Defy the Worlds Read online

  Abel frowns at its gaudiness. The extravagance is of course wasteful, so it must serve some purpose.

  Its use can’t be tactical, he thinks. Therefore it is emotional. The passengers of this ship are no doubt rich, and they may wish for the ship to reflect their wealth and status. So the elaborate decoration is… symbolic.

  He wonders whether Burton Mansfield helped choose the ship’s name. As Abel knows from experience, Mansfield likes symbols and allusions. In the ancient Egyptian myth, the great god Osiris is murdered by his brother Set, who dismembers the body and scatters the pieces far and wide. Osiris’s wife, Isis, and the other goddesses bring the pieces back together, though there’s one part they never find: the penis. So Isis creates a phallus out of gold for Osiris, then copulates with her reequipped husband, causing him to be resurrected as king of the world of the dead.

  Mansfield would of course be drawn to the idea of rebirth. Surely, Abel thinks, it can’t be about the replacement phallus, though Freudian theory might find a link between that and the enormous size of the Osiris.

  Movement at the edges of the ship’s framework proves to be a large squadron of fighter mechs, swooping through the area and skimming the surface, protecting every millimeter of the hull. It may be impossible to sneak aboard. Abel considers turning himself over to Mansfield—or appearing to, feigning his defeat just long enough to get on board—but that would require him to fight his way out—

  The border of the viewscreen flashes yellow: new ships in proximity. Abel’s sharp vision picks up motion around Proteus and Triton as well. Immediately he focuses multiple lenses on each motion, bringing up several dozen vessels of various sizes, all of which seem to be moving in on the Osiris’s location, faster than normal passenger ships or freighters.

  “Remedy,” Abel says aloud.

  Not the Remedy faction he sought either—not the moderates and medical professionals who founded the resistance movement. Those people wouldn’t be attacking a passenger ship. These can only be the radicals. The dangerous ones. The terrorists.

  The Persephone is still several minutes away, and his ship can’t turn back a force of that size on its own. Abel, used to easily overpowering and outthinking humans, is unprepared for the knowledge that he’s outmatched. Even if the Persephone had weapons, he’d be hard-pressed to take out more than a handful of the attackers.

  But Mansfield and Noemi have to be aboard that ship.

  Directive One pulses within Abel, demanding that he do something to protect his creator. Anything. He takes hold of his control panel and braces himself as though for impact: The urge to protect Mansfield is that strong. Something far more powerful urges him to save Noemi, to get her out of there even if it costs his own life.

  He hits the controls and sends the mag engines into overdrive.

  The Persephone flashes into the battle in mere seconds. Abel kills overdrive right away; the engines buck in protest but his ship remains ready. Unfortunately the Persephone has no weapons, only mining lasers that can do damage when needed. So Abel can offer little more than escape.

  Reach the docking bay. Use the damage Remedy has done to get on board. Then find Noemi and free her from custody. Directive One repeats within his mind, but Abel ignores it, or tries to. We’ll notify Remedy of our neutrality as soon as we leave the Osiris. Perhaps there will even be a chance to discuss the mission to help Genesis, to get relay codes from someone on one of these ships—

  Laser cannon fire slices so close to the Persephone that every alert goes off at once; every console lights up almost solid red. Another meter closer and his ship would now be wounded almost past repair. Abel decides informing Remedy of his neutrality should be an earlier step in the process.

  He slaps comms on for wide-frequency transmission. “To any Remedy vessels within communications range, this is the Persephone, a noncombatant vessel. Please respond.”

  No reply. No other ships fire but Abel can’t determine whether that’s due to his message or because they’re focusing their attack on the Osiris with even greater frenzy.

  The Remedy ships blast the spacedock surrounding the ship over and over, until the skeletal framework shatters into metal beams that rotate out through space. As Abel watches, unable to intervene, Remedy ships circle the Osiris, darting toward and away like stinging insects, until a few manage to penetrate the landing bays.

