Just because she can be distant does not mean she has no concern for you at all.”
“Yeah,” I said, feeling like someone with actual emotions should probably get involved in the conversation. “I mean, when I was a kid I thought my mum didn’t love me ’cos she’d never buy me a cream-filled crepe from the bakery when we were walking past. She always pretended she couldn’t hear me yelling. I thought she didn’t care. But then I got older and I realized she just didn’t want me to turn out fat and hideous, like her.”
“And besides,” said Warden, bulldozing me right back out of the conversation. “You are more than just your mother’s daughter. You are part of the public perception of a nation’s president. And with that, you are a symbol of the nation. Any perceived affront upon you is an affront upon that nation, and I am certain they will respond accordingly.”
“I didn’t ask to be the symbol of a nation,” spat Jemima, returning her chin to the cradle on her knees as she submitted to our combined assault.
“Yeah, I imagine those pilots on Salvation won’t remember asking for a jackboot facial, either,” I said, rolling over to turn my back on them. “I don’t think that’s on any of their plying day planners. Now I really am going to sleep.”
And I really was.
Chapter 20
If the planet we were on wasn’t Cantrabargid, it was an uncanny doppelgänger. It had the suns, the terrain, and the thirty-hour rotation cycle, which meant I could get a generous ten hours of sleep and have a bit of a lie-in before the sun rose.
But then I was well fed and energized, and was willing to be generous with the benefit of the doubt. Conditions for the evolution of life were strict enough that suitable planets tended to be a little bit samey.
And it may even have been Cantrabargid after all. It was a pretty big planet, and I’d not seen huge amounts of it the first time. Maybe this was another set of rocky orange plains on the opposite side of the planet from where the Zuvirons lived. Contrary to bad fiction—like Jacques McKeown’s—very few habitable planets have exactly the same terrain from pole to pole, but there’s no reason there can’t be two deserts.
Mind you, they both had to be pretty damn big deserts. The Malmind War had seen skirmishes eighteen miles wide. And after a punishingly long hike along the top of the valley wall in the cold morning sun, I stood atop a rock spire that served as a vantage point, and the desert was still stretching from horizon to horizon.
“Stay low, McKeown, you’ll be seen,” said Warden, crouching beside my perch.
“The Malmind don’t look up,” I said, attempting to memorize the layout of the Ruggel village, nestled in the huge, bowl-shaped crater that seemed to mark the beginning of the valley. “Design flaw. That’s why it was always star pilots having to deal with them—they’re very easy to bomb.”
“He’s right,” said Alice, who was kneeling unafraid at the very edge of the valley wall. “When they don’t fight, they just stand around like farm animals grazing.”
The bowl must have once been a lake, which had long since shru
nk down into the little watering hole around which the village was built, just as the valley must once have been a mighty river that was now the little stream. The houses were squat, uniform dwellings constructed from rough slabs the same color as all the surrounding rock.
Crouching low enough to squeeze inside Ruggel-shaped doors was apparently too complex an operation for an individual Malmind cyborg to process by itself, so most of them were following preset patrol routes along the roads and alleyways dividing the houses. The few patches of pale white flesh that were uncovered by cybernetic implants had been universally burned a vibrant pink by the sun.
“They don’t appear to be doing anything,” said Warden, showing off those keen observational skills.
“They’re just occupying,” I said, climbing down from my perch for the sake of a more face-to-face discussion. “They don’t care about holding a village. They care about adding to their numbers. They’re waiting for the Ruggels to come back and try to retake their homes.”
“Which we will,” said Alice defiantly.
“Not much chance of a surprise attack, then,” said Warden unhappily.
I blew air out of my cheeks and looked down at the village again. From there, the Malmind could see along the valley for miles. An approach from that direction was far too obvious. But the walls of the crater were too steep. An invading force would need climbing equipment, and the descent would be slow. It would be almost as obvious as a frontal assault.
“How did the Malmind take the village in the first place?” I asked Alice. “This is about as defensible as it gets.”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “It all happened so fast. They came out of nowhere.”
“How conveniently unspecific,” said Warden, giving me one of her looks. Alice scowled, confused.
My gaze drifted to a patch of dusty silver-white that was poking up from between a couple of houses. Some old sheets had been thrown over it to help it blend in with the rest of the village, aesthetically speaking, but a nacelle is a difficult thing to disguise. It had to be Alice’s parents’ ship, unused for however many years, but intact enough to be beaten into a flying state, I was certain.
“This would be so much easier if I had a ship,” I thought aloud, then turned to Alice. “If I could get in there alone, get to the ship, maybe—”
“Nope,” she said, with irritating speed. “Village first, then ship. Earn trust.”
I sighed. At some point, when the Ruggels had been teaching her essential survival skills, there must have been a few basic lessons on contract negotiation.
“You may have raised a relevant point,” said Warden, charitably. “It could be possible for one or two individuals to sneak into the village unnoticed, by climbing down from the cliffs.”
“And then what?” I asked. “Break out the kung fu?”
Warden surveyed the village, tapping her chin with one finger, then used the same finger to point. “What’s that?”
She was indicating a cylinder of tarnished silver that had been erected in the center of the village, on the bank of the watering hole. It was about ten feet tall and held upright by a number of twisted metal limbs. About halfway up the cylinder, there were four extruding rubber tubes, currently dangling unused.
As we watched, one of the Malmind cyborgs, in response to some kind of signal, lurched up to the cylinder and placed one of the tubes into its mouth. The tube immediately stiffened as some hideous substance was passed through it into the cyborg. Like many things about the Malmind, there was something indecent about the whole process that seemed completely unnecessary.
