Forgotten Suns (34 page)

“I have very little patience,” he said, “and none to spare
for games of taunt and parry.”

“Our apologies,” she said. “Two shuttles are coming in. Will
you allow them both on board?”

“I have a choice?”

“You can refuse,” she said. “The planet will die. You’ll go
on. Your debt will never be paid. You’ll have the whole of U.P. after you no
matter what you do. I don’t suppose that matters to you, either.”

“This is what you call persuasion?”

“Is it working?”

He spread his hands. “The ship isn’t going anywhere until it’s
fed. If it lets the shuttles in, so be it.”

~~~

“She’s talking to somebody by shielded link,” Aisha said
after the ship had made sure MariAntonia went to her quarters and stayed there.
“I can’t hack it at all. Can you?”

“I’m not trying.” Rama pushed himself up out of the chair. “This
is all part of the game they play on this world. They would like to make it
bigger—to play it everywhere your people are. They think they can use this ship
to make it happen.”

He had to know they could hear, if they had a hack in the
ship’s kludge of a system. He was disgusted, and tired, and pushed to the edge.

Nobody here had the faintest idea how dangerous he was.

At least he was talking. Aisha had to hope that meant he’d
listen. Whether it would stop him from blasting them all when he’d finally had
enough, she didn’t know. All she could do was hope.

~~~

Both shuttles came in at once. The one from Spaceforce,
with
Leda
’s ID attached, and the one
from Araceli with its interestingly complicated set of authorizations. Rama was
waiting when they got there, which meant Aisha was there, too, along with most
of the crew and a handful of scientists.

Those were studying Rama. He ignored them.

The
Leda
’s shuttle
had Aunt Khalida in it, and to Aisha’s deep dismay, Lieutenant Zhao. The other
one, the one that she’d thought belonged to pirates, took its time opening.
Then Marta stepped out: the lady from the bar, with her hair braided and caught
in a net.

“Well,” Rama said to them all with the first hint of humor
he’d shown since he set out for the Ara Celi, “and welcome.”

“And in good time, too,” Marta said with serenity she must
practice in front of a mirror. “You know why I’ve come, I think.”

“Suppose I don’t,” he said.

“We all play games,” she said. “Even you. Ask Captain Nasir
why she is here.”

“I’ve come for my niece,” Aunt Khalida said. She sounded
stiff and cold, which meant she was either crying or screaming inside.

“Is that all?” Marta inquired.

Screaming, Aisha thought. Definitely. Though not at Aisha.
Yet.

“
You
tell him,”
Khalida said, biting off each word. “You’re the backup, after all. The
failsafe.”

“The trigger,” Marta said.

Khalida rocked back. She couldn’t be that shocked, could
she?

Maybe she’d had as much to bear as Rama had, in her way. “A
line of code? That’s what you are? It doesn’t make sense.”

“We are all made of code,” Marta said. “Mine, in combination
with certain implants, has an actual, and particular, use.”

“You can’t be the only one in existence. You can’t—”

“Limited resources,” Marta said with a graceful lift of the
shoulder and turn of the hand.

Khalida met it with deliberate gracelessness. “I don’t
believe you.”

“When you’re done sparring,” Rama said much too amiably, “do
let us know what the match is in aid of. Meanwhile, I believe I’ll take the
opportunity to rest. I can’t remember the last time I did that.”

That stopped them both cold.

“I come to claim my debt,” Marta said, at the same time
Khalida said, “They want you to get their children out of here.”

It was like a chorus. Aisha had no trouble telling the
voices apart. Neither did Rama.

“Debt I understand,” he said. “Pray explain the rest.”

Marta was not about to, which left it to Khalida. She wasn’t
happy about it, either. “They’ve liberated a shipload of children from the
Corps. They want you to get them away from here, and keep them away. The Corps
will probably come down on you with the proverbial fire and sword, but Araceli
won’t blow. Or so they say. I don’t know what, or whom, I believe any more.”

“They would entrust their children to me?” Rama looked even
wilder than usual.

“I don’t understand it, either,” Khalida said. “But I can’t
budge them. You open an orphanage, the planet survives. I told them you wouldn’t
do it.”