  Once on board, the Remedy members will no doubt assume control of the vessel. Then Noemi will be at the mercy not only of Burton Mansfield but also of the most dangerous wing of a terrorist organization.

  Notify Earth security. Abel usually tries to avoid interacting with the authorities any more than necessary; he doesn’t know who might be under Mansfield’s pay, or even whether someone might finally penetrate his fake identification. He doesn’t care. Not if Earth ships could save the Osiris, and Noemi along with it.

  “Free vessel Persephone calling any Earth ships in range,” he says, adjusting his signal to ensure it more swiftly reaches the comm relays between planets. “Suspected Remedy action against a civilian vessel near Proteus. Repeat, suspected Remedy action—”

  Four Remedy ships swoop in sharp arcs to zoom straight toward his ship. The problem with open comms is that anyone can hear you, and now Remedy knows he’s endangering their mission. That makes him the enemy.

  Abel had calculated this, so he’s prepared. He shifts the Persephone’s course, diving toward Neptune. The last thing he sees before switching his view is the Osiris beginning to move. As still more Remedy ships dart inside, it lumbers from the debris of its frame and begins to fly toward open space.

  They can’t get far, Abel reminds himself as he focuses primary instrumentation on Neptune, fast approaching on his viewscreen. From here, even in overdrive mode, no ship can reach either the Genesis or Earth Gate in less than four hours. What he has planned will take far less time.

  He wheels around toward the moon Naiad, the innermost of Neptune’s satellites. As he’d anticipated, the Remedy fighters follow him. Naiad is small and irregularly shaped, and its orbit is erratic. Abel brings them around in a curve that is in fact a collision course. Their computers will inform them of that in 3.8 seconds.

  Changing course in time to avoid a crash must occur within 3.1 seconds.

  In the last moment, Abel banks sharply to stern. He doesn’t shift the viewscreen to show him the scene of the crashes behind him. Watching the smaller, abstract symbols on his console blink out of existence is sufficient.

  Killing humans to save his life and his ship is within Abel’s parameters. Given that he was acting to save Noemi from a crisis these pilots helped bring into being, he feels morally justified. Yet the knowledge that he’s taken human life haunts him. He will have to consider this from many religious and philosophical viewpoints—but later, after rescuing Noemi.

  The Osiris has already traveled a great distance, and at a higher speed than the Persephone can reach. He’s not that far behind, however, and Abel feels sure that the ship will soon come to a stop. Whether Remedy gains control of the ship or is defeated, the captain will need to cease flight and take stock of the damage.

  Yet the Osiris keeps flying, getting farther and farther ahead by the minute. As its path becomes clearer, Abel begins to frown. It appears to be headed to the Kuiper Belt of asteroids and detritus that circles the far end of the solar system.

  In other words, it’s headed toward nothing.

  Perhaps this is a random course, set by Remedy to escape Earth authorities, if they’ve taken control of the ship. That’s the only rationale Abel can devise. That attempt is doomed to failure—the ship’s ionization trails will be traceable for days yet—but it is possible the Remedy members don’t know that. He magnifies the image of the ship so that it nearly fills the domed screen, giving him the best possible view—

  —and the Osiris disappears.

  Abel at first assumes a sensor malfunction. He runs through the ship’s systems looking for a fault and finds no
ne, then examines his own internal workings. Everything reports normal.

  He pushes the engines faster, and even considers putting them into overdrive again, dangerous as this would be. But within 2.31 minutes, he’s close enough to get better readings on the area. He turns up various far-flung asteroids, one distant gravity anomaly, but absolutely nothing that could be a ship. Even if the Osiris had been destroyed, there would be wreckage, radiation, or other evidence.

  Instead the ship has simply vanished from existence—taking Noemi with it.

  13

  THE MAIN LIGHTS FLICKER, LEAVING ONLY THE STACCATO red alert for illumination. Panic crackles through the passengers like near-fatal voltage, galvanizing them all.

