Read The Dark Imbalance Online
Authors: Sean Williams,Shane Dix
Tags: #Science Fiction, #Fiction, #Space Opera
The Dark Imbalance (20 page)
The Hum ship drifted smoothly toward
Kindling,
looking like a cross between a sailing ship and processional barge, its bulky, bullet-shaped body almost completely obscured by tapering instrument spines, crisscrossing antennae, and curved flanges that seemed to serve no actual purpose. This far from the sun, out where an Oört cloud might once have existed, there was very little light to view anything effectively. In artificial color, the vessel looked like it was painted electric blue, with highlights of bright orange and green. Its vividness was unsettling enough without its contents to consider.
It decelerated to a relative halt and hung there, waiting.
“I have to go,” she said to Trezise.
“Understood,” he replied without any appreciable lag. “We’ll speak again soon, Page.”
For once, despite herself, she hoped that this would be true.
* * *
The circular bridge of the
Apostle
was dimly lit and smelled of steel. De Bruyn sat at the lowest point of the cavernous space, surrounded by ranks of instruments like steps in an amphitheatre. Tall figures moved among those instruments, but the light was too faint for her to make them out. She half-glimpsed robes and cowls; very occasionally, eyes glinted at her.
“We know who she is,” said the shadowy figure sitting opposite her. His face was completely obscured by the hood of a black combat suit that had been modified to give it a more ceremonial air. “But do you know who
we
are?”
“You are the Disciples of Evergence,” she said.
“And what does that name mean to you?”
She hesitated. “I’m not sure,” she said finally. “The word ‘Evergence’ doesn’t appear in any language I have access to. It’s not a name, it’s not a code—”
“It has no meaning of itself,” the hooded figure interrupted her. “It could be said to be a confluence of many essences: of convergence, forever, emerging, divergent, evolution, emergency, and even vengeance. But ‘Evergence’ is none of these things. It is a word for something that has, until now, needed no words. It has existed in silence, and will return to silence when the need for words is gone.” The ominous figure inclined its head as the echoes of his voice faded. “But I feel you do not understand.”
“No, I’m afraid you’ve lost me,” she admitted with a shrug.
“It doesn’t matter. Your comprehension is neither essential nor desired. We simply wish to ensure that you bring with you no misconceptions about our purpose here in Sol System.”
“You worship the enemy,” she said softly. The words carried much more significance when said in context.
“So it has been said,” the figure observed. “And if that is what you choose to believe, so be it.”
“You’re telling me you
don’t
worship them?”
“We do not
worship
,” the figure intoned. “That is all I am telling you.”
“But you are on their side?”
“Yes.”
“And Morgan Roche is your enemy.” She didn’t need to phrase that as a question.
“Yes, she is.”
“Then I believe I can help you,” De Bruyn said, feeling a catch in her voice that surprised her.
“Really?” Was there a hint of mockery in his voice? She couldn’t be sure.
“Yes,” she said, the word emerging as little more than a croak. What was wrong with her? Finally she had found people that suited her needs, and she seemed to be having second thoughts! But she wasn’t about to back out. Not now. She
couldn’t.
“I
can
help you,” she said more assertively, adding: “If you help
me
.”
“Ah, I see.” The figure nodded thoughtfully. “And what is it exactly that you want from us?”
“A deal,” she said. “We work together and we
both
get what we want.”
“You would serve us?”
“No,” she said quickly. “I would work with you. For a time.”
“How?”
“I am alone, here. My resources are meager. But I know what I’m doing, and I have access to information at the heart of the IEPC. Give me one of your cells to command, and I will do your job for you.”
“Which job do you think that would be?”
She leaned forward. “With my knowledge and your Disciples, we can trap Roche. I
know
we can. All we have to do is cooperate, and she will be out of your hair forever. It’s that simple.”
“Nothing is ever that simple,” he said darkly.
“Look, all I need is to get my hands on her,” De Bruyn said. “I don’t even care if she’s alive, just as long as I have her body.”
“Why would you want her body so badly?” he asked.
“Because it contains the truth,” she said. “The truth of who she is.”
“I’ve told you once that we already know who she is,” he said. “Why not just ask?”
