No Going Back (36 page)

I pulled out my mouth guard and yelled, “Zoe, are you okay?”

I heard a murmur but could not understand the words.

I clawed my way out of my couch and went to hers. She was still stuck inside it. I moved some of the padding and helped her sit up. She looked dazed.

“Are you okay?” I said.

She shook her head slowly, as if making sure it was still attached.

“Not yet,” she whispered. I held up a finger in front of her eyes and moved it. She tracked it, but slowly.

“Stay here,” I said. “You’ll feel better in a bit.”

I ran out of the open hatch and stopped four or five meters outside Lobo. I surveyed the damage to the other ships.

Far off on either side of the lake, dust surrounded two ships that looked as if each had collapsed under its own weight. No way anyone in either of them had survived. I shook my head. I hadn’t meant for anyone to die.

The two ships opposite us on the other side of the lake looked fine. They must have had the same type of emergency crash circuits as Lobo, because their hatches stood open. As I watched, men stumbled out of them. It was hard to see them clearly, but several appeared to be bleeding. A few fell onto the sand as soon as they were outside.

From the ship on my right, a man emerged leaning on what looked like a walking stick. He stopped as soon as he was outside and leaned against the ship. He lifted what I now realized was an old-fashioned rifle, a weapon with no electronics in it.

“Jon?” I heard.

I whipped around.

Zoe was standing a meter behind me, on the sand outside the open hatch.

I dove for her and yelled “No!” at the same time.

The sound of two gunshots in rapid succession drowned out my scream.

Zoe spun, fell, and hit her head on Lobo’s edge.

I landed holding onto her feet.

Blood pooled on her upper left side.

I couldn’t tell what the shot had hit. I crawled up to her shoulder and checked her. The body armor had saved her from one shot, though its force had hit her chest hard. She was bleeding from a wound on her shoulder near her neck, above the armor, and from her forehead, where she’d fallen. She was unconscious and breathing shallowly. I couldn’t tell how much damage she’d sustained in the fall.

I raised to a crouch and beat the sand with my fists. “She was innocent!” I screamed.

Another shot sounded as pain exploded in my upper left quad.

They needed me alive, but they apparently didn’t need me undamaged.

I fell flat on the sand. Zoe faced me, but her eyes saw nothing. Her breathing turned ragged.

From across the lake I heard the sound of laughter.

Laughter.

They’d shot Zoe, whose only mistake was to care for me.

They’d shot me.

Two ships of their own men had died.

And they were laughing.

I shook my head and fought back the scream that was building inside me. If I gave into it, I wasn’t sure when I would be able to stop. I could have told the nanomachines to turn off the pain, but I didn’t; I wanted to feel it all. I wanted the strength it gave me. I wanted it because I had let this happen, and I deserved to suffer for it.

I had let it happen, but they had done it.

All these years, all the hundreds of times I’d controlled myself, I’d walked from the conflicts, I’d let the guilty live, I’d done everything to avoid killing, and here I was.

Here Zoe was, soaking the sand of a world that wasn’t even hers with her blood.

Here I was, shot yet again, bleeding yet again.

Somewhere in the worlds, Jennie, my sister who had healed me, who had given me so much, waited for me to find her, her life ruined by the same type of people who had sent these men.

All the children I’d seen die, all that had happened to me, all that had hurt those who had been foolish enough to care about me, and still I had tried to save my enemies even as they hunted and hurt me and those I cared about.

Not today.

I screamed, no words, just the anger taking voice for a moment.

I clamped my mouth shut and held onto that rage. Before the nanomachines could close the wound, I reached down to my quad and rubbed my hand across it. I pulled back my hand. It was slick with my blood. I used the pain to focus, and I told the nanomachines in the blood to stay active. I pointed them at the men on the other side of the lake. I visualized the nanomachines building a massive cloud from the lake’s water. I saw in my mind them using every last drop of it, so that they formed a cloud so big it would rise above the lake and the sand like a mighty black storm, and then I imagined it falling on the men and their ships like a plague. I told them to go. I told them to disassemble everything on the other side of the lake that wasn’t sand—the people, the weapons, the ships. Everything. Then and only then should they stop.