“Not an orphanage,” Marta said. “They’re in stasis. We only
ask that you take them out of the Corps’ reach, and keep them safe until they
come there.”

“Why? Why trust me?”

“Instinct.”

That was not a rational answer. From the expression on Rama’s
face, it made actual sense to him. “Supposing I would agree to this, where is
this safe place you speak of? How far and how long have I to go?”

“As far and long as you choose,” Marta answered. “Just get
them away from the Corps.”

“Which, as the Captain reminds us, will simply lock on and
follow.”

“I doubt that,” Marta said.

“Bargain for bargain,” he said. “You come with them. You
bring your powers of darkness, all your shields and your defenses. You protect
them. I transport them. Otherwise, no. I will not.”

“Debt for debt,” she said. “I accept.”

“One more thing,” Khalida said. “The code. You’ve got what
you wanted. Now hand it over.”

“I told you,” said Marta. “I am the code. I’m going wherever
this ship takes me. Araceli lives.”

“Unless you come back,” Khalida said. “Or another trigger happens
to have been made. Or born.”

“Both,” Marta said. “Does it matter?”

Khalida’s eyes narrowed. Her mouth was a thin line. Aisha
could feel her thinking, through the static and the blankness and the craziness
in this place. Clicking over data. Reckoning up accounts. Calculating options.

Not trusting Marta even slightly. She was playing a bigger
game than this one planet, and offering a greater threat to the whole of U.P.
Turning her loose might kill far more than a hundred million people. But there
was no way to be sure of that.

Kill Araceli for certain. Risk killing who knew how many other
planets. Back and forth. Weighing. Measuring. Deciding.

Taking the bargain in front of her. Leaving the rest to
whatever gods might exist.

Her mind was a beautiful thing, even with all its broken
bits and its jagged edges. Beautiful and terrible. Aisha remembered to get out
before she got caught.

She felt eyes on her. Lieutenant Zhao had managed to
disappear while the others talked. Watching. Listening.

Thinking. And seeing.

She threw up the old familiar wall. It was too late; she
knew that. She still did it.

She hoped she’d given him a mother of a headache.

The ship made a bay for the stasis pods that Marta had
brought in her shuttle. There were six hundred of them, and a bit more; they
weren’t all baby-small, but only a few were big enough to hold a grown person.

They were sad and hopeful at the same time. All those
children who might never grow up, but at least they were free.

Ship’s web told Aisha what they’d come from. Slaves, in a
way. Tools for the Corps to use. Living shields. Enough of them in one place
would make it invisible to anyone with psi.

Even in stasis, they were enough to do the same for the
ship. That was a gift. Aisha was sure it was intentional.

The ship was taking a long time to feed, and it wouldn’t be
hurried. People, even crew, straggled off to bunks and berths. Rama was one of
the few who stayed awake and on the bridge.

Aisha stayed close by him. She mostly stayed awake. She kept
thinking she was dreaming, that the living ship and the planetary war and the
ancient king were all in her imagination. Then she snapped awake, and it was as
real as the kink in her neck.

A whole lot of people were trying to hail the ship. They
couldn’t find it, but the ship’s communications systems picked up the signals.
The Corps and MI and half the Spaceforce ships in the system were melting down.

The only thing that wasn’t was Araceli. The worldwrecker was
still there—she could trace the millions of devices that made up its parts—but
the trigger was off.

“Aren’t you afraid the Corps will kill all your people?”
Aisha asked Marta. “Or worse?”

Marta had made herself a station near one end of the bridge,
set up a cradle and a screen and gone to work on Aisha couldn’t quite see what.
It wasn’t harmful was all she could tell. It looked as if she was studying an
opera score.

She glanced up from it when Aisha spoke. Aisha was still in
the black robes, but she hadn’t had the veil on in a while. She put up with
Marta searching her face, though what there was to see, she couldn’t think.
Marking points for ID, maybe.

“The Corps will do nothing,” Marta said. “We’ve scrambled
their web systems from here to Outer Pradesh. They’ll be planetyears sorting it
out.”

“Wonderful,” Aisha said. “You’ve made them mad. They’ll hunt
you to the ends of the universe, just on general principle.”

