Defy the Stars Page 5

  “Esther—”

  “Tell Mom and Dad I love them.”

  Abel chooses this moment to interrupt. “I had a thought.”

  “Is it about getting around your idiotic programming?” Noemi snaps. Oh, why did she have to say it like that? She doesn’t want Esther to hear her being mean, not now.

  “Cryosleep.” Abel points at the pods against the wall. “Often even severely injured people can be successfully put into cryosleep. If she weren’t brought out of it until an organ could be cloned, perhaps—”

  Esther wouldn’t agree to cloning either, but cryosleep would be okay. What they’d do after that… Noemi doesn’t have to think of that now. She can leave it to the doctors once they’re back on Genesis. “Yes! Please, yes, put her in cryosleep!”

  “I’ll check on the pods.” Abel’s on it in an instant, finally making himself useful again. But after a few moments, he pauses. “I’m afraid the cryosleep pods’ power source was damaged in the attack on the Daedalus thirty years ago.”

  “Isn’t there any way around it?” On a ship this size, Noemi knows, every vital system should have backup.

  “Normally the ship’s main grid would provide backup power, but I took that offline.”

  “I thought you were supposed to be helping me!”

  “I am now,” Abel says, his tone maddeningly even. “I wasn’t when you first boarded the ship. At that point you were considered an intruder and—”

  “It doesn’t matter!” Noemi’s almost screaming by now, and she doesn’t care. “Just bring the main grid back up!”

  Abel nods and rushes toward sick bay’s main computer interface. Noemi takes a deep breath to steady herself before she leans back down toward Esther. “It’s going to be all right,” she whispers. “We’ve got a plan now.…”

  Esther’s eyes are closed. She doesn’t hear. Noemi looks up at the biobed and sees the dark truth the sensors reveal: Esther is dying. Right now. This moment.

  “Esther?” Noemi touches her friend’s shoulder, stricken. “Can you hear me?”

  Nothing.

  Please, God, please, if you won’t give me anything else, at least let me tell her good-bye. He’s never answered Noemi before, but if he does now, she’ll believe forever. I have to tell her good-bye.

  The sensors flatline. Esther is gone.

  In the very next instant, every computer interface in sick bay brightens to full illumination. The damned mech brought power back online just as soon as it was too late to save Esther.

  Noemi stands as if frozen, staring down at Esther. Her eyes well with tears, but it’s like they’re crying without her. Instead of sobbing or shaking, she feels as if she’ll never move again.

  She’s in heaven now. Noemi should believe that. She does, mostly, but the knowledge doesn’t comfort her. The words only echo in the hollow space that has replaced her heart. She finds herself remembering her family’s funeral more vividly than she has in years—the high winds that blew, tugging at everyone’s hair and clothes, and stealing the priest’s words before Noemi could really hear them. The way Noemi stared down into the grave and tried to imagine her parents lying there, baby Rafael between them, looking up at the sky for the last time before they were covered by dirt forever. More than anything else, she remembers Esther standing near her, all in black, crying as hard and loud as Noemi herself. Years later Esther had revealed that she made herself cry, so Noemi wouldn’t be alone.

  Now Esther’s gone, too, and instead of being held close and told she was loved, she had to die listening to Noemi shriek at someone in anger. That ugly moment was the last one Esther ever knew.

  It’s dangerous—being angry at God—but Noemi can’t deny the bitter rage she feels at this one last proof that she isn’t enough for God, for the Gatsons, for anyone at all.

  The long silence is broken by Abel’s voice. “I didn’t attempt resuscitation because failure was all but certain. Her internal blood loss was too great. We would’ve had to begin the transfusion much earlier to save her.”

  “Or we could’ve gotten her into cryosleep.” Noemi turns to stare at the mech. He stands near the computer interface, very still, so obviously unsure what to do that he looks almost human. This doesn’t move her; it enrages her. “If you hadn’t wasted time trying to kill me, Esther might still be alive! We could have put her into cryosleep and saved her!”