A small cloud formed above my hand as the blood disappeared from it.

A slight morning breeze blew across the desert, but it did not deter the nanocloud.

The cloud moved to the lake and immediately began to grow. It grew wider and taller and thicker as it moved across the lake, slowly at first and then faster. The water level in the lake lowered, and the cloud grew taller.

More shots came from across the lake, and then more shots rang out immediately after them, but now the cloud made it hard to see us, so all of the shots smacked harmlessly into Lobo.

The cloud grew ever faster.

I heard screams and caught glimpses of people running, but then the cloud became so dense I could see nothing through it. It widened and grew taller, a thick black curtain rolling across the desert, and then it left the now dry lake.

The morning breeze turned into a wind blowing from the other side of the lake, but I knew it existed only because of the motion of the sand on either side of the cloud; the cloud stopped the wind, too.

I watched as the nanocloud moved relentlessly forward, over the ships, over the men behind the ships, and then over those who had run the farthest.

Finally, it paused, held for a moment like a dark note in a song of terror, and then it fell, the nanomachines turning to dust.

The rising sun shone brightly through the air the cloud had filled mere seconds ago.

The wind grew in strength and blew the dark brown sand and the black and gray dust into the dry lake, onto the statues and toward me, but the wind’s force was not great enough to bring any of it all the way back to me.

A host of statues stared at me, tears on their faces, tears of sorrow and joy and relief. Past the lake, where our pursuers had been, there was only desert.

“Would you care to explain to me what just happened?” Lobo said aloud.

His voice, gentler than I remembered it, snapped me out of my reverie.

I looked a last time at what I had done, at the emptiness I had left where life had been, and I wondered how long it would be before this, too, joined my nightmares.

“Yes,” I said, only comprehending my feeling as I gave it voice, “yes, I would, but not quite now. Now, we have to tend to Zoe.”

I picked her up and took her to the medbed. I took off her outer garments, peeled off the body armor, and watched as Lobo strapped her into the bed. Probes went into her, sensors ran across her body, and displays danced with information I hadn’t the training to decipher.

I sat silently and let Lobo work.

After a few minutes, he said, “She’s lost some blood from the gunshot wound, but it’s largely superficial. She has some broken ribs, but those are not going to be a big problem. The fall did the most damage and caused a little bleeding in her head, but I’ve addressed that.”

“Will she live?”

“Certainly,” Lobo said, “and with no loss of function. For now, though, she needs to rest. If she were awake, she’d feel a great deal of pain, so I’ve sedated her.”

“Thank you,” I said.

I walked outside and stared across the lake again.

Those few who came to see the statues would wonder where the water had gone, though in time the desert would reclaim it all, and the statues would vanish.

Others would come here searching for their men and for us. The men in the ships had almost certainly relayed their positions to their colleagues. It might take time for the Kang and Pimlani families to send more people, or they might move quickly, but others would follow. I no longer believed they would leave us alone.

We had to go.

We also had to get Zoe to safety.

Before we did, though, I wanted to leave something for those others. I wanted them wondering just what they had unleashed.

“We still have those long-running holo beacons, right?”

“Of course,” Lobo said. “Standard marking and emergency tools.”

“Record this,” I said, “and put it in a beacon, but with some changes I’ll give you.”

“Go,” Lobo said.

I started talking.

CHAPTER 47

Jon Moore

W
e left the beacon in place but did not activate it yet; I wanted one more review.

We lifted off.

“Where to?” Lobo said.

I wanted to return Zoe to the show, but there was no way we could be sure we would be safe for even a short time back on Haven. We needed to find someone who would take care of Zoe and make sure she made the trip home when she was healed enough to travel, which Lobo said would be in a few days.

