Catch the Lightning (31 page)

“I’m sorry.” I kept saying that. It sounded so useless. Apparently all my prayers had done no good at all. True, Althor wasn’t going to die. I was. What they were doing to him was worse than death.

“Do you believe in God?” I asked.

“Yes.” He stroked my hair, his voice damp like his face. “More than one, actually. Our supreme being isn’t a ‘god,’ though. She’s female.”

“Then why do you say ‘for gods’ sakes.’”

“It’s the English translation of a Skolian idiom. Literally it means ‘for the sake of any above-spirits that may notice me.’ The spirits don’t have a sex.”

“Can you pray to your Goddess?”

He laid his cheek against my head. “I tried. She doesn’t hear. Or maybe she doesn’t exist. Maybe Ixa Quelia is no more than the desperate mythology of a dying people.”

“Ix Chel?”

“Ixa Quelia.”

“Ix Chel is the Maya moon goddess.”

“Raylicon has no moon, other than in our legends, probably brought by our ancestors from Earth. Ixa Quelia is the goddess of fertility. Fire. The night. Life.”

Life. No wonder he thought she hadn’t heard.

Eventually we dozed, half awake and half asleep. After a while I became aware of voices. Opening my eyes, I saw mirrored armor filling the room. Admiral Bloodmark stood in the doorway.

As Althor and I stood up, Bloodmark spoke. “We’ve been in contact with Iquar’s people.”

Althor tensed. “And?”

Bloodmark motioned at me. “Iquar wants her too.”

“No!” Althor pulled me against him. “She’s not even an empath. Your people tested her.”

“We sent him holos.” Bloodmark shrugged. “He wants both of you, as compensation for our delivering damaged equipment.”

“Ragnar, don’t do this to her. Let her go.”

Bloodmark came forward, through the forest of waroids. “At least this way she’ll live. You may even get to see her.” He glanced at the mercenary nearest him- “Bind him.”

They shouldn’t have come into the room when Althor’s arms were free, no matter how much they thought they had subdued him. He lunged at the nearest waroid, moving so fast that his reflection in its armor became a gold smear. He grabbed its mirrored arm and swung it around, hurtling its bulk into two others. They crashed together and toppled, the grating clang of their armor echoing off the polished stone walls.

Then he went after Bloodmark.

They blurred. Two human machines in battle. Althor’s attack threw them forward and in the loW gravity they sailed at a wall, feet off the floor. Bloodmark twisted, knocking Althor off balance, but Althor used the admiral’s momentum to wheel him around. They hit a waroid, still grappling with each other, but as fast as the mercenary reacted, Althor was faster, shoving against it so that he and Bloodmark spun away before it could grab him. Althor and Bloodmark wresded together, feet skimming the polished floor as they tried to throw each other.

The waroids shouted, strange filtered calls. Three aimed their weapons, tubes with bulky handles. But they didn’t shoot, not with Althor and Bloodmark locked together and moving fast. The fighters hit a wall and rebounded, moving like flashes of moonlight on sea waves at night, silver and black, blurred water rolling on a shadowed beach. They crashed past me, coming so close that I felt the heat generated by their reactors.

They lost their balance, and Althor swung Bloodmark under him as they hit the floor. For one instant they made a frozen tableau, Althor with his hands around Bloodmark’s neck, strangling him—

The shot came as an explosion of compressed air. It hit Althor in the chest and threw him backward, wrenching him away from Bloodmark. Four waroids dragged him up against the wall, pinning his arms and legs. Althor swore and tried to pull away, but four human fortresses were more than he could overcome. .

Bloodmark stood up, rubbing his throat. “Is there any more damage?”

The doctor pulled out his med clip and stepped over to Althor. As Althor struggled, one of the waroids pulled back his head, exposing his throat, “Don’t knock him out,” Bloodmark said.

The doctor swiveled his helmet to Bloodmark. “It will make him more manageable.”

“Iquar’s people want his reaction time slowed,” Bloodmark said. “He’s no good to Iquar if the only way to control him is to knock him out. You’ll need a neural suppressant that affects his reflexes without diminishing his empathic responses. If sedatives are in his system, it could affect your treatment.”

