Spear of Light (2 page)

A year ago, Charlie had been forced out into space, ripped from Lym and sent out to be its ambassador. When he came home, he'd had two soulbots with him: humans turned to Next against their will, but now—undeniably—part of the invading force. Kyle had ferried Charlie and the two robots home from the stars. They had unnerved him, and he had kept his distance ever since.

Charlie tried to pull nuance from Kyle's expression, but all he read was raw anger.

“Kyle!” He held a hand out in greeting. “What can I do for you?”

Kyle leaned back and brought his arm up.

Charlie bobbed to miss Kyle's open palm as it came at his face.

At least it was open. He'd have had to react to a fist. Charlie kept both of his arms at his side, struggling to control the heat rising in him.

Cricket barked, telling him she wanted to be out near him. Hopefully she would stay put. She'd never seen him fight, and he couldn't have her involved.

Jean Paul held his stunner up, pointing it at Kyle. “What's this about?”

Kyle didn't take his eyes from Charlie's. “You gave away our farm. That was mine. My dad's and mine. You negotiated away way too much, and you didn't ask us for the right.” His voice was loud and shaky, edged with anger. “No one asked us anything. Not even Manny.”

Calm had always been the key to Kyle, who ran hot. Charlie let a beat of time pass. “And you came out here to slap me?”

Kyle shifted on his feet, looking down and then back at Charlie. “I didn't believe you'd betrayed us. But everyone said it was you, and Manny wouldn't answer any of us. What happened?”

“I kept what I could.” Charlie glanced toward the Wall, noting that it was uneven and thus probably not finished. “They were coming. They were coming
no matter what
. We traded. They agreed to stay contained in a few places. This is one of them. They agreed to let us keep most of Goland.” He winced at how weak that sounded, and he pointed up, toward the black of space. “They have a whole fleet out there. They could have taken it all.”

Kyle's eyes were still narrow, the anger not yet banked. “So you picked my farm?”

Charlie was glad he had worn his uniform. “I did what I had to do. Surely Manny will give you more land.”

“Dad might take it, but not me. I want our land back. I was born there.”

Charlie said nothing. Surely Kyle knew he couldn't have the past returned to him. “I understand. I'm sorry.”

“I'm fighting, Charlie. I want you to fight beside us. We're going to make them leave.”

Charlie arched an eyebrow. “Really?”

“We'll find a way.”

Charlie stopped for a deep breath. “You can't fight them. We can't fight them. They destroyed a whole space station. Look what they're doing to their ships! Melting them. They can melt themselves, copy themselves, restore anything you kill.”

Jean Paul spoke up, calm and reasonable. “How do you fight software?”

“That Wall's not software!” Kyle shouted, his face darkening.

Jean Paul spoke softly. “Sure it is.”

Trust Jean Paul to have words for the heart of something Charlie had never thought of, not in that way. He was right. The emotion drained out of him, leaving emptiness touched with faint despair. “You can't fight them. Neither can I.” His eyes flicked toward the Wall and then back at Kyle. “I don't even know if we can contain them. I tried to save as much as I could. There's more rangering to do. Come out to the station, to Goland.”

“I'm not coming back.”

“Too bad. We could use you. I'm sorry.” He was stuttering. Pointless. “We need more hands now, not fewer. I'm sorry.”

“I'm not. I'm sorry for you. I knew you'd fallen for the robots. I saw it. I saw it firsthand.” He fell silent, staring, his jaw trembling with some emotion he wouldn't let escape him. “You'd best be careful. Most of the town knows you've lost track of which side you're on. I won't hurt you. I promise never to hurt you. But I can't keep everyone off you.”

Charlie looked away from Kyle for a moment, back toward the huge silver wall. “Come back and work with us. You're big enough to get past this, and so is your dad. You'll be okay.”

Kyle paused, swallowed, and met Charlie's gaze with a very earnest look. Even for Kyle. “Go back to Wilding Station. It's best. For now.”

Charlie took a deep breath. Keeping his voice low, he asked Kyle, “Is that a threat?”

“It's a warning.”

It sounded like a threat. “I can't take orders from you.” He stopped for a moment, staring at the damned wall. “Maybe it will be okay if we give it a little time. Maybe we'll get something better than heartbreak out of the Next.”

Kyle's face had closed down again. “Nothing will ever be okay again.”

“That's a path to madness,” Charlie said.

Kyle's face hardened. “Talk to me when you're ready to fight. In the meantime, be careful.” With that, he turned and walked away.

Charlie stood silently, watching his friend walk away. He couldn't let this lie, but he also couldn't fix it, at least not right now.

Cricket leaned into him. He ruffled the fur on her neck before he turned toward Jean Paul. “If I hadn't gone away to space, I'd be as angry as Kyle.”

“You're still the same as you always were.”

“That's a lie. With great knowledge comes great confusion.”

Jean Paul laughed. “Nona will be coming soon. I'll take Cricket and we'll walk around. She needs a stretch.”

“Stay away from Kyle.”

“He's gone.” Jean Paul pointed. Sure enough, a single skimmer rose up toward the sky, the afternoon sun glinting on its silver skin. “Go. Clean up. You've only got twenty minutes until Nona shows up.”

Charlie leaned over and gave Jean Paul a quick, tight hug. “Thanks for being here.”

Jean Paul nodded, quick and perfunctory. “Always. Go meet your girl.”

“She's not my girl.”

“Right.” Jean Paul gave Cricket a hand signal and the two of them left, walking toward the edge of the spaceport. Even with one front leg missing, Cricket kept up just fine. They headed toward a large expanse of grass between empty landing pads.