“That’s weird,” I said.
“What is?”
“It’s the hub cylinder. Dispenses nutrient fluid that keeps the units running. Also the top part is a signal booster, receiving messages from the Malmind central core and passing them on to the local forces. It’s the focal point of every Malmind expedition. But it’s weird.”
“What is?” repeated Warden patiently.
“They’re usually kept somewhere out of the way, ’cos they’re such an obvious weak point.” I rubbed my chin. “Maybe it needs to be near a water source?”
“So we destroy it, and they are helpless!” said Alice, punching her palm in triumph.
I shook my head. “If they don’t get orders from the core, they’ll just continue following the last order received. And they can go for days without nutrients. They’d still have more than enough capacity to make us into Christmas decorations if we went in noisy.”
“But what if they were receiving different orders?” asked Warden.
I looked at her questioningly, and she jiggled her tablet in response. Ply knows how she had been able to hold on to that thing all this time. It was probably because it was the closest thing she had to a soul.
“You said it was a signal booster,” continued Warden, double-checking what I presumed to be the suite of hacking tools she had installed. “If I can get close, I may be able to override that signal. If I can figure out what kind of machine code they use, I may even be able to reprogram them. If not, I can at the very least shut them down with code they don’t understand.”
“How close is close?” I asked.
From some mysterious pocket in her outfit she produced a double-ended USB cable. It was about two feet long. “This close.”
I cocked an eyebrow at the village below us. “Are you honestly volunteering for the solo mission? ’Cos I am fully onboard with that plan and plying thrilled at the prospect.”
She took that on the chin. “No, McKeown. Two of us should still be able to maintain the element of stealth. As the resident veteran of Malmind combat, I propose that you come with me in an advisory role.”
“Yeah, yeah, I figured as much. I’m just a little concerned that ‘help retake the Ruggel village’ has suddenly turned into ‘single-handedly retake the Ruggel village.’”
“We’ll be ready with more rockfalls if you need to make an escape,” said Alice. “But don’t think about trying to take the ship.” She patted her loincloth, which jangled musically. “I always keep the keys with me.”
“Didn’t even cross my mind,” I said, and I meant it.
“I’ll go back to the camp and get the climbing gear,” said Alice, making to leave.
“Now?” said Warden. “Shouldn’t we wait until darkness?”
I shook my head. “Nope. Malmind have enhanced vision. We’d be the only ones with a disadvantage in darkness, so we should do it now. Unless you’re having second thoughts in the cold light of day.”
“None at all,” said Warden. She watched Alice scamper off back along the trail, and I could immediately tell that she was waiting for her to be completely out of earshot. “So.”
“Yes?” I said, with an exaggerated encouraging tone.
“Among what few bare essentials could be grabbed in a single panicky moment as they were ousted from their homes by a belligerent force, there was also apparently some climbing gear.”
I gestured to the village with an open palm. “They live surrounded by cliffs! And sloths climb a lot! It’s probably an important part of their lives!”
“What about the ship?”
“That will be an important part of our lives, or at least the continuation of them. What are you getting at?”
“It seems odd that she would always be carrying the keys to a ship that she claims to have not used in close to a decade.”
I peered out toward the ship in question, still sitting visibly between Ruggel dwellings. Now that I was focusing on it, I noticed that some potted plants had been arranged around it artfully. “It hasn’t been flown, no. But there’s no reason she won’t have been going inside it. Maybe that’s where she sleeps. Maybe that’s where she keeps the bedrolls and the climbing equipment.”
“Well, as long as you are satisfied, then forget I said anything,” said Warden.
“Way ahead of you.” I halfheartedly scanned the village yet again. “I mean, what do you think th
is is going to turn out to be? A VR simulation they put us in while we were asleep?”
“Of course not. Jemima and I were both awake for the whole trip from the station to the planet.”
I raised my eyebrows. “So . . . maybe it’s just me who’s in a VR simulation.”
Warden shrugged. “You aren’t, but there’s no possible way I can prove that to you.”
“Hm. On second thought, a VR simulation would have more emotions than you.” I glanced back along the trail. The location of the Ruggel camp was indicated by a column of campfire smoke in the distance, like a single pencil mark across the orange sky. “Do you think Jemima will be safe in the camp?”
“Safer than in the surrounding desert,” said Warden, also staring at the smoke. “To the extent, I am hoping, that she will be dissuaded from trying to escape when we have to drag her back to her responsibilities.”
“And yet, here you are, having run away from all of yours.”
“I only did so after careful consideration led to the conclusion that fleeing was the most logical course of action for me at that time,” she said, sounding more than a little rehearsed. “She is merely being immature.”
I nodded. “Funny. You ever think, between the three of us, we’ve sort of created a little impromptu family unit?”
I had never heard a syllable infused with as much utter loathing and disgust as the next one to come out of her mouth. “No. I do not.”
I blinked. “Me neither.”
After Alice returned with some ropes and climbing hooks, and immediately left again to wrangle up some more boulders for the valley escape route, Warden and I made our way around the lip of the crater, seeking the best spot to rappel down to.
We found it in a small courtyard, right next to where Alice’s ship was parked, backing onto the sheer cliff wall and decorated with a small well in the center. It seemed to be the point of least Malmind concentration and was well sheltered by buildings and the ship. And directly above it there was a sturdy elongated boulder a few feet from the edge of the cliff, around which I began looping the rope.