The Dying Light (42 page)

There was amusement in the AI’s tone when it replied:

“That’s a first,” said Roche solemnly. She felt something absurdly like grief rising in her throat. “And Box...?”

“Thanks.”

There was a long pause before the Box spoke again.

“Not really. Just on the whole, I figure I owe you.”

She didn’t doubt that. But if there was anything left of her in a minute’s time, she would probably kiss the Crescend’s High Human cheek in gratitude—if it had a cheek, of course.

She sat straighter in her seat. “Okay, this is it. Uri, how are we looking?”

“All systems are green for slow-jump.”

“It’s your decision. I’d rather rely on
your
instincts in this case.”

“Understood. The
Sebettu
will be in range in thirty seconds.”

She studied the boundary ahead of them. It was whipping like a flag in a gale.

“How long until we jump?”

“Soon...” The ex-captain’s voice and expression were all concentration.

The chronometer hit twenty seconds.

The
Sebettu
was so close, Roche could practically smell its Kesh commander. If it came too close too soon, hitting the boundary wouldn’t be an issue. One solid strike from behind would put an end to all their problems.

“Ameidio, full shields aft.”

“Aye, Morgan.”

“Fire if you think it’ll help. Uri?”

The boundary loomed large. Previously small details now looked like giant ice floes tossing on an impossibly heavy sea.

The counter hit ten.

“Soon...”

“Their weapons are all locked and ready to fire.” The edge to Haid’s voice betrayed his own anxiety. “They’ll be in range in no time.”

“Looks like we’re going out the same way we came in,” said Roche, gripping her armrests.

Five seconds.

A wall of tortured space-time seemed about to strike them, and the
Ana Vereine
lurched violently to one side.

“
Almost
,” whispered Kajic.

Zero.

Plus one.

Plus two.

Plus three.

“They’re firing!” Haid shouted, bracing himself against the console.

The boundary hit them at the same time as the barrage from the
Sebettu.

“Now!”

Kajic’s voice filled the bridge as the engines let loose their contained energies in one, powerful surge.

For a split second, Roche felt like a tiny insect squeezed between the thumb and forefinger of some unimaginably giant beast.

Then they were jumping.

The ship rattled and shook as space warped and twisted. She felt as though she were being pulled inside out and spun around at the same time. Somewhere in the ship, Maii stirred in her coma; Roche could sense the distress of the reave as a wave of panic washed through her mind.

Veils of red fell behind them. Darkness peeled back and exposed—

Stars.

Then a blaze of blue light obscured them as the
Ana Vereine
dropped fully into real space.

Roche stared incredulously at the screen.

They were rocketing out of what looked like the surface of a large blue giant, warped into a fat spindle shape by incomprehensible forces. The anomaly had grown since they’d last seen it. Its surface was disturbed by the mighty distortions in space-time it hid.

“Behind us!” Haid yelled.

Something black and angular jutted out of the surface of the anomaly. Energy whipped around and from it, reaching for the
Ana Vereine
as though to pull it back down but also arcing back to strike itself. The sight filled Roche with both amazement and horror: the
Sebettu
had followed them through!

Then the surface of the anomaly flexed like a droplet of water in free-fall. The Kesh destroyer seemed to hang suspended for a moment, half in and half out of the slow- jump. There was a bright flash of orange light—even brighter than the anomaly—and the destroyer began to disintegrate.

First it broke into two, lengthways. Then those two fragments—each many times the size of the
Ana Vereine
—broke apart into smaller segments. Each piece hung briefly silhouetted against the anomaly, then either fragmented further or exploded. Within a second, there was nothing left larger than a grain of rice; another second reduced the Kesh destroyer to molecules; one further second and only plasma remained, a cloud of elementary particles tearing itself apart from internal forces.

“Box?”

Roche gripped the edge of her console hard. The ship shuddered as the shock wave hit it.

“
Box!
”

“We are experiencing communication problems due to the radiation from the anomaly,” Kajic said.

“Try the... what was it? The Eckandi emergency band!”