“Connect me to Lydia Chang,” I said. Audio only on our end. I was still covered in dust and sand.

She answered the call quickly.

“Lydia,” I said, “this is Jon Moore.”

“Mr. Moore,” she said, “how are you?”

“I’m fine. How are you and Tasson?”

“Wonderful! He remembers almost nothing of what happened.”

“I’m very glad,” I said. “I am sorry to bother you, but I must ask you for a favor.”

“You know I owe you whatever you need,” she said, her voice more serious now. “What can I do to help?”

“A friend of mine was hurt,” I said. “I need someone to watch her for a few days until she is enough better to travel.”

“I must know, Jon, if you are asking me to do something illegal.”

“She did nothing wrong,” I said. “The men who shot her, though, definitely did. The police here would probably like to know about this affair, but for her safety, it’s better that they not and that she simply goes home.”

“I understand,” Chang said. “What would you like me to do?”

“Nothing,” I said, “except answer the door when I come to you, and then take care of her.”

“When?” she said.

“Within the next few hours.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

“Thank you,” I said. I disconnected. To Lobo, I said, “Here’s what I need you to do.”

* * *

When we touched down in the same public landing zone we’d used before, a private executive transport was waiting. It was a large vehicle, easily big enough to accommodate a party of ten, and certainly spacious enough for one man and a woman on a field stretcher. A man came out of the front of the vehicle and showed me his ID; it matched what I’d expected. He helped me carry first Zoe’s bags and then Zoe into it.

We went straight to Chang’s. The man never spoke.

I sent him to knock on her door.

She opened it before he could.

I stepped out of the vehicle then so she could see my face.

She motioned us inside.

I held up a hand and then waved the man back to me. We carried Zoe quickly inside and put her on a bed in a back bedroom to which Chang directed us.

We put her bags on the floor near her.

I sent the man back to the vehicle to wait while I spoke with Chang in the room with the still sleeping Zoe.

I handed her some pain medication and some antibiotics, along with instructions for them should they prove necessary. When we’d gone over Zoe’s condition, I gave her a wallet with an open draft on a small account here.

“This has enough money,” I said, “for you to feed her, pay yourself well for taking care of her, and call a doctor if it comes to that. There’s also enough for her to book passage to the gate on a shuttle, pay for a jump to Haven, and buy a shuttle home from there.”

Chang nodded. “You do not need to pay me for my help,” she said.

“Taking care of my friend—her name is Zoe—will cost you work time. I want to compensate you for that.”

“Thank you.”

I stared into her eyes. “You trusted me to save your son’s life, and I did. You told me what you would do to me if I betrayed that trust. Do you remember?”

“Of course,” she said.

“This woman I am entrusting to you means a very great deal to me. I am trusting you with her life, and one day soon I will check on her again. Do you understand what I am saying?”

“No threat is necessary from you, either, Jon. I will take care of her.”

“As I did your son, Lydia, but still you felt the need to threaten me.”

She smiled. “Love is not always gentle,” she said. “I understand.”

I took a last look at Zoe Wang. I thought of the conversations we’d had and those we had not finished.

“One more request,” I said.

“What?” Chang said.

“I would like you to tell her three things for me.”

“Of course.”

“First, tell her that I saved Tasson and those other children from Kang and his horrible friends. I want her to know that story was true.”

“I have not been able to tell anyone that story,” she said, “because you asked me not to, so that will be a pleasure.”

“Tell her also that I am sorry.”

“Yes.”

I hesitated a long time, staring at Zoe, trying to understand everything I was feeling.

I stood in silence so long that Chang stepped closer to me and said, “Jon? The third thing?”

“Tell her that I loved her.”

I left.

* * *

When the transport dropped me at the landing zone, I waited until the man had opened my door before I left the vehicle. I walked to the far side of Lobo and waved him to follow me. I hadn’t finished paying yet, so he followed me without comment.

“I’ve purged it,” Lobo said to me over the machine frequency.