“I understand.” The doctor replaced the clip. While the other waroids held Althor’s head back, he pressed his tape against Althor’s neck and the rotating holos appeared, “A few more optic threads around the shoulder region ripped. But the damage is minor. It should repair itself before we rendezvous.”

“Good,” Bloodmark. said. “Now restrain him properly this time.”

They bound Althor’s wrists, then took us back through the building. Four waroids flanked Althor, one on each side holding his upper arm. One walked with me, silent except for the hiss of its armor every now and then. I wondered what it became when it took off the armor. A man or woman with a normal life, family, friends? It was impossible to imagine.

We left the building and crossed the glassy plain, moving in the low gravity with dreamlike languorous steps. As we walked, the quality of the light changed, becoming softer, like starlight. I looked up. Far overhead, the dome was opening, revealing a black sky studded with stars. They resembled jewels, their colors far more vivid than when seen on Earth. In fact, they were as bright as on the holomaps in the Jag—a view created by the near vacuum of space.

“Wait!” I stopped walking, my heart pounding. “We have to go back. To the building. We’re losing air.”

The waroid grabbed my arm, forcing me to go with him. Ahead of us, Althor twisted around to look, then stumbled as his guards yanked him forward.

Bloodmark slowed down to walk with me. “There is plenty of air.”

I pointed at the dome opening above us. “Not out there.”

“Can you see a glint of light, like a curtain?”

By squinting, I could just make out a familiar soap-bubble shimmer far above us. “What is it?”

“A membrane,” Bloodmark said. “It holds in air.”

I later learned a molecular airlock is a modified lipid bilayer. Nano-bots dope the membrane, each an enzyme plus a picochip.

Applying an electric potential causes the enzymes to alter shape and lock onto receptor molecules in the membrane, changing its permeability. One setting makes it impermeable to gasses, air and water vapor in particular. When we walked through it, our bodies became part of the interface. Its cross-linked structure and picochips remembered its previous form, so it could regain its shape after we passed through.

Bloodmark spoke quietly. “If it makes a difference to you, I am glad you are going with Althor. If Iquar lets you see him, that may make it easier on Althor.”

I clenched my fists. “I don’t see how you live with yourself.”

“There are times when we must do what seems cruel to avoid a greater evil.”

“Who gave you the right to decide?”

His voice hardened. “Who had the right to condemn us to centuries of war?”

“Don’t you know what you meant to him?” I wanted to hit him. “Is this how you would treat your son?”

“My son is dead.” Bloodmark spoke numbly, lost in the memory. “He was ten. About the same age as when Althor started to live a normal life. A task force of Eubian agents infiltrated a base near a city where he lived with my Elder Wife. The Traders meant to be in and out within a matter of hours. They were discovered. Near a park. My son was playing there. He was caught in the cross fire. Shot by our own people.” His voice had a deadened quality. “An accident. A tragic accident.”

Softly I said, “And now you’re going to make Althor the sacrifice for that accident?”

He stiffened. “My son has no connection to Althor.”

Ahead of us, the waroids reached the ship. As they took Althor inside, we came up to them. The leader spoke to Bloodmark. “You’ll hear the results on the news broadcasts.”

“Very good,” Bloodmark said.

“You’re not coming with us?” I asked.

“Of course not,” Bloodmark said. “When the exchange takes place I will be seated at the Assembly. I have an invitation to dine with Althor’s parents afterward.” He paused. “I imagine I will be with them when the news comes over the broadcasts. I will do my best to console the shocked and grieving parents.”

I gritted my teeth. “You bastard.”

“Whatever you may think of me, I am doing what I believe best for my people.”

A waroid pulled me toward the ship. I looked back to see Bloodmark standing with his bodyguard, alone on the field, hands clasped behind his back, silver hair gleaming in the black landscape.

The mercenaries tied us into our seats again and lowered the visored helmets on both of us. I didn’t know what Althor’s did, perhaps began dosing him with biomech suppressants. In mine, the mist curled around my face and I drifted into a fitful sleep.

I woke when something poked my lips. Opening my eyes, I saw a waroid pushing a tube from the framework around my head into my mouth. The mercenary had pushed back my visor and was floating in front of me.

“Drink,” she'said. “Come on, girl. It’s just water.”

