Bitter Angels (14 page)

I tried to shrug it off. “We’ve gone into the dark before,” I said softly. We had—I had—and we’d come out in one piece. Mostly.

How had I come to be the one reassuring Misao?

“Not like this.” Fury roughened his voice. He hadn’t been angry at me. He was angry at the world, at the higher-ups and the lower-downs who couldn’t tell him what he needed to know. “Our best people have said we’ve got all the intel there is, but I can’t make myself believe that. The situation is focused around Bianca, I’m sure of it.”

As soon as he’d said Bianca’s name, I heard Siri again.
You have no idea what she did for you
.

But Misao would know.

“Was I your idea, Misao? Did you ask Siri to tell me her little theory about Bianca? As if I might not be motivated enough?”

All the anger I’d seen in him a moment before dissolved slowly into disappointment. He looked away quickly. When he spoke again, I barely heard him.

“Of all my people, I thought you were one who was not convinced that I am a manipulative mastermind. I brought you back because I need you. Because despite everything,
you remain one of the best coordinators we have.” The wind gusted hard, and Misao sucked in a great breath. “Two years ago Bianca tried to tell me that Erasmus was ready to explode. But she didn’t have the proof, and even if I wanted to believe her, there was nothing I could do.”

He drew one tan-gloved hand out of his pocket and laid it on my arm. I couldn’t remember a time he’d touched me. Misao was my distant, steady boss. He did not come down to us, he did not come out with us. He was apart, distinct.

“Be careful. Be thorough,” he said to me that cold afternoon. “Be sure, Terese. Before you make any move.”

I swallowed and nodded, and I had gotten out of there as fast as I could, so I wouldn’t have to witness for one heartbeat longer the inconceivable sight of Marshal-Steward Misao pleading.

Whatever else may be said about it, the Erasmus System
is
beautiful. Its sun is a vigorous, young yellow. Its ten planets are all gas giants: the Divine’s own jewels floating in the blackness. Our ultimate destination was truly impressive. R3ES3—which the pilots and the returning aid workers called “Reesethree”—had probably been destined to be a star, but it hadn’t quite cleared the final hurdle to start its gases fusing. It remained a huge gas giant turning lazily on its axis displaying chaotic bands of sulfur yellow, rusted
orange, and startling scarlet. Many-armed hurricanes—great swirls of black, white, and tan—crawled across the lanes of color.

Even from this far out, we could make out some of Reesethree’s moons. Five of them were almost Mars-sized and seismically stable. But more important, one of them was Europan—it had a world’s worth of water concealed under a shifting layer of ice. This was enough to make the moons suitable for human habitation, at least by sufficiently determined human beings.

I didn’t spend too much time on the scenery, as spectacular as it was. What I really wanted to see were the jump gates. We were heading straight toward them, so I was able to tap the fleet’s scopes and get a good long look.

There is no mistaking jump gates for anything but artificial constructs. Mother Nature does not make cubes, and even if She did, She would not cut perfect circles out of each side, then make the things float.

The Erasmus gates were old. They tumbled through the darkness—giant dice in a game the gods had finally decided to let us in on. Their extinguished lights made dark spots and lines on their scored and pitted hides. One sat with a side perpendicular to the plane our ship traveled on, another pirouetted on its corner, showing me each of its blind eyes in turn as we flew past.

I stared at them, searching for some sign of activity, any sign of life. Because if we had gotten it right, the Erasmans were going to launch their war through those gates.

Vijay had folded his arms and crossed his legs, businesslike, distanced, and a little disgusted. At me or the situation? “Alone, they probably can’t,” he said. “But while they’ve been trying to keep some kind of hold on power in their own system, they’ve also been expanding their influence into some other little pieces of chaos.”

“Little pieces of chaos which, coincidentally, also still have jump gates on the edges of their systems,” added Siri. “And which could be brought back online fairly easily and used to launch…anything at all.”

I had stared at them. They were talking science fiction. The idea that someone could launch a fleet of microdrones, or infectious spores, or something else exciting, using old jump gates was a horror XP staple. Such an attack might not take down an inhabited system, but it would tear it up badly, and it would be extremely difficult to tell where the attack had come from, let alone to stop it once it got started.

“They’d destabilize the entire FTL-transit network,” I said. “Nobody would allow outside ships into their system. Trade between the diaspora worlds would grind to a halt…”

“Which may be part of the idea. Destabilize the whole system, then be smack-dab in the center when it comes to building it back up again.” Misao worked his desk’s commands, cross-loading more scenario workups.

There was a kicker that the horror shows seldom bothered to consider. The internal drive works on the same principle as the gates. Anything you can do with a gate, you can do with an ID ship, only it would require fewer people and leave fewer witnesses.

Siri’s smile had been bitter. She brushed a speck of dust off her neat cobalt-blue slacks. “Because if this is a viable plan, they could simply smuggle the plans out to one of their partner systems.”

“Then there is the diplomatic question,” said Misao. The frustration in his voice had strained to get out. “If we start taking apart all the old gates we can reach, we are going to undo far more than some antiquated hardware.”

