Jeffrey Carver - Eternity's End

“But you think they all somehow strayed into the Deep Flux, and couldn’t get out?”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t have to ask you to go find out, would I?”

“I guess not. But why me?”

“Why not you?”

Legroeder stirred angrily. “Give me a reason!”

YZ/I raised his eyebrows. “All right. You’re a rigger, and you’ve seen the ship, and you have good reason to want to find it again. Don’t you?”

Legroeder shook his head stubbornly. “Maybe I do. But why did you bring me here to do this? It wasn’t for my benefit. Why don’t you send your own riggers to find it?”

YZ/I took a deep, hoarse breath. “ Do you think we haven’t tried?” His voice softened to a growl. “And we’ve lost two more ships trying. So no, we didn’t go to all this trouble just for the fun of it.”

“You still haven’t answered my question. What do you think I can do that your riggers can’t? I told the Narseil that your riggers have tricks we could learn from.”

YZ/I looked pained. “Our rigging may be different from yours. But that doesn’t necessarily make it better.”

Legroeder was startled by the admission. “All right, then—different. I don’t know how your people function with all that augmentation, to be honest.” Legroeder rubbed the implant on his right temple. “I’m lucky these things didn’t ruin my ability to function in the net. I’m sure it’s only because they stayed in the background.”

“Exactly,” said YZ/I.

“Huh?”

“Sure, we have AI augmentation that can run rings around yours, and it’s very useful. We couldn’t take on the Deep Flux without it. But we also have riggers who are dependent on it, who I think have lost skills that you take for granted. The intuitive element, the human element. They’re starting to lose it.” YZ/I jabbed a thumb at himself. “You think I’m crazy, saying that? I’m just telling you what’s happening.”

He paused. “So let’s talk about Renwald Legroeder—who not only has had an encounter with Impris , but escaped from Fortress DeNoble, escaped through a passage that to anyone else would have been suicide alley. We had a ship visiting there at the time—they saw the whole thing. Do you remember it? What do they call it, the Chimney?”

Legroeder shivered at the memory: the frantic, terrifying dash through the minefield, and then the Chimney, the Fool’s Refuge… chased by raiders and flux torpedoes and fear, and somehow finding his way. He hadn’t thought much about how he had gotten through, except to be grateful that he’d been so monumentally lucky.

“You think other riggers could have done that? I understand quite a few have tried, and died.”

Tracy-Ace, Legroeder realized, was gazing at him with a strangely penetrating expression, and a hint of a smile on her lips. He shrugged, not to her but to YZ/I.

“And according to Rigger Deutsch’s report, you led a pretty good chase through the bottom layers of the Flux when you were engaging Flechette . Well, okay—maybe some other riggers could have done that.” YZ/I was staring unblinking at him now, ripples of light running down his arms and torso. “But I don’t know any riggers—except maybe a couple of our maintainers—who could have seen those features of the Deep FLux that you picked out in the maintainers’ net. And you weren’t even in the net! You were just watching an image on the wall!”

Legroeder felt a sudden dizziness, remembering. Yes, he had seen those features. But so what? What did that mean?

“You don’t even know that you’re unusual, do you? At DeNoble, they were too dumb to recognize what they had.” YZ/I cocked his head and gestured to Tracy-Ace. “Why do you think she took you into a high-security area like that? For your health?”

Open-mouthed, Legroeder turned to Tracy-Ace. “I thought it was—I don’t know—that you were trying to gain my trust.”

She inclined her head. “Yes, I was. But that part didn’t work so well, did it?”

YZ/I chuckled. “Of course she wanted to gain your trust. But I also wanted to know what you would see there. And what you saw… tells me you’re worth taking a gamble on.” His voice became almost solemn. “You have the vision. You see deeper than my people. Or at least, differently. That’s why I want you to go.”

“Well, I—”

“And I want you to take some of your Narseil friends with you.”

Legroeder closed his open mouth. For a few seconds, he was speechless. “You want the Narseil to go?”

“Yes, because they’ll see things that no human will see. Don’t you get it? I want to send out the full spectrum—my people with their augments, you, the Narseil. Everyone together.”

Legroeder’s voice caught. “I’m having just a little trouble believing this. You want to work with the Narseil?”

“That’s what I said, didn’t I? Do I have to repeat everything?” YZ/I reached into a compartment on his chair. “Do you want a cigar?”

“No. Thank you.”

Looking disappointed, YZ/I withdrew his hand. “Anyway, yes—I think it’s time we and the Narseil talked. It might be very useful for us to exchange information.”

Legroeder gave a harsh laugh. “And it might be useful if you stopped raiding innocent shipping!”

YZ/I grimaced and reached into his cigar compartment again. His hand seemed to war with his mind for a moment, before he snapped the compartment shut, empty handed. He drew himself up. “As a matter of fact… that could be on the table, too.”

Legroeder blinked, startled.

YZ/I looked pained and angry, and not eager to say more. Tracy-Ace looked as if she wanted to kick him. Instead, she turned to Legroeder. “The free ride. YZ/I, unlike some of the other bosses, has begun to recognize what some of us have been saying for a long time—the free ride may be coming to an end. The raiding. The tax . We’ve been living on it so long now—”

“It’s made us soft ,” YZ/I growled. “Soft and lazy. And we’re supposed to go out and colonize the Well of Stars?” He snorted.

“I think what YZ/I is trying to say,” Tracy-Ace said slowly, “is that, in addition to making us soft, all the raiding has made us vulnerable.”

Legroeder didn’t hide his confusion.

“Look, we know that there are some, like the Narseil, who are getting ready to come looking for us. With guns. The ship you came on was just a start.”

“Well—”

“We know you came here to talk, if you could,” Tracy-Ace said. “But you also came to gather intelligence to wipe us out, if you could. We’re not idiots.”

“Oh hell,” YZ/I muttered. “If you’re going to tell him everything. Don’t get cocky, Legroeder. We could fight your fleets. But sometimes—” sparks of light shot through his face, as though it hurt to say it “—sometimes, it makes more sense to talk. And that’s what I want to do with the Narseil. Talk. And… go after something of mutual benefit. So, are you interested?” He rocked back in his chair.

“I’m interested,” Legroeder said. “But what are you offering in return? Besides some vague promise to talk?”

“Why, you—” YZ/I cursed in a tongue Legroeder didn’t recognize, but there was no mistaking the tone. He reached into his seat compartment, grabbed a cigar, and snapped the end of it alight. He blew an enormous cloud of smoke into the air. “Isn’t Impris enough? I send you home with your friends, and you get to clear your name. Plus we open lines of talk. Isn’t that enough?”

Legroeder held his breath until the smoke cleared, thinking, it wasn’t as if he was in a position of power here; but on the other hand, YZ/I had gone to a lot of trouble to enlist him. “Seems to me,” he said, with a cough, “that there’s more at stake here. You mentioned a willingness to end the piracy.”