  Abel doesn’t respond at first. But finally he says, “You are correct.”

  As many times as Noemi has gone into battle against Earth forces—as many times as she’s seen friends and fellow soldiers torn apart by their mechs—she thought she knew how to hate with her whole heart. But she didn’t.

  Now, only now, as she stares at the machine responsible for her best friend’s death, does Noemi feel what hatred really is.

  8

  ABEL’S PROGRAMMING COVERS MANY SITUATIONS involving interpersonal conflict.

  Not this one.

  The Genesis warrior—the dead one called her Noemi—stands next to the corpse, shaking with anger. Like all mechs, he has been constructed to endure human wrath in both its emotional and physical forms, and yet he finds himself uncertain. Wary. Even… worried.

  Noemi has command over him unless and until he is released by someone with the authority to override her. Therefore, her power over him is all but absolute. It doesn’t matter that he could outrun her, outshoot her, that he could kill her with a single hand: He cannot defend himself against her any more than he can disobey her. Abel is at his commander’s mercy.

  She takes a deep breath, stops trembling, and goes very still. He isn’t sure how, but he knows that’s worse.

  “Where’s the nearest air lock?” Noemi asks.

  “The equipment pod bay approximately halfway down the main ship’s corridor.” In other words, the cell in which Abel just spent the past three decades. Noemi seems unlikely to be interested in this information, so he says nothing else.

  Noemi nods. “Walk toward it.”

  Abel does so. She follows a few steps behind. Although she could potentially have many reasons for needing an air lock, he immediately understands which of her potential purposes is most likely—namely, his destruction. She will release him into the cold void of space, where he will cease operations.

  Not instantaneously. Abel is built to withstand even the near-absolute-zero temperatures of outer space… for a time. But within seven to ten minutes, the damage to his organic tissues will be permanent. Total mechanical malfunction will swiftly follow.

  He isn’t afraid to die. And yet, as he walks along the corridor to his doom, his executioner’s steps echoing behind him, Abel feels that this is wrong. Unjust, somehow.

  Is this another of his strange emotional malfunctions? Perhaps his pride is occupying too large a part of his thoughts, because it galls Abel to think that he—the most complex mech ever created—is about to be tossed out an air lock like human refuse, for no reason other than the pique of an unhappy Genesis soldier.

  After some consideration, he decides that yes, his pride is interfering with effective analysis of the situation. He is from Earth, and therefore he is this girl’s enemy. Although he knows how powerfully his programming controls him, she probably doesn’t trust it. If Genesis has held true to its anti-technology stance, then Noemi has probably never been in the same room with a mech before. She’d only have met them in battle. No wonder she finds him frightening. Taking into account the fact that he attacked and very nearly killed her not half an hour before, her decision to space him appears more reasonable. Almost logical.

  That doesn’t make him feel any better about it.

  When Abel reaches the equipment pod bay, he steps without hesitation through the door he was so grateful to escape not even an hour ago. He can see the irony of having been freed from this place only to come back here to die. In his mind he finds himself running through scenarios, possibilities—the seven different ways he could kill the Genesis soldier this instant. Why?
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  Then Abel realizes what it is: It’s not that he doesn’t want to die. It’s that he wants to live.

  He wants more time. To learn more things, to travel through the galaxy and see all the colony worlds of the Loop, to return back home to Earth for at least one day. To find out what has become of Burton Mansfield and perhaps speak with his “father” once more. To watch Casablanca properly again instead of merely retelling himself the story. To ask more questions, even if he never gets the answers.

  But what a mech wants doesn’t matter.

  Abel turns to face Noemi before she can hit the controls that will seal this door, allowing her to open the outer hatch and vent him into space. He went so long without seeing a human face or speaking to anyone. It helps him to look at her, even if that means watching her take the steps that will kill him. Although he doesn’t expect this to affect her in any way, her dark-brown eyes widen when they’re face-to-face again.

