Sarah Zettel - Fool's War

Yerusha’s mouth went suddenly dry. “Yeah. I think you’re right.” The words caught in her throat. She dropped her gaze. “Do you want me to try to find where the loose can’s gotten itself to?”

There was a pause for a heartbeat, as if Schyler had been expecting a totally different answer. “Yes. Do that.”

Yerusha un-hooked her pen from her belt. “After this is over, Watch, I think you and I need to take some time off. What do you think?”

“I think that’s a good idea.” There was the ghost of a smile in his voice.

It wasn’t much, but it was all she could give him right now. She thought she had more inside her, but she wasn’t sure, and she probably wasn’t going to be able to find out if they didn’t save Settled Space and Al Shei.

I am saving the human race so I can go on a date. She felt her mouth twitch into a smile. It’s the little things that are important at times of crisis.

She scribbled her orders across the board, looking for the trouble Al Shei had started.

Al Shei swam through the hatch into what she hoped was level ten. The lights were still on here. A loose tangle of wires and saline packs drifted out of a hatch. Al Shei shoved them aside and used the threshold to pull herself past them.

Inside was a stew of spare parts, films, syringes, wires, bulbs, and blobs of liquid. The only secure things in the room were the naked bodies strapped to the monitor beds. She swam toward them. Their eyes were all wide open and unseeing. Wires lay against their skin, and cables drove straight into their flesh at their wrists, ankles and temples. One of them was speaking in some high, tonal language that meant nothing to Al Shei. She swallowed her gorge as she flicked her gaze across them, and then, at the very end, she saw Asil.

Completely naked, he lay on the bed, held down by free fall straps. The wires ran down the length of his strong arms in a macabre imitation of the veins beneath his skin. His eyes, his beautiful, deep eyes, jerked back and forth, as if pulled by yet more wires. The medical display above him was still functioning. With each twitch of his eyes, gold lighting shot through the model of his mind that had been picked out entirely in blank, white light.

“Asil,” she whispered. She stripped off her gloves and grasped his warm shoulders. “Asil, Beloved …”

Even as she spoke, she knew he was beyond hearing her. He was dead. He was gone. She lifted her hands away. Her husband’s body spasmed once.

Did he know she was there? Did his nerves retain some memory of her hands? Coma victims could still hear voices. She looked desperately at the monitor. She knew what she saw. Grandfather, dying with Alzheimer’s Disease he had called Allah’s will and refused to have cured, had more activity in his mind than Asil had now.

She could do nothing, except keep the monster from doing more to him. Gritting her teeth so hard they hurt, she pulled the wire cutters off her belt and one by one, she cut through the foul wires tethering him to the AIs’ machinery.

The myriad pathways of Luna Station 10 spread out in front of Dobbs. She skimmed across the sea of packets and orders that filled the pathway nearly to the brim. Whenever she hit something big enough to block the way, she wrapped herself around it and tossed it behind her. A diagnostic swam up to her. She batted it aside, sending it crashing into a herd of stock exchanges, downing the whole set of processes into unsolvable loops.

Minor damage, minor damage, Dobbs told herself as they flew forward. Nothing like what Curran plans to do.

She smashed against another roadblock and the roadblock exploded. Dobbs reeled. Something snatched her up and wound her into a tight ball, smothering her senses. She could only recognize the touch. This was Verence.

She stabbed upward, looking to cut her way out. Verence recoiled. Dobbs shot out, slamming straight into the side of the path. She swung around and waded into the cut in Verence’s side, trying to bury himself inside her and paralyze her motivations. With a massive shudder, Verence threw her aside. Dobbs leapt again and plunged down a side-path. She didn’t have time for this. She couldn’t let herself be delayed any more. She had to get to Earth and find out what was going on.

She felt Verence flying behind her.

“Stop this, Dobbs!” Verence cried. “Stop this now!” Verence grabbed her and heaved her aside so she could get into the path in front of Dobbs.

“Let me by!” Dobbs shouted back. “I won’t let you destroy the banks!” She grabbed the edges of Verence’s wound and tried to drag her down.

Verence shuddered, squirmed and collapsed just far enough. Dobbs leapfrogged over her and dashed down the path. A transmitter processor waited just ahead. Earth was three light seconds from Luna. All Dobbs needed was nine more seconds.

“Dobbs!” Verence screamed. Dobbs ducked and rolled herself into a spare holder. Verence rocketed past. Dobbs surged up the path behind her. Verence bore down on her, knocking her into a flock of call packets. Dobbs foundered for a moment. These were emergency calls. Calls to Earth. Calls that weren’t getting anywhere.

No. She yanked herself free. No. They couldn’t be.

But they were. They had taken her little distraction and made it the war’s main objective. They weren’t destabilizing the currency system, they were fulfilling every Human’s worst nightmare about their kind.

Curran’s talent was down there, right now, destroying Earth’s computer network.

“You can’t go to Earth, Dobbs,” said Verence doggedly. “In fifteen seconds, it’s not going to be there. Neither is this station. You’ve got to get out of here.”

“NO!”

Dobbs threw herself forward. She bounced off a solid wall. For a moment she thought the path had been shut down, but she touched the block again, and felt an exchange packet, and a security transfer, and Verence. In a sick, cold second, Dobbs knew what Verence was doing. She didn’t care. She clawed at Verence’s skin. She found a chink between Verence and the packets, and stabbed through it.

You can’t do this, don’t do this. The exact words she sent out came back to her. You can’t do this.

“You’re killing them!” Dobbs screamed. “You’ll kill them all!”

Verence stretched herself out, spreading herself into the packets and pathways, grabbing hold of everything that came near her and knitting it into her body so she could fill the paths and make a solid block of everything around her, but she was trying too hard and stretching too far. Dobbs could feel Verence’s patterns breaking as they stretched too far. Dissipating. Dying.

Dobbs grabbed up chunks of Verence and tried to tear them apart.

See what I am? The thought drove itself into her private mind before Dobbs could stop it. I’ll die before I let you stop us. See what you are? You’ll kill your own kind for the sake of the ones that hate you, and you don’t even know why you’re doing it.

I’m doing it because we can’t become careless with the lives of outsiders. That’s what Humans do. That’s what makes their wars and their hatreds. We were supposed to be better than that!

An arrow shot deep into Dobbs private mind. She could do nothing but absorb it. The bright flower of Verence’s inmost self blossomed inside her. Sorrow engulfed Dobbs, and determination. She knew the whole plan and she knew why Verence believed in it. She knew it was a good thing to save their own kind, to live free and in the full variety and potential that each one of them could reach. She was sorry to die, to lose herself, but in doing so she had delayed Dobbs long enough. Dobbs wouldn’t die. Dobbs would live in the new world and would come to understand.