“I am broadcasting on those frequencies.”

“Any response?”

Kajic waited a second. “Nothing.”

“Give it a minute.”

Kajic nodded, and Haid turned to face her. She forced herself to breathe. No one said anything as the seconds swept by. The surface of the anomaly rose to meet them at a rate inversely proportional to the rate it was shrinking inside. The
Ana Vereine
angled its headlong flight until it seemed to be gliding.

A minute passed with no word. The Eckandi emergency band was empty, as were the others. Roche waited another minute just in case, then had no choice but to accept the truth.

The Box was gone.

“Take us back in,” she said quietly.

No one spoke as the
Ana Vereine
began its descent back into the maelstrom.

Epilogue

IND
Ana Vereine

‘955.01.25 EN

0170

“Do you have any idea how many people crew a typical Kesh destroyer?”

Roche didn’t answer because she didn’t want to know. The face on the screen looked like it was going to tell her, anyway.

“Four thousand three hundred and fifty.” Marine Commander Gent sighed to himself. “I don’t know how I’m going to explain this back home.”

“Just fill out your report as usual,” Roche said. “And mark it to the attention of Page De Bruyn.”

“De Bruyn, of COE Intelligence?”

“Yeah,” said Roche. “And you can deliver a report from me too. I’m kind of obliged to tell her what’s going on every now and again.”

“Well, I wish you’d tell
me
.”

“Look, take it up with your superior officers if you like.” Gent was definitely old school, and Roche was fast losing patience with him. “Tell them what I’ve told you and wait for a reply. They’ll only confirm what I’ve said, and you’ll only have wasted your time. But I’m happy to wait. As long as you do your bit and make sure these people get to where they’re supposed to, my involvement with you is at an end.”

Gent grunted. “Okay, Roche. Have it your way. But if I find out you’re spinning me a line—”

She broke the link with a flick of her wrist and leaned back into her seat. She shouldn’t have been surprised. Broadcasting a distress call had been risky—but when they’d found the wreckage of the COE blockade and realized that there wouldn’t be enough room to house all the refugees longer than a day, she’d had no choice. The
Ana Vereine
wasn’t built to accommodate that many people.

She simply hadn’t known that the first ships by would be the frigate
Starburst
and a full Armada reconnaissance squadron, or that there was a war brewing outside.

Her eyes were hot with fatigue. She rubbed them with her fingertips, trying to knead new life into them.

“Leave the galaxy alone for a few days and look what happens,” said Haid dryly. “Perhaps next time we should get a sitter.”

“Open conflict with the Dato Bloc. Revolt in the Narm Protectorate. Tension with the N’Kor Republic—and don’t think this incident will make things easier on that front. The Olmahoi sending in grayboots to find the
irikeii
. Talk of impeachment in the COE capital...” She shook her head; bright-colored blotches danced across the vision of her one natural eye. “How could it have fallen apart so quickly?”

“Perhaps it’s just symptomatic of the main problem.”

Roche looked over to him. “You mean the clone warriors?”

Haid shrugged. “They’re good at blending in, Rufo said; they insinuate, then they corrupt. Maybe they don’t always work from the bottom up when they want to tear things down.”

“Maybe.” Roche’s gaze returned to the screen, and the image of what remained of the anomaly. It had cooled as it expanded, changing in color from blue-white to yellow to red. At that point—when no space at all remained within the Gauntlet—the boundary between the real universe and the anomaly had evaporated. Three hours later, a warm pile of primeval dust with nothing but angular momentum was all that remained within the perimeter of the former Palasian System. One day, it might accrete into a protostar and give birth to a new system, but that would occur long after Roche had left the scene. Billions of years later, probably.

“Uri, Get Auditor Byrne on the line,” she said.

“Hailing her now,” said Kajic.

She waited, but it was Lud that spoke: “Sorry, Morgan Roche. I’m not sure where Auditor Byrne is right now. Can I help?”

“I just wanted to know how you got on with those all-suits. Anything recoverable?”