De Bruyn didn’t state the obvious: how could he know anything more than
she
did? The rumors she’d heard—and which, she was sure, comprised the bulk of the Disciples’ knowledge— were wild and contradictory. Some proclaimed Roche as a savior, others as a traitor. De Bruyn lent none of them credence, just as she wouldn’t waste her time listening to the views of a religious fanatic.
“Because I want to see the truth with my own eyes,” she said.
The robed figure pondered this for a few moments, then asked, “And what
exactly
do we receive in turn?”
“Apart from Roche out of the way?” She leaned back into the seat and shrugged. “What do you want?”
“You say that you have access to the Interim Emergency Pristine Council.”
“I have a contact—”
“Will you give us information?”
She hesitated. “What sort of information?”
“The information we require.”
She waited for him to elaborate, but he said nothing more—and he obviously wasn’t going to until she had agreed or disagreed. An icy silence filled the air of the bridge, and again her doubts returned.
She shook herself free of them by reminding herself why she was here. This
wasn’t
a grudge-match. This was about justice. Everything she had unearthed suggested that she was doing the right thing. If she was doing this for herself, why was she going to such lengths? Any sane person would have given up weeks ago—and there could be no question of her sanity.
She was
so close
to the truth....
As she waited for docking instructions to arrive from the
Apostle,
she’d used the time to scan the data Trezise had given her. A cursory glance had been all she needed. The records weren’t complete, but they did fill in portions of a bigger picture. They had come from the second moon around Bodh Gaya, the former capital system of the Commonwealth of Empires, where the Armada housed its Military College. Morgan Roche had served there during her training for COE Intelligence, years ago. Trezise had managed to get his hands on various reports, assessments, essays, and test scores that demonstrated how average a student Roche had been. Only in one area had she excelled, and that had been the handling of AIs. She had preferred to grapple with artificial minds rather than those of the people around her.
Perhaps, De Bruyn thought, that might explain why she’d had so few friends. It certainly explained how she had been selected as a courier for JW111101000, the Box that had ultimately helped her escape from Sciacca’s World and the clutches of the Dato Bloc. That was one AI De Bruyn was glad to see the end of.
But that information was not specifically what De Bruyn was after. The information she sought hadn’t been there at all. And in some ways, the gaps were more telling. All of Roche’s physical records were unavailable. Not missing or deleted:
unavailable.
When Trezise had asked why, he had been told that access to those records was restricted by special order VSD5278.
De Bruyn recognized that order number. It was department shorthand for the COE’s previous Eupatrid, Enver Buk. Eupatrid Buk himself had specifically ordered those records kept secret, no matter who asked for them.
That in itself might not have been significant. Trezise had dug back a little further, not just trying to find a birth date but
any
physical record at all, prior to Roche’s enrollment at Military College. Her name was recorded at an orphanage on Ascensio, but there was little else of note: no medical records, no education reports, no informal recollections. Her application scores were on file in Ascensio’s COE Armada recruit database, along with the form she must have filled out to apply for the test, but the results of her medical exam were missing. Special order VSD5278 had cast a cloak over them, too, it seemed.
It had taken De Bruyn only a minute or two to confirm what she already suspected: that the details of Roche’s early life were being kept secret by the government of the COE, and that this secret had been ratified by the Eupatrids past and present who had issued the special orders required to ensure that no one ever found out the truth.
What that truth was, though, she wasn’t yet entirely sure. But she had suspicions. She had been chasing those suspicions, along with Roche, across Sol System and half of the COE in the hope that they might be verified. If Roche’s early life was being kept secret, it was entirely possible that the details Trezise had uncovered were completely fictitious. Where had Roche come from before Military College? Out of thin air, it seemed—which made her suspiciously like the clone warriors the IEPC were trying to fight.
As soon as the idea occurred to her, De Bruyn had been caught by its ramifications. If it was true, Roche
must
have been planted by the enemy to seed chaos and disorder the way that they had in so many other systems. The fact that she had not, until recently, shown any destructive or even subversive tendencies did not necessarily invalidate this theory.