Charlie couldn't keep his eyes off the Wall. Software. He wouldn't have thought of it that way. His skimmer was metal, but it had no smarts. It wouldn't become anything else unless someone made it something else.

The Wall that blotted out part of the sky had made itself out of starships, and he had to presume it would become starships again someday.

The Next were software. But they all started as people. Thinking about that fuzzy question of soul was as hard as thinking about an individual raindrop in a storm, or a single droplet of fog.

He started toward the waiting area, still feeling in every way like he wasn't ready to see Nona. Maybe he'd never be ready to see her. She must be on her way already, in a shuttle that had left one of the stations orbiting overhead. What was she thinking? Was she possibly as nervous as he was, as conflicted? As hopeful?

There were other people in the waiting room. He recognized a family that lived near his uncle Manny. When he smiled at them, the father looked away and the mother stared for a brief, excruciating second and then looked away herself.

He used to be popular.

He leaned on the window beside the woman and looked out. As he did, he managed to recall her name. “Luissa, I hope you're well.”

After a few breaths she whispered. “No one is well anymore. They're a plague on our lives.”

Her husband gathered her in his arm and sidled two steps away, pulling his wife close. Maybe this was why Manny had sent his own family into hiding. Didn't anyone believe they'd done as well as they could?

Charlie didn't try to say anything else, and a bubble of space persisted around him even as the room filled up.

The observation deck was far enough away from the Wall that it could only steal a section of sky, the change subtle but unmistakable. The view should be flat green or yellow fields all around: grains and vegetables hugging the tarmac on the far side and stretching all the way to the boundary between soil and beach, the ocean just barely too far away to really see. Instead, square ships that the Next used for cargo blocked part of his view, and the Wall shadowed the fields even this early in the afternoon.

A sweet female voice played over the loudspeaker. “Five minutes until Shuttle Three lands.”

The shuttle flew in low over the fields and slowed to a near hover before it set down on four legs and squatted on the tarmac like an insect settling flat onto the surface.

The waiting room doors opened, and Charlie and the others spilled out onto the pavement.

Nona walked down the ramp first. She wore a yellow dress and blue boots that matched the blue streaks in her hair. She stood with her feet braced and shaded her eyes from the sun, looking for him. He saw the moment she spotted him, the smile, the relaxation of her shoulders. Her simple dress showed off her blue and green dragon tattoo and highlighted the lacework tats on her wrists. She had a new one on one hand, possibly her captain's sigil from the
Sultry Savior
.

He forced a casual walk, came up close enough to smell her (clean and oily, like all spacers). He stood with the width of an outstretched hand between them. He'd met her right here, the first day she set foot on Lym. He'd gone with her to the far edges of the solar system and come back. They'd been lovers for one night and separated the day after.

One night.

They each had their duty. He hadn't seen her since before the system-wide vote on the Next, before he negotiated with the Next about Lym and turned the whole system against him, before the Shining Revolution murdered Chrystal, the new Next created from Nona's childhood friend.

She looked almost the same. Beautiful. Still pretty enough to shock him. The jewel in her cheek looked like a cut diamond in the sunlight, and her hair sparkled as well, as if had been painted with tiny, tiny touches of reflective glass. The green and blue scales of her dragon tattoo matched the colors in her hair. The differences he noted were small. She looked tougher. Less vulnerable.

Nona smiled up at him. The sunshine of it pierced him and he smiled back, and then he couldn't help himself anymore. He took her in his arms and pinned her to him, running his left hand along the small of her back and touching her jewel with his right. “I'm so glad you came.”

She pushed just far enough away to look up at him and then past him and above them. “The sky is as fabulous as the first time I saw it.”

He looked up. A few thin clouds painted over a deep blue field. After spending so much time locked inside a space ship, he'd sworn to appreciate the magic of sky every day. He smiled.

“It's so good to be here,” she murmured.

This time he recognized her bag in the pile that had been offloaded and left on the tarmac. She stopped him before he could lead them toward Jean Paul and Cricket. “I brought a second one. I'll be here longer.” She pointed out a large red bag on wheels.

He grabbed it, stuck her smaller blue bag on it, and took her hand with his free hand. The crowd split in two sections. Some walked directly toward the edges of Manna Springs, which butted up to the spaceport. He and Nona joined people headed toward the parking lot and the observation building. A double rope separated them from a line of robo-carts bearing cargo from the transport. The whirr and clatter of the machines made it difficult to talk, but he leaned down and whispered in her ear. “Want to see a waterfall?”

“Always.”

“The same one I took you to before?”

“All of them.”

He felt better than he had in a very long time, maybe since they had separated. It surprised him. He had expected to feel awkward. Instead, he felt like they were a couple. Even though they had spent a lot of time here and in space together, they'd mostly avoided each other. He'd barely started to feel safely intimate on the
Savior
when they'd been ripped apart by the need to be in two places, and by the pursuit of what turned out to be Shining Revolution ships.

As they entered the waiting room, a female guard blocked their way. Again, someone Charlie recognized; Farro had worked beside him on Desert Bow Station, a ranger base on Entare. Years ago, when they were both newly minted in their jobs. Even though he hadn't seen her for at least a decade, she looked very much the same: small and slight, with wisps of curly black hair escaping her ponytail to frame her dark face. The black uniform of the Port Authority barely contrasted with her skin. She didn't look angry like Kyle had, or confused like the woman near the big window earlier. If anything, she looked concerned and determined.

He held his hand out. “Hi Farro. I'd like you to meet Nona.”

“Hello.” She kept her eyes on Charlie. “Are you going into Manna Springs?”