“A few bits and pieces. We’re still looking through them. We’ll let you know if we need anything.”

“Do that.” The outrigger spines hung not far from the
Ana Vereine
, looking absurdly like two giant conifers stripped of their leaves. Each “branch” held a berth for one outrigger; most of them were empty, even those of Long Span. The remains of the all-suits destroyed by the
Sebettu
were being cannibalized for parts to repair those still needed; the rest of the components would come from the
Ana Vereine’s
stores.

“Idil wants to know what you’ve done with Linegar Rufo,” Lud said.

“Give him to Gent. They’re going to take him to face trial for his crimes.”

“Good.” She could hear the satisfaction in the outrigger’s voice. “No matter what Yarrow... what she
was
at the end, her people deserve retribution.”

Roche grunted a vague affirmative, not wanting to mention the strife in the COE; civilized proceedings might be on hold for a while if things went badly on any of the fronts. Lud would hear soon enough. For now, he was happy, and that was what mattered.

“By the way,” he went on, “we have the body of the clone warrior. Do you want us to dispose of it?”

Roche was about to agree, but thought better of it. “No. Bring it aboard when you get the chance. It’s bound to be of use to someone.”

“Consider it done.” Lud signed off.

More than just useful, Roche thought. It would be a wellspring of information on the clone warriors. To the best of her knowledge, none had been dissected. The Box would’ve loved it—and Rufo too. Part of her was tempted to keep the scientist with them a little while longer in order to have access to his specialized knowledge. But she could never trust him. He was too self-centered and treacherous; even his data would be suspect.

said Maii when Roche asked for a second opinion.

Roche smiled to herself. The young reave was almost back to her old self, exploring the minds of those around her with ease and disquieting confidence. She was doing it from her bed in sickbay still, but Roche knew that in no time at all the girl would be fully recovered and once again on her feet.

She refused to discuss what it had been like under Xarodine for so long, and neither had she talked about the
irikeii
—but that wasn’t surprising. She had only been conscious for a couple of hours, and Roche had been busy for much of that time.

asked Roche.

Maii was also reticent to describe the state of the clone warrior’s consciousness.

Roche wondered how the reave could tell at all what was happening behind someone’s shields, or even how someone could be awake
without
thinking—but she let it go for the moment. The fine details of epsense were something she knew little about.

For now it was enough that the girl was alive and safe. Whatever else had happened, at least Roche could relax on that score.

The question was: how far could she relax around Cane, knowing what she had recently learned about him?

“Morgan.” Kajic’s voice was soft, cautious, his expression in the holographic display regretful. “I have concluded a preliminary scan of the region. There is no sign of the Box anywhere. I can continue looking if you like; there is still a slight possibility that it might be simply damaged and unable to hear you. However, a conclusive search will take much longer than—”

“How
much
longer?”

“At least a month. The space we have to search is as large as Palasian System. If we didn’t know where to start looking, even a small planet would be hard to find. And as the collapse of the Gauntlet has disturbed space for a light-year in every direction—”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” she said tiredly. “You can stop looking.” She raised a hand to massage her temple. “I just thought we should try to... I mean, if it had been me out there, I’d like to think that the Box would have...” Her voice trailed away to silence.

Kajic filled that silence quickly: “Don’t worry, Morgan. I’m sure we’ll hear soon.”

She didn’t say anything, just got out of her first officer’s seat and went for a walk.

* * *

If there was one thing Roche hated, it was waiting. Not waiting in the sense of waiting for a delivery to come; in those cases, what was coming was known, and there was usually a rough idea how long it would take. She’d had plenty of training at that in the Armada.

What she hated was waiting for something unspecified at a time unknown—knowing only that nothing could be done until it arrived.

Like most of the mundane Castes, she’d had little if anything to do with High Humans before her mission to collect the Box. Already she had learned how frustrating it could be. The entire business with Cane—from start to finish—had been orchestrated by them from the shadowy recesses of the galaxy. They knew more about the clone warriors than anyone else, and probably had known for a lot longer, too. Their perspective on the galaxy was much broader than that of any single government, even one as widespread as the Commonwealth of Empires, so the effects of the clone warriors would have been more visible to them.