Of course. I rubbed my forehead. Interfering with something an independent system considers its property inevitably makes you more enemies than friends. And worse, it can also cascade in an uncontrollable manner. And just going around saying, “Hey, someone might be trying to weaponize the gates, let’s take them apart, okay?” was probably a diplomatic nonstarter.

“Erasmus traffic control to ship provisionally identified as
Miranda I
. Your approach has been recorded by our scopes. You will respond with the identification codes for your ship, the fleet vessels, and the piloting personnel within sixty seconds or we will begin countermeasures.”

I dropped my gaze from the window to the screen lying across my lap. I brought up the view of the habitat where this message of welcome had originated, and followed as one of the pilots zoomed our scope in on the gently spinning series of tin cans and golden sails to show its missile ports open, ready, and pivoting toward us.

“Countermeasures,” said Siri. “I do love the old-fashioned rhythms of diaspora dialects.”

Of course I had every confidence in our pilots, but I still had to work to keep from clutching my couch arms as the long strings of identification codes were reeled off for the five fleet ships. After all, what better justification for a war than to accuse a bunch of Solaris ships of smuggling or some other sovereignty violation, then blowing them out of the black sky? It was cost effective, and could have a positive propaganda effect with allied systems.

“There are days I hate having an imagination.” I loosened my hands for the twentieth time.

“You too, huh?” muttered Siri.

We grinned at each other, and with a jolt, I realized I was excited. I had thought I’d never get to do this again. For years I had looked toward a future without any missions, without any chance to use my skills, to protect my home and all the people of two dozen worlds who carried peace as their birthright. And no matter what else I’d worked at, I had felt bereft.

In my mind’s eye, I saw David standing hunched and alone in the rooftop garden. I saw the strangled anger in Jo’s eyes, and guilt threatened. It raged and it stamped, but I beat it back.

I started unhooking my webbing and looked across at Siri. “Time to dress for dinner.”

While the pilots guided us into docking orbit with Erasmus Habitat 2, we donned our field-dress uniforms. These are not the sleek uniforms we wear when we’re on public parade. Field dress recognizes the possibility of sudden violence and involves black body armor that is specially reinforced and weighted for the environment. The shining boots are thick-soled, hard-toed, and square-heeled. The armor is softened by a neatly tailored blue dress tunic with a flaring hem that is weighted on the inside and stiffened with gold-and-white braid on the outside. There is also, of course, the venerable tradition of the “fruit salad,” on the chest, showing honors earned and tests passed. We even had our peaked blue-and-white hats on our heads, since docking bays are designated “outdoors” for protocol purposes.

Then there was the gun. Not a lethal armament, but an armament nonetheless, slung across my back with a wide white strap. We all carried one. Just in case.

Most of the diaspora populations have heard that Guardians cannot kill. We don’t keep that a secret. But outsiders have a tough time reconciling “cannot kill” with a group of overtly armed people. It makes them wonder if that whole not-killing thing might just be a rumor, or if we are a
branch with some kind of special license. This means the smart ones hold off from any violence, at least for a while, and only the stupid ones rush in.

I can tell you from experience, it’s a lot easier to deal with the stupid ones.

The half dozen of us “official” Guardians assembled in the main dining hall. I surveyed my tiny contingent. We should have had three or four times as many operatives for this mission, but the personnel simply was not there. They were out in Freedom and Ganges Heart and Dragon’s End and a dozen other diaspora worlds. I had to threaten to resign my commission again to Misao and four others above him to make sure we even had our own doctor. Gwin wore gleaming white gloves on her hands and stood head and shoulders above the rest of us. I wondered if she’d chosen that build.

The docking clamps clanked as they sealed and whirred as they pulled us in. The ship ran through its cycle of signals and announcements. I used the time to line up my five subordinates for inspection. I tweaked Siri’s hem and brushed some dust off her shoulder. She muttered something under her breath I could have written her up for.

Once they all passed muster, we fell in: our short double lines straight, our shoulders square, our heads up, standing at the ready, waiting for the doors to open.

We let the civilians exit ahead of us. This is standard operating procedure. After all, what’s the point of getting all dressed up if you’re not going to make an entrance?

Even though we were only six, we made an impressive noise as we marched down the ramp into the cavernous white docking bay. Our civilians, the thirty that were already down on the deck bay, stood up a little straighter, proud of
the show. Several people lounging by the gates also straightened at the sight of us.

As I led my people past the civilians, I glimpsed Vijay far in the back of the crowd of aid workers. If it hadn’t been for his height, I wouldn’t have known him. His skin had been dyed a mellow brown and his shaved scalp gleamed in the flickering lights. The real change, though, was his face. They’d scarred him. Angry white slashes crisscrossed his cheeks under his eyes. His nose was a squashed lump. Erratic, snarled lines decorated his forehead and throat, as if someone had given a toddler a knife instead of a crayon and let him draw on Vijay’s skin.

The resulting impression was of an optimized kid who’d gone way far down into the anger and the self-mutilation that came with it. He caught me looking at him and for a moment his eyes, undamaged and dark, narrowed. We both glanced away and I focused on the little committee that stepped up to welcome us.