De Bruyn noted that at about the time Roche enrolled in the Military College the High Human known as the Crescend had joined the COE in a partnership designed to foster trade and joint industry between the Caste echelons. Maybe the Crescend knew about Roche and had decided to see if she could be contained rather than destroyed. Maybe he hoped to bend her to his will, or at least make her an ally rather than an enemy; that might explain why he was so keen to keep her existence a secret, to the point of penalizing those who came even close to the truth, like De Bruyn. Maybe he didn’t care what happened to the COE at all, and was only interested in seeing what happened at firsthand when the time bomb called Morgan Roche finally went off.
Maybe he wasn’t involved at all, and the giant shadows De Bruyn saw on the wall before her were cast by shapes much tinier. Either way, she had to be sure. Something odd was going on, and she had been caught up in it. Now that she was close to finding proof—of
anything at all
—it was finally time to act. But she couldn’t do it on her own; she was going to need powerful friends if she was to see justice served.
She needed to fight fire with fire.
“I’ll give you information,” she said to the man in black, “if you give me Morgan Roche.”
His posture didn’t change, but in the shadows that hid his face she thought she had seen him smile.
“Good,” he said. “In that case,
God’s Monkey
will meet with you in precisely seven hours. Its pilot and contingent of Disciples will obey your commands—unless, of course, those commands are contrary to the goals of our movement. You may use them as you will until such time as our mutual obligations have been discharged. Does that suit you?”
She swallowed with relief. “Thank you, yes,” she said. “But where exactly will I meet them?”
He gave her the coordinates. “They will know you as ‘Reverence,’ “ he said. “Use them well, Page De Bruyn.”
He stood. She stood too, although her muscles felt weak. The gray-clad Disciples who had led her to the bridge stepped out of the shadows to stand by her side.
“Wait,” she said to the figure in black. “You know my name?”
He turned to face her, but said nothing.
“Couldn’t I at least know yours?”
“Mine is not relevant,” he said.
“If you’re worried that I will tell the council—”
“The thought would never cross our minds,” he said, taking a step toward her. “Nor should it cross yours again.”
De Bruyn swallowed. “I assure you,” she said nervously, “I wouldn’t tell anyone—”
“Oh, I know you won’t,” he interrupted her. “Not just because I tell you that should you betray us by divulging anything that has passed between us this day, we would hunt you down, Page De Bruyn, and we would kill you. Of that
you
can be certain.”
He took another step forward, into the light, and smiled as she recoiled a pace in alarm.
Even with the hood up, there was no mistaking the face of Adoni Cane.
“I know,” he said, “because we have a deal...”
12
AVS-38
955.2.12
1770
Defender-of-Harmony Vri carried the injured girl over the threshold of the airlock, ignoring the gunfire that insistently peppered the back of his combat suit. Once he had safely passed the girl to the armored figure waiting for him, he turned and fired four shots in rapid succession in the direction he had come.
There was an explosion. Immediately, the gunfire stopped.
The scutter shuddered noisily as the airlock closed with a hiss.
Vri steadied himself. The scutter lurched away from the station and weathered a battering on its way back to the
Ana Vereine.
He walked the short distance to where the girl had been strapped to a stretcher and attached to a portable autosurgeon. The shot had taken her in the shoulder, piercing her hazard suit and making a mess of the flesh beneath, then exploding messily out the back. Only the suit’s small first-aid facility had kept her alive while Vri and Haid fought their way back to the scutter through near-endless waves of Fathehi custodians.
The autosurgeon’s display was blinking red: the girl needed the full version on the main ship before she would begin to recover.
Vri stood. His faceplate clicked open, swinging up and back to reveal not just his face but most of his head too. Even through the light hair that covered every inch of his features, his anger was obvious.
“It was too close,” he said. His voice was deep, and every word perfectly enunciated.
Haid too had shucked the helmet of his combat suit. “We were unlucky,” he said, wiping sweat from his hairless black forehead with the palm of his glove. “Even when they sprang the trap, we thought Maii had it covered. But all it took was one lucky shot...” He looked down at the girl, rocking in her stretcher as the scutter endured another battering. “Maybe we weren’t so unlucky. At least we managed to get out.”
“It was too close,” Vri repeated with the same, slow precision to his words.
Haid looked at him. “So you keep telling us.”
“It is not
you
I am telling.” His intense eyes were as golden as his armor, and focused on the back of the person piloting the scutter.