She remembered something Rufo had said: “We are entangled in the details.” That was how she felt: caught in a web. And the more she tried to understand, the more entangled she became.

She was under no illusions about her own role in all this. She was just a courier for the Box, an intermediary allowing the Crescend, via the Box, access to spaces he normally couldn’t get into. No doubt he was eagerly awaiting some sort of transmission from the fragment of his much larger self. When that signal didn’t arrive, and word reached him that Palasian System had collapsed, he would know that something had gone terribly wrong. But she doubted he would relinquish such a privileged position so readily.

Part of her was half expecting a replacement Box to arrive at any moment, or some other development by which her next step would be made clear; another part believed she was redundant now, and the Crescend would find another courier for another sliver of himself. It didn’t matter either way. For now she was stuck, caught between possibilities, still buried under a pile of details threatening to suffocate her.

She came to a halt outside the ship’s medical center.

The last time she had seen Cane, he had been lying on his back, half-covered by the crystal in which Rufo had encased him. The
Ana Vereine’s
autosurgeon had begun removing him from the shell, and his vital signs had been gradually returning to normal—although what was normal for him was still not entirely known. How long until he would return to consciousness was likewise unknown. The drugs Rufo had used to immobilize him might have been strong enough to cause some lingering damage, in which case simply taking him out of the crystal cocoon wouldn’t be enough; he would have to heal himself.

She had no doubt he would do that eventually, and sooner rather than later. Adoni Cane was the most incredible organism Roche had ever encountered. His physical strength, agility, and endurance were matched only by his cognitive abilities. The only times she had ever seen him puzzled were when he had confessed to responding to the command language Rufo had been broadcasting to the other clone warrior, and when he had first come to her cabin on the
Midnight
and had not known anything more than his name.

For all intents and purposes, the other clone warrior had proven herself to be as equally developed as Cane—if not more so—but something still bothered Roche. She had assumed that the other clone warriors would be just that—
clones.
Jelena Heidik had patently not been a clone of Adoni Cane, unless gender itself was something these warriors could change at will in order to perfect their disguise.

Cane was still lying on his back when she let herself into his isolated ward. The protective shell had gone, though. He now lay naked beneath a translucent sheet with various monitors snaking across and under his skin. A bank of monitors on one wall displayed his vital signs. They seemed within the bounds of normality, as far as Roche could tell.

“I don’t know if you can hear me,” she said, leaning on the end of the bed by his feet. “But there’s something I need to know. I might as well ask it now. If you
can
hear me, it’ll give you something to think about. At the very least you can decide whether to answer me honestly or not.”

She paused, wondering for a moment if she really expected a response from him, or even if she
wanted
one. “Before Rufo captured you,” she went on, “you told me that although you didn’t know what you were, or what you were for, you
did
know what you could easily become.” She remembered the look in his eyes: cautious, cold, calculating. “What is that, Cane?
What
could you become? A warrior like Jelena Heidik? Is that it? Or something else entirely?”

She waited for a sign that he had heard, but the steady rise and fall of his broad chest didn’t change. His brown skin seemed to absorb the light shining upon him, making him look like some kind of wooden statue. A totem, she thought. Something to frighten children with.

She sighed heavily and began pacing irritably about the bed. “Am I crazy for trusting you, Cane? You could do anything, any time, and I know I couldn’t stop you. Before, I used to worry about the Box conspiring to get rid of me; and yet even without the Box, I’m
still
worried. The Box was the Crescend’s tool through and through, and it followed its own agenda, but it was still just an AI. It had its limitations. You...” She stopped at the foot of the bed. “You’re like a new virus no one’s ever seen before. Who knows what effect you’ll have if we let you loose?”

Roche watched him, clutching for a response, but in the silence that followed she felt like a fool standing there trying to talk to him. Maybe later, when Maii picked up signs of activity, she would return and try again.

She turned to leave, but the sound of tapping stopped her.