“I’m sure they will. They’ll have to find us first. And that
needs the systems we’ve worked hardest to scramble.”

“All they need is hostages, and you’ve left them a planet
full.”

Marta turned to face her. “This planet is full of farmers,
artisans, builders, engineers. Infrastructure, Sera Nasir. Their lovely country
houses, their endless supply of foodstuffs, the roads they travel and the
machines they depend on and the web they use for communications because mind to
mind takes an excess of energy and requires a plethora of shields—take away the
people who make all these things happen, and what’s left? A nest of parasites
without a host.”

“I don’t think it’s going to be that easy,” Aisha said.

“Nothing ever is.” Marta turned back to her screen. It was
opera: she had the music set to a tight feed, but Aisha caught the edge of it.
Grand, roaring stuff. She would have listened if she’d had time, but the
twisting in her stomach told her the not-easy was about to get a lot harder.

~~~

Rama went down so slowly Aisha didn’t realize what was
happening until the ship lurched.

He was sitting upright as he had been for hours. His hands
were on his knees. His eyes were open.

Empty.

He was in there somewhere. Deep down, curled up tight,
sleeping deep.

The ship rocked again, less sharply. It was almost done
feeding, and starting to feel another hunger, to be moving—sailing—swimming
through infinite space.

Without Rama to keep it focused, it didn’t care about the
swarm of microbes running up and down its insides. It was starting a long roll,
powering up for another subspace leap. A bigger one this time. All the way out
of the system.

That was what they wanted. Wasn’t it?

“
Stop!”
Aisha
shouted—screeched, really. “Ship, stop now. Wait.”

There was no reason for it to listen. It had a bond with
Rama, which he had earned. She had nothing but desperation.

She pushed at it till her head ached. It had stopped rolling,
which was good, she hoped. It still wanted to dive deep.

Somebody’s hand closed over hers. She felt a rush of
something like wind and something like the one sip of brandy she’d ever managed
to sneak when her father wasn’t looking.

“Hold on,” he said. “Breathe.”

It wasn’t Rama. This voice was too soft and light. It was
Lieutenant Zhao.

Part of her wanted to rip free and run to the other end of
the universe. The rest drank his strength and used it to lean on the ship.

It didn’t stop wanting to dive, but it decided to feed a
little more around the edges of this moon. Aisha’s knees tried to let go.

Lieutenant Zhao held her up. She shrank away from him.

“I won’t hurt you,” he said. “Or sell you to the Corps,
either.”

“No. You’ll just sign me over, and the law will make me go.”

“From here?”

She worked her arm free of his hand. It was hard, because
she wanted to like him. He wasn’t a bad person at all. He was just…

“Corps.” He was reading her. She’d been too badly thrown off
to remember how to stop him.

“He helped you with the test, didn’t he?” he said. He tilted
his head toward Rama, who hadn’t moved at all. “Of course he would.”

“He’ll never let you have me,” she said.

“I didn’t come to take you to the Corps,” he said, “but to
your mother and father.”

Her body went rigid. It didn’t stop her brain from working. “You’re
not getting your hands on me again. Ever. You understand?”

“Even to take you back to Nevermore?”

“I’ll go back when I’m ready to go back.” She stepped away
from him. “You leave me alone.”

He took a breath as if he might have said something else,
but in the end decided not to. Not that she would have listened anyway.

They were still in deep trouble. Rama was not responding,
the ship was just barely under control, and Aisha had no idea what to do. There
wasn’t anybody she could trust, to ask.

Even Aunt.

It hurt to realize that. Aunt was part of the reason why
Araceli was such a nightmare. Aisha couldn’t be sure Aunt would hold together
if anybody pushed, especially MI. Or the Corps.

She’d belonged to them once. They’d messed her up and thrown
her out. She was broken.

There was one person Aisha might talk to. She was not on
this ship, but her XO was.

~~~

The Spaceforce shuttle sat at the end of the bay, with its
whole crew still on board. Aunt, too.

Aisha never got that far. People waited at the entrance to
the bay. They were all crew, and they weren’t about to move.

In a vid she’d whip out her swords and swashbuckle her way
through. In real life she was half the size of half of them, and half the age
of the rest, and her swords were plasteel.