Elizabeth Bear - Scardown

“Nothing, Leah.” He spoke as if from far away.

How do you know?

“I was with him.”

Oh.

“I told him you were thinking of him.”

Thank you. Richard fed her data, showed her the leisurely, orange streak that was the Huang Di, the limping arc of the Montreal coming around. “Are we ready to go up?”

Testing the vanes now. A thought brought her up short. Richard. Those ships on Mars.

“Yes?”

Could they have been grounded for a similar purpose? Long ago?

His hesitation might have been framed in nanoseconds. An unaugmented human, one not becoming accustomed to conversation at the speed of thought, would never have noticed. “It's a possibility, yes. Mars had significant surface water once, and the project xenobiologist thought that was what they were for.”

But they failed. There's no life on Mars.

“Mars was a more fragile system,” Richard said.

Is this going to work, Richard?

She almost sensed when he thought about lying to her, almost knew the instant when he decided there was no point. “Probably,” he said. “A little, at least. We have to try, in any case. There's nothing else left to do.”

Min-xue would have liked the poetry of it if the Huang Di moved, when she moved, with the silk-on-water purity of his grandfather's fishing boat. She didn't, though; it was the Montreal that was graceful, elegant. The Huang Di lurched like a drunk when he triggered her main engines and attitude jets, no time for a gentle burn, no poetry in her motion but a stagger.

I wanted to be a poet, Richard. Did I tell you that, my friend? I wanted to live to write poetry.

The Huang Di curved in space, dropping, one brief nudge enough to push her into the gravity well, a longer burn to turn her topple into a glide.

“Min-xue,” Richard answered. “You've done so. This is a poem that will be remembered for a thousand years, my friend.”

Min-xue smiled, feeling the warmth of his friend's benediction. And then feeling nothing at all, as his connection with the Huang Di suddenly, unbelievably, went dead.

Damn it. Richard, I think they've —

After so long in the darkness, the light that struck his eyes was as bright as staring into the sun.

— found me.

The Huang Di is pulling up, Richard. That's not right. That can't be right —

“It's not right, Leah. Not right at all.”

Oh. In timeless space, the body of her ship like her own bright body laid out under the stars, Leah considered. Richard, do we need a new plan?

“ Huang Di 's security has found Min-xue. I don't have a fallback plan.”

She knew. Leah always knew when somebody was lying to her. He had a plan, all right. It just wasn't a plan he was willing to use. What's the crew complement of the Calgary, Richard?

“Sixty-four,” he answered reluctantly. “Counting Trevor and you. A skeleton crew.”

The Montreal 's is 347, and her stardrive works. The Calgary 's isn't on-line yet. She's crippled. It's logical, Richard . Leah felt the cold in her belly like the cold of space against her hands when she had leaned against the view port, and her right thumb fretted the chip implanted in the back of her left hand. The Huang Di 's chances to heal the damage are finished. She extended the solar sails and looped the feed from visual, thermal, and magnetic-body sensors that would have told the bridge crew that the Huang Di was moving. Sunlight filled her sails and she — the Calgary —skittered forward with the same sort of hitching glide she got if she opened her coat while on ice-skates and let the wind carry her along.

“Leah—” No. She felt his denial and his impotent fury.

The only choice, Richard. The logical choice. Or are you my father, now?

“No,” he answered, a little while later. “I think you're rather grown-up, actually.”

“Trevor, I need you.” Richard's voice, overlays of Alan's, and Koske was on his feet with one hand on the hatchway's wheel, not even bothering with shoes. It was dim in his cabin, recessed lights shaded with translucent polymer he'd tack stripped to the wall, and he could tell from the Calgary 's luxurious shiver that she was under way.

What's wrong, Richard?

Richard didn't so much explain as thrust the knowledge into his head wholesale, a bubble of trajectories and leaps of intuition and Leah and Min-xue's wildly desperate plan. Koske stopped momentarily, the hatchway wheel still heavy in his hand, using the other to shield his eyes as the information flared into headache as if someone had boxed his ears. He stepped back from the door and started to pull his ship shoes on, one foot at a time. “Time is limited,” the AI said. “Leah's going to get herself killed—”

Koske nodded, swallowed, and turned his head to look through the porthole in the floor at the spinning stars, so far away. I wanted to go there, he thought. And then said to Richard, What do you propose I do about it?

“—ah—”

Carefully, calmly, Koske opened the door. Long strides carried him toward the bridge. She's right, Richard. Are you afraid of dying?

“It's not a major concern these days. I would be somewhat hard to kill. Aren't you?”

No, Koske answered. He checked his stride and stopped dead, weight all forward, one hand on the bulkhead. The bridge wasn't far. His head still thumped with the equations and diagrams Richard streamed through it — trajectories, velocities, calculations of mass — and he dropped his chin to his chest and heaved a single long, expressive sigh.

Trevor Koske turned, a crisp reversal of stride, and palmed himself into a deserted side corridor, increasing his pace. I don't mind dying. But there's sixty-two people in this hunk of tin who probably do.

“What are you going to do about it?”

Get everybody aft. Tell them it's a drill. Lie. Fake hull damage forward. There's enough debris flying around to make it ring true. I don't care what you do.

I'll uncouple the drive units. They'll have a couple of hours before the radiation gets too bad. Start shuttling them back to Clarke, or to the Montreal. We'll save whatever we can.

Richard tracks the crew for me, feeds me the data. How did I ever live before I had an AI in my brain? He beats the stuffing out of my hip unit, that's for sure.

He shows me the vermilion eye that is the icon for the Huang Di, as red a star as Mars, and shows her start to slide downward, backward, directions that have no meaning in space at all. I fumble for the interface pins, have to look down at my hands to make them work right. Oh, too tired for this, Jenny. Too tired.

Even dimmed, the bridge lights beat at the backs of my eyeballs. I'm slapped with a sudden incongruous picture of Nell, all her black hair come out of her braid and tangled with snowflakes, stooping to pack slush into a ball that's going to sting like hell when it wallops me in the side of the head.

Bad time for a flashback, too. It tells me I pushed it real hard with my raw interface earlier, and maybe did a little more neural damage than the nanosurgeons have been able to repair just yet. I need more downtime. Sleep. Supplements and plenty to eat. All of which I'm not going to get.

There's an answer, of course. Miniature yellow pills rattle in my thigh pocket, and it would only take just one.

Maybe two.

Except if I push it too hard, I could wind up like Carver. Like Face's boy Mercedes, who got his brain melted when Unitek was illegally testing the Hammers in Hartford — was it just a few months back? “Gabe?” I say his name as much to remind myself that he's there as to get his attention. “How's it coming?”