  Noemi doesn’t speak. She lifts her hand to the control panel… and does nothing.

  Seconds tick by. When Abel judges that this pause has gone on an inordinately long time, he ventures, “Do you need help understanding the controls?”

  “I understand the controls.” Her voice is thick from the tears she’s still holding back.

  Abel cocks his head. “Have I misinterpreted your purpose in bringing me here?”

  “What do you think my purpose is?”

  “To space me.”

  “You got it.” Her smile is twisted by grief. “That’s why we came here.”

  “Then may I ask why you have not yet done so?”

  “Because it’s stupid,” Noemi says. “Hating you. I want to hate you because you might’ve saved Esther and you didn’t—but what’s the point? You’re not a person. You don’t have a soul. You obey your programming, because you have to, and without free will there can be no sin.” She breathes out sharply in frustration, looks up at the ceiling as if that will keep the tears from trickling beyond her eyes. “I might as well hate a wheel.”

  A few more seconds elapse before Abel feels emboldened to say, “May I now step out of the air lock door?”

  Noemi moves back, making room for him. This reads as permission, and so Abel steps out of the equipment pod bay with profound relief. Only then does Noemi hit the controls, once again sealing off the bay.

  He offers, “If you would feel safer with me immobilized, the cryosleep pods would be effective. Mechs cannot be put in true cryosleep, but exposure to the chemicals activates our dormant mode.”

  “I don’t need you to be dormant. I need you to be useful.” She wipes at her eyes, attempts to act like the soldier she is. “We’ll—I’ll take care of Esther later. First I have to make a plan. Wasn’t the bridge back that way?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She winces. “Please don’t call me that.”

  “How should I address you?”

  She’s still pulling herself together. “My name is Noemi Vidal.”

  “Yes, Captain Vidal.”

  “Noemi’s fine.” She turns and trudges toward the bridge. Her voice is hoarse, her exhaustion and grief obvious, but she remains focused on survival. “Follow me, Abel.”

  She’ll let me use her first name, Abel thinks. No human being has ever allowed him that much liberty before. The thought pleases him, though he can’t determine why.

  Nor does he know the reason why he glances over his shoulder, back at the equipment pod bay he has escaped twice today. Surely after thirty years he has seen enough of it.

  Perhaps it’s just because it feels so good to leave that place behind.

  “This is the navigational position for the pilot, right?” Noemi runs her hands through her hair as they stand on the Daedalus’s bridge. The curved walls allow the ship’s viewscreen to wrap almost entirely around and above them, displaying the surrounding star field in such detail that the bridge appears to be a dull metallic platform in the middle of outer space. “The captain’s chair is obvious, and I figure this is for external communications. And that’s the ops station.”

  “Correct. Your technological sophistication is surprising for a soldier of Genesis.”

  She turns toward him, frowning. “We limit technology by choice, not out of ignorance.”

  “Of course. But in time, the first must inevitably lead to the second.”

  “Why do you have to act so superior?”

  Abel considers her assertion. “I am superior, in most respects.”

  Noemi’s hands close around the back of the captain’s chair, gripping it too hard, and when she speaks again, she grinds out every word. “Could you. Knock it. Off.”

  “Modesty is not one of my chief operating modes,” he admits, “but I will try.”

  She sighs. “I’ll take what I can get.”

  He assesses her as she paces the length of the bridge, her formfitting emerald-green exosuit outlining her athletic body vividly against the blackness of space. Amid the stars glow the larger, gently shaded planets of the Genesis system. Abel can make out the circle that is Genesis itself, brilliant green and blue, with its two moons visible as tiny pinpoints of white.

  “Do we have fuel?” Noemi asks. “Can the Daedalus get back home?”