I opened my mouth and the tube clicked into place. Liquid ran cool and sweet down my throat. Someone asked a question in another language and the waroid said, “Her dehydration wasn’t critical. Otherwise it would have activated an alarm.” When I finished drinking, I opened my mouth and the tube-clicked back into the framework. The waroid still floated above me, watching. Maybe she didn’t have enough to do. More likely she was making sure the merchandise remained in good shape. Didn’t want to deliver dehydrated goods. Freeze-dried. Instant Tina. I tried to laugh, but it came out as a sob.

“What’s the problem?” someone said.

“Damned if I know,” the waroid watching me said. “None of her monitors show anything.”

Someone said, “She’s crying, idiot,” and someone else muttered, “Sometimes I hate this job.”

The woman in front of me snorted. “You won’t hate it when pay time comes. We’ll be some of the wealthiest people alive. Hell, we’ll be fucking richer than some planetary governments.” As a murmur of agreement washed over the others, the pilot said, “Approaching reinversion. Prepare for transfer.”

Movement rustled through the cabin as the mercenaries settled into their seats. The exoskeleton on mine closed and a holomap appeared above it. The map showed the stars blueshift-ing in discontinuous jumps, converging to a point. Holographic hieroglyphs scrolled under the display, my first indication that Skolian languages are three-dimensional, one dimension containing most of the information, the other two adding subtleties and complexities.

We reinverted smoothly. After the stars redshifted to normal a tiny bar appeared in a corner of the holomap. Gradually it swelled in size, revealing itself as a rotating station, what I later learned was called, simply, the Cylinder. It had an extended torus, making it a double-walled cylinder. Instead of a hub, a nonrotating tube extended down its hollow center, flaring out into a pod at each end to give it a fluted appearance. A massive ring of thrusters circled the neck of each pod.

The Cylinder grew to fill the holomap. Lights scintillated on it, either fixed or racing in necklaces of green, gold, silver, blue, and violet. Glitter drifted around the fluted tube. We came in closer, until the holomap could no longer show the whole station; closer still, and structures on its surface resolved, cranes, spires, and towers; even closer, and structures within the structures resolved, like fractals repeating their pattern at higher magnifications. Closer yet, and only a pod on the closest end of the fluted tube was visible. The glitter had grown into specks—

With a mental lurch, I realized the “glitter” was ships. Huge ships, with multiple sections, brisding with turrets and antennae. Finally I absorbed the station’s magnitude: it was thousands of times larger than Epsilani. The pod before us was opening, like a massive flower with sharpened petals. As we passed under those petals, I realized the pod could hold a hundred ships our size.

New voices came over the com, speaking yet another tongue, one with a harsh sound. Input for the holomap switched to a site outside the Cylinder, allowing us to see our ship inside the open pod, like an insect in a Venus’s-flytrap. A robot arm unfolded from the pod’s inner surface; when fully extended, it stretched the length of the mercenary ship and more. As it opened its skeletal fingers, a cargo door on the ship rolled open. With no atmosphere to carry sound, the whole process was eerily silent. The claw entered the cargo bay—and came out with the Jag in its skeletal grasp. A huge door in the surface of the pod slid upward and the crane withdrew inside with its captive starfighter. The massive door closed, leaving a smooth section of hull.

Althor spoke, his voice groggy, as if he had just Woken up. The pilot answered, something about the Jag being transferred to Iquar.

The ship docked, entering a chute in the neck of the pod. My holomap shut off once we were inside. A shudder vibrated through the ship, a sense of something huge clamping onto it. When the vibration stopped, someone said, “We’re secure.”

I stirred, and my hair drifted in lazy coils, swirling into my face. The waroid on my right climbed out of her seat and stood up, her magnetized boots planted on the deck. She freed me from the seat, then pulled me up and held onto my arm to keep me from drifting away. My limbs felt numb, the sensation returning in pins and needles.

At the front of the cabin, several waroids were holding Althor while another locked his hands behind his back. He stood watching me, his face creased with fatigue. Despite my deadened brain, I sensed traces of his fear.

We disembarked into a large chamber. After decontamination, we floated out into a huge bay with swinging catwalks and decks made from crisscrossing strips of red metal. A rail ran through the area, terminating at the decon chamber. Two transport cars waited on it like bullets molded from bronze, their noses pointed away from the ship.