  “What do we do?” Delphine clutches Noemi’s arm, probably because Noemi’s one of the few not shaking with fear. “If Remedy captures this ship, they’ll kill us all!”

  “How did Remedy learn about our voyage?” demands the older, more hostile man named Vinh. “We were assured of total secrecy!”

  “I’d like to know that myself.” Mansfield has gone ghostly pale. “They said we’d had proximity alerts, but they never said—”

  Another blast near the window floods the room with a flash of intense green light. The ship rocks again, and Mansfield nearly topples from his chair; Gillian manages to catch him. She says, “Someone betrayed us. Someone inside the Columbian Corporation—no one else could’ve known.”

  Vinh says, “I demand an inquest!”

  Noemi thinks, This guy has no idea that we might all be dead in an hour. As scared as the other passengers are, they’re not taking any actions to save themselves. They stare upward, almost motionless, like rabbits in a vehicle’s light.

  Heavy clanking through the walls suggests a major system shutdown. Everyone tenses, and Noemi’s palm itches for the holt of a blaster. Standing here in a ship she doesn’t know, with people she doesn’t understand, unnerves her more than straightforward combat ever has. She prefers it when she can see what’s trying to kill her.

  Over the comms comes the captain’s voice, now hoarse with panic. “We’re being boarded! All hands to emergency escape pods! All hands, abandon ship!”

  It’s like throwing bread to pigeons. People scatter in every direction at once, screaming with terror, knocking over trays and one another. A flume of champagne splatters across Noemi’s face; she spits it out and yells over the din: “Everyone listen!”

  Everyone does. They halt in place, staring at her. At first Noemi’s surprised—she thought she’d get the attention of just a few people—but then she realizes she’s the only one trying to act for the group. That turns her into an authority on a ship she’d never heard of, with capacities she knows nothing about.

  “You,” she says to Gillian, who must know more about the vessel than most. “Where are the nearest emergency escape pods?”

  “Near the cabins. In other words, up several decks.” Gillian remains crouched by her father’s side; Mansfield is trembling with terror, which would be satisfying at any other time. “We’d have to move through the main public areas of the ship to reach them.”

  Realization sparks Noemi’s temper. “In other words, you had escape pods for the passengers but not for the crew.”

  “The crew’s ninety percent mechs!” Mansfield snaps.

  Noemi wonders whether they care about the lives of the other 10 percent.

  Gillian adds, “If Remedy’s boarding the ship, then they’ll be in those same public areas. We can’t go there without turning the corridors into a shooting gallery, with us as the targets.”

  “Okay, then,” Noemi says, thinking fast, “what’s the nearest area of the ship we could secure?”

  “What do you mean, ‘secure’?” Delphine’s small hands cling to Noemi’s arm; her silky white caftan has glittering trim tinted pink by the alert lights.

  The subtle vibration of the engines shifts under Noemi’s feet. They’re breaking free of the docking framework already. The Osiris is on the move, and regardless of who’s driving, Noemi doesn’t want to go where they’re headed. “I mean, we get weapons and barricade ourselves within an area of the ship that we can keep Remedy from taking.”

  “There’s no point in this,” Vinh snaps. “We have mechs on board for this.”

  “Exactly right.” Mansfield nods, as if he’s encouraging himself rather than the others. “The mechs will defeat the Remedy members.”

  Maybe being rich and pampered turns you into an optimist. Noemi’s never had that luxury. “If the mechs win, great. If not, we need to be prepared.”

  “Who put you in charge?” Vinh says.

  Gillian rises to her feet and puts one hand on her bracelet—the one containing the trigger for the poison in Noemi’s arm. “That’s a very good question.”

  Noemi’s gaze scans the partygoers around her, half of whom are still holding their glasses of fizzy wine instead of running for the escape pods as they were just told to do. They wear velvet capes, thigh-high boots, jewels the size of bumblebees on their fingers and in their ears. The terror on their faces makes them pathetic; otherwise they’d just be laughable. “I’m not in charge,” she says, “but I’m betting I’m the only person here with any military experience. Yes?”