  Abel replies, “Fuel stores are sufficient for full-ship operations lasting two years, ten months, five days, ten hours, and six minutes.” He leaves out the seconds and milliseconds. “The ship took damage in its final battle, but the damage doesn’t appear to have been extreme.” Hardly even threatening. He frowns at the readouts scrolling past on the console. Did Captain Gee panic? Did she convince Mansfield to abandon ship when there was no real need? “Travel through a Gate would be difficult—”

  “We’re not going through a Gate. We’re going home.”

  Of course. Earth is Abel’s home, not Noemi’s. He continues, “After minor repairs with instruments we have on hand, we should be able to reach Genesis without difficulty.”

  “Good.”

  What will become of him on Genesis? Will he be dismantled? Sent back out into space? Made to serve in their armies? Abel cannot guess, and thinks it would be a bad idea to ask. He has no control over the situation. He may as well learn his fate when it comes to pass.

  Noemi sits heavily in the nearest chair, the one at the ops station, which like all the stations aboard the Daedalus is thickly padded and covered with soft black material. Running her hand along it, she frowns. “Was this some kind of luxury cruiser or something? Regular Earth ships can’t all be like this… can they?”

  “The Daedalus is a research vessel, customized especially for its owner and my creator, Burton Mansfield.”

  “Did you say Burton Mansfield?” She sits up straight and gapes at him. “The Burton Mansfield?”

  At last. It’s good to see Noemi finally responding with appropriate awe. “The founder and architect of the Mansfield Cybernetics line? Yes.”

  He watches for her reaction, anticipating her amazement—and instead sees her scowl. “That son of a bitch. This is his ship? You’re his mech?”

  “… yes.” How dare she call his father such names? But Abel can’t object, so he forces himself not to think of it any longer.

  “I can’t believe it,” Noemi mutters. “You’re telling me Mansfield himself came to this system thirty years ago, and he got away?”

  “All humans aboard abandoned ship,” Abel answers as simply as he can. “As I wasn’t on the bridge at that time, I cannot know how successful their escape was, nor their reasons for abandoning a functional ship.”

  “We scared them. That’s why they ran.” Energized, Noemi gets to her feet and reexamines every station on the bridge, as if it requires further consideration now that she knows who it belongs to. “But why would Burton Mansfield come to the Genesis system to start with? Why would he throw himself into the middle of a war?”

  And there it is—the question Abel had hoped Noemi would not think to ask.

  As long as she’s his c
ommander, he cannot lie to her. However, he has enough discretion to… omit certain facts, as long as her questions are not direct.

  He tries indirection first. “Mansfield had undertaken critical scientific research.”

  “In a war zone? What was he researching?”

  A direct question: Full disclosure is now required. “Mansfield was studying a potential vulnerability in the Gate between Genesis and Earth.”

  Noemi goes very still. She’s realizing the true significance of what she’s found. “By vulnerability—do you mean a potential malfunction, or—tell me, exactly, what?”

  Abel remembers the day Mansfield realized the worst. The endless hours of research and sensor readings required, the immense leap of insight it took for Mansfield to grasp the answer: All of this, Abel now has to deliver to a soldier of Genesis. “By vulnerability, I mean he was investigating a way a Gate could be destroyed.”

  Noemi’s face lights up. Under different circumstances, Abel would be pleased to have brought his commander so much joy. “Did you find one?”

  They ought to have foreseen it, Abel thinks. They shouldn’t have left me here. It was… tactically unwise.

  Because I have no choice but to betray them.

  “Answer me,” Noemi says. “Did you find a way to destroy a Gate?”

  Abel admits, “Yes.”

  9

  HE’S LYING.

  Noemi knows the mech—Abel—can’t lie to her while she’s his commander, which somehow she is. But the enormity of what he’s said makes it feel like the ship’s gravity is shifting beneath her feet, forcing her off-balance. Her grief for Esther weighs on her too heavily to allow for the sudden, staggering return of hope.

  “How?” She takes one step toward Abel. The viewscreen dome shows fire-fog trails of the galaxy’s arm, stretching their glowing tendrils overhead. “How can anyone destroy a Gate?”