“I hear you,” said Roche. She didn’t need to turn to know he was referring to her. Nor did she particularly care what the Surin thought at this moment; there was too much happening to worry about that. Besides, she had been watching via the suit monitors and the Box’s patch into the consulate’s security channel; she knew better than either of them just how narrow their escape had been. Another ten seconds in the dock and a full squadron of custodians would have pinned them in a crossfire from which none of them would have emerged alive.
“I’m taking her back,” the Surin warrior said. His firm tone conveyed more than the words themselves.
Roche did turn, at that. “You’re not taking her to Erojen.” Her voice was as hard as his.
“No, of course not,” he said. “I meant to the
Phlegethon.”
Roche was silent for a long moment; then her expression softened slightly. “Okay,” she said. “The
Phlegethon
it is. But if you don’t let me fly this thing home first, we won’t be going anywhere at all....”
The Surin nodded, and Roche turned back to the controls. He took the seat closest to Maii’s injured form.
Sensing Haid’s eyes on him still, he turned to face the ex-mercenary. They stared at each other for a few seconds.
“You fight well,” Vri said finally, adding: “Despite your handicap.”
Haid’s eyes flashed. “As do you, despite yours.”
Vri frowned a question, and Haid indicated the girl.
“I do not consider my protecting this child to be a handicap,” said Vri indignantly.
Haid raised one arm, indicating where an energy bolt had passed clear through his arm and out the other side.
“Nor do I consider this to be one, either,” he said.
Vri pondered this for a moment, then turned away and was silent for the remainder of the trip back to the
Ana Vereine.
* * *
Earlier, they had argued about the mission to the Fathehi Consulate.
“It is too dangerous,” Vri had insisted.
“Dangerous, yes;
too
dangerous, no,” Roche had shot back. “The junior consul herself has assured us that we will have free passage through the station.”
“And you
believe
her?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“After all that has happened, I find your naivete disturbing.”
Roche felt her face turn red. “We are more than capable of handling anything they might throw at us.”
“We are a handful of people against an entire station!”
“Maii can—”
“Yes, she can. And she
has.
You rely on her too much. You are
using
her! You are using her as I would use a percussion rifle—to be tossed aside when its usefulness has expired.”
“That’s not true!” Roche was finding it difficult containing her emotions, and a blast of anger from the reave in response to Vri’s accusation only enhanced her irritation. “We rely on her help, but that’s
not
the same as using her.”
“She is a child that is—”
“That is still capable of making up her own mind!” snapped Roche. “If you want to talk about people being used, then take a good look at yourself!”
This caught the Surin warrior by surprise, and he frowned in confusion.
“You’re just a stooge of the Surin Agora,” Roche went on. “They don’t care about the truth, and they don’t care about Maii! They just want her back so they can take her apart and see how she works. And you’re helping them!”
Vri had reared back in the screen: “Be careful what you say, Morgan Roche.”
“If you’re threatening me,” Roche spat, “I swear I’ll have you shipped back to the council faster than you can say ‘mindless pawn’!”
“Easy, you two,” said Haid, putting a hand on Roche’s shoulder. “This is getting us nowhere.”
put in Maii herself, her emotions back under control.
Roche took a deep breath and looked down at her feet. Maii was right; she was as guilty as Vri of assuming that she knew what was right for the girl.
Maii said.
For a moment, Roche thought Vri would argue with her, but instead he simply nodded. “It is a reasonable compromise,” he said.
“But—” Roche began.
“She’s right, Morgan,” said Haid, smiling. “It’s my turn to be the hero.”
Roche knew he was only joking, but she couldn’t help feeling slightly stung by his words. She was reluctant to lose control because she was desperate for something to go right—just once! The fact that nothing had gone right for anyone in Sol System didn’t change things. She still felt like it was
her
that was somehow getting it wrong.
And Maii did have a point. She
was
tired of facing hostile envoys and suspicious security forces. This could be a good way for Vri to save some face, and to relieve the restlessness eating at Haid. Besides, she and Maii had swept for clone warriors upon their arrival and the place seemed clear. That made it safer than any of the other ports they had visited.
