Defy the Worlds (Defy the Stars #2)(102)
Meanwhile, the other Vagabond and Genesis ships swoop and swirl in crazy victory spirals. He wonders which one of the tiny darting lights on that screen is the corsair. Normally he’d focus in tighter to locate it, but he finds he doesn’t yet want to.
He’s… hurting. Not physically, except for the bright line of pain where he cut his arm open. What he feels is more like the absence of something so essential he takes it for granted, maybe similar to what humans experience when they get dizzy or are temporarily deafened by trauma. When he tries to take stock of his condition, he realizes there’s a sort of numb place in his brain—an area he can’t currently probe.
He decides to ignore this for the time being. His organic repair systems may heal it, and if not, he can have Virginia Redbird mend any damage. Currently Abel has higher priorities, such as finding Noemi amid the post-battle chaos, and dealing with the small ship that’s now approaching the Persephone.
A transit pod, he realizes. These aren’t fighters; they’re hardly even ships at all, with very little steering and propulsion. They exist purely to allow humans to move between ships in space when neither vessel can dock with the other. The green-and-white marks on its side reveal that this one was launched from one of the larger, older troop ships of the Genesis fleet.
Abel rises from his chair, surprised to feel his legs shaky beneath him. But he can walk through the corridor without stumbling. Weary as he is, he’s still able to function.
By the time he gets to the launching bay, the air lock is already cycling. Maybe he should’ve demanded communication from the pod before allowing it to dock; maybe he should’ve set the door not to automatically open. Normally he would have done these things, but in his current daze, they’re occurring to him too late. Everything is too fuzzy, too slow. This must be what having a human brain feels like.
The air lock cycle ends. Abel immediately steps inside the bay. He can’t keep this individual from coming on board, but if there’s going to be a confrontation, he intends to get it over with quickly. When the transit pod slides open, however, the visitor appears to be… if not a friend, at least an ally.
“Darius Akide,” he says. “I thought you were a noncombatant.”
Akide nods. “I went into battle to bear witness, and to chronicle this stage of the war for the survivors, if there were any.”
“As you see, survivors are numerous.” Abel waits for praise or gratitude that doesn’t come. The humans may not yet have realized what he did for them. However, other questions are far more important. “Did you see Noemi’s ship? She was flying a red corsair.”
Surprise flickers on Akide’s face as he steps from the pod, his long white robes striking an oddly formal note. “She went into battle? I thought she was required to resign.”
“Nothing could keep her from defending Genesis.” Abel will need to send out a signal to her directly. What if she was one of the few Genesis pilots lost in the early, bloody stage of the fight?
Have faith, he reminds himself. Even if he can’t believe in a deity, he can believe in her.
“What is the purpose of your visit, Dr. Akide?” Abel asks. “You could have simply reached out to me via comms, which suggests you have a message that is delicate and requires extra security. Or you may wish to conduct a confidential conversation.” Could Akide have realized what Abel did to the other mechs? It would be a considerable mental leap, but his cybernetics background with Mansfield makes the connection possible. This would naturally be something Akide would have wished to investigate immediately.
“Yes, I have a message.” Akide has a strange expression on his face. “Do what you were made for.”
He straightens to his full height and withdraws a small device from his robe, larger than a comm link but smaller than a spanner. Before Abel can ask what it is, Akide hits a switch and—
The floor tilts and sways. Visual input shuts down entirely; touch and smell go to minimum. Abel staggers sideways and would fall except that Professor Akide catches him in his arms. Only sound remains to him, that and the panic of his own thoughts.
Akide helped design me, Abel thinks in a daze. He knows how to shut me down.
Whatever signal was sent doesn’t render Abel completely unconscious, the way Mansfield’s old fail-safe did; he retains some mental function and full auditory input. “Why?” he manages to say. If he’s judging the sounds correctly, Akide is dragging him along the Persephone corridor. “What are you—”
“I’m sorry, Abel. I’m genuinely sorry about this. But I have to secure you.” Professor Akide’s footsteps stagger in irregular thumps; Abel’s considerable weight is no doubt difficult for the older man to manage. “Make sure your consciousness is bound good and tight. Then I can take you back to the one cybernetics lab we have on Genesis. There, I can get some work done.”
“What—do you—”
“This battle doesn’t change anything.” Akide sounds resigned, as fatalistic as Noemi described him. “Our victory today will only make Earth more desperate. They’ll send human troops next, and they’ll land on Genesis. They’ll kill our children, burn our homes. We can’t let that happen.”
“But—Haven—”
“There’s no guarantee Earth’s people will accept Haven as a new home for humanity. They have to survive a life-threatening disease to even think about it! Even if they do, every person on every single colony world is going to feel betrayed by Earth. Haven can’t be their home for a long time to come, if ever. So to avoid a mass uprising, Earth must conquer Genesis, immediately. The battle today proved that. That means this is our last chance to stop them.” Akide takes a deep breath. “Long ago I learned to question the work I did with Burton Mansfield. I thought I’d left it behind me. Now I see God’s true purpose in it. He led me to Mansfield, because Mansfield would lead me to you.”