  A few of them glance around. Delphine timidly offers, “Probably.”

  “All right, then,” Noemi says. “Since this ship is already on the move—”

  “You don’t know that,” retorts Vinh.

  Does this man not even know how to gauge when a large ship is in motion? “Yes, I do know that, and so does anybody else who’s paying attention to the vibrations under their feet. If your crew still has control of the engine room, where are they taking us?”

  “You don’t need that information,” Gillian says sharply. The passengers look confused; it’s sinking in to them that Noemi isn’t just another partygoer.

  “Fine, then. Doesn’t matter,” Noemi says. Her heart’s beating fast in her chest, because it’s not like she’s had tons of experience with this either. Taking on an entire Remedy army sounds like a good way to end up dead. She’s out of her depth—but less so than anyone else on board. That means she has to do what she can. “We still need to secure an area before Remedy’s forces fill every part of the ship.”

  “How do you know that they haven’t already?” Apparently Vinh hopes to show her up, but he’s doing a really bad job of it.

  “I know that because none of them are in here yet.” After giving that a second to sink in, which hopefully will keep him quiet for a while, she goes on. “All right. What weapons do we have on board?”

  Mansfield draws himself up in his chair. “No weapon for you.”

  But Gillian bends down to him. Her intense blue eyes focus on Noemi as she says, “It doesn’t matter, Father. She’s of use, for the moment, and we don’t want this ship to go far.” She puts one of his hands on her arm; to those around, it must look like a comforting gesture, but Noemi sees that Mansfield is now touching the bracelet that could kill her. More loudly, Gillian calls, “There are a handful of blasters in emergency lockers throughout the ship. They were intended for use if the ship was infiltrated during final construction—but nobody’s removed them.”

  Noemi tries to take heart from that. “Okay, so, we’ll pick up a few weapons on our way to our base.”

  “We have a base?” Delphine asks in a wavering tone.

  “We’re about to. You guys know the layout of this ship better than I do,” Noemi says, thinking fast. What kind of place would they need? “What we need to do is—is seize control of one critical area as fast as we can. The main engine room, the food supply, something like that.”

  “Won’t those areas be the first Remedy goes after?” says Vinh, who has a point for once.

  She nods. “Yeah, they will. But we should still try to claim one, just in case Remedy does get control of the ship. We can negotiate on equal terms if we can hold just one room on the Osiris, as long as it’s the rig
ht room.”

  Gillian stands up, and instantly the attention of the room shifts to her. That’s the authority they already know—a leading shareholder in whatever the hell the Columbian Corporation is—and are more comfortable with. “Follow me,” Gillian says to the passengers and Noemi both, as she opens the nearest door.

  Normally Noemi would be relieved not to have to carry the burden of leadership alone in a situation like this. Now, not so much. But at least they have a guide.

  She jogs through the corridor, alongside Shearer, ahead of the passengers huffing and puffing behind them. Mansfield’s chair hovers slightly above the floor and, to Noemi’s disappointment, is able to keep up. The ship rocks once more—but from fire within the decks, not outside the ship. If the fight has shifted inside, then Remedy must be close to gaining control.

  The emergency lockers are hard to spot at first: Normally they’d be painted a bright yellow or orange, but here they’re a sedate gold that matches the pseudo-Egyptian decor. Noemi stoops by the first locker, cracks it open, and pulls out three blasters. She tosses the other two to people nearby—Delphine and Vinh. Dr. Shearer just keeps running, leaving the rest of them to catch up.

  “I’ve never fired a real blaster!” Delphine says between gulped-in breaths. Obviously she’s not used to running this fast. She is fast, though; her white caftan flutters around as if she were caught in a strong breeze. “Is it like in games? Because I’m pretty good at games.”

  “Of course it’s like games!” huffs Vinh. “What’s the point of firing simulators if they don’t simulate firing?”