Or so it had seemed. Roche had become so used to looking for clone warriors that she had blinded herself to base Human treachery. When the junior consul decided that Roche had extended herself far enough into her station, she ordered her custodians to open fire—on the boarding party and on the
Ana Vereine
itself, forcing the ship to retreat to a safe distance and leaving the others to scramble for their lives through the station. Had the scutter not already docked, and had the Box not been available behind the scenes to keep the custodians at bay, the situation could have been a lot worse than it was.
Even without knowing what lay ahead, Roche had approached the mission with apprehension. Before leaving, she had gone to see Cane.
He had taken up residence in an observation blister on one of the
Ana Vereine’s
seven nacelles. The curved window allowed him an unobstructed view of the space around the ship. Not that there was much to see. The only object visible to the naked eye was the crossed rings of the Fathehi Consulate, tumbling slowly against the starry backdrop.
The Box had observed him there on numerous occasions over the previous two weeks, since the events on Perdue Habitat. When Roche didn’t ask for him specifically, that was where he went. She suspected that he was avoiding her.
“Will you tell me why you’re doing this?” she had asked.
At first he hadn’t answered, his brown skin soaking up the light from distant stars.
“Cane?”
“I am thinking.”
“What about?”
“About what it is like to be alone.”
Roche had glanced at the stars, at the galaxy around them. All those systems, all those worlds, all the Humanity filling them up: High and Low, Pristine and Exotic, old and young—and almost a thousand of those Castes were now crammed into Sol System. She didn’t feel alone anymore. Not at all.
And that didn’t even take into account the AI sharing her body.
“Why?” she had asked.
“I killed one of my own kind,” he said. He turned to face her.
“You still have us.” She had attempted a smile, then regretted it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was bothering you this much.”
He had shaken his head and returned, expressionlessly, to watching the stars.
“Nor did I,” he said quietly.
“You mightn’t be the only one in this position, you know.” She didn’t want to take his black mood with her to the consulate; if there was anything she could do to crack his reserve, she would try it—even if it meant inviting him to join the landing party to the consulate in Haid’s place. “Your siblings don’t seem terribly indiscriminate. We only know of one time when they cooperated, and that was on Perdue, Maybe
that
was the exception. Maybe they kill each other as easily as ordinary Humans do.”
But he hadn’t responded.
Eventually, she had left him alone and gone to see Alta Ansourian. Another mistake. The woman was still grieving for her father and for all the friends destroyed with her habitat. Since coming on board she had barely emerged from the stateroom Roche had given her—not even to see what was going on when the
Ana Vereine
had come under attack.
“Do you think I’ll ever get back to Vacishnou?” she had asked Roche.
“I’ll do my best,” Roche told her, hoping the words didn’t sound as empty as they felt. The homeworld of the Vax was on the other side of the galaxy and seemed far removed from their current situation. “That’s the most I can promise, I’m afraid.”
“I understand.” But if she truly understood, it hadn’t given her any comfort. And that more than anything made Roche wonder if Alta Ansourian was wiser than she looked.
* * *
She thought seriously about the question. Was she angry at Rey Nemeth for giving her a mission she couldn’t finish? Or at Vri for forcing her to face the inevitable? Or at Maii for being shot?
The last was ridiculous. If anyone, she should resent the person who had shot the girl. That in itself was tempting, but not as tempting a target as the junior consul who had ordered the attack. Or the lieutenant who had turned them away from the LaGoc barracks that had been their previous port of call, as had leaders of the three previous habitats they had tried to contact. Then there were the Noske saboteurs who had planted a bomb on their usual scutter, nearly killing everyone on board; the clone warrior in the Katajalin Serai, responsible for triggering a mass riot that had torn the normally tight collection of vessels apart within a day of Roche’s arrival; and finally Inderdeep Jans and her unknown enemy cohort who, together or apart, had brought about the appalling failure that had been the very first of Roche’s missions for the Ulterior.
She could hate the council for not helping her, but that was pushing the boundary too far. She might as well hate the COE, or the Crescend, or the galaxy itself.
Except the Box hadn’t asked about
hate,
had it? It had asked her about her anger, and once she separated the two, the answer came to her.
control.>
.> She rolled onto her side, into a fetal position.
She couldn’t tell if the Box was being facetious or not.
do me when it comes to the crunch?>
Phlegethon.
<1 would give you nothing less, Morgan.> The AI seemed pleased that she had asked its advice. Phlegethon
is as good a place as any.>